Excellent Langtons Classification. Winner of Australia's most coveted award, the Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy for vintage 1992, Elderton are one of the nation's great icon winemakers. Elderton's matriarch and principal, Lorraine Ashmead, is the driving force behind one of our nation's most eminent luxury brands and one of the world's great wines. Command Shiraz has established an enviable reputation since the first vintage in 1984, establishing a peerless reputation internationally as a stately new world Shiraz.
A pure, single vineyard wine, from an unknown clone of Shiraz, picked off ancient vines, still growing on the original own roots, planted circa 1894, auspiciously classified as a centenarian block by Barossa Old Vine Charter. Following the initial budburst of a good spring, ample subsoil moisture allowed the old vines to flourish throughout the warm, dry summer. A cool February delaying ripening until late March, encouraging more blueberry and mulberry characters than is normal for Command Shiraz, very soft, pliable tannins adding structure and finesse. The finished wine was treated to an extravagant three years maturation in a mix of completely new American and French oak barrels.
Very dark purple with bright magenta hues. A radiant bouquet exhibiting a symbiosis of perfumes, savoury elements complexed by virile berry fruit and vanilla/cashew oak derived influences. An extensive, well layered palate of extraordinary elegance and generosity, capsicum notes and eastern spice, blackberry and fragrant blue fruit flavours, framed by sweet cedar oak and bound by a structure of finely tuned tannins, a Shiraz of immeasurable length and largesse.
