Barossa Shiraz 2024: Wines of elegance and poise from a low-yielding year

When a vintage provides challenges rather than perfect conditions, that’s when you learn just how keenly winemakers know their region to still produce superb wines.

Barossa’s 2024 Shiraz vintage can be measured by this yardstick. Harvest was preceded by an especially dry winter, isolated frost events during bud burst and flowering that reduced grape yields.

There were also picking challenges due to rain events scattered during grape picking.

'Distinctive elegance and poise'

It resulted in fewer dazzling superstars – yet an especially strong strata of superb wines have emerged that show distinctive elegance and poise.

From the 110 wines submitted to Decanter’s annual Barossa Shiraz vintage tasting, it proved very difficult to isolate the Top 40, such was the breadth of consistency, stylistic harmony and balance among the most attractive and worthy wines.

Challenging yields from the 2024 vintage have not compromised quality output – a statement clearly made by rising star winemaker Belinda van Eyssen of The Cutting.

She barely had enough Shiraz grapes from her Stonewell Vineyard to fill a 500-litre barrel, but her keen attention to detail has produced exceptional wine – which is only being sold in magnums to ensure this vintage’s tiny output will be celebrated in a grand manner.

Streamlined style

This is evident at Torbreck. Winemaker Ian Hongell has cleverly amplified the vitality and freshness of Shiraz from old vines that in a previous era were overly weighty, marked by extravagant oak usage.

No more; Torbreck Shiraz now has immediate appeal. ‘It’s all about achieving balance,’ says Hongell. ‘It can be big and beautiful at the same time.’

Hongell doesn’t achieve this in isolation. He works year-round with Torbreck viticulturist Nigel Blieschke, who is fixated on rejuvenating the health and productivity of old vineyards.

‘Look at the length of those vine canes – all consistent,’ Blienschke says, long after vintage has finished and leaves have fallen from the 1958 Gnadenfrei Vineyard at Marananga in the Barossa, which supplies fruit for The Laird.

‘That’s a picture of health, showing vines that are completely in balance.’

New energy

This is exactly what veteran winemaker Reid Bosward is searching for. Having left Kaesler Wines in 2023, Bosward now buys berries from a variety of growers for his own eponymous wine brand, and is making an irresistible brand of lively modern Shiraz.

‘I want serious fruit to speak of freshness, so that people can love drinking it now,’ says Bosward.

There is now an impressive fraternity of like-minded Barossa winemakers pursuing elegance and structural strength in their delicious medium-bodied Shiraz – Michael Hall, Alex Head, Amelia Nolan at Alkina, Michael Corbett of The Vanguardist (who also makes Whistler Wines) and Craig Stansborough’s Purple Hands Wines.

They are not alone. Yalumba’s Octavius, Dean Hewitson’s Monopole and Barr-Eden Estate are notable as big-bodied wines sourced from intense old-vine fruit, that now show more sympathy in their youth, without sacrificing any of their sturdy longevity or depth of flavour.

Even some of the heaviest mainstays of big Barossa Shiraz – such as Hentley Farm’s The Beast and Kaesler’s Old Bastard – are more nimble, and underline a dynamic new energy at the core of Barossa’s best modern Shiraz.

Barossa Shiraz 2024: 20 more noteworthy wines