Koomilya 'DC Block' Shiraz 2022

Stephen Pannell has twice won Australia’s most prestigious wine award, the Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy – most recently in 2014 for his 2013 Adelaide Hills Syrah – and his reputation is further hinted at by his being named one of the 50 most influential contributors to the world of wine by Decanter Magazine.

In 2014, Steve won his second Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy and further cemented his relationship with the great grapegrowing region that is South Australia by setting up a cellar door in the heart of McLaren Vale. His local legend status has been confirmed again and again, winning the Bushing Trophy for best red wine of show in McLaren Vale no less than four times: 2011, 2015, 2016 and 2018.

A single-block Shiraz from 50-year-old vines grown on slaty siltstone flecked with ironstone
rubble at an altitude of 108m, facing southeast and closest to the restored creek line.

"It’s so nice to see these Block wines consistently show true to site, while also naturally fluctuating with the vintage. The DC is always the most traditional of feel – of intensity and fruit flavour – of the triad of wines, but it’s as effortless, as delightfully free of artefact as the other wines. Deep of fruit, brooding, but never sweet or rich with it. Just a wine of thrumming presence with a bloody ferrousness, feeling of those ironstone-laced soils, old vines and that distinctive Upper Tintara bush block. There’s a character in all the wines that feels of that place, of the earth and the bush in the warmth of summer, but not of eucalypt, of mintiness, just of the scent of that serene place. An excellent wine." 96pts | Marcus Ellis | Halliday Wine Companion