Yarra Yering Dry Red No.2 2022

Halliday Shiraz of the Year and Red Wine of the Year. Score awarded by the Halliday tasting panel at the annual Awards judging.

The Dry Red No. 2 is Yarra Yering’s ode to the Rhône, a co-fermented blend with a distinctly Australian accent - layered, poised, and utterly seductive.

Originally dreamed up by the visionary Dr Bailey Carrodus, this wine is 96% Shiraz rounded out with flecks of Marsanne, Mataro and Viognier - an old-world blueprint reimagined through a Yarra Valley lens. As always, the winemaking is precise: hand-picked fruit, whole berries to boost fragrance, a few handfuls of frozen Viognier skins and Marsanne bunches added to select fermenters, then 15 months in fine French oak to knit it all together.

Complex from the first swirl - black cherry, licorice, iodine, graphite - before opening into a wine of seamless texture and savoury length. It’s already taken out Shiraz of the Year and Red Wine of the Year in the Halliday Wine Companion, and it’s not hard to see why.

This is elegant, age-worthy Australian Shiraz at the very top of its game. One for collectors, one for the table, and one that Dr Carrodus would surely raise a glass to.