Katnook Prodigy Shiraz 2010

IT'S $100 a bottle and recommended
best for drinking in 2055 – whether you
can wait 40 years is up to you.

COULD YOU PAY $100 AND WAIT 40 YEARS?

David Ellis

ITS $100 a bottle now, best recommended drinking time is 40 years away in 2055 – yet already it's garnered enough local and international awards and accolades to fill all of this column, leaving us no space to talk about the wine itself.

We're writing of the Katnook Prodigy Shiraz 2010 from a vintage lauded as one of the finest on record in Coonawarra, and with the wine made from small selections of vines renowned for consistently producing fruit of outstanding depth of flavour, exceptional colour and firm tannin structures.

Senior Viticulturist, Chris Brodie used hand-pruning, bunch-thinning and shoot-removal techniques to get the very best fruit off these already low-yielding vines, with Winemaker, Wayne Stehbens then employing small-batch vinification in open fermenters, basket-pressing, and maturation in French and American oak barriques for just over two years.

All this resulted in a wine of intense raspberry and plum aromas, marvellous pure-fruit flavours, and with underlying licorice spice and finely-grained tannins. There's no way we could hold off for 40 years, and reckon any time will be right to enjoy this one simply on its own with close family or good friends – in front of a winter's fire now, or maybe in the sun on the balcony come Spring.

 for week beginning 20 July 2015