Wine | Australia

Australian wine is the easiest major region in the world to read, because it has the fewest rules. There is no appellation hierarchy to decode and no ageing requirement to pay for. What there is instead is a single question: does the label name a real place? If it says Barossa Valley or McLaren Vale, the producer has made a claim they can be held to. If it says South Eastern Australia — a zone covering most of the country’s vineyards across four states — they have not.

Everything in this collection names a place. It is the premium end of our Australian shelf, built around two South Australian regions an hour apart that make wines which taste almost nothing alike.

Barossa Valley: warmth, old vines, plush texture

Warm, dry and low-lying, planted on sand and ironstone north-east of Adelaide. Barossa Shiraz is the plush end of the grape — blackberry and dark plum, sweet baking spice, chocolate and vanilla from oak, broad soft tannins. South Australia never had phylloxera, so some Barossa vineyards have produced continuously since the 1840s, and the region runs a voluntary Old Vine Charter that puts real definitions behind the phrase: 35 years for Old Vine, 125 for Ancestor Vine.

Pramie Shiraz Schild Estate ($64.99) is the serious Barossa expression here. Penfolds Shiraz Bin 28 ($34.99) is the multi-region South Australian blend that has been the country’s reference point for what Shiraz at its price should do since the 1950s.

McLaren Vale: sea breezes and a finer grain

South of Adelaide and close enough to the Gulf St Vincent that afternoon sea breezes pull the heat out of the vineyards. The wines are just as dark but built differently — savoury, herbal, briny at the edges, with firmer and finer-grained tannin. If Barossa Shiraz is velvet, McLaren Vale is closer to suede.

Koomilya Shiraz ($58.99) is the modern, site-obsessed end of the region. The Mollydooker house sits at the opposite pole: deliberately huge, high-alcohol, unmistakable — Mollydooker Shiraz The Boxer ($27.99) is the entry point, Mollydooker Shiraz Blue Eyed Boy ($59.99) the bigger version, Mollydooker Merlot The Scooter ($34.99) the Merlot and Mollydooker Two Left Feet Blend ($28.99) the blend.

Cabernet, and the blend Australia invented

Cabernet Sauvignon blended with Shiraz is an Australian specialty rather than a compromise: the Cabernet supplies the structure and the mid-palate hole it famously leaves, the Shiraz fills it. Penfolds Cabernet Shiraz Bin 389 ($69.99) is the reference bottling — known locally as “baby Grange” because it is aged in the barrels that held Grange the year before — and Penfolds Bin 600 Cabernet Shiraz ($59.99) is the more accessible version. For straight Cabernet, Penfolds Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon ($78.99).

19 Crimes the Warden Red Blend ($20.99) is the approachable end of the collection, and Australian Wine Bundle ($115.99) is the shortcut if you want to compare several at once.

The one fortified worth knowing

Penfolds Grandfather Rare Tawny Port ($88.99) is a solera-aged Australian fortified in the Portuguese tawny idiom, and it is a genuinely distinctive category rather than an imitation — Rutherglen and the Barossa have been making fortified wine since the nineteenth century. Dried fig, burnt orange, walnut, and a finish that goes on for a minute.

How to buy from this shelf

Decide which texture you want before you decide how much to spend. If you want plush, warm and sweet-spiced, buy Barossa. If you want savoury, tighter and more structured, buy McLaren Vale. Then check the alcohol on the back label — a lot of these sit between 14.5% and 15.5%, and at the top of that range the wine needs food with fat in it to stay in balance.

Serve everything here at 62–65°F rather than true room temperature. Our guide to Barossa versus McLaren Vale works through the difference bottle by bottle, including the cheaper end of the shelf in our full Shiraz collection. For the other great high-altitude New World red, see Mendoza Malbec. Everything else lives in red wine and the full cellar.