Torbreck The Steading 2019

Ripe but sinewy tannins mesh beautifully with dark berry and black olive on the chamois-smooth palate. There's smoked meat, ink, lavender and Turkish Delight riffs, with iron filing minerality to the lengthy finish. Sourced from 40- to 150-year-old vines from Gomersal, Lyndoch, Greenock, Moppa, Marananga, Seppeltsfield and Ebenezer, this polished 60% Grenache blended with Shiraz and Mataro is aged in 4,500-litre French oak foudres.

Plush, plummy fruit is accompanied by fistfuls of savory herbs and spices, purple beets, tobacco leaf and iodine in this rich red. The palate is tightly structured but balanced. Although silky in nature, the fruit is cinched in savory, talc-like tannins. Oodles of herbs and spices flow right to the finish. 

 A blend of 53% grenache, 28% shiraz and 19% mataro. Each component has been elevaged in large-format oak (4,500 liters) and this is the wine that reflects the vintage style and quality. It shows the all-round consistency of 2018 with bright red and blue berries, some red pastry notes and deeper, earthy, slightly tarry notes, too. The palate has a rich, supple and fleshy texture with ripe red-plum and raspberry fruit flavors, as well as soft, late-picked tannins. Drink over the next eight years.

The newest release, the 2019 The Steading, offers restrained aromatics of mixed berries and cherries interlaced with hints of savory herbs. If it lacks the ripeness and richness of the 2018, it's more elegant and perhaps more complex, with those herbal striations adding silky textural elements to the medium to full-bodied palate. Gentle tannins linger on the finish.