Clarendon Hills Cabernet Sauvignon Hickinbotham Vineyard 2004

Owner Roman Bratasiuk shows a slavish devotion to the simple tenets that yield some of the best Shiraz fruit grown in Australia.  From the flagship Astralis vineyard, he hand-harvests fruit from over 75-year-old dry-farmed vines and allows the indigenous yeasts to work their magic.  The resultant wine is unctuous and viscous, yet harmonized, and expresses those elements which define the essence of great Shiraz - black fruit, bramble, super concentrated cassis and spice, undercurrents of tobacco, coffee and licorice root.