Stone House Vineyard, Barossa Valley (South Australia) Shiraz 2009

Among this wine’s many virtues, soaring aromatics figure very prominently, as scents of ripe red and black berries are remarkably expressive, with lovely accents of saddle leather and wild mushrooms following hard on the heels of the fruit notes.  Full-bodied but really not heavy or syrupy, this is a wonderfully drinkable wine rather than a powerhouse that can be admired but not really enjoyed in a sustained way.  Although this has had enough time in bottle to develop tertiary characters that show atop the primary fruit and secondary oak, but all three layers are really in evidence simultaneously, making this one of the most complex of all the top wines shown at the 2014 San Diego International Wine Competition.  Bloody impressive juice.