2020 Penfolds RWT - Bin 798 Shiraz, Barossa Valley, Australia (750ml)

WINEMAKER'S NOTES: 

TASTING NOTES: 

This is a wonderful Bin 789 with striking poise, polish and intensity on offer. Show-stopping aromas of ripe blackberry, dark plum and espresso are primal and freshly captured. The palate is rich and lusciously expressed, with a very plush and intense core of ripe blackberry and dark-plum fruit. Roasted coffee here, too. Such poise and polish. Drink over the next decade or more.

- James Suckling, 98 pts. 

The 2020 RWT Shiraz Bin 798 is a powerhouse of bloody fruit and firm tannin. It veritably explodes from the blocks, showing plum skin, raspberry leaf, blackberry, mulberry, lashings of salted licorice and rendered lamb fat. I am coming to love (in a big and serious way) the Barossa Shiraz' bottlings from 2020—the year was significantly down in yields, warm and dry, and responsible for wines of muscle, density and gravitas. So, too, for this wine. Excellent.

- Robert Parker's Wine Advocate, 98 pts. 

This is a strong vintage of RWT. It's austere, dense and still-young but is also seamlessly layered, almost unnoticeably complex. The brambly blueberry and raspberry fruit is woven with plums, dried herbs, spices and florals, with a note of freshly sealed tarmac. The palate is silky and supple, tightened by a muscular line of chalky tannins with lifted acidity and densely packed flavor. A long distance runner, this should be held another few years until around 2026, then drunk for several decades after.
Editors' Choice

- Wine Enthusiast, 95 pts. 

Stunning, a toothsome and dense wine, with sink-your-teeth-into-them tannins and blackberry buckle, salted caramel and moist, sticky toffee cake flavors. Packs aromatic accents of clove cigarettes, black olive tapenade, fresh rosemary and toasted cumin flavors that gush through the long, expressive and generous finish. Drink now through 2040.

- Wine Spectator, 95 pts. 

The orchestra strikes with big volume on entry, announcing this as a very dark, very plush composition. There’s quite a bit of bustle and bluster to work through with the crowd of bold blackberry, bramble, blueberry, high violets, wild raspberry and dark plum notes, and it only softens into a savory embrace after an age in the glass. The big architecture of oak and tannin that contains this wine only reveals itself at the finish, suggesting a long life ahead.

- Decanter, 94 pts. 

The 2020 RWT is a bold, Barossan expression that delivers lashings of sweet flavour. Highly expressive, it explodes with plush, open knit, mulberry, blackberry, licorice and inky fruits. A distinct chocolatey richness and powerful oak are well matched thanks to16 months in French oak hogsheads, 49% new. The warm dry vintage then delivers an immense core of tannins with a line of peppery/meaty flavours over luscious chocolate and blueberry displaying exceptional length. This is a big wine, built for the long haul.

- Vinous, 94 pts.