The 2022 Riposte ‘The Cutlass’ Single Vineyard Shiraz from Adelaide Hills offers a generous yet elegant profile, featuring aromatic pepper spice alongside deep dark plum and blue fruit notes. Its extended, intricate palate concludes with a lasting finish marked by refined tannins and subtle spicy oak nuances.
"Adelaide Hills Shiraz is a hot-ticket at the moment and here is a wine that sits very comfortably in the pocket of the emergence of a regional style. It’s satisfyingly ripe, crimson plum and berry to the fore, plump, with a little lift of pepper. Its signature, more importantly, is a palate shape that feels circular and continuous, with a sense of generosity that fills the mouth without weight, thickness or oak overburden. A wine with purity of flavour and structure that offers a complete new-age Shiraz experience." 95 Points - Toni Love
"Pepper and spice and all things berried and nice. If you’re ‘into’ bunchy shiraz then this is very good buying at under $30. It offers ample cherry-plum fruit flavours, loads of pepper, herb and stalk characters, and well-played smoky-reduction, the latter particularly apparent in the aftertaste. It’s tight through the finish; if it extends as it relaxes/evolves it will warrant a higher score yet." 92+ Points - Campbell Mattinson, The Winefront, 23rd November 2023, Drink: 2024 - 2028+
The grapes for this wine are from the vineyard of Carmine and Marina Pepicelli, near Lobethal in the Adelaide Hills. At 480 metres this is one of the highest Shiraz vineyards in the region. It is located on a gentle north facing slope giving an ideal aspect with maximum sunlight exposure.
In a quest for complexity, the grapes were fermented in two batches. One featured 50% whole bunches with normally crushed fruit as the balance while the other contained 50% whole berries. This produced wine of two different styles one, well-structured with an attractive carbonic ‘lift’ and the other rich, soft and textured. They were matured separately in French oak barriques (35% new). After rigorous barrel selection the wine was blended and bottled In March 2023.
