👃🏼 The vanguard aromas are a really lovely mix of vivid BlackBerry fruit, with a touch of pepper spice. And this makes total sense, because it is 81% Shiraz – which traditionally boasts…(wait for it)… blackberry fruit and pepper.

[As a side note, this these first two notes are quiter an achievement from a technical perspective. Delightful fresh fruit flavours and aromas on a shiraz is a tricky thing to achieve because, as discussed in the video. you need enough oxygen during fermentation to keep yeast healthy, but not so much oxygen that you lose the fresh fruit volatile aromas.]
Taking another sniff, I detect touches of slightly deeper, sweeter fruit as well, perhaps blackcurrant fruit pastille and a little hint of lavender,
[Again, these notes could come from Shiraz, but could equally be provided by the 11% Mourvedre in the wine.]

👄 When we eventually get around to actually tasting the wine (you cvan sniff this guy for hours) it certainly doesn’t present as a heavy 15% icon style wine. Rather, this is light stepping and quite elegantly poised.
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[The tannins are remarkably gentle, but then perhaps that is partially because it has also had roughly a year of maturation and three years of cellar age.]
Probably the most prominent flavour note (asopposed to my textural observation) is the incredible savoury core that runs down the middle of the wine.
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[Often from cooler climate Syrahs, especially like those from Elim on South Africa’s Cape south coast., you can get these black olive briny elements… but Noble Hill is nowhere near Elim, and Simonsberg-Paarl is a truly warm region…and yet you get a kind of black olive tapenade note, anyway. Fascinating.]

Another thing to note is the presence of redder fruit, too: cherry, red plum, red mulberry.
[When one looks at the alcohol and see that it’s 12.5% this implies that they would have harvested the Shiraz a little bit earlier in order to make sure that the Viognier was getting overripe on the vine.
As it turns out, it wasn’t just Shiraz but ALL cultivars that were harvested on the same day.]
The end result is that you have some of those tarter redder fruit notes that come from slightly higher acid, lower sugar grapes. Of course the mourvedre component supports and bolsters that with the slightly riper black fruit elements. The end result is a much lighter styled, fairly modern take on Shiraz.