A blend of shiraz and cabernet from the Hunter Valley, with the shiraz sourced from premium vineyards on the Tyrrell's property and Moon Mountain vineyard and the cabernet coming from Pokolbin. In the Hunter Valley, ideal conditions in spring led into a hot January very similar to 2009. Early harvesting before the rain resulted in clean, healthy, fully developed fruit.

All of the components were fermented and matured separately until blending in December 2011. After blending, the wine was put back into French oak barriques, 30% of which were new, until bottling in May 2012. The wine was predominately matured in smaller 225L barriques. As always with Vat 8, we see much darker fruits and some chocolate characters in the wine, along with the extra element of spice from the higher percentage of new oak.

A modern style of Australian red that also respects the tradition of regional and varietal blending to make a more rounded wine. The wine shows intense plum fruit sweetness from the shiraz with dark berry and chocolate characters. The cabernet component adds to the length and fullness of the wine.

3 Gold Medals
95 points - James Halliday