Brokenwood
Graveyard Vineyard Hunter Valley Shiraz
2009

The producer

Three lawyers – including wine writer James Halliday – who became friends over drinking fine wines, established Brokenwood, in the centre of the Hunter Valley in 1970, as a weekend hobby farm. The original 4.5-hectare block was planted to Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon and friends were cajoled into helping during vintage and pruning in return for good food and wine.

The wines quickly developed a strong following, and six new partners joined in 1978 allowing the purchase of the block adjoining the winery … the Graveyard Vineyard. Not actually a graveyard but, as with the original Cricket Pitch vineyard, a plot that was destined by the local council to be the local graveyard. Planted on deep clay soils the wines showed amazing depth and concentration from the very first vintage.

The wines’ popularity and subsequent growth in production saw the arrival of a full-time winemaker, in the early 1980s, along with new equipment, and the release of a Semillon. Brokenwood continued to expand, taking on more shareholders and producing wines from vineyards across Australia. Today there are several outstanding individual vineyard wines in the range, but in terms of Shiraz, the leader of the pack is the Graveyard Shiraz, a Hunter Valley (and Australian) classic. Brokenwood also produce an outstanding Semillon, the IRL Reserve Semillon, which is well worth seeking out.    

The wine

Brokenwood’s ‘Graveyard Vineyard’ is named after the original intentions for this site in Pokolbin, Hunter Valley. Here Shiraz is growing in heavy clay soils, which produces a wonderfully rich and concentrated wine, which then goes on to be aged in 100% French oak barrels, none of which new. The only Hunter Valley Shiraz which has made it into Langton’s Classification of Australian Wine.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.