Clonakilla
Shiraz-Viognier Canberra District
2005

The producer

Founded in 1971 at Murrumbateman, 40km north of Canberra City, by Irish scientist John Kirk who saw similarities in climate and topography to some of the great vineyard areas of Europe. This was the start of what is now the Canberra Wine District. The Clonakilla property was named after the family’s farm in County Clare, Ireland, and initially dabbled with the standard Australian blend of Cabernet and Syrah, and later in 1986 – unusually - Viognier for white wines.

After a trip to the Rhone, next generation winemaker Tim Kirk experimented with the Cote Rotie co-fermentation of a small amount of Viognier with Syrah. As they say, “that was that” - acclaim was immediate and widespread with one scribe penning “a patch of Cote Rotie near Canberra”, another “consistently one of Australia’s best red wines”. Syrah and Murrummbateman was a match made in heaven and that little dollop of Viognier created that little bit of extra magic that raised Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier into the top echelon of Australian red wines. Clonakilla quickly became one of Australia’s iconic wineries.

The wine

The Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier has won and extraordinary array of top awards from the very few shows in which it has been entered. A wine of depth and richness but with exceptional silkiness and finesse. A wine that invites favourable comparison with the similarly blended Cote Roties.

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.