Jasper Hill
Georgia's Paddock
Heathcote
2009

The producer

Jasper Hill was established in 1982, by former food scientist Ron Laughton, and his wife Elva, and ever since then has been a small family business. The estate’s two single vineyards are named after daughters Emily and Georgia, who are both involved in the business. Today the Laughtons own 20 hectares of biodynamically farmed vineyards, all planted on their own roots. Jasper Hill produces six wines from three individual vineyards, the flagships of which are the Georgia’s Paddock Shiraz and Emily’s Paddock Shiraz/Cabernet Franc.

The wine

Georgia’s Paddock Shiraz is one of Jasper Hill’s two famous Heathcote single vineyards. 12 hectares of biodynamically grown un-grafted Shiraz vines lie on an elevated hillside at altitudes of 320 meters above sea-level, with north-western exposure. The vines were planted in 1975 and soils are classically deep rusty-red gravelly loams. The first vintage of Georgia’s Paddock was made in 1982, and the wine is deeply concentrated with black and blue fruit intensity, floral and spice complexity, chewy ripe tannins, and a very long juicy finish.

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.