Tyrrells
Vat 9 Hunter Valley Shiraz
2009

The producer

The Tyrrell family has owned the Hunter Valley property since 1858 when they planted Syrah and Semillon from the James Busby collection and produced the first vintage in 1864. Wine was not the focus until the 1960s when Murray Tyrrell set up a cellar door and a mail order business, based around special selection wines under numbered Vat labels. Among these, from 1963, was the Vat 1 Semillon that has become one of the most awarded white wines in Australia. Tyrrells also pioneered Pinot Noir and Chardonnay with some of the earliest commercial releases of each in the country in the 1970s.

Tyrrells started a program of investigation of the suitability of his vineyards to particular varieties and purchased ancient vineyards when they became available. This led to the Sacred Sites range all from vines over 100 years old. Next generation Bruce Tyrrell hid 1,000 cases of 1989 Vat 1 from his father, releasing it in 1996 to show the benefits of age on Hunter Semillon. The practice continues to this day. Tyrrells owns a large proportion of the oldest vineyards in the Hunter – the other main landowner of old vineyards is Mount Pleasant – and produces outstanding wines from these, sadly in very limited quantities.

The wine

Vat 9 is a blend of the best old blocks on the Tyrrell Estate ‘Ashmans’, where the oldest vines date back to 1892. Most of the blend is from vineyards, the Weinkeller and Short Flat. The wine is allowed to mature in mostly large new French oak barrels. An incredibly graceful and fragrant, yet powerful 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.