The story of this wine is a little complex. It goes like this. Usually, winemaker Rick Burge bottles three ‘flagship’ premium red wines made from fruit grown on the estate vineyard: the Draycott Shiraz, the Old Vines Grenache and the Olive Hill Shiraz-Grenache-Mourvedre blend. 2002 was a stunning vintage, with perfect fruit set and extraordinary ripening conditions following generous winter rains. Rick decided to use the 2002 Draycott and Old Vine material to bottle a one-off luxury GSM blend (the ‘G3’), to commemorate the family winery’s 75th anniversary.

With a parcel of fruit remaining from the G3 blend, and some top-quality fruit from younger Grenache and Shiraz plantings, Rick decided to bottle the ‘D & OH’, a blend of 74% Shiraz and 26% Grenache. Like all of Rick’s wines, it is fruit-driven, rich and flavorsome, yet also elegant and stylish. It is a superb example of classic Southern Barossa Shiraz and Grenache: not as intensely inky-black and jammy as Northern Barossa wines, but more refined, with lean, supple tannins working perfectly with acid, alcohol, oak and rich ripe fruit.