Review: Yangarra High Sands Grenache 2017

Its easy to become a Yangarra Grenache fanboy. Every wine has an unquestioned charisma, a sense of ’round peg in round hole’ correctness about them that is unmistakable. This ’17 this is another glorious High Sands, and such a pure expression of McLaren Vale Grenache, with the only question being whether this or the 2018 Ovitelli is the king.

This Yangarra High Sands Grenache 2017 comes from the highest section of the 1946 bush vine plantings with the deepest sand soils. Handpicked, mechanically sorted, the ferment includes 50% whole berries, with everything spending 21 days on skins. Wild fermented, the wine then matures for 11 months in older oak. For the anoraks too, it has TA 5.6g/L and a pH 3.58.

This is a beautiful Grenache, with pure, open and quite fleshy red fruit of superb form and unquestioned vibrancy. There’s this joyous, open, ultra-varietal and mode here and such fine tannins that it’s hard not to be impressed. Complexity. Length. All of it, absolutely top flight. Best drinking: now to fifteen years. 14%, $160. 18.7/20, 95/100. Yangarra website. Would I buy it? I’d drink it very happily, but likely buy the cheaper Ovitelli.