Zema Estate Saluti Cabernet Shiraz 2016

Review: Zema Estate Saluti Cabernet Shiraz 2016

You know what I like about this new Zema Estate Saluti Cabernet Shiraz 2016? It tastes like a Zema red, just more luscious and more immoveable.

Released to commemorate forty years as a family owned winery, this Coonawarra red comes from the best barrels of the 2016 vintage, that were then blended and matured for another 14 months in French & American oak. It’s increasingly rare to see Amex oak in Coonawarra, but it’s part of the DNA here, and it just adds these layers of lavish choc vanilla icecream decadence. After six years it’s less obvious too, and the creeping brick dust and mushroom adds complexity .

Still, this is an overt wine. It’s chunky, with a palate that looks youthful and minty too – a warm, open, full bodied Aussie red in a hearty, smooth, warm, expansive style, with the achol adding dryness, the tannins hearty, the finish inelegant but long. Not my style – it’s a bit too much of everything, but that’s the point. It’s a whole lotta wine in a true Zema mode.

Best drinking: later. Drink over the next twenty years. 18/20, 93/100. 14.5%, $145.99. Zema Estate website. Would I buy it? Just a glass for me.

Andrew Graham Avatar

Andrew Graham was once voted the 23rd most trusted wine critic on the planet. A WCA Journalism Young Gun now old hack with 25yrs as a buyer, judge, journalist, marketer and too much more.

3 responses to “Review: Zema Estate Saluti Cabernet Shiraz 2016”

  1. Andrew – Lord above $150 for the Zema 2016? Wonderful imported Barolo of similar vintage for this money. Know which I’d rather have. Reckon some of these companies are suffering from an increasingly common disease called delusional pricing

  2. It all comes down to whether someone will pay the $150. It’s a bit too much for more than a glass, personally, but hey, it’s cheap given that Balnaves William Wilson 2016 Shiraz Cabernet is $300 a bottle…

  3. Has anyone tried “Odyssee” the brain child of the director on Chat Leoville-las Cases . Blend of Cabernet Sauvignon (Bordeaux) and Grenache ( Southern Rhone) and other Rhone varieties depending on the vintage selling at around $59?

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