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.