It’s been a day or so of big dog reds at Australian Wine and Drinks Review, and today’s wine comes from Xavier Bizot & Lucy Croser’s Terre à Terre label. A blend of 78% Cabernet and 22% Shiraz from the close-planted Crayères Vineyard in Wrattonbully. Even now, at five, it’s still a molten, tightly wrapped bold red wine, cloaked in oak flavours and oak tannins (it spends 14 months in new wood, and it shows). After a swirl, not much comes out – some coffeed oak is the first flavour, then lavish oak, then oak tannins, plush fruit, coffee, and dark spirit. But you reach deep into this and it feels limitless, in a modern Right Bank Bordeaux superstar mode, but the finish is limitless. I can’t say it’s a good drink now, but the score reflects the endless future.

THE VERDICT

• Best drinking: wait a decade
• Score (out of 20): 18
• Score (out of 100): 93
• Alcohol %: 14.5
• RRP (in $AUD): 90
• Winery website: https://terreaterre.com.au/
• Would I buy it?: I’d only buy it for the cellar (and appreciate it next decade)