JM 1ST APPROACH

Deep dark black and red. What an amazing nose, simply awash with dark berries, liqueur plums, blackberry, raspberries and exotic spices, with a hint of Lindt dark chocolate. The palate too is wonderful. A mix of red berries, small dark berries, blackberry and cassis, all mingled with hints of earth and spices, and just a touch of vanilla. The wine has a wonderful mouthfeel, velvety yet firm with the finest of fine tannins. It has power and balance, has length to burn, finishing with fine and ripe tannins throughout the mouth. A wonderfully well made wine that screams quality. The long, long, chocolaty finish makes this an outstanding Shiraz in anybody's terms. Gavin Trott

At its lofty 500m altitude, Mike Press’ vineyard is cool and high at the best of times, producing shiraz of edgy black pepper personality even in a warm season. In the abnormally cool 2011 vintage this character is compounded to levels unfamiliar even in the Adelaide Hills, creating the most graceful, pretty and elegantly medium-bodied Mike Press shiraz to date.

“Just looked at the pre bottling sample of the 2012 Shiraz. It is typical of the Mike Press Shiraz and is luscious and long in flavour with good oak showing. In my opinion this is the best Shiraz we have made to date including the 2005 and 2010. It will cellar for a long time so please buy some to cellar as well as drink now .... so it can show off its full potential” - Mike Press

We’ve been on the Mike Press case for some time now. We may even have been the first puiblication to publish notes and raise the alert on his wines. The shiraz and cabernet sauvignon are always good value, but not always – contrary to the opinions of some – compelling quality. It’s a single vineyard; the wines have their ups and downs. When the stars are in alignment though, value red wine buying in Australia doesn’t come much, or any, better ...

Forget ratings, forget hype: this is the best shiraz Mike Press has released under his own name. Easily.

It’s thick and sweet-fruited and more authoritative than any previous release. It has some presence. It tastes like a Penfolds red, and a very good one at that, but at a fraction of the asking price. Dense plum, a lift of cherry, substantial vanillin oak and juicy acidity. The recipe is simple but density and purity of flavour is not. If you enjoy this style of wine, this is the release to stock up on. In Mike Press Shiraz terms, it is ‘the one’. 94 points Winefront.com.au

Mike Press celebrates a half-century of winemaking this year. It’s been seven years since I first started avidly tracking his work, and in this time his vines have precisely doubled in age. His shiraz style has grown up with its vines, from the precocious, peppery wines of the early years to a deeper personality of great black cherry and plum fruit presence, epitomised in the spectacular seasons of 2010 and 2012.
Lifted violet perfume, succulent blueberries, intense liquorice and pepper are the hallmarks of the new Mike Press style. The biscuity, milk chocolate presence of American oak is prominent, as it always is in Mike’s early release reds, demanding plenty of time for fruit and oak to settle into place. It’s got all the engineering to go the distance: beautifully textured tannins, enlivened by the naturally vibrant acidity of this lofty site. 2012 is the most complete Mike Press Shiraz to date: concentrated, confident, mesmerisingly persistent, and at every moment refined and graceful.  Drink:  2017-2022  94  points  Tyson Tselzer