2016 John Duval Entity Shiraz Barossa Valley 750 ml

Entity Captures the Essence of Old Vine Shiraz

John Duval is a legend, there’s no other way to put it.

The Aussie native spent nearly 30 years at Penfolds—Australia’s most esteemed producer, hands down—and today for $35 a bottle on cases, you can enjoy, and keep enjoying, John Duval’s “Little Grange” for years to come.

During his stay at Penfolds, including 17 as head winemaker, Duval crafted what the world anointed as Australia’s greatest First Growth Shiraz. Going for $400 per bottle, the winery’s signature Penfolds Grange combined sublime black-fruit richness with miraculously age-worthy, Northern Rhône cut.

In 2002, Duval left Penfolds to focus on his own small-production Shiraz, the most extraordinary of which is called “Entity”—a wine packed with blackberry jam, licorice, mint, and fresh tobacco, framed with lush tannins and capped with an opulently long finish.

Naturally, when Duval took his leave from Penfolds to hang out his own Shiraz-making shingle, the critics followed close behind. Duval’s 2016 Barossa Valley Entity Shiraz earned 97 points from James Halliday, who hailed it as “at once full-bodied and elegant, not a common marriage with young red wines with decades in front of them.” Never has his masterful authorship been so apparent than in this release, drawn from the same hand-picked vineyards with which Duval had worked for so long.

From the start, Duval’s Shiraz “Entity” stunned Halliday, Parker, Vinous, and Wine Spectator. Parker and Vinous would go on to unleash a barrage of 93- to 95-point scores, far and away the highest marks for any Shiraz in the $40 price range.

Today’s 2016 climbs higher still, with its 97-point score from Halliday. Sourced from 50-100-year-old vineyards in Ebenezer, Light Pass, Krondorf, Moppa, and Eden Valley regions, the 2016 offers up “clove and nutmeg overtones,” plus, “blackberry and huckleberry flavors, with accents of black tea and gingerbread,” according to Wine Spectator.

Aged for 15 months in 33 percent new French oak, the 2016 “Entity” is seamless and well integrated, bearing all the touches you would expect from a master winemaker like Duval—except for the price.