2016 Tait Wines The Ball Buster Shiraz Blend Barossa Valley 750 ml

One of our best dinners of 2019 took place not in a white tablecloth, Michelin-starred establishment, but in a drafty Michigan hunting lodge on a friend’s back forty.  

Roasted rack of venison with a black peppercorn crust was the night’s special, served on a rough-hewn table by a fireplace just barely keeping out the December frost. The roast’s interior was cooked a mouthwatering, medium-rare shade of crimson. We toasted to the ten-point buck taken the day before, and dug into the most organic, free-range, delicious protein known to the Great Lakes State.

But first—what was in the glass? This was a far cry from the usual supermarket wine we had to contend with at Chez Elmer Fudd. Glass-staining red, packed with blackberry preserves, black plum, and subtle undertones of peppermint and chocolate, this was a Shiraz of immense quality, walking the tightrope between extreme opulence, silken tannins, and a fine acid backbone.

Our buddy—an excellent shot, but more of a beer drinker by his own admission—fished the bottle out of a cardboard box and showed us the label. He’d stumbled across one of the all-time greatest values of Barossa Shiraz: the famous Tait Ball Buster cuvée.

A Dearborn sommelier had put our buddy onto it as a great wine for game meat, and he’d bought a case. Wise man. Knocked down from the sale price of $20, this 2016 is a prizefighter case buy at just $14.99, or $16.99 by the bottle, powerfully overdelivering for a Shiraz built both for immediate pleasure and the long haul.

Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate has lavished this wine with praise, calling it “a classic Barossa beauty - which proved that it ages slowly and gracefully with the very best of Barossa's Shirazes...at a fraction of the cost.”  

It’s an under-$20 crowd pleaser, but with the expert craftsmanship to land a recent vintage on Wine Spectator’s Top 100 at the #36 slot. Winery owners Bruno and Michael Tait like to boast that it’s the only wine under $20 to receive 90 points or above for 11 straight years in Wine Advocate.

We consider the Taits part of Australia’s “Gang of Five”—along with John Duval (Duval Wines), Peter Gago (Penfolds), Gary Mills (Jamsheed), and Torbreck's Nigel Blieschke—who have led the charge in modern Australian winemaking. A family known for generations for their cooperage skills, today they focus their energies on plush, magnificently concentrated reds like this one, basket-pressed in the traditional style to make it supple and accessible.

Old-vine Barossa concentration makes a heavenly pairing for venison, but at just $14.99, a case of this—capable of aging superbly—will put you in fantastic stead for any number of memorable meals in 2020 and beyond.