2018 Sidewood Shiraz Adelaide Hills 750 ml

With a glowing 96-point review from James Halliday, the top authority in Australian wine, this powerful Shiraz ranks among the standout bottles of the 2018 vintage.

Grown in the Adelaide Hills, one of the most dynamic regions of south Australia, and crafted by a master stylist, it’s a visionary expression of the elegance and herbaceous freshness this grape can achieve in pristine cool-climate conditions.

“This is the complete package,” announced Halliday. “A wine of great complexity to both texture and flavor,” it’s an emblem of “skilled winemaking with 5-star success.”

Those are the kinds of words every estate dreams of reading when they submit a wine for review, and they usually translate into a bottle that’s one of two things by now: unavailable or very expensive.

And yet today’s bottle doesn’t cost $150 (like Penfolds’ 2018 96-point Magill Estate) or even $50—in spite of its score, Sidewood is a fantastic steal that you’ll seldom find outside Australia. We treasured this bottle from our first encounter with its lifted rosemary and violet aromas, and its combination of tension and blackberry richness on the palate. 

Sidewood has been on our radar for the past few years, and we’re thrilled to have broken through with this statement Shiraz. Championed by Halliday as a five-star estate, they’re proof that this rising appellation is “a magnet for talented winemakers,” as James Suckling writes.

Owners Owen and Cassandra Inglis, who bought the property in 2004, hired the outstanding talent Darryl Catlin, formerly of the benchmark Adelaide Hills winery Shaw and Smith. Catlin boasts an international reputation as one of South Australia’s winemaking aces, and his personal project, Catlin Wines, was named one of “The Top 10 Best New Wineries” by Halliday.

With Catlin at the helm, Sidewood has strung together hit after hit. For this wine, he sourced grapes from a chilly site 1,246 feet above sea level, where sandy loam interspersed with quartz helps imbue wines with stunning complexity. Cooler than neighboring regions like Barossa and McLaren Vale, Adelaide Hills is becoming the equivalent of California’s Petaluma Gap: an arena of cool-climate excellence.

To elevate the purity of the expression in this wine, Catlin employed a vinification script you’d associate with luxury-level Pinot Noir: He cold-soaked the grapes, then fermented the mix of berries and whole bunches on wild yeast, topping the process off by aging the wine in 25% new French oak for 18 months.