'The Armagh' Clare Valley Shiraz, Jim Barry 2019
Mix any six bottles and 10% comes off at checkout — no code needed.
£10 tracked UK delivery, however many bottles.
We pack and send twice a week, Wednesdays and Fridays, by Royal Mail Tracked 48.
Members pay £192.00 — £48.00 less on this bottle. Membership is £120 a year and carries the EDKA Promise. Membership terms
Why this wine
The Armagh is one of the small group of Australian Shiraz that sit alongside Grange in reputation, from a single vineyard planted in 1968. Dense, powerful and built over decades rather than years. An icon wine that will outlive most things in a cellar.
At a glance
- Grape
- Shiraz
- Region
- South Australia, Australia
- Alcohol
- 14.00%
- Body
- Full
- Acidity
- Medium
- Tannins
- High
- Sweetness
- Dry
- Drink
- Long (10-20 yrs)
- Pairs with
- Red Meat, Lamb
What our customers say
No one has reviewed this wine yet. If you have drunk it, we would like to hear what you thought.
How it tastes
Complex and intense: rich dark fruit, mocha and garden herbs on the nose, then concentrated black cherry and blackberry on the palate with mocha oak, dark chocolate and a hint of aniseed. Fine tannins wrap the fruit in a velvety texture, and the wine has great power, length and poise. Shiraz 100%.
The producer
Jim Barry was the first qualified winemaker in the Clare Valley, graduating in oenology from Roseworthy Agricultural College in 1947, and did much to establish the region as a benchmark for Riesling and one of Australia's premier wine regions. Founded in 1959, Jim Barry Wines is still family owned: Jim's son Peter became managing director in 1985, and Peter's children Tom, Sam and Olivia are now winemaker, commercial manager and brand ambassador; the winery was named 2020 Winery of the Year at the Halliday Wine Companion Awards. The Armagh vineyard was named by Irish settlers who arrived in 1849, and Jim Barry bought it in 1968 and planted it with Shiraz. The low-yielding vines, under 27 hectolitres per hectare, grow in sandy gravel on a north-west facing slope that acts as a natural sun trap, and the wide day-to-night temperature swing ripens the tannins evenly. The hand-harvested grapes were sorted, destemmed and crushed, then fermented for eight days in small two-tonne open-top fermenters with heading-down boards and twice-daily pump-overs; malolactic conversion took place in barrel and the wine matured for 16 months in hogsheads, 60% French and 40% American oak.
Food and drinking
Serve at 16-18°C and decant for an hour or two. Slow-roast shoulder of lamb, rib of beef, venison or a mature Cheddar. Approachable now with air and built to develop for twenty years and more. Sealed under screwcap. Suitable for vegetarians; not suitable for vegans.