Halliday Tasting Team's top wines
The Halliday taster's pick is awarded to a wine by a member of the Halliday Tasting Team. The selected wines are the personal highlight of all the wines the tasters have reviewed across the last 12 months. The taster's pick is a mark of excellence and only one nomination per Halliday Tasting Team member is permitted.
Below you'll find: the 2025 Wine of the Year, 2022 Oakridge Wines 864 Drive Block Funder & Diamond Vineyard Chardonnay; Sami-Odi's 2022 Hoffmann Dallwitz Syrah; there's a shiraz pinot noir from our 2025 Winemaker of the Year, Liz Silkman; and the 2025 Red Wine of the Year and Shiraz of the Year – 2022 Dry Red Wine No. 2 – from Yarra Yering.
These are some of Australia's best wines.
2022 A. Rodda Wines Smiths Vineyard Chardonnay, Beechworth
What a thrilling wine ride! Buckle up and get ready for a deep dive into high-altitude, cool-climate viticulture where the grapes release a rare purity – not to mention, intensity – of flavour in the glass. Taut and coiled, flinty and fine, dressed in citrus, nectarine, grapefruit and quince with a nicely restrained oak presence bringing forth a gentle mealy, nutty complexity. Acidity? It's electrifying, fresh and crunchy. Good for extended time in the cellar. – Jeni Port
96 points | $60 | Screwcap | 13.5% alc. | Drink to 2035 | Halliday profile | A. Rodda | @aroddawines
2022 Canobolas Wines Chardonnay, Orange
Stainless ferment, 20 per cent malolactic fermentation on full solids; 11 months in oak (33 per cent new) with an additional four months on lees in stainless steel. Yellow grapefruit segments, blue riverstone and Blue-Tack. Lily of the Valley blooms, crushed limestone and white apple flesh. Dried brick mortar, honeysuckle and chamomile. Seductively aromatic and full of soil minerals, the wine is electric with pinpoint acidity. An oyster brine of salinity, droplets of finger lime and white pepper. Innate power and force behind this wine built from fruit and site. Oak elevates without distracting in any way. This is supersonic chardonnay. – Shanteh Wale
97 points | $65 | Screwcap | 12.4% alc. | Drink to 2035 | Halliday profile | Canobolas Wines | @canobolaswines
2022 Joshua Cooper Wines Balgownie Vineyard 1970 Block Cabernet Sauvignon, Bendigo
This beautiful wine transports me back to the days when my (late) Dad and I would share a bottle of cabernet. It smells of nostalgia yet of a promise of things to come, as it’s a modern rendition and in the hands of young Josh Cooper ... well this is something else. While there’s a waft of florals and dark fruit, this is savoury in outlook. It has some cooling menthol and Aussie bush fragrance, ironstone and warm earth, but key is the fuller-bodied palate with such poised, detailed tannins, fine acidity and superb length. It’s complete. Josh says it ‘displays my most prized characteristics – effortless complexity and power without weight’. Sums up the wine perfectly. – Jane Faulkner
97 points | $100 | Diam | 13% alc. | Drink to 2040 | Halliday profile | Joshua Cooper Wines | @joshuacooperwines
2021 Koomilya JC Block Shiraz, McLaren Vale
Native ferment with 16 days on skins; maturation in a 2300L oak vat. There really are no other wines that taste like the Koomilya shiraz triad, being utterly individual and beguiling wines of place. This, my pick of the vintage. The three block wines are kindred but aptly singular, this with some of the succulence and girth of the DC and the relative levity of the GT, bound with more spice and intense compression than either. Deep, brooding, almost bottomless, but it’s no cudgel. Dusky red fruits and florals, a deep red cherry scent, blood and iron, licorice, tar, turned humus-rich soil, dried hardy herbs, and an invigorating sour-fruit-flavoured twang escorting the supple fruit with sublimely fine, grapey tannins. It’s one heck of a wine. – Marcus Ellis
98 points | $120 Screwcap | 14% alc. | Drink to 2040 | Halliday profile | Pannell | @koomilya
2023 Mulline Single Vineyard Barrabool Syrah, Geelong
A new single vineyard from the Barrabool Hills, planted in 1999. Co-fermented with two per cent marsanne; 25 per cent whole bunches and matured in puncheons (25 per cent new). A deep, bright, crimson purple. A beautifully crafted Geelong syrah with its expressive bouquet of purple fruits, olive tapenade, pink peppercorns and bright florals. Just as good on the medium-bodied, supple yet focused and structured palate. Silky, long-chained tannins round out a complete and lovely wine. – Philip Rich
97 points | $60 | Screwcap | 13% alc. | Drink to 2030 | Halliday profile | Mulline | @mullinevintners
2022 Oakridge Wines 864 Drive Block Funder & Diamond Vineyard Chardonnay, Yarra Valley
From the Funder and Diamond vineyard, planted in Wandin East with the P58 clone in 1990. Hand picked and whole-bunch pressed to French puncheons (20 per cent new) for fermentation and 10 months' maturation before another six months in tank. Very bright. Aromas of stone fruits and lemon verbena together with some struck match, oyster shells and a little gently toasted hazelnut. There's a wonderful purity of fruit, too, on the superbly balanced, silken textured and tensile palate. At the risk of repeating myself, this is ‘grand cru’ quality Australian chardonnay but at a fraction of the price. – Philip Rich
98 points (Panel Decision) | $96 | Screwcap | 13.6% alc. | Drink to 2035 | Halliday profile | Oakridge Wines | @oakridgewines
2022 Sami-Odi Hoffmann Dallwitz Syrah, Barossa Valley
Fraser McKinley's epic Dallwitz Syrah is again in stellar form with the 2022 release. Like everything Fraser does, the attention to detail is amazing, from vineyard to packaging. It hails from the Hoffmann vineyard in Ebenezer. A cask selection from DW-OLD (planted between 1888–1912), ER-27 (planted 1927) and DW-95VSP (planted 1995) with a 76 week elevage in Burgundian pièces. Perfectly ripened macerated satsuma plum, black cherry and cassis with blueberry lift; layered with exotic spice, graphite, allspice, pan juices, panforte, dark chocolate, plum conserve, violets, fennel and rich earth. Heady concentration and perfectly poised, with powdery tannins sporting a real sense of compression and singing clearly of their northern Barossa roots. It's a stunning wine. Much adored and sought after, and it sure is easy to see why. – Dave Brookes
98 points | $95 | Cork | 15.2% alc. | Drink to 2043 | Halliday profile | Sami-Odi | @fraser_mckinley
2022 Silkman Wines Reserve Shiraz Pinot Noir, Hunter Valley
The cherry-infused palate is beautifully supple and perfectly ripe. Fruit is the undeniable hero, with seamless integration between the two varieties. Pinot makes up 30 per cent of the blend, with the MV6 clone sourced from the Travertine Vineyard. 'Best's clone' shiraz is sourced from the Wills Hill Vineyard and displays natural elegance and intensity. The blend spends three months in oak, of which 40 per cent is new, which sweetens and fills out the mid-palate, followed by three months in tank to preserve the primary fruit. – Toni Paterson MW
95 points | $60 | Screwcap | 13.3% alc. | Drink to 2030 | Halliday profile | Silkman Wines | @silkmanwines
2021 Wendouree Cabernet Malbec, Clare Valley
A blend of 60/40 per cent cabernet/malbec from the 1971 Western vineyard, 1898 and 1975 Central vineyard plots, and 1920 Eastern plantings. Impossibly svelte and fine, lacy with its silty, minerally tannin profile and imbued with blue fruits, gentle wild herb nuance, black olive, pickled cherry, faint mahogany wood notes and a lift of eucalyptus and turned earth. It's beautiful. Hauntingly so. Succulent and persistent with a kaleidoscope of fruit, elemental earth, brilliantly judged oak seasoning and that strong mineral vein. Just outstanding. World beating. – Mike Bennie
97 points | $65 | Screwcap | 13.4% alc. | Drink to 2045 | Halliday profile
2022 Yarra Yering Dry Red Wine No. 2, Yarra Valley
A blend of 96/1/2/1 per cent shiraz/viognier/marsanne/mataro. Fermented with whole berries and matured in barriques (25 per cent new). A brilliant crimson red. In fact, a brilliant Dry Red Wine No. 2. There's a little reduction when first poured but it doesn't take long for this to reveal a complex amalgam of red and black fruits, iodine, graphite and melted, dark licorice. Fleshier and more refined and seductive than last year's version. Incredibly svelte tannins. Supremely balanced. I reckon Yarra Yering's founder, Dr Bailey Carrodus, would be chuffed with this. – Philip Rich
99 points (Panel Decision) | $130 | Screwcap | 13.5% alc. | Drink to 2034 | Halliday profile | Yarra Yering | @yarra_yering
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Thursday October 31, 2024
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