- Home
- ...
- Classification Attendees Exclusive Offer
- TORBRECK The Laird Shiraz, Barossa Valley 2018 Magnum
torbreck
TORBRECK The Laird Shiraz, Barossa Valley 2018 Magnum
torbreck
TORBRECK The Laird Shiraz, Barossa Valley 2018 Magnum
About this wine
TORBRECK The Laird Shiraz, Barossa Valley
Torbreck’s flagship wine, The Laird Shiraz is only produced in exceptional years. The fruit comes from one of the finest Shiraz sites in the Barossa valley; the dry grown Gnadenfrei vineyard dating from 1958. Matured for 36 months in special French barriques coopered by Dominique Laurent, the Laird is the ultimate expression of ultra-concentrated single vineyard Barossa Shiraz.
Wine Details
Classification and Scores
Taste Profile
Winery and Region
Delivery and Returns
All wine bought and sold through LANGTONS is held securely in our state-of-the-art, temperature-controlled National Warehouse, just outside of Melbourne, ensuring fast and efficient shipping to your nominated address Australia-wide.
Shipping Charges Within Australia
All orders placed are subject to a flat shipping fee as outlined below:
Metro Areas | Regional Areas |
$18.50 | $23 |
Find our more about our Delivery Options and Returns and Refunds Policy
Expert Review
Erin Larkin
Single-vineyard wines that are at the behest and mercy of the seasons are very exciting to view over time. You understand the essence of the style of the wine and the vineyard DNA, so you sit, patiently waiting for the vintages and seasons that meet your personal proclivities to roll around. The 2018 vintage is one of those for me, as will be the cool 2021 and 2022 seasons. The fruit is sourced from the Gnadenfrei vineyard, which was planted in 1958, in Marananga. The fruit was picked over a variety of picks at optimal ripeness and matured for 36 months in new French oak barriques by Dominique Laurent. Eminently red-fruited in the mouth, this 2018 The Laird is reflective of the 2018 season, in that it is pure, fresh, laden with blood plum, saturated in red berries and framed by savory, exotically spiced black tannins. The oak, while a prominent feature of the wine, supports the fruit at all times and assists in extending the flavor through the finish. Thick in the mouth, yet still fresh, there is a moreish quality to this wine. I love it. (It is likely unnecessary to tell you that the wine is incredibly full-bodied. It is enveloping and huge but wonderful.)
Drink: 2023 - 2053
99 points, The Wine Advocate (April 2023)
Expert Review
Matthew Jukes
It is funny how truly great wines make me think of another other than wine. When I first inhaled the scent of 2018 The Laird, I heard music, which was somewhat unnerving. The phenomenal perfume here conjured up Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave – a distant musical memory from my youth. I have never seen this famous sea cave firsthand, so I searched for it on my phone while diving into this glass. If this wine looks like any marine geological formation, it must be this incredible cavern on the uninhabited island of Staffa. It is fantastic to think that Mendelssohn sat in a boat, off Staffa, in 1829 and penned a couple of bars of music inspired by this cave. Some 15 years later, the first vines were planted in Barossa. I suppose it is somewhat of a tradition for me not to bang on about fruit, flowers, herbs and spices when writing about tremendously moving wines preferring to take my readers to a more emotional place in the hope that they are moved enough to seek out the subject of my musings. In this instance, I cannot get over my Fingal’s Cave spark, and I think it sums up the absurdly deep and never-ending joy that this sublime wine imbues in its taster. Drink 2030 – 2050.
20++/20 points, Matthew Jukes, matthewjukes.com
Expert Review
Dave Brookes
An epically proportioned shiraz from the 1958-planted Gnadenfrei vineyard in Marananga; matured for 36 months in new French oak 'Magic Casks' from Dominique Laurent. Phewee, there's a lot packed into this wine. For a start, the fruit depth, concentration and purity are at levels that would make Spinal Tap proud. Head-spinning cassis, kirsch and macerated plum fruits with hints of cedar, vanilla bean, tobacco, dark chocolate, licorice, garrigue, bay leaf, sarsaparilla, cola, turned earth, graphite and pressed flowers. It's the vinous alchemy of condensing everything down to its essence and retaining a sense of elegance and place with restrained power. It's a muscular, prodigiously structured wine with a minerally edge and deep Barossan soul. Will live on for decades with careful cellaring.
98 points, Wine Companion (August 2023)
David Powell, a former lumberjack turned winemaker, established Torbreck in 1994. Since then, the tiny winery operation has grown exponentially, buoyed by the success of its highly opulent and perfumed wines. Torbreck sources fruit from a myriad of dry grown low-yielding vineyards located on the western ridge of the Barossa Valley and as far south as the Jacob’s Creek area. These include established century-old vineyards. It either share-farms or has full vineyard management control, ensuring optimum fruit quality, ripeness and flavour development. The wines are batch vinified in open fermenters and vinification incorporates a palette of winemaking options including pre-fermentation cold soak, extended maceration, partial whole bunch fermentation, warm and cooler ferment regimes and regular pumping over.
