Sometimes, nothing but the Barossa will do.

Spinifex Indigene 2010

Mataro Shiraz.

Purchased in 2012 on release while I worked in a bottle shop. I should have bought more than one bottle.

In 2020, as I drink this, it is ten years since the fruit hung on the vine.  The Indigene is clearly no young pup and is reaching that stage in a red wine’s life where it teeters on the brink of an ‘older wine’.  It is flashing flirty suggestions of ripe primary fruit (in the form of mulberry, blackcurrant and plum) but it is also speaking of leather, tar, liquorice and black spice.  I feel I have caught it at the perfect time.  There is dark chocolate, fresh mushroom, hints of black truffle and the tannins…  Perhaps the most standout feature of this wine is the texture and structure.  All the hard edges (if there ever were any to begin with) have rounded and softened and the wine has started to knit itself together in the most glorious of ways.  It retains grace and shape.  I really should have bought more than one bottle.

The thing about Mataro is, it is described (and rightly so) as ‘earthy’, ‘muscular’ and ‘gravelly’.  But, in the hands of the right maker, and Pete Schell of Spinifex is the right maker, Mataro is also a floral, pretty wine, redolent with mulberries, scattered with star anise, and built on a plush bed of ripe, chewy tannins.  

YES.