Yangarra Ironheart Shiraz 2022

Yangarra just doesn’t disappoint. With a combination of uncompromising viticulture and a whole kitchen sink full of varying winemaking methods, these McLaren Vale wines are uniformly impressive. I look forward to them every time. Today it’s the latest Ironheart Shiraz, which comes off a block of ironstone-rich soils on the Yangarra property. Ironstone, ironheart, and ferrous tannins. It’s a bright purple coloured thing too – it looks juicy. But no, it’s not a juicy wine; instead, it’s a powerful, bitter, withering and deeply concentrated wine. Yes, there is plenty of dark purple fruit in all that brooding, plus a little sausage meat and thyme, but then the dark ferrous tannins ride on in. They’re not Cabernet tannins, all thick cut big grains. Nor is it mouthcoating Neb tannins. These are sandy tannins that fill your mouth in all the right ways. Bloody good Shiraz. Points: 95/100

Australian Wine Review ∙ 4th Sep 2025

The 2022 release of Yangarra’s top Shiraz states its position and makes you listen to it. A brooding iodine and, dare I say, ‘iron-like’ minerality sits deep and restrained first off before an unfurling of charred herbs, woodsmoke, nutmeg, cassia bark and a glimmer of menthol. Black cherry, blackberry pastille and damson plum make an appearance following some aeration, alongside earth, gentle mocha, clove and dark chocolate. This has a dramatic sensibility – it’s deep and dark with excellent restraint and control. The palate runs a dichotomy of a cooling, ferrous mineral feel alongside dark, febrile power. It strides through the mouth with unabated assurance and lashings of dark cherry, mocha, earth, dark chocolate, blackberry, cassia and dried herbs. The tannins are vertical, stacked and grainy providing a funnel for the complex power to coil within. There’s seemingly endless length to this wine. It’s powerful and of course youthful, but any risk of heftiness is cut up and lifted by mineral detail and pulled into focus and precision by architectural structure. All of this paired with kaleidoscopic complexity makes for a wine of incontrovertible brilliance. Points: 96/100

Wine Pilot ∙ 28th Jun 2025

Deep, bright purple colour leads into a slightly subdued but rich nose of dark and red fruits, blackberry uppermost, with charcoal, mixed spice and sweet floral high-notes. The wine is tremendously deep and concentrated on the palate but at the same time elegant and spritely. There are flecks of dark chocolate and bitumen, too. The wine is long and the tannins supple and fine, resulting in a remarkably more-ish finish—it drinks so well now, yet the wine is destined for a long future. Points: 97/100

The Real Review ∙ 25th May 2025

22 was a cool year that produced some reticent but excellent grenache, while shiraz seemed to sail through untroubled. This is an infant, of course, but there’s a ready appeal not always seen at this stage, a meshing of red, blue and black fruits – ripe raspberry, blackberry, blueberry, tart boysenberry, red plum, black olive – with an overlay of baking spices, iodine, coffee grounds and beef bouillon. And iron, yes. It’s on the label. In the ground. In the wine. Here, the wine benefits from that soil transfer being elegant, filigreed, not rugged. It needs a little time to be its best, but it’s a superb release. Points: 97/100

Halliday Wine Companion ∙ 9th May 2025

The expressive 2022 Shiraz Ironheart is rich yet measured with a powerfully expressive core of bloody ferrous aromas lifted by dark earth and crushed spice tones. There is a finer side—touches of dried violet, white pepper and coal fire— with significant underlying tension as it tightens up on the long, enthralling close. Points: 96/100

Vinous ∙ 23rd Apr 2025