I used to be a fairly interested student of Australian wine and still have quite a few back as far as the 80s but I found that in the early 2000s they took a general turn for the worse, becoming 'Parkerized' with big sweet fruit and lavish nose but at the cost of often losing structure and ageability. I have lots of old stuff like Penfold's 707 back into the early 90s, but my recent wines are all whites with a few exceptions - Pinots I found interesting and such.
I bought this one on release - it is probably a name not well known outside Australia I decided to open my last bottle.
Still quite dark and with sweet nose of red fruit with a hint of pepper.spice, as well as a fair bit of oak, likely American but not obtrusively so. It was fully mature but in no way fading and showed as much elegance as this sort of structure allows and a fairly long smooth finish.
I went over my holdings when looking for this bottle and find that I have a lot of somewhat oddball Aussie wine - Mt. Billy, Oliverhill Jimmy Section, Kaesler, De Lisio, d'Arenberg and Fox Creek. Time to get stuck in as they say down under.