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Tasting notes
The 1996 RunRig is fresher and redder than the 1995 tasted alongside; here, the fruit tends toward pomegranate, blood and raspberry, cocoa, sweet bone marrow and dried rose petals. Texturally, this is an incredibly seductive wine. It starts silky and a little slippery, then the tannins build through the palate, and once the fruit has gone, the tannins remain yet feel chalky and pliable. It's a textural feast. The wine is labeled at 14.5% alcohol, though a recent analysis proved it to be 14.17% alcohol; and interestingly, the 1996 also has the lowest pH of all the vintages ever made, at 3.27, with a total acidity of seven. It is so fresh. Sealed under natural cork.
Critic scores
Average Score
Robert Parker
Stephen Tanzer, Vinous
More reviews and scores
The sensational 1996 Run Rig is a youthful wine that exhibits notes of sweet kirsch liqueur, blackberries, apricots, flowers, and a subtle smokiness. Tasting more like a Rhone Valley Cote Rotie than a Barossa Shiraz, it is full-bodied and opulent with some light tannins to be resolved. It should last for another decade or more. ||Torbreck’s flagship wine, the Run Rig, is made from 40- to 120-year-old Shiraz vines with some co-fermented Viognier (usually around 3%), tips the scales between 14-15% alcohol, and is aged 30 months in French oak. In contrast to the way they taste upon release, neither the 1998 or 1997 Run Rig revealed any oak. Wine Advocate.June, 2009
Bright saturated ruby. Superripe aromas of blackcurrant, lead pencil and mint. Fat, ripe and impressively concentrated; dark berry flavors are framed and carried by sound acidity. At once dense and penetrating. Ripe tannins are subsumed in fruit on the very long finish.