The 2021 Romas Grenache is spicy and full—fuller than I would have expected given the cooler season that was 2021 (as compared to the previous, much hotter 2020). This is inky, savory and intense, with musk sticks, raspberry cordial, roasted meat juice and plum skin. It is very ripe and plush, with enveloping tannins, and somehow the oak feels round and toasty here. It is earth driven but shaped by oak rather than soil. This is a lovely wine, a big wine! 14.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

The 2020 Romas Grenache is resplendent with fresh oregano, red apple skins and Sichuan peppercorn. This has intensity and line and concentration and is mouthfilling and supple. It's a kaleidoscopic, powerful, restrained wine. It has coiled power and presence, crushed rocks, Chinese five spice and brine. The tannins are omnipresent, silty, flooding the palate. Seductive. It's impossible to overstate the pleasure here. A wine of structure and density with lightness and life, too. We’re discussing the lifetime of these wines, and the 15-year mark is where Alex and Roman agree that the time for primary fruit recedes and it morphs into its older self. So, given that I enjoy primary fruit in all wine, this is where I set the window—of course, they will live beyond this. Magic.

Tasted alongside the scintillating and close-to-perfect 2020 Romas, the 2018 Romas Grenache is typified by richness. It is an incredible wine of density and line. The wine has aged slowly—blood and petals are in the foreground. What an incredible example—I can understand why the wines are released at two years of age, because the lightness and luminescence is there for all to see; but the wine moves quickly through its aging evolution, and the wines only two and three years older have already moved beyond youthful luminescence to savory exotic spice. Awesome. This is brilliant.

2017 was a cooler year in McLaren Vale, and dry at Clarendon Hills. This 2017 Romas Grenache really reflects the cooler season in the glass, with minerality and crushed rocks in the mouth. This is very clearly from a cooler year. It is smart, poised and pretty, with tense acidity.

The 2016 Romas Grenache features a backdrop of dark, brooding plums and blackberries overlaid with an attractive filigree of lavender, bay leaf and rose petals. It turns brighter and more red-fruited on the full-bodied palate, expanding into a rich, velvety wine with notes of dark chocolate and café au lait on the lingering finish.