Reilly’s Wines

Price: $14
Maker: Reilly’s Wines, Australia
Varietal: Shiraz
Packaging: 750 ml bottle, screw cap
Alcohol: 14.5%
Our Rating: 9 out of 10

Reilly’s Barking Mad Shiraz is a big, bold red wine. Its nose is pleasant, if not exceptional, with berry, cinnamon, and pepper notes. The flavor is powerful and plummy, with blackberry and chocolate at the beginning, and spicy oak at the finish. This is a smooth, fruit-forward, easy to drink wine. We paired it with spicy pepperoni pizza, but the Reilly’s website suggests a more sophisticated match of herbed loin of lamb with chargrilled vegetable couscous.

Reilly’s Wines draws its name from an Irish shoemaker who arrived in Mintaro in the Claire Valley in 1856. Today, the cottage he built now houses Reilly’s Wines. The region inspires the character of the wine; their website notes, “what differentiates the Clare from many other Australian wine regions are the dry, hot summer days and cool, crisp nights which contribute to the intensity of the flavours in Clare Valley fruit. The Reilly’s Wines philosophy is to produce low volumes of premium, hand-made wines from this unique fruit.” We do agree that the flavor of Barking Mad Shiraz is unusually intense, even for a normally robust varietal like Shiraz.