BILANCIA LA COLLINA SYRAH 2020

5 Stars & 98/100 Bob Campbell MW, The Real Review, November 2023 (2020 Vintage)
"Intense, powerful wine with blackcurrant compote, dark-fleshed plum, black pepper, anise and spicy oak flavours supported by sweet, ripe tannins. A supremely elegant wine that is accessible now but promises to reward cellaring. A Kiwi classic."

98/100 and No. 8 in James Suckling's Top 100 NZ Wines (2020 Vintage)
"A beautifully perfumed nose of white and black pepper, wet stone, grilled meat, toasted rosemary and grilled plum. Medium-bodied with silky, fruit-soaked tannins. The palate takes off, displaying a incredible amount of spicy complexity. Pepper, paprika, clove, coriander. It keeps going. Tight structure keeps everything wonderfully in line. Layered, dynamic and delicious. Superb."

Rated Outstanding & 97/100 Cameron Douglas MS, October 2022 (2020 Vintage)
"Due for release in November 2022 this wine is fantastic – with a bouquet of concentration and power, is very expressive with aromas of dark berries and field mushrooms, fruit and barrel spices, wood smoke and very youthful energy. Black currant and baked meats, mushroom and clove, dark fleshed raspberry, barrel spices and violets. Equally fantastic on the palate, very taut still, youthful and high energy with concentrated flavours of fruit and earth, wood and power. Tannins are ripe, polished, in abundance and layer in mouthfeel to an already impressive texture. The backbone of acidity contrasts the core fruit flavours adding length, shape and form. Delicious, new and cellar worthy. Best drinking likely from 2025 through 2040."

97/100 Mike Bennie, The Wine Front, November 2022 (2020 Vintage)
"Fine boned and succulent red with lots and lots of white pepper, faint game meat characters, sour cherry, alpine herb elements and a bit of bacon bone/game meat in the mix – perfume and palate match. Firm web of lacy tannins pulling things taut, excellent persistence of flavour too. It’s so fine, so pure in a way, and generally just outstanding. Finesse in spades here. one of the greatest red wines I’ve seen from NZ. Magic."

97+/100 Erin Larkin, RobertParker.com, Wine Advocate (2020 Vintage)
"The 2020 La Collina Syrah is far bloodier and more savory than the 2021 tasted beside it, and it shows the advantage that we as drinkers have when selecting which wines to drink; we have choice. This is balanced, placid, sure, mineral and fine, shaped by a splay of ferruginous tannins through the finish. It drags across the palate and continues long after the wine has gone, but it is quiet … and that is a wonderful thing. It has at once the piercing intensity and focus of the song of a bellbird, but equally, it reveals expanse and depth in the kaleidoscope of rose petals, graphite, river stones and dried herbs. Superstar. Drink it now or regret it forever—the wines age gracefully and long, but the trouble with them is that they taste so great as young wines. Your call."

95/100 Anne Krebiehl MW, Decanter UK, February 2024 (2020 Vintage)
"The nose intriguingly combines rain-wet rose hedges with their peppery scent, briar rose and the savour of roast chicken skin, all bedded on smoky red cherry. These flavours also pervade the elegant palate, where savoury, peppery spice abounds on a sinuous body, with seemingly elastic and juicy tannins. Half the ferment was whole bunches and the wine aged for 18 months in 50% new oak."