Reviews
Current Reviews
Halliday Wine Companion
The Paringa Single Vineyard Chardonnay 2023
Fruit off nine rows of the original plantings, nearly 40 years old now; hand picked of course, whole-bunch pressed to French oak puncheons, wild fermentation, regular lees stirring and mlf. It’s developed into its own style over the years. This is brimming with stone fruit and citrus, creamy, luscious and nutty lees, some lemon tart, too. Yet the palate is led by acidity, refreshing and invigorating, tempering the rich winemaking inputs.
Rating 95 by Jane Faulkner
Peninsula Chardonnay 2024
Very primary and all about youthful appeal, with citrus, fresh ginger and bright acidity alongside a thin layer of texture via creamy lees. This will flesh out in time, but a good drink now.
Rating 90 by Jane Faulkner
Estate Pinot Noir 2022
For immediate appeal, this is my preferred go-to wine. It's gorgeous bright garnet, full of intense flavours - savoury and fruit-driven, as in black cherries. strawberries and fruit compote, then up comes woodsmoke, forest floor and garrigue plus cedary oak with a slight bitter green walnut character. The fuller-bodied palate is bolstered by plentiful tannins yet reined in by refreshing acidity. Screw cap.
Rating 95 by Jane Faulkner
The Wine Front
Estate Pinot Noir 2022
This wine crackles along in fine style. It has a mineral aspect and a ripple of grainy tannin and an excellent push of fruit and spice through the finish. It tastes of strawberries and black cherries, Campari-like herbs and woodsmoke, a peppercorn character buried within. It’s firm and serious and yet it has an easy-going complexity. Indeed it’s one of those ‘makes complexity look easy’ wines. It’s good for drinking now but it will improve over the coming years.
Rating 95 by Campbell Mattinson
The Paringa Single Vineyard Pinot Noir 2021
Cherry and strawberry, cedar and mint, spicy too, with an iron and tea leaf top note. Medium-bodied, all the spice and strawberry, quite firm and ‘mineral’, good depth of flavour, fine graphite tannin grip, a lovely cool feel, bancha twig tea, orange zest, and a long and firm finish of precision and dusty spicy tannin. I’m all about this. Superb wine of uncompromising character and verve.
Rating 96 by Gary Walsh
The Paringa Single Vineyard Chardonnay 2023
This puts its foot down in flavour terms but it has its hands firmly at the wheel, and feels in complete control at all times. Grilled peaches, woodsmoke and cedarwood characters are the main drivers of flavour though there are grapefruit, apple and pear nuances if you look. There’s texture here, and there’s excellent thrust through the finish.
Rating 94 by Campbell Mattinson
Estate Chardonnay 2024
This will live and mature – well – for yonks. It’s a direct, linear, complex chardonnay with length to burn. It tastes of grapefruit and grilled peach, flint and steel, cedar and fresh, juicy pears, and while it sits slightly on the lean side at this early stage, it will blossom given time.
Rating 94 by Campbell Mattinson
Peninsula Pinot Noir 2024
Perfectly turned out. Sweet-sour cherry flavours, into strawberry, into violets, with sweet spice notes strewn throughout. Juicy and accessible but with enough tannin, and indeed oak, to both keep it in sound shape and to give it a bit of spunk. It’s not going anywhere in a hurry but it’s excellent drinking right now.
Rating 92 by Campbell Mattinson
Robinson Vineyard Pinot Noir 2022
This is a light-but-tannic Pinot Noir with red cherry and red rose characters to the fore. There’s a smoky, reductive element in play too, which combines well with twiggy herb and nut shell notes. This wine is juicy and perfumed on the one hand, and meaty and strict on the other. It needs time to unfold.
Rating 92 by Campbell Mattinson
The Real Review
Peninsula Chardonnay 2024
Bright lemon yellow hue. White peach, jasmine and struck flint aromas. Powerful on entry, lovely concentration of white peach fruits with lemon blossom and oyster shell complexity. Acidity rides high, keeping it driven and tense with a drying focus into the very long finish. This is serious chardonnay at a very reasonable price.
94 Points by Stuart Knox
Estate Chardonnay 2024
Straw yellow shines through the glass. Ripe peach, roasting nuts and flinty mineral aromatics. Bright, powerful and well defined across the palate with peach fruits, lemon zest and a creamy nougat centre. Great length, acidity is well integrated, working to drive it without poking out as it runs very long and finely detailed at the finish.
95 Points by Stuart Knox
The Paringa Single Vineyard Chardonnay 2023
Pale straw yellow colour. Grapefruit, baking sourdough and a hint of cashew aromatics. There's density and focus here, still showing primary characteristics but the harmony between citrus, apple and cashew is pitch-perfect. Wonderful length and precision, everything is fine tuned and not a hair out of place while it travels the long road to the finish.
95 Points by Stuart Knox
Peninsula Pinot Noir 2024
Deep red-purple colour, bright in the glass. Smoky, broken rock, struck flint and toasty barrel aromas, smoked charcuterie, the palate softly fleshy and of medium intensity, with black-cherry flavours. There's a directness and nice touch of firmness at the finish. Good value.
90 Points by Huon Hooke
Estate Pinot Noir 2022
Medium ruby red hue. Plush and inviting nose of black cherry and cola spices. Mouth fills with dark cherry, there’s layers of anise and cinnamon spices, hints of clove as it runs along. Great length, everything has intensity and concentration yet never sits heavy with both acid and tannins in harmony along the flow to a very long and precise finish.
93 Points by Stuart Knox
The Paringa Single Vineyard Shiraz 2021
Deep red-purple colour with a lifted and steely/metalllic aroma, a suggestion of volatility, while the palate is quite firm and full-bodied, solidly built and begging for more time. The VA is a minor issue. The wine is powerful enough to handle it. But it needs time. A shiraz worth cellaring.
93 Points by Huon Hooke
Estate Shiraz 2021
Youthful, vibrant red in the glass. Really pretty, lifted and evocative aromas of blueberry, dried herbs, sarsaparilla, white pepper, Asian spice and violets. Deliciously bright, crunchy and textured on the palate. Lashings of blueberry, blackcurrant, spice, clovey oak and cola. The tannins are firm and shapely and the acidity delivers ping and zip. A wonderful example of cooler climate shiraz.
96 Points by Aaron Brasher
The Wine Advocate
The Paringa Single Vineyard Chardonnay 2023
The 2023 The Paringa Single Vineyard Chardonnay is highly aromatic, and the palate matches with an intense score of fruit, spice, saline acidity and fine phenolic structure. This lingers and curls across the palate and streaks out to the long finish. It has penetrating flavour and is really good—unreal, in fact.
95 Points by Erin Larkin
Estate Chardonnay 2024
The 2024 Estate Chardonnay is concentrated and intense, full of salted nuts, flowers and saline acidity. There is plenty of wine here—i.e., it is full of flavor and long through the finish—and yet it manages restraint as well. This is a classy wine, very attractive. 13% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.
93 Points by Erin Larkin
Peninsula Pinot Noir 2024
The 2024 vintage feels like it was appropriately one second ago, but perhaps time goes faster as I get older. Here we have the 2024 Peninsula Pinot Noir that leads with cherry and star anise, raspberry and red licorice, strawberry and tapenade. In the mouth, the wine has a smoky edge to it, coupled with the creamy flow of fruit and tannin. This is a lovely wine: joyful, straightforward, delicious.
90 Points by Erin Larkin
Wine Pilot
Estate Chardonnay 2024
A free wheeling, generous Chardonnay in the Paringa style, but underneath the sunny exterior there is an underlying structural power. Brings the scent of the beach with saline, sea spray notes and ripe peach, pear, nectarine and citrus – very summery and bright. A balanced palate, delightfully citrus and upfront in stone fruits with background lightly spiced, vanillin oak, quince and a quince skin savouriness awaits. Brisk acidity nicely controls the obvious richness and delivers one smart, enticing wine.
94 Points by Jeni Port
The Paringa Single Vineyard Chardonnay 2023
By any measure, a luxurious Chardonnay densely packed in summer stone fruits and lively citrus that speaks of its maritime, cool climate. Textural and spiced filled, it’s all about the quality of the fruit. Nectarine, peach, melon, lemon oil and zest with vanilla peach custard and mineral saline notes, it brings a quince tartness and white peppery spice to the finish. The delivery is clean and long across some super juicy, tangy acidity. Plenty to sink your teeth into and plenty left in the tank.
95 Points by Jeni Port
Estate Pinot Noir 2022
A deep, vibrant crimson purple. Paringa Estate Pinot is never short on colour or flavour and from the outset, the ’22 is all business with scents that work both the earthy, herbal side of the grape and the pure fruited. Ripe, poised, balanced and long, it’s one serious Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir. Offers a generous but balanced mouthful, one that is texturally strong across the middle palate with a core of black cherry, red plum and loganberry fruits, tomato bush and leaf, vanilla and a touch of savoury intrigue against a background of fine, firm tannins. Can be enjoyed now or later – the best of both Pinot worlds.
95 Points by Jeni Port
The Paringa Single Vineyard Pinot Noir 2022
Top of the Paringa Pinot tree and everything steps up a notch; structure, fruit concentration and tannins, adding to the wine’s overall ageing potential. Dusty beets, earth, dark chocolate, black cherry and cedary toasty oak light up the aroma. Solid, well-built and coiled, it does a slow reveal delivering layers of red and dark fruits, earth, dark roasted spices, savoury tapenade and roasting pan juices. Crushed herbs build on the middle palate and gain momentum closing with leafy green characters on the finish. Well positioned for a bright and long future.
95 Points by Jeni Port
James Suckling
The Paringa Single Vineyard Chardonnay 2023
The extract and sheer intensity of this youthful, medium-bodied chardonnay is palate-staining from the impact of nectarines, mandarin peel and white peaches. There is crunchiness and a touch of flintiness, cashews and preserved lemon bitterness at the core and in the long finish. A real crowd pleaser.
93 Points by Ned Goodwin MW
The Paringa Single Vineyard Pinot Noir 2022
Dark cherries, plums, lilacs and crushed musk, with an undertone of dried herbs and orange zest. This medium-bodied pinot is juicy and savory rather than excessively sweet, with well-shaped tannins. While it’s more savory than most California pinots, those who like that style may well relish this.
93 Points by Ned Goodwin MW
Estate Pinot Noir 2022
This is an edgy, mid-weighted pinot that is not bereft of tannins. For the better. Edgy and jittery, moving across the gums and taking position, nobly, at the cleft of the palate. Immensely pleasurable already, with red pastille, bing cherry, dried lavender and sarsaparilla rolling long and vibrant. Drink or hold.
93 Points by Ned Goodwin MW
Paringa Estate Robinson Vineyard Pinot Noir 2022
A tautly wound, medium-bodied pinot. No lack of tannins, both stem- and grape skin-derived. Still a little reductive. But this should age very well. Rhubarb, red cherry pits and orange zest notes with the salty grit of tannins. Delicious. Drink or hold. Screw cap.
93 Points by Ned Goodwin MW
The Paringa Single Vineyard Shiraz 2021
Possibly the finest syrah (err, shiraz) out of this cooler, maritime region to date. That sounds like an underhanded compliment. Succinctly, this is excellent! Clove, black pepper grind, tapenade, violet and blood plum. The tannins, gritty and granular, yet finely wrought. Balletic, while straddling the gracious line of fruit and herb, glimpsing the excessive side of neither. The finish, excellent, with a dusting of Indian spice lingering long. Extract, freshness and savory drinkability in spades. Very Rhone-like. Drink or hold.
95 Points by Ned Goodwin MW
Peninsula Shiraz 2021
Tasting the shiraz from this table of late is a revelation. Taking the wind out of pinot's sails, perhaps. Mid-weighted, crunchy, lithe and spicy. Nothing monochromatic. Mace, clove, cardamon, and smoked charcuterie. The finish, detailed and thoroughly convincing if the Northern Rhone is the barometer of quality.
93 Points by Ned Goodwin MW
Jancis Robinson
The Paringa Single Vineyard Chardonnay 2023
Smoky nose, deep nectarine sweetness, crystalline acidity, bitter lemon. Pomelo. Richer and more intentional than their Peninsula Chardonnay. Smoke threading in and out of dramatic lemon (and lemon-zested-curd) fruit. Sliced arcs of acidity. Focused to the marble-hard, long edges”.
16.5/20 by Tamlyn Currin
The Paringa Single Vineyard Pinot Noir 2022
Hawthorn berry, coffee-bean notes, coffee-bean savouriness but it also has red-bauble shininess and brightness of fruit. Coruscatingly juicy and bright but well within the context and restraint of elegant structure and very fine, long tannins.
17/20 by Tamlyn Currin
Estate Pinot Noir 2022
Beautiful leafiness, red fruit seeping through layers and layers of sweet herbs: fresh oregano and bay leaf, peppermint. Spicy! Really vibrant red fruit and well-delineated by the gentle rasp of the tannins. Springs out the glass. So lively.
16.5/20 by Tamlyn Currin
LJM Pinot Noir 2022
Absolutely singing with electric energy – a line of energy running from the back to the front, vibrating with energy. But it's a pretty serious wine, clenched with white-knuckle tension, masses of minerality, chalk and chew. Dried tarragon and dill. Cherry sherbet and dried cranberries and vanilla-pod dust. Blood orange, pomegranate. Cherry stem and cherry stone bring layers of herbs and minerality. Complex, thrilling and with substantial length.
17.5/20 by Tamlyn Currin
The Paringa Single Vineyard Shiraz 2021
Bright mid crimson. Aromatic with violets, black fruit and a top note of red-fruit freshness. Elegantly fine tannins, notable acidity, scented on the palate. Fresh and just medium-bodied. Mouth-watering from both acidity and tannins.
16.5/20 by Julia Harding MW