May, 2025
Marcus Ellis, Halliday Wine Companion
2023 vintage
This year, Pete Fraser will launch the High Sands, Ovitelli and Hickinbotham together, giving a better chance to view the connectivity. Well, there is certainly a theme in the '23s. A degree of alcohol less, lower colour and a commanding, yet incredibly fine, structural framework. This is a very different High Sands, a reflection of the cool year, but also an evolving direction, leaning into elegance, soaring fragrance and savoury tension. Red cherry, tart raspberry, intensely floral, swirling with North African spices, musk and orange peel. The palate is coiled at this stage, but the fruit has flex and will bloom with time in bottle, radiating out from the core of mineral-feeling tannin and skein of vigorous acidity. This is truly magnificent now, but the future is one of dazzling possibility.
- 98 points
February, 2025
Stuart Knox, The Real Review
2023 vintage
Vibrant ruby and purple, youthful and bright in the glass. Blackberry pastille, Chinese five spice, and pastrami aromas. Palate is instantly alive with power and intensity yet a youthful vibrancy. Red and black berry fruits sit in the central pylon, strung from there we see a mélange of powdered spices, curing meats and earthy undertones. Tannins are prodigious in their power but never stray beyond the required tension, allow the full textural joy of this wine to carry to an almost limitless end. A wine of juxtaposition, carrying a lightness of being that belies its power and intensity.
- 98 points
June, 2025
Tom Kline, Winepilot
2023 vintageHere we have the pinnacle Grenache release from Yangarra. It’s perhaps a comparatively diaphanous release in the context of High Sands, though not to a fault. This is a classy wine of dimension, depth and endless character that will reward mightily with time in cellar. The depth to the aromas is instantly compelling while also wonderfully restrained - warm sand and mulch notes quickly make way for white pepper, cranberry, red cherry and raspberry compote. A swirl of the glass accentuates a fine mineral detail along with floral musk, brown spice and a lurking orange peel tang. This is at once savoury and pretty, demure and charming - such is its sophistication. The palate is intense but furled, sitting high in the mouth with red fruits aplenty while firm, febrile tannins provide anchor. Raspberry, red apple, cherry pit minerality, red rose, cranberry and orange peel are pulled into a corset of those stacked and powdery nebbiolo-like tannins which frame it all up and draw the wine to wonderful poised length. Yangarra’s trajectory with this grape in this region is stratospheric. That’s not opinion - it's fact.
- 97 points
May, 2025
Huon Hooke, The Real Review
2023 vintage
Deep and bright purple-red colour, bright and youthful. Dry earth, brick dust and blackberry conserve aromas, the palate medium-full bodied and intense, the concentrated fruit backed up by assertive and refined tannins that provide great structure and the finish rolls on and on, in harmony. A statuesque grenache of real presence and huge future potential.
- 97 points
May, 2025
Erin Larkin, Robert Parker Wine Advocate
2023 vintage
The 2023 High Sands Grenache is a magnificent wine. It routinely is, and nothing dulls the excitement of looking at the new vintage each year. While the Ovitelli and Clarendon Grenaches see no oak - they are exclusively in ceramic egg and amphorae - this High Sands does see a small percentage of older thick-stave Austrian puncheons, the effect of which is profound on the wine. It opens up the weave of the tannins and somehow exposes the length of flavor. The texture on the palate is gritty and sandy and yet fine, while the flavors of raspberry, watermelon, pink peppercorn, cold tea, anise and rose petals ooze from every juncture. I like this so much. It's one of the very greatest Grenaches in Australia, and it's looking so restrained in this cool/wet vintage. Interestingly, the decision was made to release this vintage prior to the more tannic 2022, for those wondering where that review is - something for us all to look forward to. 13.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.
- 97 points
January, 2025
Ryan Montgomery. JamesSuckling.com
2023 vintage
The nose is deeply perfumed, with brooding aromas of mulberries, mocha, dried herbs and tea leaves. The palate is medium- to full-bodied with finely integrated tannins and focused acidity, giving notes of raspberries, cassia bark, potpourri and spices. Very complex and tightly wound, with real purity of fruit. Drink or hold.
- 96 points
