Overview
Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier is the estate's flagship wine and one of Australia's benchmark expressions of the Rhône-inspired blend. The frost-reduced 2024 vintage delivered remarkable concentration and perfume, combining powerful fruit with floral detail, spice, fine tannins and precision. Critical acclaim has been exceptional, including 97-point reviews from Huon Hooke, Erin Larkin and Winepilot.
Vintage
October frosts significantly reduced yields in 2024, followed by an evenly warm season with well-timed rainfall. Glorious conditions through late summer and early autumn allowed the surviving fruit to develop powerful aromas and intense flavour.
Critic Reviews
97/100 — Erin Larkin, Robert Parker Wine Advocate: “The 2024 Shiraz Viognier is so perfumed from the glass, with notes of orange blossom and Boscobel rose, raspberry seed and peppercorns. The wine is delicately layered, spicy and medium-bodied, with so many nuanced levels of texture and flavor… I love this wine in pretty much every vintage condition; it varies each year, but it remains true to its fine, complex DNA. This is super.”
Tasted September 2025
Drinking Window: 2025–2044
97/100 — Huon Hooke, The Real Review: “Good depth of bright translucent purple colour; reserved spicy aromas, the palate deliciously flavoured with concentration and fruit sweetness, there is violet and blackberry, a touch of pepper, a powerful wine of focused intensity and terrific length. Juicy middle surrounded by fine grained balancing tannins. Already has lovely drinkability. Superb shiraz. A riper and more powerful vintage of this wine.”
Tasted 25 June 2025
Drinking Window: 2025–2045
97/100 — Winepilot: “Enchanting aromatics unfold in the glass to reveal a wine of immense complexity and grace. Whole-bunch-derived green bean tones are quick to melt into an array of spices — black pepper, star anise, dried bay leaf, green peppercorn, clove — while elegant fruit lingers beneath in the form of blackberry and black cherry… The detail, the elegance, the intensity, the length — this is a wine of class and quiet confidence. The term ‘national treasure’ came to mind. Outstanding.”
Tasted April 2026
96/100 — Jane Faulkner, Halliday Wine Companion: “This is splendid, and yes powerful in flavour and structure, yet reined in by poised if plentiful tannins. Abundantly floral, with pepper, black cherries and plums, soy sauce and spicy oak. It’s full bodied, rich and ripe yet comes out complex and contained.”
Tasted 15 July 2025
Published 09 September 2025
Drinking Window: 2025–2035
Producer
Clonakilla was founded by John Kirk at Murrumbateman in 1971 and has played a defining role in the development of the Canberra District as a wine region. Inspired by the Rhône Valley, Clonakilla began co-fermenting Shiraz with Viognier in 1992, establishing the style that would become the estate's flagship and one of its most recognised wines.
Specifications
-
Vintage: 2024
-
Grape Variety: Shiraz, Viognier
-
Viognier: 5%
-
Region: Canberra District, New South Wales, Australia
-
Alcohol: 14%
-
TA: 6.1 g/L
-
pH: 3.91
-
Residual Sugar: <0.3 g/L
-
Whole Bunch: 22%
-
Drinking Window: 2025–2045
