Castagna Sauvage 2003

The Castagna description of the makeup of this wine: "Made from single-vineyard, estate-grown shiraz, with a touch of viognier and a dollop of sangiovese."

I recently had my last bottle of this, which is essentially de-classified Castagna shiraz from the smoke-hit 2003 vintage in Beechworth. Unlike most of the smoke-year wines I've had, this did improve with age. There are smoke characters here, but they thread and fold through a wine of real interest. A meaty wine, wildness with a spit-shine.

Not until this last bottle did I really have a sense that there was sangiovese at work here, but I am now thinking that perhaps the savoury note it provides, as well as the different line of tannin and acid, played a crucial part in balancing out the pretty characters of shiraz-viognier and the smoke below.

Anyway, my few bottles of this, drunk over several years, have been fascinating and thought-provoking, including to my preconception that smokey wines are best used as marinades.