Yalumba

The Octavius 1998

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  Vintage 1998
  91 points winecompanion.com.au

Medium to full red-purple; a highly scented bouquet with a mix of ripe fruit and lashings of new oak, the palate in similar mode exuding massive fruit, oak and tannins.

• 

  Vintage 1998
  93 points thewinefront.com.au

Teeming with bright purple and black berry fruit, this wondrously integrated wine roams far and wide through forests of creamy, custardy, toffeed, coconutty, charry oak – it’s clearly had a range of oaks thrown at it and it’s clearly added to the wine’s complexity – with even a handsome scar of savouriness carved right from the attack to the finish. It’s a solid, muscular wine with shoulders of black coffee and legs of black coal – this is better oak-handled than previous releases but still holds a helluva lot of the woody stuff – fruit or oak, there’s no doubt that this wine’s song is an heroic one.