Grape Varieties: 96.5% Syrah, 3.5% Viognier
Country: Australia
Region: South Australia
Sub-Region: Barossa
Appellation: Barossa Valley
98 Points Robert Parker!!! "Torbreck’s
flagship is the 2005 Run Rig, a 97% Shiraz cuvee sourced from 120- to 160-year-old vines with 3% finished
Viognier added before bottling. It spent 30 months in 60% new French oak. Opaque purple/black in color, it has a
kinky, exotic bouquet of fresh road tar, smoke, lavender, black pepper, game, blueberry, and black raspberry. Full-
bodied and opulent on the palate, the wine is dense, packed, and unevolved. It will continue to open up over the
next 10-12 years and drink well through 2040 in the style of a Chapoutier Hermitage. If it develops as I think it will,
it will be a candidate for perfection down the road.
Torbreck, under the leadership of owner/winemaker David Powell, remains a Barossa Valley benchmark as well
as one of the world’s leading wine estates."
95 Points Wine Spectator!!! "Firm,
focused, highly aromatic and packed with flavor, offering floral accents to the dense blackberry, cherry and mineral
flavors that linger on the refined finish, where the grip needs cellaring to loosen. Shiraz and Viognier. Best from
2011 through 2017. 1,200 cases made.–HS"
The RunRig has often drawn comparison with the beautifully fragrant & tautly
structured wines produced from the steep slopes of the Northern Rhône Valley’s Appellation of Côte Rôtie.
The 2005 RunRig, although wonderfully aromatic like its predecessors, is a wine that exhibits so much power and
latent richness that it could easily be mistaken for the hugely concentrated wines sourced from the sun drenched
hill of Hermitage (the historic home of Syrah and some of the worlds most powerful and longest living wines).
Each of the eight parcels of fruit were gently de-stemmed into both wooden & concrete open top fermenters
where they were carefully nurtured for 6-7 days on skins. After basket pressing the wine was run directly into both
new and old French barriques where they spent 30 months with minimal racking. During the final ‘assemblage’ a
small addition (3.5%) of estate grown Viognier was added and the wine was later bottled without the use of
filtration or fining.
‘The Highland clans used a “RunRig” system to distribute land amongst their
clansmen in a series of widely dispersed holdings. The emphasis not on any one farm, but rather the communal
element of the whole. Shiraz from old dry grown vineyards is blended with viognier, complementing the strengths
and complexities of these individual parcels of fruit, whilst giving the resulting wine a further dimension.’
~David Powell, Owner/Winemaker