Seppeltsfield 1920 100-Year Vintage Para Tawny Red (South Australia)

Seppeltsfield's Centennial wines have been released annually for past 140 years and are believed to be the only single-vintage wines with such unbroken lineage on the planet. While the full composition is unknown, this now 101-year-old wine is composed primarily of Shiraz and Grenache and fortified with grape spirit. Resembling molasses in both color and texture, it is deeply evocative—a bottomless well of aroma and flavor that goes on and on: first chocolate, dates and praline, then baking spice and coffee beans, then tree sap, forest floor and the dusty spine of an old book. Intensely concentrated yet extraordinarily fresh, it is like drinking the essence of the past, a time in Australia just after WWI when hope was in the air. This is an exceptionally rare beauty that will outlive all of us. Christina Pickard