Galway Pipe, Rare Tawny Aged 25 Years (18.5%)

A$90-$100/50cl Sense of Taste, Sippify, Vok Beverages

This part of our Best in Show selection is usually the monopoly of one of the great Rutherglen fortifieds, and a glance at our Platinums (from p61) will show that they scored as well as ever. This year, though, it was a fortified GSM that came stomping through to Best in Show victory: an often unsung category that draws on some of the deepest and oldest South Australian traditions. The wine is walnut, clearing to a deep tawny at the rim. Aromatically, you’ll find apples, nuts, cinders and sackcloth amid much else, while on the palate this is rich, deep but above all energetic, balancing its burnt sugar richness and distilledcompote fruits with bracing acidity and a lingering extractive force that almost seems tannic... until you realise it’s just the residues of time itself.

Established under the stewardship of the Smith family (of Yalumba fame), Galway Pipe is still a family-owned business based in South Australia.

Although first bottled in 2020, its victorious wine is anything but a new arrival, as winemaker Chris Dix explains: ‘The Galway Rare Tawny project has been in the making for many years, drawing on our expansive selection of rare batches and barrels. Since 2012, the programme in our barrel rooms has aimed to preserve the best of our older components, further ageing liquid for many years to provide us with a tawny which is deep in complexity and richness.’

Galway Pipe is named after Governor Sir Henry Galway, Governor of South Australia from 1914-1920. When visiting wineries to taste their finest pipes (500-litre barrels) of fortified wines, whichever was most to his liking was inscribed as Galway’s Pipe.

‘Galway Pipe has always been a brand synonymous with quality fortified wine in Australia,’ says Dix, who has been making wine since the age of 17. ‘This new wine is part of our pursuit to produce the highest-quality tawny we can; a product that is an experience in itself.’