Longviews Shiraz has all the hallmarks of a cool-climate style - spicy, savoury with crunchy berry fruit. The Barbera provides a juicy, cherry-like brightness and taut acid backbone that gives the wine wonderful structure.

A vein of ironstone runs through the vineyard producing Syrah of exceptional quality. Landau displays red fruits, a medium-bodied palate with whole bunch influence giving, spice, complexity and structure. Downer naturally ferments the Landau with approximately 50% whole bunches and whole berries in small one tonne, open fermenters. Again, oak maturation is minimal, with the wine raised in older French oak puncheons for roughly 9-10 months. Adelaide Hills is buzzing with change and innovation and Murdoch Hill is a producer that is now at the forefront of this action. Its worth pointing out that Murdoch Hills is not a new player in the Australian wine scene - the Estate vineyards were planted by the Downer family in 1998. But it has been the return of the familys youngest member, Michael Downer, to take over the winemaking duties in 2012, that has created the excitement here. Pumped from stages at Vietti (Piedmont), Best's Great Western and Shaw+Smith, Downer has wasted little time in applying his experience and passion to his family vineyard practices and winemaking. The most obvious changes he has implemented have been bringing the winemaking in house (it was previously outsourced to a neighbouring winery) and the creation of the Artisan range of single-parcel, minimal intervention bottlings. Tapping into the freshness gifted by his high-altitude vines, while keeping winemaking artefact to a minimum, Downers approach has led to a range of juicy, vibrant wines that highlight the detail and freshness of each site. We are not the only ones who have been following this young winemakers progress with interest - Downer was a Young Guns of Wine finalist in 2014 and the joint winner of the Winemakers Choice in 2015. His wines have also been getting great reviews and a number of gongs in recent times (including two wines in the top ten at the Adelaide Review Hot 100 last year). The winemaking specs include wild yeast ferments, various degrees of whole bunch, extended skin contact and more and more older wood in the aging. Bottling is without any fining or filtration. In terms of the vineyards, the original 1998 Estate plantings are situated around the winery, nestled in the undulating hills of Oakbank. The shallow red loam soils here are shot through with varying levels of schist and ironstone. Varieties include Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon. In addition to the home vineyards, Downer also works with a range of nearby sites in Lobethal and Basket Range and the high altitude Uraidla vineyard in the Piccadilly Valley. These sources offer Downer a broad range of flavours, structures and textures with which to do his thing.

Little Giant Little batch is the crafting of hand-made, small parcel wines representing unique varieties, vineyards, or wine styles. Little Batch provide a snapshot of the exciting innovations and blends that typify the current Australian wine scene innovative blends that are unusual and delicious and constantly over-deliver on quality.

Rich and flavoursome the 2018 Cutlass Single Vineyard Shiraz shows thick cuts of red berry and juicy dark plum with some whole bunch derived perfume and spice.The palate is long and persistent with complex fruit flavours overlaid with fresh toasty French Oak.

Rated 97 Halliday points. "Deep crimson-purple; whereas the '11 had to fight every inch of the way, this wine displays almost contemptuous ease in the way it has marshalled the layers of black fruits and ripe tannins that soak up the new oak inputs. This will be one of the long-lived, great Black Labels." James Halliday Wine Companion, July 2015.

Intense berry and red cherry aromas vibrant lend themselves to the palate of dark berry and cherry with subtle hints of dry herbs and silky soft graceful tannins.

Red fruit aromas in the red cherry and redcurrant spectrum carry through onto the palate.

Tim Knappstein became a third generation vigneron when he commenced his career in the family company, Stanley Wines, making his first wine in 1966, after graduating from the Roseworthy College Oenology course. Riposte, has enabled Tim to fully utilise his rich and accumulated knowledge from a decorated 45 years of wine-making, and his boundless enthusiasm to keep making exceptional well priced wine, from premium cool climate grapes of the Adelaide Hills. The Dagger has been honed to create a vibrant, rich, earlier drinking wine displaying all of the hallmark aromas flavours and texture of Pinot Noir.