The Halliday Wine Companion features over 4000 wineries, and the Halliday Tasting Team reviews over 8000 wines each year. Narrowing down these numbers to showcase the best of the best is a difficult, but important task.
Earlier this month we announced both our Top 100 Wines and Top 100 Wineries. Both lists are jam-packed with some of the country's very best producers and wines from the past year. To help you navigate the list, we are spotlighting 12 wines for you to try.
From our wineries list, which is ranked 1 to 100, we are featuring excellent red wines from Clarendon Hills in McLaren Vale and the Yarra Valley's Yarra Yering.
We are also highlighting seven bottles that were awarded a spot within the 100 wines. The list includes riesling, brut blanc de blancs and vermentino as well as muscat, cabernet sauvignon, syrah, malbec and mencía from beloved wineries including Heritage Wines of Stanthorpe, Main & Cherry, Wangolina, Idee Fixe, Balnaves of Coonawarra, Morris of Rutherglen and Frankland Estate.
These wines are well-deserving of their flowers, and not only do they deserve a spot within the Halliday Top 100, but they are also great wines to add to your wishlist. Click through to read their full review, or if you see one you like the look of, shop directly from the producers.
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Wines to try from Top 100
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Morris of Rutherglen
Old Premium Rare Muscat Non Vintage
Fortified | RutherglenA celebration of the master fortified blender's brilliance in a wine which is as close to magical as you can get. Six generations of Morris winemakers have had a hand in the solera that brings this beauty to the glass. This is not a wine to hurry; take your time to embrace the scents and flavours rich and luscious in fig, raisin, plum pudding and sticky date pudding and nutty rancio laid out across a velvety texture. Complex? Goes without saying. 500ml. -
Yarra Yering
Dry Red Wine No. 1 2024
Yarra ValleyA blend of 70/16/11/3% cabernet sauvignon/merlot/malbec/petit verdot, the cabernet coming from the original '69-planted vineyard. Matured in barrique (35% new). A pure and focused bouquet of pure cassis, gravel and subtle cedar. Equally impressive on the concentrated yet elegant palate. The fine-grained, persistent tannins are in perfect harmony with the fruit. Seamless. A great Dry Red No. 1 in very fine form; a wine that will age effortlessly over the next decade, if not two. -
Clarendon Hills
Astralis 2024
McLaren ValeThe evolution of this wine is something. Once about power and saturating presence, it is now about detail and savoury drive. Once it was all whole bunch and all new oak. Today, it is all destemmed and sees 20% new French, with 20% recent fill, and about 50% three to five years old. This wine always feels like a noble struggle. The organic battling the inorganic, vine roots cleaving rock, searching for water. Dark fruit and dark mineral notes, black tea, chewing tobacco, potpourri, tapenade, dried herbs, star anise, old leather and struck iron. It's such a savoury wine, fruit ripe yet not rich, finely etched tannins carrying long, the fan of flavour-detail on the finish profound. It’s the new way with Astralis, and I’m on board. Outstanding. -
Clarendon Hills
Romas Grenache 2024
McLaren ValeAll destemmed, with over a month total time on skins. Oak is older. This is from a section of 1920s vines on tough, hungry soils. That’s a major feature of this cuvée, the ironstone, quartz and shale ever present in the glass. Blood and rust, an old-world merchant’s shop, redolent with a melange of tea and spices. Dehydrated black olive, raspberry, a garnish wheel of dried blood orange, kirsch and black cherry liqueur, sans sweetness. It’s a wine of savoury sweep and quiet power, expansive, incisively mineral, tarry, acidity vigorous, tannins marshalled for a long journey. It needs air, and it needs time, such is Romas. Do as it says. -
Frankland Estate
Isolation Ridge Riesling 2025
Frankland RiverYou’d call this pristine. Beautiful, too. It’s everything you want in a riesling from this top producer, with fruit off its organically managed, exceptional vineyard. Delicate aromas of lemon blossom, quince and ginger flower with a more complex oyster shell character. Pure flavours of citrus, glacé lemon and a touch of phenolics and silky creaminess all cruising along the palate. There’s balance between texture and the vibrancy of superfine acidity. A slip of sweetness rounds out this superb wine. -
Balnaves of Coonawarra
The Tally Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2024
Coonawarra94% per cent of the fruit is sourced from the Dead Morris vineyard and co-fermented with 6% petit verdot, before maturing in 36% new French oak barriques. A witch’s brew of blackberry, pepperberry and Old Bay spice opens the wine. This is a sleeper, with powerful aromatic intensity that builds steadily with aeration. In its youth, what shows most clearly is the pedigree of the tannins: lacy and precise, a filigree of woven fabric stitching rosemary and sage through layers of cassis and plum. Nigella seed and tonka linger on the finish. Give this wine time and a gentle decant on opening. The mild season has ensured a wine built for long ageing. -
Clarendon Hills
Sandown Blewitt Springs Syrah 2024
McLaren ValeThe vines were in their late 80s at harvest and, with a smaller yield than average, that translates to a concentrated wine. The prevailing trend at this address for a lighter touch is just as impactful, though. Blue, black and red fruits. Sour cherry, blueberry, damson plum, blackberry, wild cherry. Some graphite. Preserved salted beef. Ground anise. Clove and ginger, fresh straw. A raspberry sour, made dry. There’s a floral/leafy quality here, too, with blackcurrant leaf, wild flowers, fennel pollen and ‘wet’ fennel seeds. There’s a lot to unpack, and this, with its fine acidity and assertively fine-grained tannins, will unfurl over many positively charged years. -
Clarendon Hills
Sandown Cabernet Sauvignon 2024
McLaren ValeFrom vines planted in 1930 to the Reynella clone in Blewitt Springs. This unwraps over days, like many Clarendon Hills wines, though perhaps more so than any in this vintage. There are some high notes of fresh thyme, sage, mint and hedgerow, along with cigar tobacco and cedar over a core of blackberry, blackcurrant and wild raspberry, which melt into a darkly mineral core, the drive of acid and robust linear tannins auguring for a long life ahead. It’s an excellent release, but a year or two of cool slumber is advised before broaching, though the pleasure will still flow with half a day in a decanter. -
Idée Fixe
Premier Brut Blanc de Blancs Méthode Traditionnelle 2023
Sparkling | Margaret RiverWhen Paul Holmes à Court wanted to add a sparkling enterprise, a separate operation to Vasse Felix but an adjunct of sorts, I thought, 'What?' Now I just drink the fizz. It’s excellent, and since Brendan Carr, ex-Xanadu, took over a few years ago, quality continues to grow. This fizz is a light straw gold with plenty of bead, and while the chardonnay flavours come to the fore, it has some complexing autolytic notes: shortbread and buttered toast with lemon curd. Crisp, dry and long, the dosage is well judged, so this has a certain refinement. Disgorged April '25. -
Main & Cherry
Cabernet Malbec 2024
McLaren ValeA blend of 51/30/19% cabernet franc/malbec/cabernet sauvignon, from Blewitt Springs/McLaren Flat/Clarendon; 12 months in French oak. Michael Sexton makes such graceful red wines, fragrant, finely structured, textural and intense without heft or overt inputs. Prioritising cabernet franc over cabernet sauvignon makes such sense with his style, with a more open, less rugged profile. Mulberry, baking spices, sauna cedar, currants, lots of lavender and violet, cracked pepper and graphite. The tannic framework is quite a thing, both feeling linear and lateral, the charming fragrance billowing out through the long finish. I really like this. -
Wangolina
A Series Mencía 2023
Limestone Coast ZoneA wine evocative of damp forest floor, with organic soil, fungi and granitic earth. Bramble and Bing cherries; some bracken and thorny shrubs, too. A plume of potpourri florals. Its lingering acidity is key to lengthening those flavours. The fruit, the spice and the inorganic minerals make this wine detailed and captivating. Close in style to mountainous Galician mencías, but with its own distinct richness and vitality. It's one heck of a drink. -
Heritage Wines of Stanthorpe
Whistling Kite Skin Contact Vermentino 2025
Granite BeltThe fruit spends two months on skins and is fermented in ceramic eggs. Quite a gentle impact of skin fermentation, resulting in pleasing, chalky texture and a general dryness that feels apt in the more vigorous lime-in-tonic-water characters, the tangle of grapefruit pulp and mandarin, the pucker of brown pear skin and the haze of cloudy green apple juice. Lots of perfume, good flavour, a bristling, energetic feel overall. A complex and compelling wine.
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