Of the most famous of the Leeuwin Estate Art Series wines are the cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay. The range has been extended to Riesling, shiraz, sauvignon blanc and semillon sauvignon blanc varieties. The artwork on the bottle is Eagle Hawk Dreaming by Rusty Peters (1935 – 2020), an indigenous artist from the eastern Kimberly religion in the north of Western Australia who worked on cattle stations, broke horses and only began painting in 1998 – a pretty decent career change.

The Leeuwin Estate 2017 Art Series shiraz is now a museum release, but I think it is a little early for such a release as I picked up my bottle from my local bottle shop. If I look around, it is mostly sold out in most bottle shops. This medium bodied shiraz has a whiff of black cherries, red currants and dark chocolate overtones.

Interestingly, this is 97% shiraz with 3% malbec, but I wouldn’t be calling this a blend, I have been told any wine over 85% is considered a straight variety. James Halliday rates this as 95 points and Joe Czerwinski gives this 92 points, so whilst there is a little variation in scores, I am reading this wass scoring in the 92 – 93 point range that I would think is a fair range.