The Eric Stevens Purbrick Shiraz is Tahbilk’s prestige red wine, named for Eric Purbrick, the English-born grandson of founder Reginald Purbrick, who moved from London to Tahbilk in 1931 and managed the estate through most of the twentieth century. First released by Eric as the estate’s “Bin 11” Shiraz in 1948, the wine has evolved through several name changes before adopting the current Eric Stevens Purbrick designation in 2002. It is assembled each year from the finest barrels of the vintage, incorporating fruit from Tahbilk’s multiple Shiraz plantings including the 1933 and 1936 vines.

The 2015 growing season in Nagambie Lakes was distinguished by excellent conditions for Shiraz, producing wines of notable concentration, fine tannin structure and savoury complexity that the Tahbilk style demands. The estate’s traditional approach of open-vat fermentation followed by ageing in a combination of large old and smaller new French and American oak barrels gives the Eric Stevens Purbrick its distinctive character: broader and more textured than the pure asceticism of the 1860 Vines, with American oak contributing a gentle vanilla note alongside the French oak’s spice and structure. Chris Shanahan reviewed the 2015 as “powerful in flavour, structure and savour... elegant, refined, and tasting young and fresh.”

The Eric Stevens Purbrick is the wine that most directly channels the estate’s deep history of producing generous, structured Victorian Shiraz for long-term ageing, a style that has remained remarkably consistent across the Purbrick family’s century of stewardship. The wine regularly appears in discussions of Victoria’s finest red wines and is collected by enthusiasts who appreciate the combination of genuine historical pedigree, old-vine fruit quality and restrained price relative to the South Australian icons with which it can legitimately be compared. The 2015 vintage represents an excellent year for this label.