93 Points, Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar - Deep ruby. Expansive, seductive bouquet of red and dark berries, with sexy vanillin oak spice, floral oils and graphite adding complexity. Lush and creamy but lively too, with energetic blackberry and mulberry flavors, exotic Asian spice accents and fine-grained, harmonious tannins. Suave mocha and candied licorice appear on the long, juicy finish. This is absolutely lovely right now, with no edginess or herbal notes, but will clearly repay a decade-plus in the cellar.

Winmaker Notes
Inky, deep and dense purple.  Aromatics leap from the glass - sweet fruits, with blueberry to the fore. Spices and a suggestion of cedary oak court the regionally proclaimed Barossa Valley Shiraz varietal notes.  Complex, and invitingly generous.
The palate is at once opulent, juicy and mouthwatering - a compote of assorted berries (red and blue), Satsuma plum and cherry.  Dark pepper spices adorn the back palate, and the tannins are engulfed by the abovementioned fruit rush. The fruit sits effortlessly in 69% new oak, adding another dimension to the structural and flavour layers.  This is as impressive an RWT as that from the 2002 vintage - each sip is better than the one before.

Penfolds RWT draws fruit from 20 to 100 year-old vineyards arcing across the west and north-west of the Barossa Valley, mostly independently grown. The best vineyards produce fruit of voluptuous intensity, ripe tannins, and juicy flavours. The RWT Shiraz has a very seductive style with a plum/blueberry fruit profile and fine ripe tannins underpinned by savoury French oak.

Penfolds RWT Shiraz presents an admirable alternative to the multi-regional sourcing and American oak maturation that are hallmarks of Grange, expressing instead, single-region Barossa Valley Shiraz matured in French oak barriques. The initials RWT stand for  "Red Winemaking Trial", the name given to the project internally when developmental work began in 1995.
RWT Shiraz was launched in May 2000 with the 1997 vintage. Its style is opulent and fleshy, contrasting with Grange, which is more muscular and assertive. RWT is made from fruit primarily selected for its aromatic qualities and fine texture rather than sheer intensity or power of flavour. The result is a wine that helps to redefine Barossa Shiraz at the highest quality level