Tony Love’s Top 100 Wines is your guide, from sub-$20 surprises to luxurious special event buys. There are 80 great reds across all price and varietal spectra, as well as refreshing whites, sparklings, sweet wines and fortifieds. Click through to the chapter links below to reveal the best of the best this winter

LIGHTER REDS

Before we get to the traditional shiraz and cabernet listings, the trend towards lighter varieties and styles is all the rage, with pinot noir and grenache blends leading the way.

Wicks 2015 Pinot Noir

Adelaide Hills, SA

Food: Lentils, ham bones, soup

$20

****

Long considered to offer great value, this wine is a great kick-off point not only into the Hills but also as a first step into the complex world of pinot noir, lightly lifted with musk-hinted fragrant wafts, also bush florals, faintly eucalypt and forest leafy, as well as stony and flinty elements that lead into a pure, juicy, light to medium weighted red with dusty, peppery spice notes. It’s a youthful style, fresh yet soft in its finish.

De Bortoli Villages 2015 Pinot Noir $22

Yarra Valley, Vic

$22

Food: Duck confit

****

The beauty of pinot when it first greets you is that unique fragrance — part floral, part rocky bush tracks, part kitchen spice box — that primes the senses for more, and here that comes in a delightfully sweet cherry core of fruit to follow, bursting berries and a sticky, medium weighted mouthfeel that keeps you in the sipping zone. It’s quite complete for this price, and quite content in its keep-it-simple expression.

Stoney Rise 2015 Pinot Noir

Northern Tasmania

$29

Food: Coq au vin

****1/2

The Stoney Rise label delivers more immediate drinkability than its maker’s eponymous Joe Holyman brand, the difference stylistic but without compromise if this is any proof. Deceptively simple and straightforward but there’s more here than meets the eye — attractive woody herbs and a sweet core of red to crimson fruits, with a bang-on grip mid-palate creating a dynamic release of fine velvet-touch tannins for a smooth finish.

Giant Steps 2015 Pinot Noir

Yarra Valley, Vic

$35

Food: Duck pappardelle

****1/2

While the Giant Steps crew pride themselves on their single vineyard Yarra collection, this cross Valley cuvee is a great place to immerse yourself in the mid-dark and cola end of the spectrum, with deep wells of aroma immediately impressive, then beautifully sculpted, sweet-spot, dark cherry fruit and spiced compote characters given some gravitas with mid-weight palate structures and power. Most seductive.

Nepenthe Good Doctor 2013 Pinot Noir

Adelaide Hills, SA

$35

Food: Braised pork ribs, Chinese spices

****1/2

This under-the-radar pinot should be revealed for what it is — and that’s a mighty fine, exquisitely layered wine with herbals and spices meshed into a pretty solidly structured style that still is open enough to show its varietal fragrances and pure, fleshy darker crimson cherry fruits — with evidence too of stems and whole bunches adding complexity. It’s refined, sophisticated, and seduces you for another glass before you realise it.

Pike and Joyce Vue du Nord 2015 Pinot Noir

Adelaide Hills, SA

$38

Food: Minute Steak, mushrooms

****1/2

While a lot of trade will be done in the P&J bargain “Rapide” pinot at $20, a smart, fresh and youthful style, step on up to this all-Lenswood marque which has plenty of the variety’s distinctive bush and forest herbal notes — thyme, rosemary, eucalypt — and a blacker fruit profile with more solid weight and structure, more intensity and greater palate drive. Lots going for it and worth a drive to the spectacular cellar door location.

Tapanappa Foggy Hill 2014 Pinot Noir

Southern Fleurieu, SA

$55

Food: Duck braised in pinot

*****

Brian Croser’s Foggy Hill vineyard is on one of the coldest and wettest sites in the state, chosen to nurture a pinot that clearly revels in the climate there. This is exciting, high-toned wine with vibrant varietal aromatics of crushed black cherry fruit, and wooded and bush herbals adding a forest-like background to a sweetly spotted mouthful of pure fruit joys. It’s delicious, drinkable and delightfully svelte.

Rusden Driftsand 2014 Grenache Shiraz Mataro

Barossa Valley, SA

$20

Food: Slow roasted lamb, olives

****

Grown and crafted in the sandy Vine Vale district of the Barossa, these varieties lift in such conditions and while there’s a wonderful aromatic swirling in the wine it still is quite concentrated once you’re in focused tasting mode, its spicy fragrances and faint charry oak adding highlights to sweet fruits which evolve into a rich, mouth-filling drink that’s generous in all its offerings.

Kalleske 2015 Clarry’s GSM

Barossa Valley, SA

$21

Food: Barbecued rump, lots of pepper

****

Certified organic/biodynamic working with fruit from the Kalleske estate in the western Barossa/Greenock district, this is an exciting, modern yet undeniably Barossa style that has alluring spice enticements to begin yet still delivers a darker, brooding blend of the three varieties, full bodied with sub-regional ironstone and dusty, minerally nuances in its mouthfeel — and surprisingly soft, fine long tannins in the finish.

Three Dark Horses 2015 GT Grenache Touriga

McLaren Vale, SA

$25

Food: Pizza: salami, fior di latte

****1/2

We’re seeing a rise of touriga in red blends, which winemaker Mat Broomhead says offers floral and spicy elements and aids the medium-bodied drinkability sought after in contemporary red wines. Well he’s ticked all the boxes here with a celebrated grenache blend, a new-gen style using whole bunches, co-ferments, wild yeast, and no oak. It’s a spicy, slurpy red blend that gets the palate salivating, keeps some grip in the finish and is simply delicious.

Kaesler Stonehorse 2013 Grenache Shiraz

Barossa Valley, SA

$22

Food: Rich beef stew

****

There’s no shirking from every red wine out of the Kaesler cellars, so it’s great to see that even at this entry point you get a big wrap-around wine at 15% alc which works a treat at this time of the year. An 84 per cent grenache dominance in the blend shows all the fleshy, spicy elements expected with pepper and roast vegie aromas lurking in the background as the tannins remain sticky and enduring. Bring it on a cold night, breathe deeply as you sip.

Pertaringa Two Gentlemen’s GSM

McLaren Vale, SA

$22

Food: Mapo Tofu

****1/2

The spectrum of styles covered by this blend can stretch wide and far, this towards the bigger, richer side of things, and it is getting up here in alcohol terms at 14.8%. But the ripeness and balance is managed deftly with a mass of crimson berry flavours offset by aromatic lifts of pepper and mixed herb characters. It’s juicy through and through with a great core of sweet fruit and carefully toned textural finishing notes.

Tim Adams 2013 The Fergus

Clare Valley, SA

$24

Food: Char-grilled lamb cutlets

****

While the Clare Valley’s red reputation sits squarely on shiraz, cabernet and malbec, this Tim Adams blend has been a seriously smart wine for years now, based on a neighbour’s grenache block and this season backed up by tempranillo and malbec. It shows all the crumbly earthy spice and fragrance of the lead variety, and is quite full bodied in the palate as it follows on, chewy, fleshy with sticky tannins coasting the finish.

Soulgrowers Equilibrium 2012 GSM

Barossa Valley, SA

$25

Food: Beef curry

****

Now here’s a winter red that doesn’t step away from its responsibilities to warm the soul, and at 15.5% alc/vol. it’s big and bold in all its mannerisms, yet to smell and taste it’s far more cuddly and affectionate with plenty of blood-lip character from the grenache, a fair slab of oak to boost its structure, the fruit ripe, spicy and dense, the whole lot adding up to a full-bodied and firm style. If size matters to you — jump on in.

Beresford Barrel Select 2014 GSM

McLaren Vale, SA

$27

Food: Chicken tagine

****

The lead role grenache here comes from 50-year-old bush vines and is definitely the star of the show with a spicy, woody, savoury herbed personae that defines the grape’s — and this particular iteration’s — identity through and through. It’s perfumed, balancing a mixture of crimson and black berried flavours, tidily structured with subtle vanilla/caramel oak frills towards the finish, and above all is damned tasty to sip and sip again.

Schwarz 2014 GSM

Barossa Valley, SA

$30

Food: Pork, plum sauce

****1/2

This signature combination of the region’s great red varieties comes from a range of Barossa subdistricts, and the blending has got it just right, the fragrance of the grenache built from its herb and spice elements then given a bit of earthiness from familiar gravelly, ironstone-like characters than emanate often from the western sectors — then bam, a sweet core of plum fruits and minor notes of darker spice and chewy textural end-notes. Excellent styling.