Yarra Yering
Dry Red No. 2
Yarra Valley
2005

The producer

Yarra Yering’s modern history starts in 1969, when Dr. Bailey Carrodus came along, looking for land in the area, after completing a degree in horticulture, and later a degree in winemaking from Roseworthy Agricultural College in South Australia, and also years of travelling French, Spanish, and Italian wine country. Carrodus named his vineyard Yarra Yering and in 1973 produced his first vintage of ‘Dry Red Wine No 1’, a Bordeaux inspired blend, and ‘Dry Red Wine No 2’, a northern Rhone blend. Yarra Yering quickly gained enormous critical and commercial success.

In 2008, Dr Carrodus passed away, and the estate was sold to two businessmen, who committed to continue the business in Dr Carrodus’ spirit. Today Yarra Yering has 28 hectares of un-grafted and un-irrigated vines planted on a northerly slope at the foot of the Warramate Hills. The flagship wines, ‘Dry Red Wine No 1’ and ‘Dry Red Wine No 2’, are recognised as some of the finest to come out of the continent.

The wine

Dry Red Wine No 2 is one of Yarra Yering’s flagship wines, pictured on a northern Rhone red blend, thus comprising 96% Shiraz, 3% Mataro, and 1% Viognier. Original Shiraz plantings were made in 1969, with further plantings in the 1990s. A large proportion of whole berries is included for fermentation to encourage perfume, and the final blend is allowed to age for 15 months in French oak barriques, 30% of which are new. This is a medium bodied yet densely textured and multi-layered red wine, with elevated aromatic black fruit intensity and complexity, firm ripe tannins, crisp acidity and a long length.  

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.