Rare & Fine The Signature Cabernet Sauvignon & Shiraz

When Samuel Smith's descendants decided in 1962 to formalise the Cabernet Sauvignon–Shiraz blend as a house signature, they were codifying a distinctly Australian idiom decades before the category had a name. The Signature has run continuously ever since, making it one of the longest-unbroken premium red programs on the continent. Barossa Valley floor fruit — grown on warm, low-elevation alluvial soils — delivers the mid-palate weight and dark-fruited density that defines the appellation, while the Cabernet component (typically 52–57% of the blend, though no fixed formula is applied) provides the structural counterpoint. Fermentation begins spontaneously in open-top vessels, some of which date to the nineteenth century, before the wine moves to barrel for approximately 21 months in French oak barriques and hogsheads, 25–30% new. Those barrels are not sourced externally: they are hand-crafted on-site at the Yalumba Cooperage, the only fully operational winery-owned cooperage in the Southern Hemisphere, giving the house a degree of oak-character control that no Australian peer can replicate. The 2021 vintage in the Barossa delivered warm, even ripening with sufficient diurnal range to preserve aromatic lift; the wine is approachable now but carries the tannin architecture for a decade of further development.