Made from 100% Shiraz that spent 24 months in French oak (30% new), the exuberant, flamboyant 2004 The Factor offers up gorgeously pure blueberry and blackberry fruit intermixed with smoke, bacon fat, camphor, and graphite. Silky smooth, and, as David Powell says, “the most Barossa-like” of all his wines, it represents Powell’s rendition of a Cote Rotie. It can be drunk over the next 15-20 years. - Robert M. Parker, Jr.

96+ Slightly exotic and a bruiser at the moment, the 2004 Torbreck Shiraz The Factor has amazingly rich dark fruit, meat, earth, flowers, chocolate and bacon notes literally jumping from the glass and there's not a trace of heat. The palate is full bodied with nice structure but so much fruit overlaying everything that it's easy to miss. Beautifully balanced, textured and complex, it's hard not to love this wine and the finish is long and rich.

Perfumed on the nose, with hints of roses, pepper and game all adding complexity atop the base of berries and earth. This is wonderfully creamy in texture and crammed with lush fruit, but by no means is it what you'd dismissively call a fruit bomb, as there is considerable nuance to the flavors, ending on notes of pepper, meat and dried spices. Drink now–2020.