Intense dark chocolate and rich old fruit/oak aroma; very drying tannic grip; again a bit faded and lacks fruit/flavour. Very puckering chewy tannins dominate the finish. Still has good flavour, and heaps of it: better than I remembered this vintage. Drink up soonish.
Huon Hooke, The Real Review. September, 2007

A blend of 87% Shiraz and 13% Cabernet Sauvignon, Max Schubert commented in 1993 that this vintage was not quite up to the mark. For technicians, this was the last vintage to use white capsules on the bottle, with Penfolds moving to the crimson red foils in 1980. The wine is deep ruby garnet with an unusual nose of root vegetables mixed with cola, caramel, black currant, and tar. Relatively attenuated in the finish, but sweet on the attack, this wine seems to be narrowing out, with the tannins becoming increasingly dominant. If this is typical of the direction the evolution of this wine is taking, it is not reassuring. The wine is certainly still full, but may ultimately tend to dry out rather than blossom and prove expansive. This is a vintage to monitor closely.Source: Robert Parker (eRobertParker.com) February, 2002 by Robert Parker