We purchased two Mataro’s which had the quality to become the Sultan and left them to develop. At our last bench tasting neither was better than the other and we felt like bottling two Sultans. We settled for making a son of Sultan, ‘Shazada’, but to enhance the ripe features of this wine and move it further from the Sultan profile we added a small amount of Shiraz.
If I was to offer a clue about the differences I would say the Sultan is the pure expression of Mataro while Shazada is a bold forthright Barossa red with more weight and it’s much harder to call the variety. This is the red for an important dinner party as it will evolve and it would help if it can be served from a decanter. The ultimate experience would be to drink this wine with the Sultan as the evening would finish with all participants knowing an enormous amount about Mataro.