d'Arenberg winery was established by a teetotaller - well, the most successful drug dealers don't use their own product after all - almost 100 years ago in Australia's McLaren Valley and has been in the hands of the Osborn family for four generations. The Dead Arm is not just a cute, if slightly macabre, name, it refers to the vines from which the grapes are sourced.

According to d'Arenberg, Dead Arm is "a vine disease caused by the fungus Eutypa lata which randomly afffects vineyards all over." Mostly, affected vines are pruned or pulled up, but the d'Arenberg vines have been left and "these truncated, gap-toothed old vines have been producing small bunches of highly flavoured grapes since the late 19th century."

d'Arenburg produces a range of wines, but The Dead Arm shiraz is one of their "big three" wines. The Ironstone Pressings (grenache, syrah, mourvedre) and The Coppermine Road (cabernet sauvignon) are the other flagship brands. Perhaps because it's the ultimate Australian wine - shiraz - or perhaps because it's just so good, The Dead Arm has garnered the most attention and interest over the last ten years.

Since Vintages first offered The Dead Arm in 2002, its small allocations have generally sold out quickly.  Online prices at major US wine shops took advantage of their free market and prices ran 10-30% higher than at Vintages even as other fine wines typically ran cheaper by as much - Americans were snapping it up. A couple of years ago, it looked like The Dead Arm was seriously knocking at Penfolds' door for a place at Australia's top table. It's still selling well, but the price is not rising.

The Dead Arm consistently scores above 90 points by Wine Spectator, Robert Parker and others - myself included. RP gave the 2003 95 points, for example. But the question for collectors is, will it improve into a truly great wine? It has all the ingredients and media attention and a cool label. It was heartening to learn that six bottles of 2001 went for $1,035 (lot 343) this month at Ritchies, but that was the only lot. This seemed a bit odd given that there were 1,083 different lots of wine(s) on sale. Nobody else in Toronto wanted to sell any? It made me wonder how older vintages of The Dead Arm are doing around the world.

Wine-searcher.com is a global wine database (which effectively means the US, UK and Australia, though a few other countries pop up), that spits out lists of specific stores and specific prices for specific wines from "9,383" stores. While hardly a comprehensive, statistically sound sample, wine-searcher's lists suggest a pretty clear price plateau for The Dead Arm.  

winesearcher.com eyeball average by vintage: (US$)

1997 - 80-100
1998 - 70-80
1999 - 70-80
2000 - 60-70
2001 - 80-100
2002 - 60-80
2003 - 60-80
2004 - 60-70
2005 - 50
2006 - 60

Sample size was small in each case - from 20 to 50 stores. Half bottles and magnums were ignored.

So the purchaser of lot 343 at Ritchies' wine auction this month can be comforted in the knowledge that the "world" agrees 2001 was one of the best vintages.

Jolanta Kowalski of Vintages supplied a few details about the wine's history at Ontario's fine-wine-central, starting rather ominously with "This brand used to be a 'cult' brand, as you said, and it's still popular. We order a number of other brands from [d'Arenberg] so Vintages' allocations have increased. The result has been that the scarcity of the wine has diminished somewhat and customers are no longer scrambling to get these wines on the first day they are released."

Jolanta confirmed that Vintages ordered 2,000 six-bottle cases of the 2006, which had been the source of my concern as that looked like flooding the market. Her figures on first-day sales were also revealing: "On the first day of last year's release we sold almost 2,600 bottles. On the first day of release this year, we sold about 1,380 bottles."

The Dead Arm is an excellent Australian shiraz, usually offering lots of fruit, darkness, smoothness and complexity. The market seems to be judging it harshly right now (as a collectable), but it doesn't have the track record of some of the finer Hermitage syrahs, which stretch back decades. It's also clear that the older vintages are selling at a premium to newer vintages: it may yet be unfair to count The Dead Arm out as a collectable.

And I'm not saying that just because I, um, own some and am hanging on to it...

Here's my tasting note from the current release. You will also note that Vintages, at US$47, is very keenly priced in world terms.

D'Arenberg The Dead Arm Shiraz 2006. $55.95
McLaren Vale, Australia
The Aussie collector's favourite is back. Very powerful nose of dark red fruit, a little extracted. Cassis and dark plum dominate and there's a slight herbal secondary note, though not much darkness - a bit of graphite. Very full bodied on the palate - the acidity and somewhat chalky tannins are high, and it's not "ready" yet, but there's already a smoothness that bodes well. The richness of the ripe plum and blackberry fruit are joined by hints of darker tobacco notes which will likely become more evident. Nice and quite fresh finish. Not sure if this is better than the 2002, but it's very good. 90-92 points