99 points Jeb Dunnuck

The 2016 Shiraz RWT is a brilliant, brilliant wine, and I suspect the finest version of this cuvee ever produced. Thrilling notes of black raspberries, crème de cassis, toasted spice, mint, and espresso all emerge from this deep, rich, powerful Shiraz. With massive concentration, it still glides across the palate with no sensation of heaviness or rusticity, building, perfectly ripe tannins, and incredible opulence and intensity. It shows more grilled meat notes with time in the glass and is a monumental Barossa Shiraz that flirts with perfection.

98 Points Andrew Caillard Master of Wine 

Medium deep colour. Intense mulberry chinotto Turkish Delight aromas with roasted chestnut vanillin notes. Well concentrated, rich and voluminous with deep set blackberry, mulberry dark chocolate flavours, fine plentiful slinky grainy tannins and mocha roasted chestnut oak. Finishes tannin and oaky firm with prolonged classic dark berry praline flavours. Still elemental with lovely density and texture. The Penfolds DNA showing through the Barossa aesthetic.

98 points Bob Campbell

Deep, dense, almost inky purple/red colour, with a glorious bouquet of mocha, grilled nuts of various kinds, great concentration and density, which saturates the palate and lasts for minutes on the aftertaste. Smoky, toasty, nutty, graphite and roast meat aromas; charcoal and bitumen, but not fruit! The fruit is there in spadefuls but it is submerged behind a curtain of complexity. An enormously impressive wine, the texture almost improbably supple and smooth in spite of the welter of tannin. Outstanding wine. 

97 points James Halliday

Lovely crimson-purple hue. Intriguing; while the wine is only just into medium to full-bodied territory, the tannins have been sculpted into fine lines to provide the framework for a high quality wine. It thus flies somewhere in the left field, but does so with charm and grace, the length glorious.

97 points Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

The 2016 RWT Shiraz is Penfolds's embodiment of Barossa Valley Shiraz. Aged in French oak (72% new), it offers hints of vanilla and cedar, but more than anything, it showcases the region's bold berry and plum fruit. Full-bodied and rich, verging on decadent, yet firmly structured and long on the finish, it's a powerful yet elegant wine that is capable of being consumed young or aging up to two decades. Having embarked on a career in the wine business right around the time the first RWT was released, it's a treat to see how the latest version is showing. It's a relative bargain among the Penfolds upper echelon.

96 points Decanter

Developed in 1995 from a red winemaking trial, hence RWT, this is the quintessence of Barossa Shiraz, albeit in 72% new French rather than American oak, which brings a finesse of mouthcoating texture to the wine. It has depth of colour, aromas of liquorice, spice and mocha, and concentrated black fruits on the rich, sumptuously opulent palate. It's all underpinned by French oak polish along with a freshness and fine-boned structure that should see this sleek beauty last two decades if kept in good condition. If this were a Bordeaux it would be a second growth, and apart from Grange this is the star of the show this year. It should be great with a roast rib of beef. 

96 points James Suckling

Barossa Valley shiraz meets French oak (72 per cent new) in a warmer vintage and delivers a wine that sits right in the pocket of elegance and richness combined. Aromas of redder fruit with raspberries and red plums, as well as black tea and a smoky, coal-dust edge. Boysenberries, too. This is complex. The palate has commanding length and depth with succulent, powerful yet fine and compressed tannins at its core. Both the length and balance are impressive. A great RWT! Try from 2022 and for at least two decades after that.

96 Points Tyson Stelzer

An impressively deep, bright purple hue heralds an RWT of great stature and spine. This is a commanding vintage that delivers powerful, spicy satsuma plum and blackberry fruit, while lacking nothing in structural assuredness of firm, fine tannin endurance. It culminates in a finish of impeccable line and enduring persistence. One of the greats in the twenty year history of RWT, and set to go down among the longest lived.