2024 Whispers of Chaos Sangiovese Cabernet Sauvignon Barossa Valley

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From the Barossa’s newly crowned Best New Act at the 2026 Young Gun of Wine Awards: a sangiovese-cabernet blend that trades the region’s traditional power for restraint, detail and quiet arresting charm.

Producer
Whispers of Chaos
Region

Barossa Valley
RRP

$35
Vintage

2024
Variety/Varieties

Cabernet sauvignon Sangiovese
Alc./Vol.

13.5%

Juicy cherry up front, both sweet and tart, with a core of blackcurrant and a touch of spice – think nutmeg and warm baking spice. The tannins are fine but have real grip, with a lively, blood orange tang.

Marcus Torzi just won Best New Act at the 2026 Young Gun of Wine Awards, and the 2024 Whispers of Chaos Sangiovese Cabernet Sauvignon shows exactly why. It’s one of the most quietly arresting wines to come out of the Barossa Valley in recent memory – a claim made more remarkable by the fact that Torzi was still completing his viticulture and oenology degree when he made it.

The Barossa is a region at a crossroads. Its reputation was forged on dense, concentrated shiraz and grenache – wines built for power, prestige and the cellar – but the world has moved toward freshness, lightness and accessibility, and a warming climate is making the old model harder to sustain besides. The makers who’ll lead the region forward are the ones with an instinct for restraint and a nose for what’s actually delicious, and Torzi is exactly that kind of maker. His label pairs sangiovese and cabernet sauvignon from Moppa Hill – a distinctly Italian idiom, leaning on Tuscany’s own long-proven blend – and matures it primarily in Italian stoneware, with a portion in seasoned oak for roundness and integration. It’s unfined, unfiltered and unforced: a calibrated lightness of touch that producers twice his age are still reaching for, and it’s announced Whispers of Chaos as one of the most exciting new wine projects in the country.

Tasting note

Cherry-edged, with a nice balance of sweet and sour versions of fleshy cherry in the nose. Cabernet comes through as a core of cassis underneath and a faint green edge of blackberry leaf and bay leaf. Lovely spice here – nutmeg and kola nut, and a blood orange tang too. Fine tannins that have surprising persistence and grip, sherbet-like acidity that gently fans across the palate, with a tiny touch of pickled watermelon rind on the finish.

When to drink

Pour for your hipster mates who still think ‘Barossa’ only means big and brawny – preferably at a barbecue, bonus points if there’s a spicy Italian sausage or two smoking away nearby. Or don’t wait for an occasion at all: enjoy it whenever you damn well please, because every night is pizza night, and this bright blend is the perfect cue. Attack it with the same abandon you’re about to bring to that capricciosa.

Themes of this wine

Barossa Valley

The Barossa Valley is Australia’s most famous red wine region, built on old vines, a warm continental climate and a long tradition of powerful, full-bodied shiraz. Some of the country’s oldest producing vineyards, planted well over a century ago, still bear fruit here, giving the region a depth of vinous history few places in the world can match.

New-wave Barossa

Alongside its old guard, the Barossa has in recent years become home to a growing cohort of producers rethinking what the region’s wines can be — favouring earlier picking, whole-bunch ferments, neutral oak and single-vineyard sites over ripeness and power. The movement doesn’t reject the Barossa’s history so much as widen it, proving the region can produce wines of real freshness and finesse alongside its more traditional style.

Sangiovese

Sangiovese is Italy’s most important grape, by both volume and reputation, and it has travelled the world, establishing serious outposts across the New World. In Australia, sangiovese didn’t really start making inroads until the late 1980s, but with improved genetic material, it is now making quite an impression. The key flavour component mentioned when people talk about sangiovese is cherry, generally red, but sometimes black, with that primary profile generally accented with savoury notes of dried berries, hardy herbs, dried earth, leather and cedary notes.

Cabernet sauvignon

Cabernet sauvignon is the world’s most planted grape variety and is grown all over the wine world, with it even persisting in some of the cooler margins of viticultural zones. When things get properly cold, cabernet has little chance of ripening, but many warm regions have long histories with the grape, even if some purists argue that it loses varietal definition if it gets too ripe. Bordeaux in France’s south-west is the spiritual home of cabernet sauvignon, where it is almost always blended with one or more of its Bordelaise compatriots: cabernet franc, merlot, petit verdot and malbec, and where it forms part of some of the world’s most expensive and sought-after wines. Cabernet has been in Australia about as long as any variety, coming across in the Busby Collection of the 1830s. It has since found its most successful homes in Coonawarra, Margaret River and the Yarra Valley, but the oldest plantings are to be found in the warmer zones of the Barossa and Clare Valleys. It can surprisingly produce wines of distinction even in some of the coldest regions, such as Tasmania and Macedon – though a beneficial site is essential for success.

Oval-shaped fermenters

Amphorae are some of the most ancient winemaking vessels, and the modern practice of using ovoid fermenters is a very similar idea, with the shape encouraging ferment vectors to swirl and tumble. While amphorae are typically made from clay, eggs come in a range of materials, from concrete to ceramic to steel.

Explore Further

Winemaker profile

Marcus Torzi

Marcus Torzi was 21 years old and still completing his Bachelor of Viticulture and Oenology at the University of Adelaide when he launched Whispers of Chaos – already making two of the most quietly arresting wines to come out of the Barossa Valley in recent memory. The label debuted in August 2025 from the family farm at Mt McKenzie with two wines: a roussanne, riesling and semillon white blend, and a sangiovese and cabernet sauvignon red. Both are unfined, unfiltered and made with Italian stoneware as the primary maturation vessel. Both have a delicacy and lift that feel like a deliberate, considered answer to the questions the Barossa is currently asking itself. In a region wrestling with its own identity, Torzi’s project is less a debut label than a signpost.

Awards

20th Annual Young Gun of Wine Awards Winners

Twenty years of championing young Australian winemakers. Six trophies. One unforgettable night. Meet the makers who took home the silverware at the 2026 Young Gun of Wine Awards.

Region Guide

Barossa

The Barossa, encompassing the Barossa and Eden Valleys, is the cradle of South Australian winemaking, being home to some of Australian wine’s most venerable names and the home to some of the world’s oldest productive grape vines. First surveyed in the 1830s, the Barossa’s fertile land presented a tantalising prospect for Silesian Lutheran immigrants escaping religious persecution, who quickly identified its suitability for viticulture. That Germanic influence remains to this day, both in place names and the feel of some of the historic buildings, from Lutheran churches and chapels to stone farm buildings and wineries. With around 500 growers and 90 cellar doors, the Barossa is a wine visitor’s paradise, and when you throw in the longstanding traditions of farming and fine produce, it is also a food lover’s mecca. While the Barossa and Eden Valleys are both distinct regions with individual characteristics, they are also inseparable in many ways, sharing some similarities and correlations, and with key wine producers often spilling into both. So, while the regional differences are essential to note, it is helpful to consider them together, especially when visiting.