All hand harvested and processing across a sorting table, only the very best berries go into this wine. The Cabernet fruit is crushed to build structure through fermentation. Merlot, Malbec and Petit verdot are whole berry ferments for fragrance and palate flesh. All fermented in half-tonne fermenters and hand plunged twice daily, some of the Cabernet spending extended time on skins for complexity. Components kept separate in French oak barrels, only 40% of them new until being blended just before bottling after 15 months barrel maturation.
Fruit power is the hallmark of this blend, dark berry fruits and some sage adding a background herbal lift. Christmas cake mixed spice and oak is evident but all in balance with the fruit. Beautiful fruit, a bright acid drive and tannins that form a solid foundation for the long future. Brooding but not intimidating, this will be exciting to watch evolve.
“An Australian benchmark wine that I wish I drank more often. Beautiful. Memorable. Wonderful. The texture grabs you. The faintest grip, the sheath of feathery tannins at play. Scents of cassis, bay leaf, faint eucalyptus and mint, sandalwood and sweet earth. Pure flavours, come hither fruitiness, but compact, inward, extraordinarily long in character too. A cool expression, tense and taut, luxurious too, has flow, but all compact and restrained. It tastes delicious, generally, though it’s the feel, the stretch, the sense of pedigree and detail that gets you. Stellar release. And I reckon more better to come.” – Mike Bennie, The Wine Front
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Campbell Mattinson
“55% cabernet sauvignon, 28% merlot, 12% malbec, 5% petit verdot. Essence of blackcurrant with a boysenberried freshness, almost into forest berry territory, with polished cedar wood oak and drifts of fragrant herbs. Pure, complete, svelte; all these words apply. Has a long run ahead of it.” – Campbell Mattinson, Halliday Wine Companion
