This is possibility the biggest wine I have tasted from the 2018 Granite Belt vintage, it’s certainly a serious wine with years of development in its future. It looks really impressive and inviting in the glass with a heart of inky depths and luscious meniscal lips glowing with a bright deep purple.
Scents of this upper medium bodied wine are a compounding of black, red and blue fruits with spice a little dusty earthy expression and some elusive herbal characters – perhaps some rosemary.
60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Petit Verdot and 15% Merlot all on new French Oak for 20 months delivers a wine of great structure, balance and some earnest cellaring potential. I first tasted this wine at The Magnificent Seven event in October 2019. Mark said to hold the wine in your mouth for 30 seconds before swallowing. I suggest that you try doing that but combine it with some swirling in your mouth as the wine is increasingly opulent. Cassis is the first flavour I encounter but the wine is replete with berry fruit showing black berries, black cherries, some mulberries and blueberries. The acid is young, fresh and in balance with the wines components, likewise the French oak is evident but smooth and providing a facilitative background support, there are spices which are hard to specify, a combination of cinnamon and very mild cardamon. The tannins are quite smooth for most of the palate but emerge with a drying quality later on, then secede their power to some comparatively sweet fruit flavours and return just as you notice that fruit with a lovely drying flourish to tempt you to repeat the entire experience.
The flavour spectrum of this wine does have some suggestions of sweet but it is predominately savoury and, for me, quite beguilingly so. I was surprised at how drinkable this wine is already, indeed it will be tempting to open more in the near future but, at least for me, the wine will be in its prime around 2028 and the drinking window will continue way beyond that.
Tasted: Friday 3rd July, 2020 without food and then with over several hours.
Alcohol: 14%
Closure: Screwcap
Price: $60
Suggested Drinking Window: now but peaking in 2028 and remaining so for years
Winemaker: Mark Ravenscroft
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