A blend of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot. Call it a French blend call it what you want. For me it’s unmistakably Australian as a meat pie.
The fruit is sourced from Grosset’s windswept Gaia vineyard in the Clare Valley. The separate components all spend almost 1 1/2 years in French oak. Resulting in a dark deep red colour. Ripe red fruits on the nose. Blackberrys with Indian ink hints, sweaty, leathery hints in the mouth and on the nose at the finish. At 15 years I think it’s drinking at its best now or close to it.
Laced with dark fruit, leather, coffee, chocolate with notes of green pepper maybe from the Cab Franc on the finish. The Clare Valley soil and fruit are unmistakable This is an Australian red wine there is no mistake about that. It tastes of its place even after years in the bottle.
I feel that I have short-changed this wine but I just don’t have the words to describe the power and gentleness of this wine, nor to put into words the flavour of older fruit laced with hand fulls fine dusty tannins wrapt up in a mineral twist on the finish.
As always it’s a privilege to taste good wine that has aged incredibly well must have been that bloody screw cap enclosure.
Michael Lillis
The Rot has Set In
