I first fell in love with wine at the tender age of 19 when I decided I would see what all the fuss was about having a glass of red wine with some steak. This was in the midst of the Celtic Tiger Years and of course Wolf Blass President's Selection Cabernet Sauvignon was served by the glass in the restaurant I was in. Needless to say I fell in love with the delicious Blackcurrant and tobacco notes of the varietal. Following this I began to experiment and learn a little more about the grape I had come to adore. This is where I discovered the 12km by 2km strip of land in the South of Australia known as Coonawarra in the form of the Rymill 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon. To this day it is one of my most memorable and enjoyable wine experiences. The wine was sublime and in fact haunted me for weeks to come. It was layered complex and forced me to engage with a plethora of new words to describe all I was smelling and tasting from the glass.
| Rymill Winery - Photo Steve Chapple |
It is now several years on (I won't say how many) and I have tasted my fair share of Cabernets and Bordeaux blends from across the world (again I won't say how many) and I simply cannot get Coonawarra out of my head and have yet to find a region that can come close to quality and offer a decent price. For example, Margaux in my opinion, offers some of the finest examples of the Cabernet varietal in the world, but when price comes into consideration many of us can only dream of trying them. All of this was compounded for me at the recent Wine Australia when I made my way around the room and spotted the Balnaves Cabernet Sauvignon, 2008 vintage.
0.012 seconds later I had a glass in hand and proceeded to smell the contents of the glass for a good ten minutes.
The nose displayed intense sweet blackcurrant, coffee, dark chocolate, mint (no doubt the Terra Rosa soil influence). The palate reflected the nose with blackcurrant cinnamon spice, mint and a powerful coffee filled finish. To say the tannin of this wine scraped layers off the inside of my mouth is an understatement. I had difficulty opening my lips wide enough to utter a single word, which was 'wow'. This wine was clearly too young and had a long road ahead of it.
Call it divine intervention, luck, chance, being a jammy fecker ... whatever, but I stumbled across a bottle of Balnaves 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon recently and in preparing this article I thought it very apt that it is the vintage that ensnared me all those years ago be assessed.
The wine was a little slow to wake up and the nose was a quite closed. However, once it did wake up it did so with a bang with lively aromas all vying for my attention. On the nose the wine displayed all the calling cards of not only its varietal, but its place in the world. This wine screamed mature varietal with; blackberry, cedar, truffle, earth, tobacco and some thyme. The stamp of terroir was given by the very distinctive eucalyptus aromas that danced around the others. coming of course from the Terra Rosa soils. On the palate the wine was a dense mix of black currant, red currant, truffle and a long finish of coffee. The acidity and tannin were both well balanced, with the latter being very pronounced still.
Firstly the wine lived up to expectations offering me a glimpse into the beginning of my long love affair with vitis vinifera and proving to be an expression of all that wine is about, people, their stories, location and of course varietal. The wine is clearly in an interesting phase of development (perhaps a little sleepy) and has a long way to go yet.
Rating: A+ (92)
Shane
No comments:
Post a Comment