September Tasting Notes Roundup
Some highlights (and lowlights) from the tasting bench this September, all in one easy roundup.
Dal Zotto L’Immigrante Prosecco 2013 (King Valley, Vic) $36
Pure
and clean – really taps into the white flowers with a flash of gumball
of top Prosecco. Vibrant palate with really fine bead for a Prosecco. Smart modern
bubbles and easily the best Aussie Prosecco I’ve had. 17.8/20, 92/100
Waipara Wai Sauvignon Blanc 2013 (Waipara, NZ) 13% $20
Loads of sweet sweaty terpenes on
the nose – is this Waipara or Marlborough? Big passionfruit hit. Flat,
slightly gritty palate. Ordinary. 14.5/20, 80/100
Tower Estate Coombe Rise Semillon 2013 (Hunter Valley, NSW) 11% $22
Produced from a vineyard on Pokolbin Creek. It’s just
straw green in colour with a tight, green and yellow apple nose. The flavours look a little washed out and the C02 is
sky high – Like lemonade tinted water, the acid biting and dry. I kept
waiting for the palate intensity to drop here – it never did. This has
really retracted into an acidic hole. Don’t drink for another 3 years at
least. (it’s going to improve markedly) 16/20, 87/100++
Fifth Leg Sauvignon Blanc Semillon 2013 (WA) 12.5%
Not Margaret River anymore – just ‘WA’. Quite an obvious snappy tropical nose – all Sauv, with a
dash of herbs to top it off. Palate is indifferent after the nose,
starting with a tropical fruit punch but dissipating to aspirin and
acid. Fair, simple, drinking wine. 15.5/20, 85/100
Plantagenet Chardonnay 2013 13.6% $33
This seems stuck, trying to be lean and fresh but also sacrificing intensity for it. Fine,
lean, citrus nose with minimal oak over yellow apple fruit. Palate is
lean, tight and a little subdued, the finish attenuated by alcohol.
There is good length no doubt, but this still feels a
little stunted and simple. Length bumps up the score 17/20, 90/100
Hungerford Hill Chardonnay 2011 (Tumbarumba, NSW) 12.4% $33
Love the raised lettering on the front of this label. Old school. The oak
sticks out a fraction here. Sweet nutty oak over a palate that is both
delicate and chubby. Surprisingly fat for Tumbarumba actually. It’s quite full
and São oakish but where is the drive and clean finish? Almost there, but not quite. 16.5/20, 88/100
Ten Minutes by Tractor 10X Pinot Noir 2013 (Mornington Peninsula, Vic) 13% $32
Deep blood red colour this vintage. Indeed the nose is fuller, less
feminine and the fruit more glacé. Still, underneath that fullness lies
more classic 10X, the initial fruit fullness filling out into a
curranty, more obviously oaky form with a big alcohol drive through the
finish. Long, a little raisined but genuinely long, with a dry and black finish. Seriously attractive Pinot.
17.8/20, 92/100
Rochford L’Enfant Unique Pinot Noir 2013 (Yarra Valley, Vic) 13.8% $54
raspberry red colour. Lots of grape sweetness on this, the delicacy of
the nose leading to a sugar sweet palate that is gentle and concentrated
but looks just a little to too much about one dimensional raspberry
lollies if cast in a gentle mode. Good but too sugar ripe and warmish to
be great. 17.5/20, 91/100
Ten Minutes by Tractor Estate Pinot Noir 2011 (Mornington Peninsula, Vic) 13% $46
red fruit of classic Mornington Pinot. Gee it looks brittle to finish
though – a little meaty and punching acidity. Still a softer wine in context and actually pretty tasty. 17/20, 90/100
Stoneleigh Rapaura Series Pinot Noir 2012 (Marlborough, NZ) 14.5% $28.99
Curiously I find the cheaper win more tasty than this. Carries a big, ripe and
oak fleshed nose – quite a full, old style red licorice Marlborough
Pinot nose. Milk chocolate oak and loads of sweet fruit give this an
easy edge but beyond the oak and sweet fruit it doesn’t offer much. So
sweet and oaky! Finishes warm too. Not a bad wine – commercially
attractive – but somewhat short and fat and oaky. 16.5/20, 88/100
Blackbilly Tempranillo 2012 (McLaren Vale, SA) 14% $20
Meaty,
mulchy with bitumen and an animal hide tone. Black pepper beef and soy.
and slightly bretty palate has good penetration, a big dollop of earth
and quite tangy acidity. Sure has plenty of flavour, largely older oak. Maybe a little bretty? Just a little oxidative at the
edges. Not quite persuasive but great length. Nice grippy finish too.
Surprisingly good depth of fruit at the pricepoint, but definitely
a little wooly. 16.5/20, 88/100
Meerea Park Hell Hole Shiraz 2011 (Hunter Valley, NSW) 13.5% $56
Sourced from the Leonard
vineyard. Thick plum fruit, cast ripe this vintage. Rippling, licoricey
fruit – deep! Inky deep. Bitumen red fruit. Very thick and tannic style,
the tannins thick cut and chewy with some black dirt thickness.
Finishes warm, a fraction play and masculine. Loads of power! Long
termer. Has some black earth grip to finish. Loads of power! Almost
gruff. Hold – this is going to be a stunner. 18/20, 93/100+
Bright
purple boysenberry colour. Vanilla bean oak slick announces the palate,
along with boysenberry ripple fruit and just a little guttural black
chewiness, the finish carefully finessed but still a bit warm and
spirituous. Quite pretty but reductive and warm and vanillan. Needs time
to come together. 16.7/20, 89/100+
Tyrrell’s Vat 8 Shiraz Cabernet 2011 (Hunter Valley, NSW) 13.8%
The
first year in living memory that the Cabernet component is 100% Hunter
Valley. Happily, this looks very Hunter 2011 too – bright red fruits,
silky smooth and fruit sweet palate and a regional hint of sausage meat
too. It’s perhaps a little too overfined and the tannins are very soft, but the form is pretty good and mighty palatable stuff. 17.7/20, 92/100+
Snake + Herring Dirty Boots Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 (Margaret River, WA) 14%
Firm, dry and extractive, this has a black
mulch and black pepper firmness to it that is hard and a bit
uninviting. Really quite muddy, it smells so unsweet considering the
alcohol. It tastes a little fresher than that but the just meaty, black
earth palate has little fruit to give. Unfun. 15.5/20, 84/100
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