This Heirloom Vineyards Cabernet was produced from a remarkable Coonawarra Cabernet Vineyard whose clones and viticulture embody the very best in cutting edge but old school viticulture and winemaking. Hand tended vines, sorted bunch-by-bunch, naturally open fermented, basket pressed and stored in French oak barriques from bespoke coopers.
The colour is remarkably vibrant, a bright crimson purple that reflects the 2 years in oak. A core darkness indicates the wine's ripeness and concentration.
It has a classic lift of essential Cabernet fruit aromas, a perfume of dark mulberries with a lift of white mulberries, tayberries and bramble-berries that have been baked with a fresh pie crust. A great heady aroma with rich red ripe fruits but also some hints of crushed violets and whiffs of mushrooms, olives, dried herbs and suggestions of briar and undergrowth wisping in and out. There is also a shot of old school glossy tri-coloured boiled sweets character to this most complex Coonawarra Cabernet. Two years in oak has allowed a meshing of some spice and cedar oak maturation to complex.
The palate is in a word, powerful. Also 3 dimensional. Although serious dark fruits, almost Bordeaux like on the nose, it reveals Super Tuscan type flavours on the palate. Once full-bodied and tannic, now medium bodied, supple and flavoursome. Blackcurrant is dominant but more mulberry fruit on entry, gently fleshy and with elegant and appealing tannin backbone. Good acidity too to balance the generous textural palate with flavours of plum, berry and hints of spearmint chocolate to make a second glass, and we hope a second bottle irresistible. Will age with grace over the coming decades.
An extraordinary Single Vineyard Cabernet from Coonawarra that will cellar well but is so deliciously perfect now any argument for delayed gratification is perhaps academic.
