Or perhaps the title of this post should be “oeuf sur mon visage”.
I was invited by the Grape and Wine Council and Coonawarra vignerons to help moderate a benchmark tasting of 2010 Cabernets including the venerable 2010 Margaux. How could I say no? Perhaps I could have, if I properly considered that my audience would be 25 winemakers, some of whom had wines in the line up and each one had great technical knowledge.
The wines were served blind and we were to score them out of 20 as they do in Australian wine shows and assign Gold, Silver or Bronze medals to each wine. I was one of three on the panel, flanked by two experienced show judges, Pete Bissell who is a past Winemaker of the Year and Greg Tilbrook who has made wine in both Coonawarra and Margaret River. So Pete and Greg provided the technical commentary and I was the wild card style police!
And so to the wines, each served blind and only revealed after we had bestowed our scores which I have listed. The Coonawarra wines had all scored Golds at the recent Limestone Coast wine show.
2010 Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon
Good berry nose with a savoury edge, slightly briary tannins. Quite a ripe style with fine palate and good length. Slightly meaty edge. Silver.
2010 Brands One Seven One Cabernet Sauvignon (Coonawarra)
Bright fruits in redder spectrum, with violet edge. Abundant but fine tannins give the wine a long and reverberating finish. Silver. Note that when revelaed dvised that this wine was awarded best Cabernet trophy at the Limestone Coast Wine Show.
2010 Cullen Diana Madelaine (Margaret River)
Finer, less ripe style with good detail. Soft, feminine style that gets a bit lost in a line up like this, but it is already drinking well. Bronze.
2010 Te Mata Coleraine (Hawkes Bay, NZ)
Big punchy nose, lots of lift. Ripe style with some spice elements with good palate length on good tannin base. Surprisingly ripe. Silver.
2010 Chateau Margaux
Big mocha and smokey oak noted dominate the wine, sitting above the dense, chewy black fruits. Strong tannins. Very youthful. Bronze from me.
2010 Woodlands ‘Heather John CS (Margaret River)
Slightly seaweedy aromatics . Bright fruits, with higher acid palate, although has good balance and intensity. Silver.
2010 Majella Cabernet Sauvignon (Coonawarra)
Glossy, dense appearance. Lovely cassis fruits, engaging perfumed aromatics with lovely oak base. Ripe, powerful style. Gold.
2010 Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon
Lovely berry fruit aroma, with some oak influence on the palate. Some clovey, spicy overtones, but nice fine tannins on the palate. Silver.
2010 Ch Leoville-Barton
Bright purple. Less fruit character, with more savoury inflections. Some brett detracts but nice long and fine palate. Silver. (Most judges marked it down to No award due to brett)
2010 Domaine de Chevalier (Pessac-Leognan)
Chocoberry nose. Multifaceted aroma with nice balance of primary and savoury elements. Beautiful glossy, layered palate with poise and power. Gold.
2010 Wynns Messenger CS (Coonawarra)
Simpler berry fruits with minty notes. Good richness on palate with tannins a bit blocky at this stage. Overall a strong wine with good potential. Silver/Gold.
2010 Sassicaia
Almost over ripe and savoury, with garrigue notes. Palate diffuse and lacking definition. Strong tobacco notes. Low Bronze.
And so concluded a most fascinating benchmark tasting, which illustrated the vagaries of blind tasting and thus show judging, but also amply demonstrated that our top Cabernets can compete with the best in the world. At least my scores gave the audience a few chuckles.
Cheers,
Kent