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  • Country ranking ?

    169
  • Producer ranking ?

    11
  • Decanting time

    2h
  • When to drink

    now to 2035

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The Story

Immaculate, powerful, intense nose with purity and clarity of primary fruit characterised by pear, white peach, lime curd and custard apple. There are infinite layers of brioche, grilled hazelnuts, cinnamon quill, shaved nutmeg, black cardamom and almond meal. A thread of graphite in the background adds elegant complexity.

Penetration and drive with incredible shape and frame on the palate. The symmetry of layers, contours and overall balance is precise. Pear, cut lime and nectarine are definite throughout. Sweet spice and elegant oak use sit neatly with the fruit, underlined by a delicate acid line, leading to a palate with effortless length.

 

Cool destemmed fruit with some skin contact. The juice was settled for 3 days, racked and inoculated with yeast. 100% of the juice was barrel fermented in new French oak barriques and the lees stirred regularly. After 11 months in barrels the various components were blended, fined, cold stabilized and bottled.

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Vintage 2017

AUSTRALIA VINTAGE REPORT: The 2017 winegrape crush is estimated to be 1.93 million tonnes, based on responses received by the Wine Sector Survey 2017. This crush is 5 per cent higher than the 2016 final crush figure of 1.84 million tonnes (Department of Agriculture and Water Resources – Levies recorded figure). It is the third consecutive vintage where the tonnes crushed have increased.

Additional tonnes this year came relatively equally from the cool and temperate regions of Australia and the warm inland regions (Riverina, Murray Darling-Swan Hill and Riverland). However, the tonnes from the cool and temperate regions increased by 9 per cent compared to a 3 per cent increase in the warm inland regions.

Most regions recorded an increase in tonnes crushed including: Riverland, Riverina, Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale, Coonawarra, Clare Valley, Wrattonbully, Margaret River, King Valley, Eden Valley, Heathcote, Tasmania, Orange, Gundagai, Grampians, Hunter Valley, Hilltops, Alpine Valleys and Rutherglen.

 

Regions where the tonnes crushed declined in 2017 included Murray Darling-Swan Hill, Langhorne Creek, Padthaway, Adelaide Hills, Currency Creek, Goulburn Valley, Cowra, Swan District, Mount Benson, Robe and Mudgee.

The 2017 red variety crush is estimated to be 1,062,660 tonnes – an increase of 112,000 tonnes (up 12 per cent) compared with 2016. The white variety crush is estimated to be 866,970 tonnes, a decrease of 19,000 tonnes (down 2 per cent) compared with 2016. Red varieties increased their share of the crush to 55 per cent, compared with 52 per cent in 2016.

The top three red varieties by volume were Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, together accounting for 85 per cent of the total red crush. Shiraz accounted for 47 per cent of the red crush (up slightly from 2016) while the Cabernet Sauvignon share fell from 27 per cent to 26 per cent and Merlot remained at 12 per cent.

Among the whites, Chardonnay remains the dominant variety. However, its share fell from 47 per cent in 2016 to 42 per cent this year with the Chardonnay crush down 13 per cent.

 

2017 will also be a good year for Grenache. It’s a grape whose time has come, and has indeed been coming for a few years. It’s a warm-climate grape that does particularly well in regions such as McLaren Vale. Now that consumers have got over their strange obsession with dark colour and lots of structure in their red wines, Grenache is allowed to do what it does best: make elegant, perfumed, somewhat lighter-coloured reds that are the equivalent of the Pinot Noir of the warmer climates.

Pinot Noir is also going from strength to strength, and superb examples are coming from Tasmania, Mornington Peninsular, Macedon Ranges and cooler parts of the Yarra Valley. 2017 will be a good year for Pinot, and also for Australian wines’ cool climate regions generally.

Chardonnay is one grape where there has been a shift in style, and 2017 could see it become even more interesting. ‘As you’re well aware there’s been a trend for quite a few years for "size zero” Chardonnay, early picked, skinny and with a very strong sulphidy character,’ says Wildman. ‘The better examples of these wines have dominated at the wine shows and therefore have further driven the style (think Vasse Felix Heytesbury, Penfolds Bin A, Oakridge 864). ’However, this style of Chardonnay has come under criticism because it’s almost as if the foot has been made to fit the slipper, and they aren’t actually all that nice to drink. As a consequence, Wildman notes, there are now fewer wines in this skinny-sulphidy style being seen. ‘The pendulum seems to have swung back (rapidly) towards the middle ground, where the wines have some weight, texture and ripeness, are not afraid of some new oak, and the sulphides have been dialed back to just a whisper of struck match, making the wines not too skinny, not too fat, but "just right”.’ He reckons that as the 2016 wines hit the shelves next year this trend for more balanced wines will increase.

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Latest Pro-tasting notes

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Written Notes

Art Series Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon 2017 – 2% of Malbec is included in this cracking Marg River Cabernet. 22 months in total in a mix of barrels and barriques. There has never been any doubt over the stunning quality of the Art Series Chardonnay, but it has taken longer for this wine to reach its current stratospheric levels. Indeed, the Leeuwin reds are one of the big improvers in the region over recent decades. 

Deep purples here. Black fruits dominate with plums and mulberries. Spices, dry herbs and some gravelly notes. A wine that is concentrated and with deceptive grip, but a wine that is still exhibiting elegance. The balance between fine acidity, silky tannins and impressive length is knife-edge. This is a quality Margaret River Cabernet. 95.

  • 95p

Tasted from a 10-cl sample bottle. 98% Cabernet Sauvignon, 2% Malbec. Machine-picked, berry sorted and fermented in closed, static fermenters at 26–30 °C with extraction by pumping over each individual parcel three times daily. After malolactic fermentation entirely in barrels and nine months of barrel maturation, separate parcels were blended for further maturation in French bordelaise-coopered barriques (medium toast) with seasonal rackings. 22 months in total in oak. Egg-white fined. Bottled 1–5 February 2019. Not yet released. TA 6.96 g/l, pH 3.35.
Very slightly smoky, then Douglas fir pine needles, a touch of dark caramelised bacon scrapings. Balsamic richness and depth threads through dark fruit; black plums baked to sticky char, sooty olives, crushed box leaf, caraway. The tannins are so polished they almost seem to have an inner glow. And the fruit, mid palate, also seems to glow ruby-like and fresh and full of life. You couldn't but be seduced by this. 

  • 91p

Pedigree Margaret River on show. Fine silty tannin, red fruit, brine, plump fruit profile – almost glossy in this context.

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Information

Origin

Adelaide, Margaret River

Other wines from this producer

Art Series Chardonnay

Art Series Riesling

Art Series Sauvignon Blanc

Art Series Shiraz

Cabernet Merlot Prelude Vineyards

Cabernet Sauvignon

Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay

Leeuwin Estate Brut

Margaret River Shiraz

Prelude Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon

Prelude Vineyards Margaret River Chardonnay

Siblings Shiraz

state Prelude Vineyard Chardonnay

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