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Wine Description
The Story
Black Label, our iconic flagship, and the first ultra-premium wine made by Wolf Blass in 1973. Wolf’s aim was to create the finest red blend from the vintage and, 37 vintages later, the sentiment is as true today as it was then. Black Label enjoys a prestigious history, a multi-award winning wine which is, to this day, the only Australian wine to have won the coveted Royal Melbourne Wine Show’s Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy a record four times. Recognised on the world wine stage as a wine of distinction, heritage and pedigree, Black Label has an unparalleled reputation as a benchmark example of classic Australian wine.
The philosophy behind Black Label is simple: to take the year’s very best wines and weave them together into a synergistic whole, the resultant wine being greater than the sum of its parts. It is about creating a wine with many layers of flavour in a complex composition of intense fruit characters, magnificent structure, a rich lustrous texture, long velvety tannins and a lingering palate.
The two major varietal players in Black Label are Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz, which together enjoy a long-standing partnership as the most highly acclaimed and definitive of Australian red blends. Cabernet Sauvignon provides great structure and backbone, displaying intensity of flavour and fine, long tannins. Shiraz fills out the palate with rich, mouthfilling fruit, balancing the line of Cabernet to create a harmonious blend. The 2009 Black Label combines Cabernet Sauvignon from the Barossa Valley with Shiraz from McLaren Vale and Langhorne Creek, lightly spiced with a hint of Langhorne Creek Malbec.
After fermentation and maturation, parcels of wine from individual vineyards undergo a scrupulous selection process to make the final Black Label grade. It is at this point that a little alchemy takes place. Blending is the ultimate masterstroke in creating Black Label, a highly creative exercise, relying on sensory skill, experience, and the winemakers’ ability to project how each wine will contribute to the blend and develop over time. The orchestration ensures that Black Label expresses the vision and style of Wolf Blass – quality, character and consistency.
Viticulture Meticulous vineyard selections from three outstanding viticultural regions come together to create a harmonious, balanced wine. Cabernet Sauvignon sourced from low yielding vineyards in the Barossa Valley contributes complex blackcurrant and plum, richness and depth. Shiraz from McLaren Vale brings warmth and opulence of fruit, while Shiraz and Malbec sourced from the Langhorne Creek flood plain provides additional structure, elegance and finesse along with an expressive regional eucalypt character.
Winemaking Harvested at optimum maturity and flavour ripeness, fruit from each vineyard was crushed, de-stemmed and fermented separately for seven to twelve days on skins. The ferments were allowed to warm naturally with a combination of plunging and gentle pumping over to maximise colour and flavour extraction. Mid-ferment the wine was cooled to extend fermentation, maximising time on skins and accentuating line and length. The wines were pressed off skins while still retaining a small amount of sugar, then transferred to barrel to complete fermentation, allowing a balanced integration of oak characters and enhancing texture and complexity.
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.
Recommended glass shape
Average Bottle Price
| 2020 |
|---|
| 70€ |
This data comes from the FINE Auction Index, a composite of average prices for wines sold at commercial auctions in 20 countries. The average prices from each year have been collected since 1990. This chart plots the index value of the average price of the wines.