Region | |
---|---|
Subregion | Australia > Western Australia > Margaret River |
Colour | Red |
Type | Still |
View all vintages of this wine | View all wines by Leeuwin Estate
This classically powerful and structured cabernet offers ripe cassis and blackberries, as well as blueberries and leafy, herbal nuances. The palate is built on compressed, fine tannins that carry plenty of deep blueberry and blackcurrant flavors. Impressive now, but better after 2025. Screw cap.
From a cool year, this is perfumed and intense. With buoyant acidity, the silky, cedar-edged cassis, mulberry, blueberry and red cherry fruit gathers impetus through the palate. Notes of sage, anise, bitter chocolate, terracotta and gravel lend savoury and textural nuance. Powdery cocoa tannins and vibrant acidity tease out the finish. Poised, but lingering, medium-bodied and elegant, it is drinking beautifully now, but will go some distance.
Drinking Window 2021 - 2035
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.