The Real Review (97)

Medium red colour with a trace of purple in the rim. The bouquet is pepper-spicy, stemmy and savoury, with a whiff of new kid leather, while the palate is elegantly structured and yet firm, tremendously intense, taut as a bow-string, and magnificently balanced. This is a stunning pinot of a complex, bunchy style, already drinking well, with more held in reserve. 17 JUN 2020

The Real Review (97)

Light to mid-yellow colour, with a shy, reserved bouquet of savoury elements including almond meal, stone fruits, malt and bran biscuit. Traces of honey and nougat emerging. Appealing creamy lees touches. The wine is tremendously intense and beautifully rounded, soft-textured and finely balanced while enlivened by its citrusy acidity. Long, long carry. A classy wine of great complexity and refinement.

The Real Review (96)

Light to mid-yellow hue, with a reserved, shy bouquet which has traces of lemon balm, creamy lees and pencil wood, while the flavour is tremendously intense and focused, powerful in an understated way, with lemon and grapefruit flavours, showing concentration as well as subtlety, the finish lingering on and on. Time will doubtless build that bouquet further. A smashing chardonnay.

The Real Review (97)

Deepish red colour with a subtle tint of purple. The bouquet is savoury, complex and charcuterie-tinged, dried herbs too, the palate rich and generous, fruit-sweet at the core and almost plush in its texture. A succulent pinot. There are ample tannins supplying backbone and contributing to length, all in harmony with the gorgeous richness of flavour. A stunning pinot.

The Real Review (99)

Deep crimson colour with a good strong purple tint, and the bouquet is very foresty, with more whole-bunch character than the other Farr pinots this year. Root vegetable, freshly-turned earth and dried flower petal aromas, clean and fresh and deliciously inviting. It's more open than the Côte Vineyard at this stage. The palate is full-bodied and concentrated, powerful and emphatic, the ample tannins adding force to the wine's structure and persistence. A majestic wine with tremendous intensity and length that is great now but should also reward cellaring for many years.

The Real Review (99)

Deepish crimson colour with a good tint of purple on the meniscus. The bouquet is restrained and shy, brooding and deep, all confirmed by the palate, which is also full-bodied and very deep, concentrated and densely packed, with more earth-bound than fragrant aromatics, some smoky-barrel nuances neatly combining with five-spice and dried thyme touches. A robust, powerful pinot with terrific length and potential.

The Real Review (97)

Medium-deep red with a good purple tint and a mossy, forest-floor/earthy undergrowth and smoked smallgoods bouquet, the palate refreshingly lively with clean acidity underlying the complex, savoury, medium-bodied flavour. Mixed spices, taut and tense, direct and piercing in its lengthy finale, which concludes with a pleasant touch of chewiness. Superb pinot.

The Real Review (98)

Deep red/purple, bright and youthful colour. The bouquet shows black pepper, latent dark berries, some 'forest floor' bunchy touches and a hint of freshly-turned earth—a stylish and hi-fidelity varietal nose. The palate is likewise intense and bright, with silky-textured tannins in fine balance, acidity evident and refreshing, inviting the company of appropriate food. Brilliant bouquet and flavour. A stunning wine in an elegant cool-grown style.

Tim Atkin MW (97)

It’s not just because I’ve visited this spectacular site that I love the Malbec it produces, although that helps. This really is one of the great wines of the world, with amazing perfume of wild herbs and white pepper, layers of red and dark berry fruit, stylish oak, filigree tannins and a finish that lingers on the palate.

Tim Atkin MW (96)

This incredible, isolated site produces one of my favourite Malbecs, not just in the north but also in the whole of Argentina. Pepper, savoury and intense, with expertly handled second and third-use oak, suave tannins, notes of bramble and red berry fruit and long, balanced, nuanced finish. Superb winemaking. 2022-31

Tim Atkin MW (97)

Now striding into its fourth vintage, Alto Los Cuises is a brilliant Malbec from a unique site of bush vines on rocky soils. Fermented with some whole bunches, it’s a red that’s partly inspired by the wines of Burgundy, with sappy, floral white pepper and raspberry flavours, fresh acidity and the faintest hint of wood spice.

Celebrated as an epitome of excellence, the Fillaboa Rias Baixas Albarino 2020 is a remarkable embodiment of Spanish viticulture originating from the prestigious Rias Baixas region in Galicia. This distinct single-varietal Albarino was meticulously curated by Fillaboa, a revered estate known for its commitment to maintaining indigenous varieties and implementing sustainable practices in their vineyards.

The wine was produced through careful vinification in stainless steel tanks to extract maximum esseence from the low-yielding, hand-harvested grapes all while maintaining utmost integrity of the Albarino character. The result is a strikingly splendid wine with expressive aromatic profiles of citrus, stone fruits, and subtle floral hints.

Upon tasting, the Fillaboa Rias Baixas Albarino 2020 reveals a harmonious balance of minerality and vibrancy, ending with a lingering finish. This wine's elegance and flavour complexity make it an impeccable pair to seafood and shellfish. An experience in a bottle that is truly unforgettable.

Wine Enthusiast (95)

The latest vintage of this noteworthy producer's Chardonnay is singing. A harmonious, multifaceted nose offers notes of bright citrus, fresh melon and flowers, while a chorus of sun-baked stones and freshly baked bread linger behind. Beautifully textural and salty on the palate, it crunches with minerals and vibrant fruit. The oak is tucked away and the finish long and salty.

Halliday Wine Companion (97)

From the Primavera vineyard at Woori Yallock, planted in 2001 on the same red soil as Wombat Creek. Both destemmed (55%) and whole-bunch components. Bottled unfined and unfiltered. A very bright crimson purple. So pure and perfumed with briary cherries, ripe redcurrants and freshly cut roses. Poised, juicy and energetic, the wine has so much tang and crunch, you barely notice that this is also structured finishing with long, gently puckering tannins. A wine with immediate appeal, but also one that will reward at least another 7-10 years in the cellar.

James Suckling (97)

There’s striking freshness of lemon and yellow grapefruit here with a chalky, stony, flinty edge. The fresh fruit carries subtly spicy oak nicely. There are grapefruit and fresh yellow-peach flavors in abundance. This carries energetic, acidity-fueled drive and delivers impressive balance, as well as length. So long and juicy. Drink or hold.

Halliday Wine Companion (96)

Giant Steps' higher-elevation sites, as in this and Applejack Vineyard, have turned out racy, long and superfine wines – it’s the moreish, mouth-watering acidity. Of course there’s more: the complex flavours and heady aromas. Smoky, slinky and talc-like texture to the acidity, with a dab of creamed honey and citrus on the palate. There’s a lot of precision and it’s a pure wine in a way that evolves superbly in the glass.

James Suckling (97)

Wow. This is complex and structured with dried strawberries and fresh flowers. Full body. Wonderful depth and intensity. The texture is so impressive. Give it time, but hard not to drink it. Screw cap.

Halliday Wine Companion (96)

50% hand-picked, 50% machine-harvested (traditional), part whole berry, part crushed, 2 weeks on skins with cultured yeast, 14 months in French barriques (30% new). The Grampians at its most seductive. Medium-bodied, with supple dark fruits, licorice, spice and soft tannins.

Pazo Senorans Rias Baixas Albarino Seleccion Anada 2012 is the latest released vintage of the wonderful white, and we can rest assured that it is a wine of immense personality. Awarded 98 points from the Peñin Guide, the leading wine magazine in Spain, this sings with fascinating notes of “white fruit, citrus fruit, fine lees, petrol”. It possesses a richly flavourful and elegant palate ending with a lengthy finish.

Wine Advocate (98)

The single-vineyard Sorte O Soro had not been produced since 2016, and the 2019 Sorte O Soro is the next vintage after that. This plot has always shown additional elegance, freshness and salinity since he started vinifying it in 2004, because of the altitude (710 meters above sea level) and the north exposure to the Bibei Valley, where the old clone is planted on fine granite sand and quartz soils. Like As Sortes, this Sorte also fermented and matured with lees in new 500-liter French oak barrels for eight months. It has 14% alcohol with a pH of 3.12 and higher acidity (at 7.5 grams) than the rest of the 2019s. It feels very harmonious, elegant and nuanced with some creaminess, with notes of wet pollen and yellow flowers. The palate reflects the soil, with vibrant granite and very fine sand and electric quartz (saline), and it's also round and powerful from the clone that is planted in the vineyard. This vineyard is in the process of being organically and biodynamically certified. 2,240 bottles were filled in September 2020. I tasted the 2019s and 2020s from Rafa Palacios in Valdeorras. For him, these are two very good years. 2019 had a mild and dry winter and a rainy and cold spring that delayed budding, followed by a mild summer with fewer hours of sunshine, which meant a delay in the ripening process. Harvest was more than one month later than usual, and the grapes achieved very slow ripening and full development of aromas and flavors while keeping the acidity. The harvest started in October and finished in November. It's a beautiful, homogeneous vintage with very good wines. 2020 saw a moderately cool and rainy winter and a dry and cold spring that resulted in 20% less bunches than in 2019. The summer was also quite dry but, fortunately, not too hot. Given the low yields, maturation was accelerated, and the harvest began at the beginning of September for Louro and from September 25th for As Sortes. Given the scarce water, the plants had to work harder deep down into the soil, which marked the wines; the silica and quartz from the sandy soils of O Bolo shaped a saline identity and the wines achieved a lot of elegance and balance. It's a more heterogeneous vintage, and the higher-altitude vineyards behaved better. The 2020 O Soro is out of this world. He gave me a quick preview of the very cold 2021, a vin de garde vintage but a challenging year with a lot of rain. They are in the process of certifying their vineyards (organic and biodynamic), but they have some problems in the vineyards with neighbors who are not organic, so it will probably be faster for O Soro and Sorte Antiga.

Decanter (98)

Sampled from a vat, this is one of the best As Sortes I have ever tasted, comparable to the iconic 2011. It's a prodigy of subtleness and elegance. Everything is firmly delicate in this wine. Restrained aromas open up parsimoniously, with a steely structure like a great Burgundy, but with flinty acidity almost like Grosses Gewächs from Rheingau. Despite the fact that the sample was not yet bottled, the wine had no oak influence, just the indication that it had been aged, as top Godello must. Rafael Palacios is refining his work year after year, reaching the magic of the greatest wines. A top wine, and one to keep.

Wine Advocate (95)

The 2015 O Diviso felt closed, more reticent, and seems more powerful, despite the fact they did a nonextractive vinification; they did nothing and let the wine ferment at its own pace. This matured in one 600-liter oak barrel, and this is the only red that has a slight note from the oak. There is also a relevant amount of Garnacha Tintorera, so the combination of a warm year, the small barrel and the varietal mix resulted in a more austere and backward wine that is going to require more time in bottle. The fruit is darker and the wine is more powerful than the 2014. It might evolve with time in bottle, because it certainly has the stuffing to do so, but today As Caborcas was singing, and I have to give it the edge. 895 bottles produced. It was bottled in May 2016.

Wine Advocate (94)

The blockbuster 2004 Shiraz Springflat’s inky/purple color is followed by a wine that pushes concentration to the limit. Made from tiny yields of 1.5 to 1.8 tons of fruit per acre, aged in 50% new and 50% 1 and 2 year old oak (half American and half French) barrels, it is a huge, rich, backward Shiraz that still assaults the palate and olfactory senses. Forget this big, structured, intense 2004 for 2-3 years and drink it over the following 15 or more.

Halliday Wine Companion (96)

Hand-picked and sorted, gently destemmed, partial whole berry adherence for stems, 4 days cold soak, wild-fermented, 14 days on skins, pressed to tight-grain puncheons for 8 months maturation. A layered palate interleaving velvety fruit and hints of forest on the long, medium-bodied palate. Trophy Best Pinot Noir Mornington Peninsula Wine Show.

Halliday Wine Companion (95)

Relatively bright but light colour; a super-elegant, supple palate and spotless bouquet; natural acidity gives the wine its special brightness and length; new French oak and tannins play a pure support role to a classy wine which has tremendous length.