2022 John Riddoch Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon
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Tasting notes
Inky plum colour, damson, hoisin plum, cocoa bean, this is young and deeply concentrated right now, a ton of smoky campfire and grilled rosemary, muscular and fairly subdued but the bones are here. Just needs time to soften and open. Sue Hodder winemaker.
Critic scores
Average Score
Jancis Robinson MW
Jane Anson, Inside Bordeaux
More reviews and scores
The 2022 John Riddoch Limited Release Cabernet Sauvignon is routinely a magnificent wine, a bastion of age-worthy Cabernet, framed in the Coonawarra paradigm of ripe fruit and ferruginous tannin. Here, the 2022 tastes bloody, meaty and chewy, with sweet roasted marrow and black exotic spices. Everything about this vintage is black. The wine is brooding and intense, yet it is also pure and focused; blackberry, pomegranate molasses, cassis, sumac and aniseed all mingle among the sea of structuring, cocoa-powder-esque tannins. It's a thing of inchoate beauty, one that will unfurl over many decades to come. 13.5% alcohol. Sealed under natural cork.
Aged for 17 months in French oak, 43% new. Made only in the best years, from vines grown on Coonawarra's famous terra rossa, and apparently from only 1% of the best grapes available in Coonawarra. This lovely Australian classic manages to be both fresh and mellow at the same time. There's that whiff of balsam, the merest suggestion of pyrazine, but Cabernet is there in all its fully mature, complex glory. The tannins are almost imperceptible and it's already a great drink. (JR)