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Hutton Vale Farm Cabernet Sauvignon

91 / 100 - James Suckling

Heart of Ribera del Duero. 18 Months of barrel ageing for embodying the best of its region.
With a beautiful red cherry color with ruby rim. It has a very elegant nose with mineral notes, balsamic, blackberries, raspberry and spicy notes from the wood. Lively in the mouth with a very good structure. The wine has a long finish, fleshy and elegant in the mouth.

This great 2016 Barolo is rated 95/100 by Winescritics.com and shares the savoury and classical note from the Italian wines of Piedmont, Italy.

The Italian Amarone style of wine has been our enduring inspiration for the White Boar over the past decade and more. Inspired by, but in no way a copy ; we use Shiraz and Cabernet and not Rondinella, Corvina and Mollinara which are the indigenous varieties used to make Amarone. We cordon cut our vines and then dry and concentrate the grapes on the vine as opposed to harvesting them and drying on racks as they do in Italy. After about 10-12 days drying on the vine, we pick and crush and ferment the grapes, before maturation in big old oak barrels before bottling and further maturation.

TASTING NOTES

Dark red fruits, leather, allspice, liquorice on the nose, with a full, soft palate and soft tannins combined with enormous length and persistence.

Dutschke Shiraz gives the fullness and softness of fruit to the palate, while Cabernet provides a fruit lift and tannin structure for the backbone. While very approachable as a younger wine, this wine will bottle age particularly well.

91 points, James Halliday Wine Companion 2021

53% cabernet, the rest, shiraz. Perceived as a quintessential Aussie blend, although concomitantly, plenty championed the same blend in the south of France. This is juicy, without being a floozy. Cabernet’s herb-soused rims of tannin corral shiraz’s fruit cake spiced generosity. Plush and loosely knit, but the weave is palpable. Nice wine on the earlier side, with no real reason to wait.