Leeuwin Estate, Art Series Cabernet Sauvignon, 2018
Leeuwin Estate, Art Series Cabernet Sauvignon, 2018
- 75cl
- 13.5%
- Red Still
- Cabernet Sauvignon
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Optimal drinking window: Now - 2036
Leeuwin Estate was born in the early to mid-70s when founders Denis and Tricia Horgan, decided to plant vines on their cattle ranch, a few miles in from the coast in Western Australia’s Margaret River, a few 100 miles south of Perth. It has proved to be an inspired decision and with Robert Mondavi on hand to give advice and guidance in the early days, they hit the ground running.
Within a couple of years of their first vintage (1979) they were winning both plaudits and awards worldwide. Their Art Series Chardonnay became one of the most must-have wines of Australia almost overnight. Fast forward 40 years and their daughter, Simone Furlong now runs the winery, maintaining the estate’s enviable position at the top table of Aussie wineries.
If you tasted this wine blind, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in St Julien or Pauillac. There is such poise and well-crafted structure to the wine which lift and punctuate the stony, blueberry fruit just perfectly. The main difference is that if you were in St Julien and Pauillac, drinking a wine of this quality, you’d be paying much more!
What the critics say:
"The 2018 vintage in Margaret River was perhaps the best vintage in the modern commercial history of the region (i.e., since 1967). Most producers made their best wines in this year, and despite a string of extremely high-quality vintages that followed (2019 - cool, aromatic; 2020 - moderate to warm, great power and tannin structure; 2022 - too early to tell but whispers abound that it rivals 2018, certainly a warm year), it remains a standalone vintage in its outlay of powerful fruit and shape. The 2018 Art Series Cabernet Sauvignon is the best made at the estate, and I say that ahead of my favored 2014 and 2012 vintages."
"97% Cabernet Sauvignon, 3% Malbec. After individual berry sorting and cold soaking, fermentation took place in closed static fermenters at temperatures between 26 °C–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 with seasonal rackings. The wine spent a total of 22 months in oak. Truly elegant in every way. One sip of this wine and I can feel its beauty. It has a pure-fruited translucency and the whisper of pine needles, a mint-cold freshness, tannins reaching long, tenacious, slender from top to bottom, embedded through the fruit. A wine with a sweet heart, taut purpose, exquisitely formed clarity."
OUR GROWERS
Leeuwin Estate
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