Philip White compares contrasting premium reds from the great 2012 vintage: Margaret River Cabernet and Langhorne Creek Shiraz.
Vasse Felix Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon 2012
$35; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92++ points
This the 40th consecutive release of Vasse Felix Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon. Tom Cullity planted the first vines here in 1967, and released the region’s first red wine, a Cabernet, in 1972.
Coming from many individual patches of vineyard, each with its own peculiarities, the grapes are fermented by wild yeasts and, depending on the batch, often spend three or four weeks macerating on their skins. The wine gets a judicious mix (50-50) of new and older French barrels before assemblage.
While this vintage also contains 13 per cent Malbec and 1 per cent Petit Verdot, it is the Cabernet that gives this wine its quiet authority. You’d be hard pressed to find a more typical example. It has a sweet eucalypt forest topnote, which is not intrusive, and a breath of velvety summer dust. It’s musky, reminding me of a sweet old Guerlain perfume, somewhere in the direction of the heady nostalgia of Jicky. Then there’s a layer of fresh ripe blueberry, which is a meaty-smelling berry when you delve properly into it.
The texture is more velvet than silk; I suspect that tiny dribble of the very late-ripening Petit Verdot has given the normally prominent Cabernet tannins a kick along. Appropriately, the natural acids are firm and steely enough to guarantee a rewarding five to 10 years of cellaring; maybe more.
While this lovely drink would dance a bonnie duet now with pink cutlets of lamb, I would urge the true Cabernet perve to lock a few bottles in the dungeon and enjoy the wine more in a few extra years.
Bremerton Old Adam Limited Release Langhorne Creek Shiraz 2012
$56; 15% alcohol; cork; 82+ points
The muddy soulfulness that was the hallmark of the black alluvium of the original Langhorne Creek vineyards was always best expressed in the Shiraz grape. It seemed to soak up the flavours of that earthy muck from the irregular summer floods of the Bremer River.
With the excellence of the 2012 year and the little matter of $56 foremost in mind, I approach this wine expecting something special, and a silky contrast to the velvet austerity of the Cabernet reviewed above.
It sure smells soulful and yep, muddy, in a nice murky manner. Like milk chocolate; like salty Dutch liquorice. But rather than reek of the traditional redgum eucalypts whose juice infests that original true blue mud, the wood here smells like Quercus alba oak from America. This has added its sappy tannin to the flavours of the wine. As Wolf Blass’s Langhorne Creek guru, John Glaetzer, would say after winning three consecutive Jimmy Watson Trophies with such oak: “No wood, no good; no medals no jobs.”
Those legendary ’70s wines Glaetzer made also had eucalypt. Many obsessive aficionados now regard eucalypt as a fault more than an honest reflection of terroir, as Glaetzer did. The lack of eucalypt in this wine hints to me that maybe the wine’s not from the mudflats, but the higher broadacre ground developed in the years after Premier Dean Brown loosened up the water restrictions, permitting irrigation from the troubled waters of Lake Alexandrina.
All that aside, we have a wine that should please lovers of the diminishing number of Penfolds premium reds that depend upon new American oak, like Bin 707. It may not show that finesse, but it’s close. Wolf Blass freaks will probably love it, too. In which case, you’ll be saving between $50 and $300 per bottle by avoiding those and sticking to Old Adam.
Steak, medium.
