Grape Observer Wine Review

This wine is Wendouree’s cabernet sauvignon and malbec blend from the 2017 vintage and the Clare Valley in Australia.  Wendouree is among Australia’s best producers. They are not perhaps as widely known as they could be. They have a legendarily opaque, and hard to access, mailing list where the wines are sold directly well below market prices (therefore, the hard to acce...

Mt Difficulty are a top pinot noir producer in Central Otago in New Zealand.  This style of wine is an example of why Central Otago pinot noir is so attractive to the consumer. It is a high quality pinot noir produced in an unarguably cool climate and shows correct and well proportioned pinot noir characters. Dark in colour, the 2023 vintage of Mt Difficulty’s pinot noir...

This wine is from Mora and is a dry riesling from Bannockburn in Central Otago in New Zealand.  It’s bottled in a chardonnay bottle, an unusual choice for riesling to be sure, but it proves a false indicator of modest quality aspirations.  This wine in fact is a delicious, pure fruited expression of cold climate riesling.  There are intense aromas of lemons and...

Château Haut-Bages Libéral in Pauillac is one of the more approachable of the Bordeaux cru classés. This estate is reported to have improved in recent vintages, having become organic in 2019 and then biodynamic in 2021. I typically see these labels as proxies for producer ambition, rather than necessarily techniques casually leading to higher quality. Generally speaking,...

This is the 52nd vintage of Yalumba’s Signature cabernet sauvignon and shiraz blend from the Barossa Valley in Australia.  Writing this made me reflect anew whether the “new world” moniker for Australian wine is very out of date.  The 2023 vintage of Yalumba’s signature has an inky colour in the glass as befits a very young wine from this region.  Its aromas ar...