Our Australian Wine of the Year for 2021 is the elegantly polished Mount Mary Yarra Valley Quintet 2019, which rated a perfect 100 points on the back of a near-perfect 99-point rating for the 2018 vintage last year. Quintet has long been a highly regarded wine, a Bordeaux-esque red blend that has garnered immense respect over many years and one that played a big role in establishing the reputation of the Yarra Valley region.
Mount Mary Vineyard is a pioneer of the modern epoch of Yarra Valley wine and it is fitting that our choice of Quintet as our top Australian wine, out of the nearly 1,900 we rated this year, coincides with the 50th anniversary of the winery’s establishment in 1971 by the late John Middleton. Current winemaker and third-generation family member Sam Middleton has managed to sensitively and intelligently refine the wines to their highest-ever level of quality, driven from the vineyard up.
Middleton’s stated belief is that “great wines are always a function of many different factors all aligning,” and he singled out the warm and dry conditions of the 2019 vintage as “perfectly suited to the Quintet varieties, producing beautiful fruit ripeness alongside fresh natural acidity.” The wine has such strikingly rich fruit intensity, a perfectly seamless texture and a weave of tannin that is reminiscent of great St. Julien-like Leoville las Cases in a great vintage.
Quintet leads a strong component of cabernet-based wines in our top 100, with Margaret River delivering much in terms of concentration, such strong regional character and compelling drinkability, as well as the ability to age so reliably. The sheer intensity of fruit seen in the wines of Cullen, Vasse Felix, Juniper Estate, Deep Woods, Nocturne, Xanadu and Domaine Naturaliste is a highlight of our Australian tastings this past year.
READ MORE: OUR TOP 100 WINES OF 2021
The Yangarra Grenache McLaren Vale Ovitelli 2019 (No. 2) leads the way for this rapidly ascending star of Australian wine styles in terms of both quality and consumer popularity. There are nine grenache in this year’s list and six of those feature in the top 50. The Ovitelli is a wine of unique texture and one that marries power so closely with elegance, focus and purity and stands in contrast to the more structured Yangarra Grenache McLaren Vale High Sands 2018 (No. 19), which also features in the list.
S.C. Pannell’s dynamic duo of 2020 grenache wines also appear in our Top 100, with the front-and-center concentrated purity of Old McDonald (No. 25) nicely contrasted by the finer-boned Smart Vineyard bottling (No. 53). Clarendon Hills, Aphelion, Vanguardist, Thistledown and Yalumba are all represented with outstanding grenache here, too. There has been a consistent run of high-quality Aussie grenache spanning 2018, 2019 and 2020 vintages, and the early signs for 2021 McLaren Vale and Barossa indicate there will be high ratings to celebrate this time next year, too.
The Adelina Shiraz Clare Valley 2020 (No. 2) heads up a total of 21 inclusions for Australia’s most famous red grape and a collection of outstanding examples from a diverse set of regions. Adelina is a project that defines much of what is great and exciting about the modern face of Australian wine. Vignerons Jennie Gardner and Colin McBryde are a highly educated and experienced duo who understand the importance and potency of provenance in the narrative of great Australian wine; their Adelina Shiraz Mataro 2020 also makes the list this year at No. 79. These are wines of subtlety and power and belong in every serious collector’s cellar.
READ MORE TOP 100 WINES OF AUSTRALIA 2020
STYLISH SHIRAZ
As expected, this Top 100 list includes a comprehensive range of shiraz styles, from the elegantly composed Hunter Valley (Mount Pleasant) to the cool and fragrant climes of the Canberra District (Clonakilla and Ravensworth) to the complex and composed Yarra Valley (Oakridge) and the spicy powerhouse of Great Western (Best’s).
There’s also a series of stylishly refined, modern and powerful shiraz wines from the Barossa (Sons of Eden, Spinifex, Standish, Torbreck, Hentley Farm, John Duval, Head and Elderton) as well as McLaren Vale’s smoothly balanced and effortlessly plush Ox Hardy and Koomilya. It is a convincing showing of warmer-climate Australian shiraz wines that are as undeniably refined as much as they remain authentically regional.
And the South Australian multi-regional Penfolds Shiraz St Henri 2018 (No. 4) reminds us again just how great the vintage was for shiraz in this part of the wine world. It is a wine that has logged consistently high ratings in recent years and, like the Adelina, should be a staple for Australian shiraz collectors. And, perhaps the ultimate collector’s trophy, the third release of a multi-vintage Grange blend, the Penfolds South Australia g5 NV (No. 10) is rated 100 points and is just so uniquely creative, rich and powerful.
The top whites are the Tyrrell’s Semillon Hunter Valley Vat 1 2021 (No. 6) and the Tolpuddle Chardonnay Tasmania 2020 (No. 7), with 13 chardonnay wines in total listed this year. Like shiraz, chardonnay is so widely planted in Australia we see regions as diverse as Margaret River, Adelaide Hills, Macedon Ranges, Yarra Valley and the Hunter Valley all represented with exceptional releases. Australian chardonnay continues to lead in a global style sense while being strongly shaped by characters of region and place.
But it is riesling that perhaps strikes deepest in terms of capturing the taste of place, and the 2021 vintage has delivered comprehensively high quality across Australia’s most important regions for this style. There are 12 riesling wines on this year’s list, led by the Pooley Riesling Tasmania Margaret Pooley Tribute 2021 (No. 17). Tasmania, Canberra District, Frankland River, Macedon Ranges, Clare Valley and Eden Valley are all represented with stunning examples made in a dry, thrillingly fresh and piercing range of styles. These are without a shade of a doubt the greatest value wines in this year’s Australian Top 100.
Enjoy the holiday season, stay safe and drink well!
– Nick Stock, Contributing Editor
The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated in 2021 by the tasters at JamesSuckling.com. You can sort the wines below by vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.
