Western Australia’s Greatest Vintage Ever?
Nick tasted the majority of the wines for the Western Australia report at Smith’s Beach in Margaret River. This is shortly before starting on the 500 bottles.
Western Australia is such a rugged, diverse and exciting part of the Australian wine landscape. I recently tasted almost 500 latest releases from across the state just ahead of the COVID-19 lockdown. I found a captivating refinement of the wines from the state’s vinous crown jewel, Margaret River, as well as a rise in quality in the bottle across the vast region of Great Southern.
The Western Australian wine scene continues to power along strongly, helped by the turbo-charged impact of the 2018 harvest, which delivered such impressive stylish and deep wines across much of the state. The 2018 vintage is one to celebrate and collect as wines come out on the market.
“2018 is a stunning year for both reds and whites, the best I’ve seen in last 12 or so years,” declared Vasse Felix Chief Winemaker Virginia Willcock.
Vanya Cullen, the owner of Cullen Wines, agreed, and showed a pair of outstanding wines from the 2018 harvest: the Kevin John Chardonnay and Diana Madeline Cabernet blend. “The 2018 growing season was just beautiful,” she reflected. “Everything happened in rhythm, at the right time, and the wines have such intensity.”
The 2018 Diana Madeline (99 points) is one of the stars of this report and one the greatest editions of this wine yet released. Cullen herself likens it to the legendary 2001 vintage, a wine that is defined by both power and finesse. Both are certainly hallmark traits of this stunning 2018 which stands as a shining example of refinement in Margaret River.
2018: A classic and stylish vintage
The 2018 vintage is without question one of the best and most classically styled vintages ever recorded in Margaret River and across greater Western Australia. It delivers tautly composed, powerful and refined structure in whites and reds. Both will be long-lived wines. The cabernet sauvignons are likely to peak in more than 20 years. But this is not to say the 2018 wines aren’t destined to deliver much pleasure in the interim. On the contrary, they will unfurl in layers over time and they are complex in their youth, to the point of being cryptic. Cullen made the comparison to the great 2001. The 2010 vintage certainly had the same double edge of power and freshness too, but 2018 will outdo both 2010 and 2001 in time.
One of the other top wines of this report crowns a more than decade-long journey for Western Australian winemaker, Larry Cherubino. The inaugural release 2018 Budworth Cabernet Sauvignon is sourced from the Riversdale Vineyard in the Frankland River sub-region, a vineyard purchased by Cherubino in 2010. The road to this exceptional release started many years back with viticultural adjustments such as grafting old vines to new clones and other fine tunings.
“2018 is one of the best seasons I’ve seen in my career and cabernet sauvignon was just on another level,” said Cherubino. “It wasn’t too warm, wasn’t too cool, and it ran perfectly from bud burst to harvest, the wines are very hard to fault.”
This 2018 Budworth Cabernet Sauvignon has a brand of power and precision that defines the world’s great cabernet-based wines, wines that are typically arrived at when great terroir meets meticulous viticulture and a gifted growing season.
Margaret River leads chardonnay’s quality lift
There are many reasons to be excited about Western Australian chardonnay and the highly competitive space is awash with examples that stack up very favorably on a national and international scale. Margaret River leads in impressive style and this recent tasting reveals an uplift in quality across a greater number of producers in the region.
Dormilona winemaker Jo Perry, said: “There’s been a realisation that you don’t need to do so much to chardonnay to get the best results in Margaret River. There’s less curation and fiddling in the winery and more people are chasing vineyard character and making more naturally expressive wines.”
Perry cites a pivot towards enhancing the innate character of quality fruit as the new normal for chardonnay in Margaret River.
Virginia Willcock agreed. “We’ve been heading down a path of making wilder chardonnays and holding the complexity in tight in Margaret River. Everyone’s becoming much more comfortable with embracing looser production techniques, higher solids and so on, making better chardonnays that are also more interesting.”
Add a good run of recent vintages to that and there’s a lot of good chardonnay to be found in this report. The top chardonnay wines emanate from a long precession of great names, with Cullen, Deep Woods, Vasse Felix, Xanadu, Cherubino, Stella Bella, Flametree, Leeuwin Estate, Fraser Gallop, Voyager Estate, Nocturne and Dormilona all delivering chardonnay wines rated 95 points and above. Cullen Wines’ Kevin John 2018 (98 points) leads the field as a stunning example of purity and power in a wine that walks a tight rope of elegance and finesse.
“The 2018 chardonnays need time to unravel, and they’re tightly wound,” said Willcock.
You’ll find these wines will deliver a longer drinking window than most vintages, while 2017 chardonnays are in the zone of balance and completeness. The 2019 chardonnay vintage is a bounty of unctuous, ripe and fleshy fruit and there are more and more examples of winemakers aiming at instantly appealing fruit and not trying to wrestle their wines into some other mode. Look to producers like Leeuwin Estate, LS Merchants, Vasse Felix, Flametree, Voyager Estate and Xanadu for approachable, fruit-focused 2019 chardonnays.
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- LS Merchants is one of the best new producers at the moment, and this is their Chenin Blanc.
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- The 2019 Dormilona Cabernet Sauvignon Clayface typifies a new spirit of drinkable cabernet.
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- A delicious Larry Cherubino Cabernet Sauvignon 2018 Frankland River.
Great Southern style
By comparison, the Great Southern region is transforming itself via a new and sometimes second generation of winemakers who are making wines that are more stylistically expressive. This is underpinned by a similar shift in viticulture and vineyard management. The net result is both exciting and impressive to taste.
“The Great Southern is a vast region and traditionally there were a small number of large to medium-sized producers that dominated and blended across many parcels,” said Larry Cherubino, explaining that much of the interest was there but often buried in blends. “There’s a generational change in terms of winemaking approach, in that grapes aren’t being forced into making styles that just aren’t right, and viticulture is now much better tailored across much of the region. We’re getting down to the real detail of quality now.”
Riesling holds impressive sway as always, particularly in the Frankland River sub-region. The Frankland Estate once again leads the way with wines that offer depth and dimension. Their 2019 Isolation Ridge (97 points) has almost unfathomable depth and length. Their 2019 Smith Cullam bottling (96 points) is complete and seamlessly composed while their 2019 Poison Hill Riesling (96 points) is a thrilling exercise in precision and detail, both on the nose and palate.
Also look for the Great South rieslings of Cherubino, Forest Hill, Howard Park, Kerrigan + Berry, Castle Rock and Brave New Wine. A special mention also for LS Merchants Die Berghain Riesling 2019 (93 points) as an imaginative, delicious example from Margaret River that showcases the depth of fruit in 2019.
Shiraz and malbec show well
Shiraz out of both the Great Southern and Margaret River makes good headway in this report too. Again, this is largely on the basis of more imaginative winemaking and no better example is the wildly complex Vasse Felix Margaret River Syrah V 2019 (95 points). Malbec continues to perform its lynchpin role in supporting cabernet-based blends championed most notably in the Vasse Felix Tom Cullity 2016 (96 points). It also demonstrates impressive solo voice in a suite of wines with Mark Messenger’s Beneath The Kite 2017, Vinaceous Reverend V 2018, Singlefile 2018 and Ferngrove Black Label 2018 all achieving an impressive 94 point rating.
And to circle back to cabernet sauvignon, the procession of powerful and focused 2018 vintage wines will be followed by a set of deliciously complete and immediately attractive 2019 wines in a year’s time according to early tastings. If the 2019 Walsh & Sons Cabernet Sauvignon Roi (96 points) and 2019 Dormilona Cabernet Sauvignon Clayface (96 points) tasted here are an early indication, there’s much to look forward to in the next round of releases. This pair typifies a new spirit of drinkable, effortless cabernet that is born of vineyard pedigree and an eye to fruit purity, a movement whose lineage is unequivocally linked to Vanya Cullen and her pursuit of elegance in the flagship Diana Madeline cabernet blend.
The people, the pedigree and the stories behind Western Australia’s wines are as captivating as the wines themselves. Prices are steady and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future so you can buy wines for both now and later.
Nick Stock – Executive Editor