Wednesday Wines – Episode 232 – Happy 175th Birthday Yalumba
The crème de la crème of the UK wine world was out in force to celebrate Yalumba’s 175th anniversary at the secretive La Loma restaurant deep inside Oswald’s private (wine) club in Mayfair last week. Lucy Hill-Smith (6th generation), descendant of founder Samuel Smith, did a sterling job of controlling the rabble, and she took great delight in (re)introducing winemaking maven and all-round legend Louisa Rose, who barely drew breath over four hours of gripping wine commentary. The assembled throng fell silent as Lou trotted out trivia, stories and anecdotes like confetti falling on our heads. Not a scintilla of this information repeated anything noted in the deeply researched accompanying literature. I have never witnessed a 360-degree info dump like this, and I found myself writing random snippets of information I had never heard in my life alongside my usual scrawls of tasting notes, which are reproduced below (including a couple of in-depth pieces already published from my previews of some of these wines). It was over too soon. I had to rush off to another tasting, but I cannot wait to see Lou and Lucy again – wines of this calibre and people of this integrity and skill that make this the very best job on earth. There is no higher praise possible from this particular commentator.
My thoughts on the wines –
2014 Yalumba, The Menzies Cabernet Sauvignon, Coonawarra
Yalumba bought this vineyard in 1993. They had been ‘swopping’ fruit with various friends in the region, most notably the Redmans back to the ’20s! I know this wine well. Here is my note from 100 Best Australian Wines 2018-19 – ‘2014 The Menzies Cabernet Sauvignon is an even more distinguished creation (this line refers to its little brother, 2014 Yalumba The Cigar Cabernet Sauvignon). The nose is amazingly impressive with taut, salty, cassis fruit and fabulous marquetry. The length is astounding, with awe-inspiring tannins which roll on for minutes. 2014 The Menzies has an Old-World silhouette over a classical Coonawarra flavour, which makes it both beautiful and extremely honest in the glass. This is one of my favourite vintages of this wine to date.’ Some six years on, today’s inspection reveals a heavenly nose, marking this as a benchmark Coonawarra Cabernet and the epitome of a Yalumba Menzies. This is an expressive wine with lovely purity, decadent tobacco and leather tones over a dry, plummy mulberry Cabernet core. A saline crunch and refined tannins make up the picture. At ten years of age, it is just about hitting its peak, but there is more softening to go, so don’t feel the need to rush in. This is a stunning wine, and it was £37 a bottle back in 2018 – I hope you secured your stock. This wine has turned out to be a very wise investment. 18.5/20
2019 Yalumba, The Menzies Cabernet Sauvignon, Coonawarra
As one would expect, this is a punchy, frisky, menacing wine with more overt power and attitude. Interestingly, the oak sits behind the buttressed wall of delicious, toothsome Cabernet fruit. Yalumba’s oak game has seen so much augmentation and positive change over the last decade, and this wine is allowed the space to breathe and showcase its fruit, which is such a joy to behold. It’s much more rigid and structured than the 2014, but it shows a similar palate silhouette (and most likely a similar drinking timeline); there is serious potential here. This is another outstanding vintage for The Menzies, and it should retail for around £45 when it arrives, making this one of the finest value Cabs on the planet. 18.5+/20
2009 Yalumba, The Octavius Old Vine Shiraz, Barossa
Goodness me, this is a trip back in a time machine to a different Aussie Shiraz era. While I remember it well (I spent more of my wine life drinking this style of wine than today’s finely tuned models) and while there is nostalgia in every sip, I far prefer today’s couture collections. Slurpy and juicy with liquorice and cola notes under lavish Yankee Doodle woodwork, this wine forms a relevant part of Octavius’s history in the same way that handlebar moustaches and flares are part of everyone’s back catalogue. Of course, the carpentry hogs the limelight, but the fruit, at the core, is stellar. If you look hard enough, a coolness and brightness bring a semblance of calm to the finish, ironing out the tannins and earth tones and turning this muscular outback rogue into a somewhat civilised fellow. 18/20
2019 Yalumba, The Octavius Old Vine Shiraz, Barossa
How Octavius has evolved over the last decade! Once a massive hulking dinosaur, resplendent in its American oak armour, lumbering along through the ages, beloved of geriatric drinkers. Nowadays, this wine is made from virtually the same fruit, but its oak regime is forward-looking, engineered for agility and not just sheer weight. This suits Octavius exceptionally well because this 2019 is a thunderously successful wine with the most detailed and resonant fruit I have tasted under this label. It is such a relief for this once-outlier in the Yalumba portfolio to finally join the rest of the mind-blowing reds. In 2019, Octavius finally arrived, and it will thrill all-comers. 19+/20
1974 Yalumba, FDR1A Cabernet Sauvignon / Shiraz (also released as Christobel’s Signature), Barossa
This historic wine has been made since 1962, and prior to that it was known as Galway Claret Special Reserve. Considering 1974 was an “atrocious vintage, as it was all over the world), this is a remarkable wine. At 50 years of age, it still has a beating heart and astonishing clarity of fruit. Following a simply stunning nose packed with eye-popping purity and indelible floral appeal, the palate is gentle, silky and light with faint tobacco notes that linger and fade. A grand old gent, this wine still has an enviable stance on the palate, proving that this blend (which I have named The Great Australian Red) is truly “the blend that defines Australia” – awkward though it is, to quote my words. But it’s true. I take my hat off to Yalumba and a handful of others for championing Cab/Shiraz since the dawn of time. 18/20
2004 Yalumba, The Signature Cabernet Sauvignon / Shiraz, Barossa
While this is a youthful twenty-year-old, this wine is a style shift forward, showing the transition from the past to a more familiar style of the present ( and future). Texturally beguiling and still fresh and enticing on the nose, bright rose petals and fresh leather notes sing here, bringing a stylish and eye-catching character to proceedings. The lusty black fruit is terrific and honed; at 20 years old, it is flying high. The tannins are fit and toned and it is peaking with, perhaps, another decade at this level to go. Interestingly, there were three signatories in this vintage! 18.5/20
2012 Yalumba, The Signature Cabernet Sauvignon / Shiraz, Barossa
I know this is a stellar vintage for Sig, having enjoyed it on countless occasions, and while Robert Hill-Smith usually selects the label ‘signatory’ each year, he was cunningly outflanked in 2012, as his own name was emblazoned on the bottle. Unfortunately, my bottle was a little flat and occluded, and I know this is not what this bottle looks like. I did not want to interrupt the flow of the event, so this note ends here. Of course, no score was attributed, and Lucy gave me a sip of her glass, which looked characteristically stylish. no score
2014 Yalumba, The Signature Cabernet Sauvignon / Shiraz, Barossa
Chris Greening was immortalised on this label, and I am certain he is jolly pleased that this is his wine. With a much more Cabernet-focused tilt, this wine looks like a diminutive version of 2014 The Caley (see below for a full note), and it, therefore, carries itself with an upright gait and considerable poise. The 57% of Cabernet gives it a leaner chassis with more edges and grip, resulting in uncommon control and grace. This is a slow-ageing Sig, and it already looks composed and complete. 18+/20
2016 Yalumba, The Signature Cabernet Sauvignon / Shiraz, Barossa
My note from my MoneyWeek column dated 17th December 2021 – ‘If you track back to 18th June, you will find my MoneyWeek review of 2016 Yalumba The Caley. I described this wine as the finest young Aussie Cabernet / Shiraz I have ever tasted and awarded it a perfect 20/20 score. By all accounts, this wine is relatively rare right now, given that only several hundred cases were made, and even though it was priced at the £200+ mark, sales have been impressively brisk. While this was only the fifth release of The Caley, its little brother and the star of this week’s column, The Signature, is on its 47th vintage. The Yalumba luminary invited to sign their name on this epic 2016 vintage’s label is chief winemaker Louisa Rose. Let’s be clear: Lou has not used her once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to scribble her name on any old vintage. She has reserved this privilege for a genuinely phenomenal wine. Consider this: 2016 is a stellar year for Yalumba and this elite blend, which I call The Great Australian Red. Also, The Signature shares an enormous amount of The Caley’s DNA. It, therefore, follows that this red wine, which is widely available in the UK, is, by definition, the finest value Australian wine of the year. I am tempted to go further, though, because I know that while this wine drinks perfectly now, it can age gracefully for a further quarter of a century and more, so it might just be the finest red wine to buy for your cellar as 2021 comes to a close. 2016 The Signature has earned its starring role this week, not least because it gives you just enough time to snap some up for last-minute festive gifts for your most fastidious, wine-loving friends.’
Lou is an extraordinarily modest woman, and she did not mention, during this event, that it was her signature on this magnificent wine. She quietly encouraged people to read the back label after I heckled her! At the time, I described this as the finest Sig ever, and I see no reason to change this opinion. It is a mind-blowing wine, and to think it was retailed for around the £35-mark is incredible. I will not attribute a score today to spare Louisa’s blushes, but I cannot see how this wine can be improved, and you know what that means.
2018 Yalumba, The Signature Cabernet Sauvignon / Shiraz, Barossa
My note from my MoneyWeek column dated 23rd March 2023 – ‘Last month, history was made with an extraordinary and unprecedented result in the 2023 The Great Australian Red competition. You can read all about the competition on matthewjukes.com. The soon-to-be-released 2018 Yalumba The Caley Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz became the first four-time winner of TGAR. The 2012 vintage of The Caley became the first wine in the competition’s history to win the top Trophy twice when it was anointed The Great Australian Red 2014 and 2015. It then became the first to win three times when the 2016 vintage was awarded The Great Australian Red by a UK judging panel in London last August. Interestingly, the 2018 vintage was also in the running last year as the winner of the Trophy for the Best Cabernet-Dominant Blend. Chair of Judges Wynns Coonawarra Chief Winemaker Sue Hodder said, ‘It was incredible to taste all those beautifully savoury wines. This was one of the best shows I have ever had the opportunity to be involved with!’ Hosting this annual event has been a profound privilege since Tyson Stelzer, and I launched this initiative in 2006. This wine style, which I call ‘the blend that defines Australia’, has gathered serious momentum worldwide. While we will have to wait until 6th June this year for 2018 The Caley to be launched in the UK, you can buy its ‘little brother’, 2018 The Signature, and I can assure you it is cut from a very similar cloth. The signatory on this vintage is outgoing Yalumba MD Nick Waterman; his smile was a mile wide when we announced the TGAR results. Given the 2018 ‘The Sig’ price, he may have signed the fasted-selling Aussie red wine of the year because it is an absolute beauty and is already drinking well!’
Eighteen months later, this wine has grown even more. It is a juicy and buoyant wine with sleek, dark-hued fruit and a really bright and tangy finish. It is genuinely delicious, and as it opened in the glass, it revealed a spicier finish than expected, which really caught my attention, hence my enthusiastic score! 19/20
2021 Yalumba, The Signature Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz, Barossa
Good Lord, this is a phenomenal creation. This was my first glimpse of 2021 The Signature, and it is, at once, superbly aromatic, incredibly linear and discreetly spicy. There is amazing balance here, and I cannot wait to taste it over a couple of days, deconstruct it and marvel at its constituent elements. This is a terroir-driven wine, yet its fruit is clean, profoundly deep and vibrant. I love it. 19+/20
2014 Yalumba, The Caley Cabernet Sauvignon Coonawarra / Shiraz Barossa
82% Cabernet Sauvignon (Coonawarra) & 18% Shiraz (Barossa), 14% alc, 6.2g/L TA, 3.52 pH, Harvested 28th February – 6th May
This wine was lined up for inclusion in my 100 Best Australian Wines Report 2020-21, which was due to be launched last May, but thanks to the global pandemic, it was pushed back a few times and then abandoned. In fact, there was a time when I thought I might be able to feature both this wine and the 2015 vintage in the same Report, which sounds bonkers when you consider that the inaugural 2012 vintage was featured in three consecutive Reports because of its postponed release. How times change, and how unpredictable is the world that we live in? When Robert and Jess Hill Smith launched this wine at 5 Hertford Street in London before the pandemic, I remember writing (rather cheekily) that this was the finest Cabernet Sauvignon that Yalumba had ever made. Half tongue in cheek, but also half-seriously, if the percentage of Shiraz had dipped below the 15% mark, this could have been labelled as a straight Cabernet. Certainly, from a taste point of view, Cabernet leads the way, but Shiraz does such an epic job here, too, even though mathematically, it looks like its involvement ought to be minimal. Granted, Cabernet forms the theme like a huge, ornate mosaic of stunning flavour. But this wine would simply not be complete without Shiraz, filling in the gaps, the flaws, the cracks, the missing pieces, and the imperceptible imperfections in this Cabernet-dominant masterpiece. True to the recipe – there is no recipe. This is the best wine of the vintage with the finest balance, the most alluring ingredients and the most Cab/Shiraz honesty and integrity, so when KG worked his magic, the percentages fell out at 82/18, and it will forever be remembered as the highest Cabernet percentage of all (until a vintage comes along with an 83% slice of Cab). I love this wine. It is thrillingly perfumed, superbly sleek, effortlessly sexy, and there is a real ‘Aussie claret’ note about it which ought to make the Titans on the Left Bank blush. 19+/20
2019 Yalumba, The Caley Cabernet Sauvignon Coonawarra / Shiraz Barossa
Winemaker – Kevin Glastonbury: Harvested – 22nd February to 9th April 2019: Blend – 77% Coonawarra Cabernet & 23% Barossa Shiraz: TA – 6.54 g/L: pH– 3.55: Alcohol – 14%: Oak regime – 19 months in 24% new French Barriques, balance in 1 year and older French Barriques: Source vineyards – The Ming D block in the Yalumba Coonawarra vineyard provides the 77% Cabernet Sauvignon of this blend. This 2.7 ha plot was planted in 1992 with two clones of Cabernet Sauvignon selected for structure and depth of flavour. The Caley’s 23% Shiraz component was sourced from two Barossa blocks. The first block is the Crown Village, Schrapel old Shiraz block, located along the Tanunda foothills near Krondorf, about 4 km south of the Tanunda township. The second is from the Horseshoe Vineyard on the southern side of the Yalumba winery in Eden Valley. Planted by Helen Hill-Smith in 1971, this block follows the contours around the Fred Caley Smith Hut.
My thoughts – It is fascinating when one tastes wine without the educational assistance of a fiche technique and imagines the vintage conditions directly from the flavours on display. The indelible truth about 2019 The Caley is that it is extraordinarily sleek and polished with a refined spine of freshness and control that captures the senses. I was sent a note detailing the vintage conditions in 2019, a month after I first tasted this wine, it read like a meteorological tasting note. Coonawarra experienced a cool winter with perfect levels of rainfall that led to healthy Cabernet canopies, followed by a warm, dry summer. Yields were a bit down (suggesting a subtle concentration of flavour), and cooler summer nights gave rise to grapes with superb ripeness balanced with definition and grip. Barossa experienced similar conditions, a little warmer, a little dryer and a little more concentrated. Combine these weather patterns and their resulting flavours in a 77/23 cocktail, and 2019 The Caley was born. Of course, it is not as simple as that because the precise GPS location of the constituent varieties is noted above, and these are some of the finest plots of vines on earth. The characteristics that make The Caley the most astounding of all Cabernet/Shiraz bends are not simply the parcels, the grapes and the blend but the immense skill in chaperoning these qualities drawn from far-flung paddocks and via extremely careful husbandry into the bottle. This patient and painstakingly precise assembly process takes a couple of years. No one comes close to KG and his team when it comes to marrying these two grapes while not forfeiting one ounce of potential, precision and profundity. This thrillingly precise wine delivers precisely what I was hoping for – a stunning, anthemic perfume, deafening fruit penetration and seismic length. While this is a totemic vintage for The Caley, freshness and lift are evident at every step. You must only look at The Caley’s little brother 2019 Yalumba The Signature to sense the qualities of this superb vintage. The Caley is not a more massive version of The Sig but an immeasurably more regal and detailed wine. Cabernet does all the work here, and Shiraz lounges decorously, surrounding the monumental Cabernet chassis. Shiraz adds cameo notes on the nose – aromatic mulberry flourishes and delicate five spice – and discreet bouquet garni herb details to the palate, along with a toothsome meatiness that appears towards the end of the flavour. It introduces these complex agents with Cabernet’s blessing and only when Cabernet requires its teammate to perform. 2019 The Caley is a benchmark example of The Great Australian Red model with a near-silent, relentless bullet-train of Cabernet rocketing along with Shiraz styling, adding unmistakable Aussie flair and identity, and it does this with otherworldly acumen. 19.5/20 (Drink 2027 – 2050)
2022 Yalumba, The Virgilius Viognier, Eden Valley
Another first taste – this stunning wine continues an unbroken run of impeccable Viogniers from Yalumba. There is sensational poise and definition here with incredible directness and freshness. I have said this many times before, but this makes all but a handful of Condrieus look sluggish and flabby! It is a testament to Louisa’s hard work and dedication to this awkward grape variety that The Virgilius is such a superstar. 19/20
2022 Yalumba, Tri-Centenary Grenache, Barossa Valley
These Grenache vines were planted in 1889. It is one single block with 820 vines, frolicking in deep white sandy soils, and they are very happy because yields are always amazingly generous. This wine sees no oak maturation. Instead, it is fermented in an open-topped fermenter, plunged during fermentation, then sealed and left on its skins for 372 days! No oxygen, no stems, no nothing – a wine that exists in a totally different atmosphere from all other Yalumba red wines, and it is pure, unadulterated joy. Pale, bright, cherry-soaked and silky, this is as Pinot-like as Grenache gets, and the dramatic sandy soils and skinsy elements bring lip-smacking traction to the palate, making this a wine that counterpoints silkiness with drama like no other in the portfolio! 18.5/20