Yalumba’s Menzies takes its name Sir Robert Menzies, former Australian Prime Minister and red wine enthusiast. Sourced from a vineyard planted in 1975 the wine was matured in a combination of new (49%) and older French, American and Hungarian oak for 18 months.
Superb colour – totally opaque inky black core with dark purple red hue. Perfumed scents of ripe blackcurrants intermixed with violets waft from the glass followed by a faint whiff of liquorice, cedar and spice. Medium to full bodied the palate is decked out with magnificent rich blackcurrant fruit that fills every inch of the palate followed by cedar, subtle cigar box, a faint hint of bay leaf and spice. A beautifully integrated, solid, yet very fine grained tannin structure provides ample support. Excellent length with very long ripe blackcurrant, cedary cigar box and spice aftertaste.
Accolades and Awards:
95 Points - Mike Bennie, Wine Front "It’s a firm, formidable, structured, detailed wine of brooding intensity and concentration, set to medium bodied, dusted with earth, strewn with crushed eucalyptus, drenched in decadent cassis. It’s pulses through the palate with brooding dark fruit intensity, rippling with herbal, chewy tannins that rope and weave through the wine to its very long puckering finish. There’s a softness too, wine pools in the palate and gets tugged away. Lovely wine, even though its been an epoch for me."
2012 Vintage: 95 Points - Ray Jordan, The Weekend West ""This is Coonawarra cabernet from a very good year. Still under cork which I don't understand. Blackcurrant and leafy tobacco cigar-box characters. There is real power and structure here, expressed with elegance and poise. Delicious sweet fruit which is balanced and powerful. Has great cellaring potential (Best drinking: Now to 2031. Alc: 14%)."
From the Winery
The Menzies is in the heart of the Coonawarra terra rossa country. The vineyard site is reasonably level, with the defining terroir difference coming from the soils. Our soil is red sandy loam over limestone, which is classic Cabernet Sauvignon dirt. Most of the vines for Yalumba The Menzies were planted in 1985 and are trellised tall with wide rows. Bunches are usually small with small berries giving a concentration that favours the creation of full bodied reds.
2013 was an excellent vintage; it was preceded by good winter rains and mild conditions during flowering, giving a good even set of berries. The warm conditions continued through harvest allowing the winemakers to pick ripe grapes at the ideal colour, flavour and tannin accumulation; it is a vintage to collect.
The Menzies is made by small batch winemaking, maintaining the integrity of each eight-tonne vineyard parcel through vinification and initial barrel maturation. The grapes were crushed to small static fermenters where the liberation of colour and tannin is controlled either by plunging the skins, irrigating the fermenting wine over the cap or draining all the wine from the skins then flooding it back. Selected parcels are given extended skin contact before pressing.
Don't Pay: $65.00
WBW Rating: 95/100
Closure: Cork
Region: Coonawarra, SA
Winemaker: Peter Gambetta
Drink now until: 2035
Alc/Vol: 14.1 %
