2020 Wynn's Coonawarra Estate, John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Coonawarra, Australia

2020 Wynn's Coonawarra Estate, John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Coonawarra, Australia

Product: 20208125400
 
2020 Wynn's Coonawarra Estate, John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Coonawarra, Australia

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Available by the case In Bond. Pricing excludes duty and VAT, which must be paid separately before delivery. Storage charges apply.
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Description

The nose is remarkably bright with notes of violets, blackberries, black plums and raspberries. The fruit is plush on the palate, supported by refreshing acidity. If you're expecting a hugely extracted South Australian Cabernet, you'd be mistaken. There is real elegance and finesse to the wine with velvety tannins and high-toned aromatics. This is Coonawarra to a T and although extremely approachable already, has the fruit concentration and structure to last another two decades.

Liam McKeown, Account Manager, Berry Bros. & Rudd (August 2023)

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Critics reviews

Jane Anson95/100

Intense inky purple in colour, and these tannins are silky smooth. Opens with controlled delivery of juicy black cherry, cassis and damson, with plenty of estate signature, majoring on smoked earth and oyster shell salinity. The longer you sit with it, the more the underlying brightness of the fruit comes through, delivering in spades the blackcurrant pastille that is such a signature of Australian Cab. Cold flowering in Spring meant this was an extremely small crop, down as low as 2 tons per hectare instead of the usual 6, and the 2020 John Riddoch comes from a single vineyard (Child's Vineyard) because of the cooler-than-average season, with extremely old 19th century vines helping achieve this concentration and complexity. 23% new oak, Sue Hodder winemaker.

Drink 2026 – 2040

Jane Anson, Inside Bordeaux, JaneAnson.com (August 2023)

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James Suckling95/100

A lustrous deep crimson. The oak is a little fuzzy and unresolved, but this is a full-weighted wine built to go a considerable distance, despite the cooler, challenging conditions. It seems more gently extracted than usual as a result. The fruit is a bit sweet and the texture rounder. Sourced from just a single block. Mottled blue fruits, black pastille, mulberry, licorice strap and clove, with a fleck of tea tree across the finish. The tannins, gritty, chewy and nicely moreish, although with a cushy approachability. Best to wait. Drinkable now, but best from 2027. Screw cap.

Ned Goodwin MW, Senior Editor for JamesSuckling.com (August 2023)

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Wine-Pages95/100

Made from a stringent selection of fruit, and only in the best years, this spent 17 months in French oak. Only 23% of that was new oak. The nose is particularly perfumed, not just with touches of violet and raspberry, but there's herbal notes too, like bay and curry leaf, a sense of umami depth. A little bit of eucalyptus comes through. In the mouth it is broad and tannic at this stage. Firm, dry fruit and oak tannins coat the mouth, but don't completely overpower the inherent ripeness of black fruit. Acidity too has a plum skin grippiness, notes of tapenade and liquorice adding weight and darkness to the picture. Very long, very concentrated and very young there is complexity already, but this will cellar - Wynns say for 30 years.

Tom Canavan, Wine-Pages

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The Real Review97/100

Impressively dense, dark, glass-staining colour with a strong tint of purple. Concentrated and superripe blackberry aromas, bright and intense and beautifully ripe with minimal herbal accents. Nuances of tar and licorice as well. It's full bodied and rich, concentrated and ample, with lashings of supple, fine-grained tannins and a long carry. A powerful wine but one that glides across the palate effortlessly. A beautiful and long-term cabernet.

Huon Hooke, The Real Review

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About this WINE

Wynns Coonawarra Estate

Wynns Coonawarra Estate

This famous wine estate Wynns was established by Scottish pioneer John Riddoch in 1891, who planted vines in the surrounding area, but its current identity dates from 1951 when it was purchased by Melbourne wine merchants Samuel and David Wynn, who re-named it Wynn’s Coonawarra Estate. 

Coonawarra, which is an Aboriginal word meaning honeysuckle, is an outcrop of land 300 miles from both Adelaide and Melbourne.  It is a unique viticultural area which owes its fame to the terra rossa (literally “red earth”) soil. This soil has proved itself to be ideally suited to the production of outstanding grapes for wine-making, particularly the Cabernet Sauvignon grape.

The climate here, at only 50 miles from the chilly Southern Ocean and the influence of the Antarctic winds, is marginal for vine-growing, as is the case for most of the great wines of the world, and the result is the production of wines of great complexity and intensity of flavour.

Today the wines are regarded as benchmarks for the district, lauded for their consistent quality and depth of flavour. Under Sue Hodder, who has been Senior Winemaker since 1998, Wynns Coonawarra Estate produces an annual collection of wines from superb value Riesling and Shiraz through to the flagships John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon and Michael Shiraz; the last two are made only in vintages when the grapes are deemed exceptional.

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Coonawarra

Coonawarra

Coonawarra is a famous wine region located on South Australia's Limestone Coast, an hour's drive (37 miles) east from the ocean. Populated by Scottish and Irish immigrants during the mid-19th century, it was John Riddoch's love of horticulture that led him to set up a fruit farm on the terra rossa soils of Katnook, later renamed as Coonawarra in 1897.

Although Riddoch managed to plant vines and make wine before his death in 1901, it wasn't until the 1950s that the Wynn family relaunched the Coonawarra name with the purchase of his winery. A trickle of corporate investment then followed (ie Mildara), before turning into a flood during the 1960s and 1970s. Now approximately 4,000 hectares, the controversial Coonawarra Geographical Indication zone encompasses prized terra rossa soils (free-draining red loam over limestone over an aquifer), as well as not-so-noble turf consisting of red, sandy, brown loam and poorly-drained black loam.

A low-lying cool area with a Mediterranean climate, it has moderate, relative humidity (49 percent); at 59 metres, it has a similar altitude to the Médoc (47m), is drier and 10 percent cooler – probably due to the notable cloud-cover during the key months. Non-detail/hedge pruning shapes the vineyards, resulting in large canopies and relatively high-pH juice. Cabernet Sauvignon is king, blended with Merlot matured in American oak with the capacity to age for up to 10 years.

Recommended Producers: Wynns, Coonawarra, Bowen Estate

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Cabernet Sauvignon

Cabernet Sauvignon

The most famous red wine grape in the world and one of the most widely planted.

It is adaptable to a wide range of soils, although it performs particularly well on well-drained, low-fertile soils. It has small, dusty, black-blue berries with thick skins that produce deeply coloured, full-bodied wines with notable tannins. Its spiritual home is the Médoc and Graves regions of Bordeaux where it thrives on the well-drained gravel-rich soils producing tannic wines with piercing blackcurrant fruits that develop complex cedarwood and cigar box nuances when fully mature.

The grape is widely planted in California where Cabernet Sauvignon based wines are distinguished by their rich mixture of cassis, mint, eucalyptus and vanilla oak. It is planted across Australia and with particular success in Coonawarra where it is suited to the famed Terra Rossa soil. In Italy barrique aged Cabernet Sauvignon is a key component in Super Tuscans such as Tignanello and Sassicaia, either on its own or as part of a blend with Sangiovese.

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When is a wine ready to drink?

We provide drinking windows for all our wines. Alongside the drinking windows there is a bottle icon and a maturity stage. Bear in mind that the best time to drink a wine does also depend on your taste.

Not ready

These wines are very young. Whilst they're likely to have lots of intense flavours, their acidity or tannins may make them feel austere. Although it isn't "wrong" to drink these wines now, you are likely to miss out on a lot of complexity by not waiting for them to mature.

Ready - youthful

These wines are likely to have plenty of fruit flavours still and, for red wines, the tannins may well be quite noticeable. For those who prefer younger, fruitier wines, or if serving alongside a robust meal, these will be very enjoyable. If you choose to hold onto these wines, the fruit flavours will evolve into more savoury complexity.

Ready - at best

These wines are likely to have a beautiful balance of fruit, spice and savoury flavours. The acidity and tannins will have softened somewhat, and the wines will show plenty of complexity. For many, this is seen as the ideal time to drink and enjoy these wines. If you choose to hold onto these wines, they will become more savoury but not necessarily more complex.

Ready - mature

These wines are likely to have plenty of complexity, but the fruit flavours will have been almost completely replaced by savoury and spice notes. These wines may have a beautiful texture at this stage of maturity. There is lots to enjoy when drinking wines at this stage. Most of these wines will hold in this window for a few years, though at the very end of this drinking window, wines start to lose complexity and decline.