2020 John Riddoch Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon

The beautifully expressive 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon Wynns John Riddoch radiates with lavender and violets over a deep core of blackberry and gravel. The fine oak is seamlessly balanced. There's a fantastic brightness of flavor with dried herbs, fennel seed and rosemary intertwined with layers of robust dark fruit flavors. A heart backbone of dense tannins is sure to reward the patient for what is a searingly weighty Coonawarra Cabernet.

This wine is made from just 1% of the estate’s Cabernet on terra rossa. Wet winter and spring. Poor fruit set. Hot December. In 2020 all the fruit came from Childs vineyard, planted ungrafted in 1969. Aged for 17 months in oak (23% new, 45% second use, 32% third use). Very deep, shaded blackish crimson. Rich, ripe nose. Powerful cassis aroma, ripe palate entry, black-olive flavours and then really quite a lot of fine tannin before a dry finish. Velvety texture on the way to the tannin and I’d guess this wine will age rather beautifully, but I wouldn’t open it for a while. (JR)

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.