Wakefield Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2009
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Wakefield was founded as a Cabernet producer, so it's no surprise that the 2009 is a very good drop. The cassis fruit carries a slightly herbal tinge, with hints of coffee and vanilla helping to frame the fruit. It's lush and velvety in texture, making it drinkable now and over the next several years.
Situated in the heart of South Australia's beautiful Clare Valley, Wakefield has become one of Australia's best loved and most trusted wineries. The tale of Wakefield's wine-making goes back a few years – three generations in fact, and all began with Bill Taylor Senior, and his love of a certain Bordeaux wine.
Originally wine merchants in Sydney, a passion for wine was all part of being a Taylor, and in particular, for the famous French Clarets such as Chateau Mouton Rothschild in Bordeaux's Medoc region. It was this long held fascination for these wines which inspired the family’s foray into winemaking, and provides the inspiration and winemaking philosophy behind all Wakefield's winemaking today – to produce premium wines of exceptional and comparable quality in Australia.
It was a single wine - a first growth Bordeaux - which inspired Bill Taylor to take the plunge and to purchase a block of land in the Clare Valley and set about crafting a quality wine, which reflected the terroir and could rival its 'old world' Cabernet Sauvignons.
Almost four decades later, the company remains family owned and the philosophy unchanged. Admittedly, the winery now plants a little more than just cabernet sauvignon – with nearly 750ha of vineyards in the Clare Valley, the family excels in a number of different varieties to make up its extensive, award winning portfolio – from terrific value, everyday drinking wines to the finest Australian wines at the pinnacle of the Wakefield portfolio.
And the same philosophy runs religiously through the family tree today. Following his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, third generation winemaker Mitchell Taylor is well aware of his heritage, and passionate in its continuance. A blend of 'old world' estate philosophy and 'new world' winemaking innovation, combined with an almost fanatical attention to detail and obsession with quality, has kept this dream alive, and resulted in wines of tremendous style and quality.
A noble variety bestowed with both power and concentration, Cabernet Sauvignon enjoys success all over the globe, its best examples showing potential to age beautifully for decades. Cabernet Sauvignon flourishes in Bordeaux's Medoc where it is often blended with Merlot and smaller amounts of some combination of Cabernet Franc, Malbecand Petit Verdot. In the Napa Valley, ‘Cab’ is responsible for some of the world’s most prestigious, age-worthy and sought-after “cult” wines. Somm Secret—DNA profiling in 1997 revealed that Cabernet Sauvignon was born from a spontaneous crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc in 17th century southwest France.
The Clare Valley is actually a series of narrow north to south valleys, each with a different soil type and slightly different weather patterns along their stretch. In the southern heartland between Watervale and Auburn, there is mainly a crumbled, red clay loam soil called terra rossa and cool breezes come in from Gulf St. Vincent. A few miles north, in Polish Hill, is soft, red loam over clay; westerlies blowing in from the Spencer Gulf influece this area's climate.
The differences in soil, elevation, degree of slope and weather enable the region to produce some of Australia’s finest, aromatic, spicy and lime-pithy Rieslings, as well as excellent Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec with ripe plummy fruit, good acid and big structure.
Clare Valley is an isolated farming country with a continental climate known for its warm and sunny days, followed by cool nights—perfect for wine grapes’ development of sugar and phenolic ripeness in conjunction with notable acidity levels.