Winemaker Notes
Sourced from material aged between six and ten years old, this wine is the foundation of the style; displaying the fresh raisin aromas, rich fruit, clean spirit and great length of flavor on the palate which are the mark of all the Muscats of Rutherglen.
While these wines are seen as after-dinner drinks, try serving them as an aperitif, particularly in winter. A small glass goes a very long way, warming the mind as well as the stomach. And remember that a bottle once opened, will keep for some months without deteriorating, providing it is recorked after each serving.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Chambers is a benchmark producer of the Rutherglen style and this late-picked Muscat offers a burntorange-sunset hue in the glass, with a green rim. Evoking enticing aromas of orange marmalade, honey, medjool dates and almond blossom, the palate continues along similar lines. Unctuous and intensely sweet, there’s just enough acidity keep this from syrup territory. It would benefit enormously from a creamy, salty cheese pairing.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The NV Rosewood Vineyards Muscat appears only slightly less complex than the Muscadelle. Possessing a very pale brown color with a glint of gold, this wine is quite grapey on the nose with notes of brandied sultanas and spice cake. In the mouth it’s very sweet and rich with relatively medium-high acid to balance. The finish is very long with flavors of spicy grape syrup. As with the Muscadelle, this is also an amazing value.
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Wine & Spirits
Here's a steal: a half bottle of rich, stylish muscat for $16. This is filled with luscious, plump peach flavor, perfumed tart cherry notes with a rummy, sugarcane sweetness in the finish. Serve it with hazelnut ice cream.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The Chambers Rosewood Vineyards Muscat shows aromas and flavors of toasted almonds, Sherry-like nuances, and pleasant oxidative qualities. Pair it with a mild yet distinctive blue vein cheese. (Tasted: March 22, 2024, San Francisco, CA)
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
Located in the warm and dry northeastern corner of the state of Victoria, bordering the southern side of the Murray River, the Rutherglen region bears a long history of fortified wine production.
Rutherglen's main variety, Muscat blanc à Petits Grains (also known as Brown Muscat or Muscat à Petit Grains Rouge for its often pink- or red-tinged berries) flourishes in the region’s deep, moisture retaining, alluvial, red loam soils. To make the distinguished and aptly named fortified, "Rutherglen," these Muscat grapes are harvested after left to semi-raisin on the vine. Fermentation only reaches a few degrees alcohol before the juice is fortified with grape spirit and aged in a barrel system resembling a cross between a Sherry solera and a Madeira estufagem. Rutherglen wines boast great concentration and fine aromas hinting at orange flowers and spice, and are capable of astounding quality.
The Rutherglen region grows second grape, called Muscadelle (confusingly unrelated Muscat), which also produces a quality fortified wine. Historically Australians called the grape “Tokay” and believed it to have Hungarian ancestry but when the French ampelographer, Paul Truel, identified it as Muscadelle in 1976, the name had to be changed. Today varietal wines made from Muscadelle can be called, “Topaque.”