Kilikanoon Blocks Road Cabernet Sauvignon 2003 Front Label
Kilikanoon Blocks Road Cabernet Sauvignon 2003 Front Label

Winemaker Notes

Deep inky / crimson red with distinct purple hues, a blend of violets, liquorice and small berry fruits on the nose integrated with subtle perfumed French oak flavors. The palate combines leafy berry fruit flavours with hints of chocolate / licorice that complex well with French oak. Wine has a tight acidity with a slightly drying firm tannin finish and a balanced alcohol smoothness that provides good palate length and persistence.

Professional Ratings

  • 91
    Readers get significant flavor concentration and power as well as surprising elegance in the 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon Blocks Road, a 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from 40- to 60-year-old parcels aged 24 months in large French hogsheads. This unfined and unfiltered cuvee is a deep, full-throttle Cabernet offering notes of loamy soil interwoven with creme de cassis, cigar smoke, and spice. Dense, rich, intense, elegant, and impressively endowed, it would be difficult to find a California Cabernet for under $50 that competes with this beauty.
Kilikanoon

Kilikanoon

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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.

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Clare Valley

South Australia

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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.

STEBLOCKSRD_2003 Item# 129672