Winemaker Notes
A very fine semillon vintage in the Hunter Valley. This wine is classicHVD Semillon showing lifted floral aromatics and tightly structured palate with considerable length of fruit and a great balance with it’s clean, soft acid structure.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 HVD Semillon is golden in the glass and moving toward. It is toasty and wide aromatically, with lemongrass and beeswax, white pepper and creamed honey on toast. This is really magnificent. It is texturally round but not squishy/bruised. 11.5% alcohol.
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Wine Enthusiast
From dry grown vineyards planted in 1908, this vintage, despite being on the tricky side, is showing beautifully. Radiant gold in color, the nose is classic Hunter Semillon: honey, beeswax, lemon oil and fresh ginger. The bone-dry palate balances laser-like acidity with layers of texture and an endlessly long, citrusy finish. Drinking deliciously now, especially if well paired with food, it has the capacity to age until 2030, at least.
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Wine Spectator
Expressive and complex, featuring candied ginger, apricot and lemon curd flavors that mingle with bright, youthful acidity and a hint of lanolin. Drink now through 2030.
Sémillon has the power to create wines with considerable structure, depth and length that will improve for several decades. It is the perfect partner to the vivdly aromatic Sauvignon Blanc. Sémillon especially shines in the Bordeaux region of Sauternes, which produces some of the world’s greatest sweet wines. Somm Secret—Sémillon was so common in South Africa in the 1820s, covering 93% of the country’s vineyard area, it was simply referred to as Wyndruif, or “wine grape.”
Most admired for citrus-driven, mineral-rich and often age-worthy Semillon wines, Hunter Valley is one of Australia’s oldest wine regions and was home to its very first commercial vineyards. The region’s warm summer nights coupled with autumn cloud cover and cool sea breezes allow full ripening and healthy acidity levels for Semillon; its diverse soils of volcanic basalt and white alluvial sands promote the development of Semillon’s delicate aromas. Hunter Valley Semillons can certainly be enjoyed in their youth but with 10 to 20 years in the cellar, the best examples develop intriguing notes of honey, browned butter and roasted nuts.
Chardonnay and Shiraz also do well in Hunter Valley.