Winemaker Notes
This is a classic Hunter Valley Semillon showing a tightly structured palate with considerable length and breadth of citrus fruit flavors. This wine is only just beginning to evolve and show a hint of toasty, bottle aged complexity. An iconic Australian wine from what is a classic vintage for Hunter Valley Semillon.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A late 'Winemaker's Selection' bottle-aged release. Among the very greatest expressions of this wine, released just as it's strutting into its halcyon years. Beguiling scents of honey-doused rock melon, Mountain Dew, green and yellow plum and buttered toast, creamy and salacious in the best sense. Yet the drive, focus and precision, behooved by the juicy acidity, drags any fold or drape of excess into a vortex of tension and regional fidelity. This is fantastic Hunter semillon and a truly world-class wine.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 Vat 1 Semillon is perfumed and floral, with nary a hair out of place here. This is sleek and streamlined, perfect in its way. It is light and detailed, fresh and distinct. It has a balanced ledger of almond meal, pressed flowers, tatami mat/straw, saline threads of acidity, pear skin, cumin, scratched yuzus, bay leaf and Murraya (orange jessamine). The texture is silky, so silky, almost slippery, without being viscose 11.5% alcohol.
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Wine Spectator
Fresh, crisp citrus and pear flavors are moving into more savory, rich and mature accents of honey, saline and beeswax. Perfectly balanced and powerful on the finish. 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.