Winemaker Notes
With lifted lime citrus aromas the palate is seamless, showing the typical powerful fruit core which is balanced by the wine's texture and soft acid profile. This wine shows a length of flavor only produced from great vineyards.
Professional Ratings
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Australian Wine Companion
While I enjoy the open-knit approaches to crafting semillon across the region, this remains the bulletproof benchmark. Even here, there have been endeavours toward greater accessibility, with some lees inflection. A meld of the finest dry-grown plots conferring a carapace of talc, sandy mineral and effusive acidity that is, to be frank, indomitable. Descriptives, ineffable. The length, justifiable. Bury this.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Vat 1 Semillon is only just starting to open up. It has notes of honeysuckle and creamed honey on cold toast, white pepper and scratched citrus. The palate is where this comes into its own. It is kaleidoscopic and rich. Glints of flavor like rays of sunshine penetrate the experience and give us a sense of what we can expect from this wine in the future. But patience will always be rewarded by Semillon. 11.5% alcohol.
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James Suckling
A later-released iteration, dubbed 'Winemaker's Selection'. A wondrous nose of buttered milk toast, a lick of lime brulee, nashi pear, wet pebble stone and yellow plum. A looser knit, warmer expression. Lightweight analytically, but more plump and medium-bodied of feel, nigh on hitting its optimal straps. A sublime, warmer vintage expression in the prime of its life.
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Wine Enthusiast
2017 was hailed as a great vintage in the Hunter Valley, but it was also hot and dry, so this is a richer, more advanced bottling than the previous vintage. Lucid and concentrated, it's unmistakably Hunter Sem, with its woolly, beeswax, lemon pith and lamp oil appeal. A mineral, flinty note adds interest. There's a laser-like line of acidity on the slippery palate and a flavor richness that flows to the long finish.
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.