Winemaker Notes
Wonderful with a chargrilled rib eye on the bone or porcini mushroom, thyme and quinoa risotto.
Professional Ratings
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Australian Wine Companion
Another beautiful release. Mint, mulberry and blackcurrant flavours drift with tobacco and forest herbs. It's a cooling cabernet but a ripe one, fluid and refreshing but firm and solid. This wine needs to be stashed in a cool, dark place for at least a handful of years to start showing its best.
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Wine Spectator
The 2018 The Menzies Cabernet Sauvignon is luscious and velvety in the mouth, with a lustrous core of shimmering purple Cabernet fruit. The tannins are typical of Coonawarra in that they are firm, yet they are seamlessly inlaid into the fruit, which feels as if it spills over the edge of the glass. Seductive but rigid, it will have a long life in front of it, make no mistake. You get cassis, resin, licorice, raspberry, gravel/iodine, bay leaf, dark chocolate, after dinner mints (the only brand to be had is the After Eight mints, of course), and notions of cedar spice. Brilliant. 14% alcohol, sealed under cork.
Rating: 95+ -
James Suckling
Aromas of blackberries and cassis with dried lavender, violets, notes of walnuts and spices. Full-bodied, firm and structured with bright and fresh black and blue fruit character, highlighted with a steady acidity and mineral backbone. Long and even. Drink or hold.
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Vinous
The refined 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Yalumba The Menzies is intriguing thanks to its sage and thyme layers perfectly matched to an effortless core of blackcurrant, with subtle oak sitting in reserve. Those herbal elements continue through the palate, supported by a firm backbone of sinewy tannins to support a long, youthful and vibrant finish. This is far from ready and needs time to blossom.
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Wine Enthusiast
Still quite young, ripe and oaky at first pour, then expanding with aeration, Menzies offers dense aromas of black cherry jam, plum preserves, black pepper, bay leaf atop a layer of toasty sweet oak. The palate is tightly wound in drying, granular tannins. Heightened acidity and tangy red and black fruit make for a structure that should take this another decade at least.
Cellar Selection
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.
Distinguished by a thin, subterranean band of crumbled, red clay loam, Coonawarra is a fairly flat, otherwise unobtrusive region with a cool Mediterranean climate, actually not dissimilar to Bordeaux.
In Coonawarra, this unique layer of red clay is called, "terra rossa" and gets its color from iron oxide. The terra rossa soil overlies soft, penetrable limestone, in a continuous area that is part of the Limestone Coast zone of South Australia. This uncommon layering of soils creates a substrate that is both well draining and at the same time, offers good water retention to support vine roots through dry summers.
Not surprisingly, Coonawara experiences great success with the Bordeaux varieties, namely Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, but also Shiraz. However Cabernet reigns superior and accounts for half of the Coonawarra harvest each year. Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon develops powerful, yet polished tannins, ripe, red berry fruit and often sweet herb or dried mint qualities. The region has an increased focus on the individual expressions of single vineyards.