• French oak
• Black berries
• Cinnamon
• Silky tannins

"Classically expressed, the perfumed bouquet shows creme de cassis, dark cherry, vanilla and tobacco characters with a touch of pepper spice. The palate delivers succulent fruit flavours and lovely mid palate weight, beautifully complemented by fine texture and silky tannins. At its best: now to 2027" Sam Kim, Wine Orbit, Jun 2020

Dark cherry red. Sweet blue and black berries up front open up to savoury spices and a hint of violet floral notes. This is classic Margaret River Cabernet. It’s an elegant wine, with sweet berries up front mixed with savoury spice flavours of cinnamon, mocha and cedar. There’s also hints of juniper. The tannins are silky soft and lush, they combine with the acid to give this wine a wonderful structure and length. This wine is complex and will reward your patience over the next ten + years with proper cellaring, if you can wait for that long.

From the summer rainfall & river flooding in the Swan Valley, to the threat of not ripening any of the red grapes in Margaret River, the 2017 vintage will be remembered as one of the most nerve-racking and anxious seasons. It certainly beats all of the last 10 vintages I’ve seen at Sandalford. Overall, the growing season, from Spring through to Autumn was much cooler than average. There were no heat extremes. This delayed ripening of all varieties by at least 3-4 weeks compared to normal. At the start of April, all of the red grapes were still on the vine, several blocks needing a good 4-5 weeks to fully ripen. With April normally the change in season, there were many hours spent watching the weather forecast, waiting for the rain to start. Unbelievably Mother Nature was on our side, April was one of the driest on record. Our latest season ever, with the last of the Cabernet harvested in early May. The wines produced this season are elegant, showing more flavour complexity and concentration.

The grapes for this wine are exclusively from our 40+ year old Wilyabrup Estate Vineyard in Margaret River. After crushing and de-stemming the grapes underwent fermentation in small 5-10 tonne fermenters. The traditional method of pumping over was used during this time to optimise colour, flavour and tannin extraction. Near the end of fermentation, the wine was pressed, with the free run and pressings kept as one, and inoculated for Malolactic Fermentation (MLF) with selected bacteria. At the completion of MLF, the wine was racked and transferred to French oak barrels (25% new) for 14 months, before being blended together and then bottled.