CABERNET ROCKS!
After a few days Coonawarra one thing is clear to me: the Cabernet Sauvignons are sublime. Okay, there are also very fine shiraz wines to find, but at each tasting Cabernets are still in my notebook with the most excellent marks. Today I spent almost an entire day hanging out at Wynns, the company that every Australian wine lover knows of the building with three gabled roofs on the labels. Because Wynns  is one of the oldest companies in Coonawarra and has an excellent reputation, there are whole tribes to take a picture of the historic building and come to taste. If you do would like to buy the wine that is no problem. But Wynns is not stupid, so some wines you can only get in the cellar.

Head winemaker Sue Hodder shows me the lab where single vineyard wines from 2008 are waiting for the decision: which gets its own label? Besides these ‘normal’ wines she and winemaker Sarah Pidgeon select grapes from one of the older vineyards to make special wines: some vineyards are 90 to 110 years old!

Superintendent of the vineyards Allen Jenkins drives me through the vineyards which have full bunches of grapes now, they have to ripen one or two weeks more. And finally I ended up with Sarah in the tasting room. She is excited about the 2008 Riesling which is indeed very fresh, but I think her heart is mostly with the dark red wines which the region is famous for. I totally agree. In the Cabernet (75%)-Shiraz (25%) from 2006 I smell dark fruit and taste some chocolate through the tannins. But I prefer the 2006 Black Label Cabernet Sauvignon with a beautiful dark, dull color, and taste some blackberries and mint. Firm, dry and probably even better it ist able to age some more. For the moment I found my number 1 ...

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This article was created on March 17, 2009 by Trouw Journalist Remke de Lange. For more wine articles: www.remkedelange.nl. This article is copyrighted