2021 John Riddoch Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon
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Tasting Notes
The 2021 John Riddoch Limited Release Cabernet Sauvignon is a brilliant wine. It is achingly intense yet is defined by its levity, which is not a common attribute in Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon. The wine expounds the virtues of the red gravel in which the fruit was grown, via its iodine and crushed shells, cassis and blood, sweet marrow and tobacco. It tastes so clearly of the place, which is a wonderful thing. The back palate swells with flavor, framed by the earth and the attuned oak. This is a tribute to the earth, an ode to it. Plentiful tannins bob along on the current of fruit. This will cellar interminably. It's up there in both quality and feel with the 2010, or so I think. 13.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.
Critic Scores
Average Score
Erin Larkin, Wine Advocate
Jane Anson, Inside Bordeaux
More reviews and scores
Deep inky purple, full concentration, gorgeous chalky tannins, this is just such a consistently impressive wine, with stretched out architecture and a real kick of freshness, full of Cabernet Sauvignon cassis that sits on the edge of capsicum and eucalyptus, with rose bud and raspberry leaf, black truffle, espresso, cocoa bean, peppery fleshy plum. Savoury, intense and highly spiced. Great quality, tasted twice, easily one of the best wines of the September Releases.
Coonawarra, South Australia; 100% Cabernet Sauvignon; aged for 16 months in French oak, roughly half of which were hogsheads, half barriques; pH 3.56; 13.5% alcohol). Wynns’ flagship wine since its first release in 1982, made in small quantities from the best Cabernet Sauvignon plots in the heart of its terra rossa holdings. An almost luminous shocking pink-purple rim and practically opaque at the core. A huge step up from the already impressive Black Label Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon, this is seriously impressive in 2021. Wild herbs – thyme, rosemary, perhaps a hint of violet and rose petal – accompany the dark briary berry fruits and the raspberry and loganberry notes. There’s a lovely note of roasted hazelnut shells too. This is very open and expressive aromatically, more so than the 2020 tasted this time last year. There’s a little cassis with aeration and the finest dark chocolate ganache. In the mouth, this is fabulously impressive, with gentle, soft and ultra-fine grained tannins holding the fruit quite tightly to a pronounced central spinal column richly covered in dense, intense and concentrated dark berry fruits. Long and slowly tapering on the finish, with the granularity of the tannins almost massaging the fruit into the palate. I love the lithe, sapid and lifted finish. Elegant for a wine with so much natural power. As good a vintage of this wine as I have ever tasted. 97
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About the producer
The region’s oldest and most famous wine producer, Wynns is synonymous with Coonawarra. The talented team crafts a wide range of wines, with a focus on Coonawarra’s trademark Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz.