2012 Mayer Close Planted Pinot Noir (Yarra Valley)

Gembrook Hill, PHI, and Hoddles Creek are my go to Yarra Pinots. Budget permitting I’m going to have to add Mayer to my list. Of course, Timo Mayer, the winemaker here is also part of the winemaking duo at Gembrook Hill.

It starts with a lovely perfumed nose with beautiful sweet cherry to the fore. Great to drink with generous, almost viscous dark cherry fruit. It nevertheless retains a lightness of feel, underpinned by a prominent acidity and some minerally notes. Latent complexity and length in spades. Very good now and likely great in 5 years or so.

Rated:

+


RRP: $55
ABV: 13.0%
Closure: Screwcap
Drink: 2015-2022+
Website: www.timomayer.com.au


Red

2012 Hoddles Creek Pinot Noir (Yarra Valley)

This wine has become one of my automatic cellar inclusions each year. The 2012 keeps up the superb value for money tradition.

Needs another year or so in bottle but it’s already pretty damn drinkable. It’s lithe, balanced and has a nice touch of mid-palate richness. Flavours of cherry, five spice, orange peel, and touches of smokiness and undergrowth. Oak is nicely integrated.  I think this wine might be at its most enjoyable over the next few years, but the fruit, structure, and balance all suggest it will go the long haul as well.

Rated: 4 Stars
RRP: $19
ABV: 13.2%
Drink: 2014-2021
Website: www.hoddlescreek.com.au


Red

Tarrawarra Estate 2010 Reserve Pinot Noir

Tarrawarra are an impressive, well-resourced winery with a long history of making Pinot Noir in the Yarra Valley. Hailing from the much vaunted 2010 Yarra vintage, this wine was on the tasting bench for 4 days and impressed.


Initially decanted for 2 hours, the wine was a bit closed on the first day of tasting.  When it began to open up, it had restrained red fruits, was tight and textured with impressive length and focus. Interestingly, the savoury, slightly stalky finish provided more fruit impact than was evident on the front palate.
By day two, the wine had opened up elegantly with herbs, cherry / raspberry fruit, and an emerging earthiness. Day 3 was lost due to a late finish at work!. By day 4 the wine was singing: richer overall, with dark spice, red cherry, ripe strawberry fruit a bit of chocolate and fine tannins. The standout feature of this wine - structure and length - was still evident till the end. A lovely wine that needs several years or more in the cellar to open up like it was on the fourth day of tasting.


In a wine blogging world that covets small batch, rare and exotic wines, the Tarrawarra Reserve Pinot stands out proudly like a burgundy-red Bentley in a carpark full of Kombi vans, Holden Commodores and Toyota Prius enviro-cars.

Rating – 94+ Points
Closure: Screwcap

RRP: $60
ABV: $13.5%
Website: www.tarrawarra.com.au

2010 PHI Pinot Noir (Lusatia Park, Yarra Valley)

When I visited the Yarra Valley in 2010, every winemaker I talked to was buzzing about the vintage that had not long finished, and that quality appeared evident from the barrel samples I tried. I came away thinking that I should go long on Yarra Valley wines from 2010 once the wines were released. In particular that trip convinced me of the quality of upper Yarra Pinot Noir. The pinot noir grown in this subregion are upper echelon in the Australian pinot hierarchy. The three wineries in particular that I love from this subregion are Hoddles Creek, Gembrook Hill, and PHI. From the 2010 vintage I’ve now bought for my cellar the Hoddles Creek Estate, Hoddles Creek 1er, Gembrook Hill, and PHI. Having tasted them now, I’m as convinced of them as I was in barrel, and I reckon they will age a treat.

This 2010 PHI Pinot Noir is everything I want from a Pinot. Initially seductive, beautifully structured, and ultimately savoury, this is a beautiful Pinot Noir. I tasted it over 3 days and it didn’t let up. It presents a refined line of beautiful flavour and finishes with terrific length. Pitch perfect in balancing generosity and elegance, it’s approachable now, but will build even greater complexity over the next 5-10 years. I think this will equal and in time possibly surpass the superb 2006 PHI. 4.5 Stars.

Rated:


RRP: $55
ABV:13.0%
Closure: Screwcap
Website: http://www.phiwines.com/

2006 Review - http://tinyurl.com/2bboowo
2008 Review - http://tinyurl.com/78dbqju


Red

2010 Hoddles Creek Estate Pinot Noir (Yarra Valley)

I’m an unabashed fan of this winery, and loved the barrel samples I tasted of this wine last year - http://redtobrownwinereview.blogspot.com/2010/07/hoddles-creek-estate-2010-vintage.html

So with that positive bias disclosed, the 2010 edition of Hoddles Creek Pinot Noir is a beauty.

With some air the bouquet becomes increasingly expressive and sexy. Lovely aromas of cherry, sap, spice, along with a touch of stalkiness. To drink there is drive and persistence to this wine. Flavours of sour cherry, rose petal, spice, and a hint of bitterness are delivered with beautiful palate weight and fine tannins. The finish doesn’t waver. The word that keeps coming up in my notes on this wine is moreish. It’s a serious, structured wine that will undoubtedly age well, and yet with a bit of air its more than drinkable now, and that moreishness makes it difficult to keep your hands off.

At $20, this Pinot Noir has no peer in Australia in my opinion. 4 stars

Rated:


RRP: $20
ABV: 13.2%
Website: http://www.hoddlescreekestate.com.au/


Red

Face-Off - 1998 Tarrawarra Pinot Noir (Yarra Valley)

Introduction (Red): The ageability of Australian Pinot Noir is something that continues to impress me, and I think it’s only a story that’s going to build as an increasing number of our Pinots sail into their second and even third decades.

My first experience with aged Tarrawarra Pinot Noir was the 2001, which I had earlier in the year at a Tarrawarra dinner hosted in Sydney, and in amongst some fantastic competition it was my wine of the night. It was a seductive Pinot right in the groove with plenty of years in front of it.

Red: The 1998 is perhaps not quite at the level of the 2001, but is still a very good wine and drinking very well at 13 years of age. Funnily enough it reminded me a bit of aged Hunter Shiraz, or put another way, it reminded me that aged Hunter Shiraz starts to look like Pinot.

A lovely aged nose of cherry, pot pourri, caramel oak, and leather. It still has some lovely fruit on the front palate, but then very quickly moves to more secondary notes including earth, tobacco, and sour cherry. It’s finishes with good length and there’s still some fine tannin in support. It’s eminently drinkable and fantastic with food. It could be cellared for a few more years, but I think it’s more or less at its aged peak now.

Brown: I echo Red's comments about the 2001 Tarrawarra Pinot - it was a standout wine on the night of the tasting. Given our mutual enthusiasm for that wine, I was interested to see how the 1998 compared.

Bottle variation may have been at play with my sample, but I did not pick up the same level of fruit on the palate. The nose of the wine I tasted was quite complex, and a definite strength: Primary fruit had given way to somewhat aged characteristics, including wild mushroom, moist earth/soil, forest floor, with a subtle liqueur cherry scent.
On the front palate and to a lesser extent, the mid palate, there was some nice black cherry, all spice, leather and earthiness. The back palate was a bit disjointed, with slightly astringent acidity and possibly alcohol heat at the finish.

Given how alluring the nose of this wine was, I would suggest for this particular bottle it may have been at its peak a few years earlier when the fruit would be more prominent/ in balance at the finish. Still, it settled down with more air, and was a solid wine.

Closing Comments (Brown)  It is promising that Tarrawarra wine maker Clare Halloran managed to produce a Pinot that has survived 13 years (when many of its vintage/era could have fallen over after 4 years). The quality of the 2001 Tarrawarra adds further weight to the opening introduction from Red about the increasing age-worthiness of Australian Pinot. While I would be surprised to see an Australian Pinot emphatically reach its 30^th year, I find it increasingly difficult to rule it out based on this teenager from 1998.

2008 PHI Pinot Noir (Yarra Valley)

I’ve read on a few occasions that Lusatia Park Vineyard, in the upper Yarra Valley, is a site of “Grand Cru” potential. The 2006 of this wine was possibly the best Australian Pinot Noir I’ve had and at least in that instance seemed to justify the hype (http://tinyurl.com/2bboowo).

The 2008 is a Pinot of complexity and potential, but coming from a less than perfect vintage, I’m not sure it will quite scale the heights of the 06.

As with the 06, the 08 performs a lovely dance between sweet and savoury. It’s seductive and complex. Cherry, liquorice, sap, spice, orange peel, smokiness, and truffle all reveal themselves over time. There’s a hint of appealing bitterness and a lovely sense of minerality as well.

There’s great mid-palate intensity and drive, but over the two nights I tasted it, it never quite finished as convincingly as I would have liked. It’s a very good wine, and if a few more years in the cellar can see it better integrated and longer, then it may well fulfil the potential that this special vineyard offers.

Rated:
+

RRP: $60
ABV: 13.0%
Website: http://www.phiwines.com/


Red