James Halliday’s Top 100 wines for 2022 have been revealed!
We are thrilled to announce our 2019 Foggy Hill Vineyard DEFINITUS Pinot Noir has made the prestigious list.
2019 Foggy Hill DEFINITUS Pinot Noir
Bramble, briar and black tea aromatics set the scene for a very complex pinot that needs encouragement to release its perfume. Len Evans might well have used his expression of ‘an old ladies handbag’ with this silky pinot, joining the ’17 as the best of the Foggy Hill pinots to date.
97 points | James Halliday
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‘I am grateful we have cracked the Halliday Top 100.
I am grateful it is Foggy Hill Pinot Noir that has made the breakthrough, adding to the swelling vindication of the 16-year-old experiment, growing Pinot Noir in a lonely vineyard at the apex of the cool moist Fleurieu Peninsula at Parawa.
The Tiers Chardonnay doesn’t need the vindication, it has proven itself to be one of Australia’s most exquisite Chardonnays over its 43-year life and will continue to do so regardless. Like Foggy Hill it was once a lonely vineyard, an experiment in a completely new wine region the Piccadilly Valley. It’s not so lonely now.
Definitus is a special piece of the Foggy Hill vineyard, kept separate since 2017.
The 2019 Definitus answers to the description given in the review “brambly, briar and black tea aromatics”. I like that description especially the “black tea” bit. More, I like the Len Evans analogy of the smell of “an old lady’s handbag”. That smell of faint camphor, lavender, rose water and old leather is evocative. I was with the great man on many occasions when he used that description about a wine, and it was usually a DRC La Tache or a Rousseau Chambertin.
I will accept that description for the 2019 Tapanappa Definitus. It is the product of a very warm dry year, 1507C-days of growing season heat versus the average of 1263, but Foggy Hill held its “distinguished site” nerve and delivered true to terroir. I am proud of the wine and thanks James.’
– Brian Croser
