WINEMAKER Brian Croser packs a punch of flavours into his wines and here is another mouthful of moreish blackcurrants and spice. Excellent wine.
95/100
Medium to full yellow colour. A complex but youthful lanolin, wool, nut-toffee and lightly floral bouquet gives entrée to a tight, slightly shrill, high-acid palate. Very fine, tight and long. The acidity is almost a tad overdone alone, but with the right food it would sing. Fruit does the talking: the complexing factors are there but well in the background. A very smart wine which will improve with cellaring.
96 points
Wines like this don’t come our way very often. Not only is it complex and fragrant, showing red fruits and dusty tobacco leaf aromas, it wraps its compelling flavours in the finest of tannins. Definitely one of the wines of the year.
★★★★★
Merlot and cabernet franc from 1974 plantings. 66/34 blend. Worthy of a spot in the jewellery drawer of Australian wine – you could argue.
This is a swashbuckler.Tannic, herbal, chocolatey, rich, elegant and more. Warm too, pushing it, no doubting it. But so beautifully etched with tannin and so well splayed with complex cigar box, gumleaf and spice notes. Plenty of rumble under its bonnet.
95 points
Drink: 2015 - 2030
The following article featured in The Australian 5/08/2015
Brian Croser says the future of Australia’s fine wine lies in the country’s cool-climate areas
WILL LYONS
An extremely intense and focused wine; the fruit is a blend of citrus, stone fruit and apple; the barrel ferment inputs and oak maturation have been swallowed by the fruit. Needs several years to relax and open for business.
94 points
Drink by 2028
Destemmed, crushed and chilled for a 4-day cold soak, 10 months in French barriques (30% new). Light colour, but with a bright hue; the flowery bouquet of spice, rose petals and small red fruits is followed by a light, perfectly balanced palate, the promised red fruits duly delivered; the finish is long and in lockstep with all that has preceded it.
95 points
Drink by 2023
2015 was a special vintage for me, the first back in the winery that I built as the Petaluma Winery now the Tapanappa Winery, since I resigned as Petaluma’s winemaker after the 2005 vintage. The first vintage in the fledgling winery was 1979 and it has just completed its 37th vintage in a wonderfully functional way.
As if to celebrate the occasion, the vintage God pulled out a benign variation from the pack of endlessly variable weather cards.
Tapanappa in conjunction with The Wine Emporium and Lutèce Bistro are hosting a wine dinner in Brisbane on Tuesday 25th August. A great chance to see each of our single vineyard wines alongside French counterparts.
See attached flyer for more information, for reservations call Lutèce on 07 31611858 or email bookings@lutece.com.au
Still has excellent crimson-purple colour; has spent close on 3 years making its way into bottle, an especially long time for a blend such as this, but it clearly needed it; there is a complex interplay between cedar, cigar box, blackcurrant, dried herbs and a persistent tattoo of fine-grained tannins on the very long palate.
96 points
2013 Tapanappa Tiers Vineyard Chardonnay
A refined and subtle Chardonnay, the elegance of this wine is reminiscent of the great examples found in Burgundy. With stone fruit and melon on the nose, it has a crisp, dry finish that is both a little nutty and pleasantly savory.
2010 Tapanappa Whalebone Vineyard Cabernet Shiraz
Dark and brooding, there’s a powerful ripe-plum scent to this wine. Cabernet can be a bit hollow on its own and the Shiraz adds a little spice and improves the texture. There’s sweet fruit but the overall impression is one of a saline dryness.