CELLAR DOOR
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While this wine is immensely enjoyable now with its slightly softer approach, faint floral/gum notes, delicate clove and cinnamon aromas, and a little stem impact from some whole bunch in the make, there is a latent power in the wine, a grip that suggests this may build into a surprise package in a couple of years.
Of three fine Tapanappa chardonnay iterations, ranging from $39 to $79, this comes from a small close-spaced section, clonally selected – we’re getting into deeply serious wine craft here – where the result is distinctively different, its white stone fruit flavours concentrated, acidity tight, and the mouthfeel superfine. Impressive.
5 stars
Complex cashew, vanilla, malt and gently dairy-like aromas; the palate soft and seamless, refined and long with savouriness, length and finesse. It's young and will build even greater character with a little more time.
Brian Croser’s Foggy Hill vineyard is on one of the coldest and wettest sites in the state, chosen to nurture a pinot that clearly revels in the climate there. This is exciting, high-toned wine with vibrant varietal aromatics of crushed black cherry fruit, and wooded and bush herbals adding a forest-like background to a sweetly spotted mouthful of pure fruit joys. It’s delicious, drinkable and delightfully svelte.
5 stars
The final barriques of 2016 vintage wines have been filled awaiting the finish of malo-lactic fermentation. In our vineyards in the Piccadilly Valley, at Parawa, on the Fleurieu Peninsula and at Wrattonbully it has been an abundant vintage of full flavoured ripe fruit wines, the reds displaying bright, intense colours.
2016 vintage was dry, very warm, moderate (no heatwaves), early and compressed between regions and varieties.
A number of firsts here for Brian Croser and Tapanappa: his first revisit of making a wine with Eden Valley fruit in forty years; the first wine made with Con Moshos (former Petaluma Chief Winemaker, now returned to the Tapanappa winery); and the first wine under the Tapanappa label made with fruit off of a vineyard not their own.
Jasmine, florals, lime, bath salts; delicate on entry, leading to mineral and sharp citrus; great acidity. A mere 300 dozen made of this wine, available ex-cellar door and website only.
Be sure to seek some out - it possesses a beautiful flow, on to a textural spread across the back palate. Exquisite finish. 93
Original review: http://www.thevinsomniac.com/2016/04/tapanappa-riesling-2015.html
Lovely finesse as well as concentration and length of palate. Quite oaky on the bouquet at this tender age. A wine of great potential.
96 points.
Deep red colour with a tinge of purple and a floral, lifted boquet showing some earthy, minty and forest-floor nuances. Dried flowers. Chewy tannins, a trace of Vegemite from oak and development and (possibly) lees contact. The wine is full-bodied and dense, generous in fleshy extract, with an amplitude of ripe, supple tannins. The back-palate is lovely and rich. A superb wine.
95 points.
A savoury and structured vintage for Foggy Hill true to a slightly warmer vintage, a wine of beetroot character, sour morello cherries and sweet and sour notes, with robust tannins and good persistence. A more rustic season for Foggy Hill.
92
Wonderfully pure and impeccably balanced. Effortlessly contrasts the richness of fig and white peach fruit, underscored by classy cashew nut French oak, and ties it all off seamlessly with lemon and lime zest and the crunchy malic acidity of this high site, accenting the mineral texture of 1,600 million year old geology.
96 points
