2019 Yarra Yering Dry Red No. 1 Cabernet Blend
Rightfully crowned 2022 Wine of The Year in Australia's Halliday Wine Companion, we struggle to think of a wine that is more quintessentially Australian than Yarra Yering's iconic Dry Red No. 1. A Bordeaux-red by design, this wine has all the textbook dark fruit cues of a Cabernet Sauvignon-dominant blend but with a beautifully balanced herbaceousness and rusticity that points to its Australian origins.
This wine is a staff favourite for special occasions. These wines are still an uncovered gem here in New Zealand... get them now before they skyrocket in price... they retail for AUD$200 across the ditch!
Tasting Notes
Fruit power is the hallmark of this blend, dark berry fruits and some sage adding a background herbal lift. Christmas cake mixed spice and a whisper of oak; all in balance. Beautiful fruit, a bright acid drive and tannins that form a solid foundation for a long future. Brooding but not intimidating, always exciting to watch evolve.
Winemaking
All hand harvested and sent across a sorting table, only the very best berries go into this wine. The Cabernet fruit is individually berry sorted before being crushed to build structure through fermentation. Merlot, Malbec and Petit Verdot are whole berry ferments for fragrance and palate flesh. All fermented in half-tonne fermenters and hand plunged twice daily, some of the Cabernet spending extended time on skins for complexity. Components kept separate in French oak barrels, only 40% of them new until being blended just before bottling after 15 months barrel maturation.
Varietals: 67% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, 12% Malbec, 6% Petit Verdot
Region: Yarra Valley, Victoria, Australia.
Vines: The first plantings at Yarra Yering into block No. 1 were these Cabernet vines and the name was born. The Malbec was also part of the original 1969 plantings. Some Merlot vines are interplanted with the Cabernet with subsequent plantings made in 1990 on the newly acquired neighbouring land. Petit Verdot is now only grown on the hillside of the new territories.
Cellaring: Upon bottling this wine looks and tastes shy, needing some bottle maturation to unfurl. Under suitable cellaring conditions it will evolve for 20+ years if you wish to show restraint, otherwise choose your occasion and enjoy!
Alcohol: 13.5%
