Australia’s 10 Top Cabernets

Funny grape, cabernet sauvignon. Wherever in the world they plant it, it still imparts its distinctive varietal qualities to its wine. Australia is no exception. You could mount a sound case that outside of Bordeaux, the world’s best cabernet-based wines are grown here, although a few sensitive Californian noses might be put askew in the process. For what it’s worth, the Qantas Cup the wine competition between American and Australian wines put the verdict well and truly in our favour.

So which are the best Australian cabernet sauvignons and cabernet blends? Firmly expecting to initiate more arguments than I finish, here are my top ten, listed alphabetically after the best of them, Penfolds Bin 707.

1. Penfolds Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon

Region: Barossa Valley & Coonawarra
Current Vintage: 1988
Price: $31.00

For mine the best wine of the Penfolds stable, this great red which always demonstrates exemplary cabernet sauvignon qualities is sourced from a number of South Australian regions, always with a hefty component from Coonawarra. It has dominated the wine show circuit for the last decade and is welcome to dominate me any time it likes. A benchmark cellaring wine with near-perfect fruit and fabulous long tannins, it was revived in 1976 after Len Evans told Penfolds their decision to drop it after 1969 bordered on the insane. He was perfectly correct.

2. Cape Mentelle Cabernet Sauvignon

Region: Margaret River
Current Vintage: 1990
Price: $24.00

Here’s an Australian doing it his own way. Although Cape Mentelle’s Cabernet Sauvignon is no longer made in the heroic dimensions of years gone past such as from 1978 to 1981, David Hohnen has fashioned a superb ripe cellaring wine with tremendous depth of fruit, great use of new oak and fabulous structure. There’s class and flavour aplenty in every bottle since 1981, which itself should settle down and soften out some day.

3. Giaconda Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot & Cabernet Franc

Region: Central Victoria
Current Vintage: 1990
Price: $24.00

Rick Kinzbrunner is a talented and instinctive winemaker unable to do much wrong in recent years. His natural flair has been enhanced with extensive experience in France and the French breeding in all his wines and is obvious to see. His cabernet blend is typically lean and tight when young, but in time the fruit then opens up in perfect harmony with glorious complexity of flavour and finely balanced tannins.

4. Henschke Cyril Henschke Cabernet Sauvignon

Region: Adelaide Hills
Current Vintage: 1989
Price: $25.50

The Henschke name is perhaps better known for its Hill of Grace red wine, but for me its premier red is one that since the incredible 1981 vintage has stood head and shoulders above most other Australian cabernet-based wines. From the Adelaide Hills comes the Cyril Henschke, named after winemaker Stephen’s father, a wine of great depth, softness and richness which develops along the classic cedar and cigarbox lines of top Medoc reds.

5. Howard Park Cabernet Sauvignon

Region: Lower Great Southern WA
Current Vintage: 1990
Price: $30.00

The Howard Park Cabernet Sauvignon shows steady refinement in the style each year from the remarkable first vintage in 1986 right to the statuesque 1990 – surely one of the greatest wines made in Australia in that very good year. It’s the progeny of John Wade, also the inspiration behind the rightly renowned John Riddoch line of Cabernet Sauvignon during his under-rated custodianship at Wynns Coonawarra. Given two full years in 100 brand new small French oak, the Howard Park demands at least a decade before opening.

6. Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon

Region: Margaret River
Current Vintage: 1990
Price: $25.00

The benchmark Western Australian red wine, Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon is another claret of finesse, elegance and longevity. Apart from three ordinary years from 1982 to 1984 its consistency has been remarkable given its status as a single vineyard wine. Made by a winemaking perfectionist in Keith Mugford, with the Mount Mary it is the wine in this list most likely to be mistaken for a top Bordeaux chateau which from time to time, they both are.


7. Mount Mary Cabernets

Region: Yarra Valley
Current Vintage: 1990
Price: $28.00 Cellar door

Occasionally reputations are indeed justified. Dr John Middleton’s is, especially where this great red is concerned. One of the first in the country to include what has since become known as the ‘Bordeaux blend’ of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc and malbec, since recently been joined by the remaining Bordeaux red grape, petite verdot, the Mount Mary Cabernet is a fine, classically-structured claret style of elegance and grace proven time and again in the cellar. To the present time, it is the only Yarra Valley wine made consistently to its lofty standard.

8. Oakridge Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon

Region: Yarra Valley
Current Vintage: 1990
Price: $30.00

Perhaps the greatest cabernet vineyard planted in the Yarra Valley for some years, Oakridge’s Cabernet Sauvignon combines concentration of intense varietal character with the structure and backbone of a classic claret. Rich, ripe and cigarboxy after a few years, the early vintages of this wine were just an indication of what the future might have held. Make no mistakes, all has been delivered in the 1990 and 1991 wines, vintages of power, strength and quite extraordinary flavour.

9. Petaluma Coonawarra

Region: Coonawarra
Current Vintage: 1988
Price: $26.00

It took another seven years before the expectation heralded by the first 1979 vintage of Petaluma’s Coonawarra red blend was next realised, but the incredible wines bottled under this label since 1986 and the immense promise of the yet-to-be-released 1990 confirm its status in this listing. The 1988 was taken out of new wood after a year, only to be re-inserted in another batch of brand-new French oak for another twelve months. The 1989, incidentally, wasn’t up to scratch and will not appear under Petaluma’s own label. make no mistake, hype has nothing to do with this selection.


10. Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon

Region: Coonawarra
Current Vintage: 1988
Price: $32.00

The Penfolds Wine Group have maintained the style created in 1982 by John Wade at Wynns Coonawarra. Totally unlike the more flimsy cabernets released by other sections of this wine group, the John Riddoch is justly famous for its longevity, strength and depth of fruit. Very astringent and extractive when young, this wine is made for drinking well into the future. Please login to post comment