Australia’s Top 15

It’s quite OK for a wine writer to wrap up a wine, I suppose, but how good is it really? Do we ever stick our neck out and attempt to quantify our opinions? Or do we simply meander like a herd of ravenous cows from one verdant pasture to the next, hardly noticing the changes between?

Now that I’m entering my sixth year as wine correspondent to the Australian Dr, the editors and I have decided that each of the wines I recommend in this column should formally be rated for quality. It seemed to make sense to link the ratings I give to such wines to the ratings I produce in my annual guide to Australian wine, The Australian Wine Handbook Portside Editions, of which the 1997 edition will be released this forthcoming August.

From this issue onwards I will be allocating each wine I mention or review with an overall Wine Rating out of 10. This rating indicates its overall quality and performance from year to year and is based on my tastings of several vintages. The following formula explains how they relate to the awards given in Australian wine shows:

Mark Points/20 Medal Equivalent

5 15.0-15.9 Bronze or just under
6 16.0-16.9 Top bronze
7 17.0-17.9 Good silver
8 18.0-18.4 Top silver
9 18.5-18.9 Gold
10 19.0 + Top gold

So, to initiate this concept, it seemed like a good idea to introduce the benchmarks – the top fifteen Australian wines which I rate as a perfect 10 out of 10. Please note, however, that these are the wines which do vary from vintage to vintage and are given vintage years on their labels. This does of course exclude the fortified wines made by blending wines from different years together. To give these great wines their due, my next wine column will highlight Australia’s Top 15 blended fortified wines.

What do I look for? In every case these wines are consistent, true to classic styles whether Australian or French, able to be cellared for at least a medium term five to eight years and reveal that bit of extra personality and character that sets them apart. Do not expect any to be cheap.


Bannockburn Chardonnay

A wonderfully textured, rich and complex chardonnay crafted in as true a Burgundian fashion as you will find in Australia by Gary Farr, a man truly in touch with pinot noir and chardonnay. Becomes wonderfully complex and succulent with age, scented with flowers and roast nuts. One of the new generation of chardonnays you really can cellar with confidence.

Cape Mentelle Cabernet Sauvignon

A modern great, but a proudly individual style apparently made with as much deference to the top cabernets of California as those from Bordeaux. Something of a paradox because it is a rich, powerful wine yet is still able to reveal delicacy and complexity with age. A benchmark Margaret River style.

Chateau Reynella Vintage Port

Australia’s leading vintage port, although it has nothing whatsoever in common with vintage port from Portugal. Sweet, intense and jammy when young, laden with liquorice, bitumen and spice, these wines cellar superbly into soft, mellow and utterly seductive wines on the rare occasions they are given the chance to.

Cullens Cabernet Merlot Reserve

The sweetest and most intensely flavoured of the three Margaret River cabernets to make my Top 15, this is about as smooth and as rewarding as a blend of Australian cabernet and merlot can get. Vanya Cullen is quite brilliant in the way she fashions together the sweetness and ripeness of her vineyard’s best fruit with the subtleties and fragrances of new oak.

De Bortoli Noble One

Australia’s pioneering botrytis-affected semillon dessert wine, which since its first release with the 1982 has set a hot pace. Consistency has been remarkable and the forthcoming 1994 release is one of the best ever. From Griffith, whose climate could hardly be more different than that of Sauternes, against which this wine is justly compared.

Giaconda Chardonnay

A genuine surprise, provided you’ve never tried the minuscule amounts of chardonnay from Rick Kinzbrunner’s vineyard near Beechworth, north-east Victoria. This wine is classically proportioned, complex and enduring, made with the same disregard to modern and allegedly enlightened winemaking techniques as the very best from Burgundy.

Henschke Cyril Henschke Cabernet Sauvignon

The Henschke name is perhaps better known for the Hill of Grace, but for me its premier red is one that since the 1981 vintage has stood head and shoulders above most other Australian cabernet-based wines. From the Eden Valley comes this wine of great depth and style which develops along the classic cedar and cigarbox lines of top Medoc reds in ripe years.

Henschke Hill of Grace

A wine whose stature and price are justifiably beginning to rival Penfolds’ Grange. Wonderfully intense, concentrated fruit from a single vineyard of old vines are married superbly with American oak in a classic Australian way. The best cellar for decades.

Leeuwin Estate Chardonnay

When Penfolds began to create a white wine of the stature and image of Grange, several people asked why they didn’t just buy Leeuwin Estate. Arguably Australia’s leading white wine, Leeuwin’s chardonnay is an explosive mouthful of concentrated, creamy Margaret River chardonnay enhanced with excellent oak. It’s our best cellaring chardonnay as well.

Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon

Against the grain of the usually powerfully-knit trend in Margaret River cabernet comes the first and most elegant of them all from Moss Wood. Restrained, refined, delicate and capable of ethereal complexity after a decade or more, Keith Mugford’s cabernet is a benchmark for the more sophisticated amongst Australia’s red wines.

Mount Mary Cabernets Quintet

One of our first reds from what has since become known as the ‘Bordeaux blend’ of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc and malbec, which have since been joined by the remaining Bordeaux red grape, petite verdot. A fine, classically-structured claret style proven time and again in the cellar. The only Yarra Valley wine consistently made to this standard.

Penfolds Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon

Arguably the best Penfolds red, consistently expressive of exemplary cabernet qualities, Bin 707 is sourced from several South Australian regions, principally the Barossa and Coonawarra. A benchmark cellaring wine, revived in the 1970s after Len Evans told Penfolds their decision to delete it some years earlier bordered on the insane.

Penfolds Grange

The wine of the moment, both for its increasing worldwide demand – and hence its price – and for the brilliant 1990 vintage wine, which is as close to definitive Grange as anything made in the last 20 years. Irrespective of vintage and the lightness or heaviness of the wine it produced, every wine released as a Grange actually tastes like a Grange should!

Pierro Chardonnay

Mike Peterkin’s small production of handmade, voluptuously proportioned, statuesque chardonnay makes at least as much impact as many top reds. It’s the nearest rival to Leeuwin Estate and proves once and for all that you can make a massively structured chardonnay without overdoing a thing.

Rosemount Roxburgh Chardonnay

A wine it has become fashionable to knock, yet one which is capable of great things if left in the bottle for two to five years. The only inclusion from the Hunter Valley in my Top 15, its occasionally brassy oak does successfully marry with its ripe, naturally fermented fruit to create the definitive Hunter chardonnay. Please login to post comment