2009 Duncan – Single Vineyard McLaren Vale Cabernet Sauvignon
14.3% alcohol; screw cap; 95+++ points
Roast fennell with aniseed and chicory, some peaty soot with that type of red seaweed – Chondrus crispus – that the Irish jokingly call moss and use for clearing chest colds, blackberry leaf … after a patient week nudging this braw laddie, these are indicators of the wine being Cabernet.
Below all that decor, the fruits, a compote of all sorts of red and black things glower upwards, gazing through the murk like the eyes of ancient pike. I’ll thank Ted Hughes for that image. Diana Genders, come to think of it, is the only vigneron in the Vales as elusive as Pike, the mythologised hermit of Marius, and perhaps the only soul in the joint who makes wine as determinedly individualistic and outstanding of quality.
But I’m wandering ratbrained now. It’s the wine. This is a massive, impenetrable, hewn menhir of a drink which I don’t reckon many would have picked as a Cabernet upon opening and even fewer would have recognised as the sort of classic McLaren Vale tincture we’d drink in the ‘seventies.
Although Cabernet was a rarity in these parts back then. When the teenaged Duncan Genders, brother, planted these vines in 1967, he found it very difficult to find cuttings. Nearly fifty years ago. That’s the sort of timeframe I reckon all Diana’s wines can claim. They will live for such great stretches of time that in these infant days the best lesson they can teach can be learned ideally by those who’ll spend their $55 and ponder a glass each day until you hit that mad rushy peak like I’m hitting now.
Reproduced from Drinkster