NEPENTHE

Much like regional neighbours Ashton Hills, Nepenthe seems to have undergone some notable changes since my last visit. But unlike Ashton Hills, notable change seems to be part of the scenery at Nepenthe.

Nepenthe's wine quality continues to remain steady in a middle of the road kind of way, but outside of that, things tend to shift around fairly quickly for this assertively marketed brand. They're certainly unlikely to die standing still.

The last five years have seen a change of ownership, change of head winemaker and a handsomely redeveloped cellar door, but today I'm going to concentrate more on what's going on with the wines. So here's a look at what might've gone through the heads of the people at Nepenthe recently.

- Let's get serious with sauvignon blanc

Although I don't have the official figures, I assume the carload after busload after carload of trendy, sharply dressed Gen-Xers who rock up to Nepenthe's cellar door on sunny days has something to do with their sauvignon blanc. Fortunately for more discerning drinkers, Nepenthe's recently adopted a more grown up approach to tackling the variety. 2009 marked the arrival of Nepenthe's 'Petraea' Sauvignon Blanc, a wood aged rendition of the variety (5 months in 2500L barrels for the 2010) which goes to show Nepenthe does have a vested interest in pleasing the more serious consumer. Going off the current release, I believe Nepenthe has a bit more work to do to perfect the style (like many from the Hills in my opinion), but their extra effort to produce a top class wine is highly commendable. $28 isn't too bad either.

- Let's get serious with pinot gris

From 2012 onwards I'm told Nepenthe will be getting 'serious' with pinot gris. Whether or not that means an addition to their reserve 'Pinnacle' range or sprucing up their standard gris I'm not sure, but there will be a change towards a a more worked style. I was recently informed pinot gris/grigio now outsells riesling in Australia, which might validate the move in some respects, as well as compensate for those estate chardonnay vines I saw grafted over to pinot gris (chardonnay has clearly been Nepenthe's best performer over the last 5 years in my opinion). Let's hope the 2012 vintage plays into their hands.

- Let's do something about our reds

Although Nepenthe has traditionally been associated with one of the the more unusual red wine portfolios in the Adelaide Hills, the company now seems to be moving in a slightly more orthodox direction, with some of the red focus shifting from those erratic cabernet styles to the more regionally accepted shiraz. The 'Gate Block' Shiraz now signifies Nepenthe's efforts to create a high quality, regional take on the variety. Nepenthe's tempranillo actually looked quite smart on my visit, but I wonder how long the winery will persist with their much maligned Adelaide Hills zinfandel.

- Let's take a look at the results

Despite the noted transitions surrounding Nepenthe's savvy, gris and fuller reds, it was two of the brand's mainstays; the Ithaca Chardonnay and Good Doctor Pinot Noir, which recently impressed a few of our country's show judges. The 2010 Ithaca having picked up the 'Best White Wine' Trophy at the 2011 Riverina Wine Show and the 2010 Good Doctor winning judge's choice for 'Best Pinot Noir' at the 2011 South Australian Wine of the Year awards. The 2010 Ithaca looks a cleverly made (in both vineyard and winery), very classy wine for its modest price, and although the 2010 Good Doctor was unavailable for tasting, it was available for purchase and I picked up a bottle for full review soon.

Nepenthe tasting notes posted below

Nepenthe Sauvignon Blanc 2011 ($19) A very clean and smart looking, typically regional savvy, with good fragrance, brightness and persistence to its ably textured herbal/gooseberry characters. Nepenthe believe the 2011 is one of the best sauvignon blancs they've made in the last 10 years and I'd have to agree. A proud cafe/pub/sitting and sipping-on-Nepenthe's-lawn wine if ever there was one. 90

Nepenthe Petraea Sauvignon Blanc 2010 ($28) I was expecting a big jump from the standard wine but it just never really happened. The relatively passive oak and extra bottle age seems to have dumbed down its fruit without really contributing much in the way of complexity. There's some mineral/banana custard notes and a fair push of smooth texture, but it just lacks the vibrancy, shape and structure I ultimately seek. Still, not bad though, and I'll be keeping my eye on it in the future, particularly given the fine 'standard' wine from 2011. 90

Nepenthe Pinot Gris 2010 ($19) Slightly dull, predictable nose reflecting fairly simple, bland white pears. Clean, straight forward palate would make for fair summertime quaffing if not much else. 86

Nepenthe Chardonnay 2010 ($19) 93% unwooded. Once again bit bland, uninspiring, with not a hell of a lot to pick in the way of fruit or winemaking tricks. It is however, cleaner and fresher than the gris, with a finish that spritzes up at the end. 87

Nepenthe Ithaca Chardonnay 2010 ($25) Outstanding value for a 'reserve' Adelaide Hills chardonnay from a reputed name. It has a very clever, fresh and complex nose with some savoury complexity - touches of mineral, yellow nectarine, flint and matchstick with a buttered popcorn-like oak component, but it's all very refined and in line. The palate begins clean, fresh and tight, before developing flavour and pungency towards the finish. Bright acids. Clean wine. Good stuff. 92

Nepenthe Pinot Noir 2010 ($19) Medicinal, sweet red cherry and herb nose, bit off putting really. I hope it's an aeration issue. The palate's a bit sweet 'n' sour, thin and conclusively lacks stuffing, subsequently revealing an unfortunate edginess. Disappointing. 84

Nepenthe The Good Doctor Pinot Noir 2009 ($38) Immediately more satisfying and varietal than the base range wine, with a nose of dusty, meaty cherry kernels, and although its palate enters with a pleasing silkiness, it quickly drops away towards the finish and that's what's left lingering in my mind. 88

Nepenthe Tempranillo 2008 ($25) A real surprise, particularly fragrantly, with its smooth, musky, mushroomy aromas of varnishy red cherries and well handled oak depicting something of the old world in a convincing manner. The vibrant and well constructed palate's bright and smooth to begin but ends with prickly spices and lithe structure. Good wine. 90

Nepenthe The Sirens Zinfandel 2007 ($35) Thin, green, very herbal nose with some cherry elements. Soupy palate, lacks stuffing and vitality, ends awkward and disjointed. Hard to see what's going on here, especially for $35. 84

Nepenthe Gate Block Shiraz 2008 ($38) Almost anything would look good after that zinfandel, and indeed, the 2008 Gate Block might've benefited. It has a bit of a multi-faceted, ripe Adelaide Hills shiraz nose, with meats, menthol/varnish, red and black plums and blueberries. Although smooth to start, with a creamy oak driven texture, the palate looks a bit baked around the edges and could do with more fruit brightness. 89

BURGE FAMILY WILSFORD WINEMAKERS VO TAWNY

- Barossa Valley, SA

- $32-$36 (500ml)

- Cork (Capsule)

- 19.5%alc

Thanks to his family connections with the old Wilsford winery, Rick Burge is able to fashion a thoroughly diverse set of Barossa fortifieds using some very old base materials. Atop Rick's sextuplet of fortified styles sits the VO Tawny, a grenache-based wine awarded a Top Gold at the 2010 Rutherglen Wine Show.

A powerful, heady, intoxicating whiff of alcohol commands the aroma of Rick Burge's VO Tawny, giving a sharp, vaporous intensity to its deeper set notes of fruitcake, currants, spice, orange rind and vanilla oak. The fumes alone would scare the pants off any teetotaler, but the wine's strength contains itself nicely on the palate, which is charmingly rich yet balanced and integrated throughout. Its burnt caramel and nutty rancio flavours persist with sticky saturation along a medium-full bodied framework, leading into a more open-ended, aggressive finish where spirit and spicy fruitcake notes forge the wine home with a lingering orange jam-like sweetness and alcoholic heat. It revels in the intensity of its finish, so a single glass should suffice.

ü A marvellous little show of the excesses of Barossa tawny, without the excessive price. For slightly less ($22), you can get Rick's Old Barossa Tawny (90pts) with even more alcohol (21.0%). Drink now.

92 points

www.burgefamily.com.au

PETER LEHMANN SEMILLON 2010

- Barossa Valley, SA

- $7-$16

- Screwcap

- 11.0%alc

The recent consistency of Peter Lehmann's bargain-basement semillon has been little short of spectacular for a wine of its price (for those of us who appreciate the style of course). Even then, with the fine vintage report and a fantastic wine like Rick Burge's unwooded 2010 Olive Hill (92pts) already released, it's the 2010 Peter Lehmann Semillon I've really pinned high hopes on. I am interested to know how this relates though.

Very restrained and clean, with a slightly spicy nose of under-ripe green pears, melons, lemon and straw, Peter Lehmann's 2010 is one of those young semillons whose shy fragrance suggests its palate should do all the talking. The medium-weighted palate does follow a similar path initially, speaking clarity through youthful, restrained flavour, but if you read between the lines it mentions a few extra details. Firstly, there's a genuinely understated concentration of clean, juicy texture, followed by a mid-palate evolution in flavour profile. It proceeds to reveal more dry grass aspects trailed by a surprisingly savoury, lanolin-like note, which lingers calmly into the aftertaste alongside a soft push of simultaneously creamy, sour-citric acids marked by a faint bitter edge.

ü For under $10 there's a bit more going on here than your average quaffing white and, it probably tastes (and reads) like more than it is. Simple, yet cleverly complex. Drink to 2016.

88 points

www.peterlehmannwines.com

JACOB'S CREEK RESERVE CABERNET SAUVIGNON 2009

- Coonawarra, SA

- $12-$21

- Screwcap

- 14.0%alc

What a delight to see Jacob's Creek issue their Reserve range shmick new labels clearly emblazoned by a region of origin. As an ever curious consumer, the more transparency with regional sourcing the better I say - I mean, I probably wouldn't have bought this wine under the old label.

Jacob's Creek's 2009 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon smells like a joyous little dob of sweet Coonawarra simplicity in a glass. Think ripe black plums and raspberries risen by sweet notes of mint/menthol and a wafer-like expression of creamy vanilla oak to boot. Its nose is only marginally put off by a whiff of alcohol etching alongside its menthol, but unfortunately, its palate doesn't follow through on the fragrant promise. There's some winemaking polish on show in its initial push of creamy oak driven black/redcurrant flavour, but then it hits a bump in the movement, first by revealing a raw edge to its fruit, and then by finishing loose and fractionally thin with lingering nuances of both the baked and sweet 'n' sour kind. Structure doesn't help out either. To track this wine as a curve...

X It appears I was overly optimistic on this one. I had grand visions of a mini-St Hugo I did. But on drinking, those visions folded faster than Superman on laundry day*. Drink to 2014.

85 points

www.jacobscreek.com

A SENSORY ENJOYMENT GRAPHICAL ANALYSIS: JACOB'S CREEK RESERVE CABERNET SAUVIGNON 2009

Those who hate the use of numbers when analysing wine will probably cringe at this, but I've been toying with this chart for a couple of months now. Previously, I've never seen fit to publish it, because too many times the analysis resembled a straight line with only minor deviations. Unfortunately for the good people at Jacob's Creek, their 2009 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon is the first wine I've encountered where the graph illustrates its point quite well. We're clearly shown how a wine can present so much initial promise, yet fall apart badly with deeper inspection. In a visual way, it sums the wine up nicely I think.

I actually sampled this wine not that long ago, towards the end of an all night binge of drinking Coonawarra reds, and was enamoured (enough for a Jacob's Creek Reserve wine anyway), which is why I bought one. Clearly, in a drunken haze, I was attracted to it more by its packaging and aroma then I was by its palate (of which, mine was probably shot by that point of the night).

As for the chart, I've purposely chosen 'packaging' instead of 'appearance' or 'colour', because I find I get more of a sensory thrill from a wine's label than I do its physical appearance (although I do fall for a sexy, unfiltered pinot...). Additionally, I've messed around with the idea of changing it from a score of 0-10 along the y-axis to a score more relative to the 100 point scale, e.g. 85-95 or something like that. It might be more comparable.

But be warned, this chart may return! So if anyone has any hints/tips/ideas on how it could be improved, I'd be MOST appreciative. To say it's in its infancy would be an understatement - I don't even know how to use it yet!

OZ WINE TOONS

DOMAINE A CABERNET SAUVIGNON 2005

- Coal River Valley, TAS

- $85

- Cork

- 13.0%alc

Domaine A Cabernet Sauvignon is a highly desired Australian wine, defined as much by its mystery as it is by its greatness. The legend of Swiss-born Peter Althaus crafting a cabernet of Bordeaux-like quality, from a part of the world where only the brave persevere with the style, is one of Australia's greatest wine tales.

Rather loose and unsettled at first and in dire need of a serious decant (5+ hours might do it!), Domaine A's 2005 takes an age to compose itself, but when it does, it reveals an immensely deep, alluring fragrance, which manages to balance contradictory scents from both the meaty/leathery and leafy/herbal spectrums. Any indication of 2+ years in new French oak is held well in check, as its nose is best described as autumnal, with murky suggestions of damp, earthy soils and brown leaf litter interspersed by brighter notes of blackcurrants, pepper berries and menthol. The longer it stays in the glass, the more hints of cigar-box, chocolate and spice begin to emerge. Eventually it finds its way into my mouth, where it unfolds a majestic display of black, briary berry flavours gripped by a first-rate tannin structure whose focus and persistence are exquisite. It becomes impressively dry and savoury towards the finish, flaunting a long and layered assortment of cedar, cigar-box and granulated coffee notes that do share space with an edge of aniseed. Unsurprisingly, for a wine of its magnitude, it's completely apparent that its best days are yet to come.

ü+ Patience reveals Domaine A's 2005 to be a beautifully deep, aromatic cabernet blend with the length, complexity and structure to rival Australia's very best. In all respects, it's a seriously confronting wine. Drink 2015-2025.

96 points

www.domaine-a.com.au

DOMAINE A LADY A 2008

- Coal River Valley, TAS

- $58-$65

- Cork

- 14.0%alc

If there's one Australian sauvignon blanc that makes the rest of the field look rather modest by comparison, then it's Domaine A's Lady A. Check 3 months battonage, around 12 months new French oak and already 3 years age for this current release, as well as a cork closure, a $60 retail tag and a potential cellaring life of 8-10 years according to the back label. Sounds like an Australian savvy with more ambition than Ayrton Senna in a go-kart? You bet!

I can't recall the last time I pulled a cork from an Australian sauvignon blanc but more importantly, I can't recall the last time I stuck my nose into such a wonderfully unique interpretation of the style. Riddled with a bright, intoxicating fragrance of sour-cream, gherkin relish (I did compare and yes, the relish is 26.9g sugar per 100g), limey minerals, fresh green grapes and granny smith apples, the 2008 Lady A's funk and complexity are without peer in this country, yet its composition is delivered with a strange balance and floral lift. The clarity and vibrancy of its palate are superb, as those idiosyncratic sour-cream and gherkin notes return to contribute taste to a creamy undercarriage, which underlines its vivid announcement of mineral-sparked green apples and kiwi fruit. The complexity achieved by marrying these contrasting characters is outstanding, as is the way its textural drive lasts well into the finish, with lingering white cheese/leesy notes matched well by an accompaniment of refreshing, minerally acids.

ü Mmmm. . . so hard to pin down such an ethereal wine. If you wanna know what $60 Australian sauvignon blanc does and perhaps should taste like, then invest your money here. The wise among us might even sit one aside for a couple of years. Definitively, the Lady A is about as close to the stereotype of a typical Australian savvy as Tasmania is to Pluto. Drink to 2016.

94 points

www.domaine-a.com.au

JACOB'S CREEK RESERVE SAUVIGNON BLANC 2008

- South Australia

- $12-$21

- Screwcap

- 13.5%alc

Just taking an unusual look at two very different 2008 sauvignon blancs at the moment. One is your readily available, typical consumer style, exactly the type of wine experts tell us not to age. As for the other, well, we're just gonna have to wait till tomorrow for that...

Ooh, there's quite an interesting nose here. Jacob's Creek's 2008 Reserve is scented with limey/toasty notes (maybe an initial hint of kero as well?), not too dissimilar to a developing riesling, but happily, it still rises out of the glass with certain degrees of clarity and brightness, if not outstanding lift. Unfortunately, it all becomes less distinctive with time. Its palate looks a bit flat, lacking varietal intensity and definition more than anything else, which leaves its one-dimensional lime juice notes to be characterised by an all too simple expression of texture, flavour and structure. Having said that, its limey focus actually proves quite drinkable, surprisingly settled and completely inoffensive, in an ignore the wine and just talk to your mates kind of way.

O Ultimately simple in the mouth, yet not too bad really. I can see where this has fallen down, but I can also see it's disappearing down the back of my throat. I still wouldn't hang on to wines of this ilk though. Drink now.

86 points

www.jacobscreek.com

RIESLINGFREAK NO.3 RIESLING 2011

- Clare Valley, SA

- $20-$25

- Screwcap

- 11.5%alc

Rieslingfreak is the brand of John Hughes, a man whose rise to prominence has been doubtlessly assisted by his appearance on Australia's most popular reality TV show. Fortunately for John, his dry Clare rieslings are of a good enough standard to withstand the potential flow of customers who make the transition from television set to bottle.

Moderately pure to sniff yet still marked by hints of tropical riesling fruit, this 2011 Clare riesling gets lifted out of the glass by a sharp, almost spiced-up scent of lemon/grapefruit, which really flies with straightness and precision, leaving a mineral accented aroma of melon and pineapples behind. There's a slightly unnerving taste of pineapple to the palate, but other than that, its concentrated texture, driving length and searing acidity work like a well drilled team. In fact, it tastes like a riesling that's been built much more seriously than its fun name suggests. The mouthfeel and movement of the wine are key. Its wet slate and lime juice flavours announce themselves as quite smooth and richly flavoured, in a pleasingly compact way that does become juicier with time, before it springs into action on a lively finish, decorated by vibrant, grapefruit-like acids and a note of tinned pineapple.

ü There is a slight sweet 'n' sour aspect here (pineapple-like), but looking at the texture, flow and structure of this wine, John Hughes clearly has a knack for dry Clare riesling. Reality TV show appearance or not, Rieslingfreak is a welcomed addition to the shelves of fine wine retailers in my opinion. Drink to 2018.

91 points

www.rieslingfreak.com