Briar Ridge Malbec 2024
$40, 14.5% alcohol, screwcap, Wrattonbully.
This is a wine and a half. It’s muscular, ferrous, ripped with boysenberry, redcurrant and blackcurrant, and both leathery and herbal in its top notes. There’s a slip of creamy vanilla texture/flavour and crashing wave of tannin, the latter integrated and assertive at once. This is a robust, if not grunty, expression of the malbec grape, and its quality is super. 95 points.
Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He founded The Winefront, is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion (and former editor of Halliday magazine), and is the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He is 100% independent, and tastes between 5,000 and 10,000 wines each year, blind and in comparative brackets as often as is practicable.
Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.
