Cape Barren Old Vine Grenache 2024
$60, 14.5% alcohol, screwcap, McLaren Vale.
Champion grenache. Beautiful drinking. It offers grunt and finesse in equal measure, throws savouriness into a fluid stream of exquisite fruit flavour, and flies tannin through the finish in perfect formation. Everything about this wine is good. It tastes of raspberries, red cherries, smoked meats, red roses and resin, and ultimately it just simply feels complete. 94 points.
This article was written by Campbell Mattinson, former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of both the highly respected The Winefront site (founded 2002) and Mattinson Photography.
Mattinson has been an independent wine critic and photo-journalist since 1987. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the prized Best Australian Sports Writing Award.
Mattinson, who is 100% independent, puts a score out of 100 on every wine that he reviews. But what he’d rather do, is tell you the wine’s story.
