Moppity Lock & Key Merlot 2022
$30, 14% alcohol, screwcap, Hilltops.
There’s both a meatiness and a fruitiness to this wine and the end result is that it’s very good. Red and darker berry flavours come infused with peppercorn, woodsmoke and briar but the flavours themselves don’t matter so much; it’s the combination of fruit, toast and leaf notes that really works here. 91 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.
