BALGOWNIE VINEYARD 1970 BLOCK CABERNET SAUVIGNON
2022 Maiden Gully Joshua Cooper
| Grapes | Cab Sauv |
| Colour | Red |
| Origin | Australia, Victoria |
| District | Bendigo |
| Sub-district | Maiden Gully |
| ABV | 13% |
This beautiful wine transports me back to the days when my (late) Dad and I would share a bottle of cabernet. It smells of nostalgia yet of a promise of things to come, as it’s a modern rendition and in the hands of young Josh Cooper ... well this is something else. While there’s a waft of florals and dark fruit, this is savoury in outlook. It has some cooling menthol and Aussie bush fragrance, ironstone and warm earth, but key is the fuller-bodied palate with such poised, detailed tannins, fine acidity and superb length. It’s complete. Josh says it ‘displays my most prized characteristics – effortless complexity and power without weight’. Sums up the wine perfectly. Rating: 97 Jane Faulkner, Halliday Wine Companion (Aug 2024)
| 12 | ||
*Case price discount: Mix any 12 bottles of wine (or 9 litre equivalent) or 6 bottles of Champagne, Spirits, Sweet Wine or Fortified (4.5 litres) to get the discounted 'case price' for each bottle.
Balgownie Vineyard is a name that should need no introduction to lovers of Victorian wine. An icon of the 70s and 80s, it has produced some of the most remarkable mature Australian wines I have had the pleasure of drinking. Indeed my cellar is well stocked with them thanks to 10+ years of collecting. Established 1969 200m asl near the banks of Myers Creek in Maiden Gully on Ordovician shale, quartz and ironstone rubble, thanks to current winemaker Tony Winspear it now supplies me a small amount of old vine Cabernet Sauvignon from some of the earliest plantings from 1970. “This vineyard is a national treasure - it has the ability to produce reds from cabernet sauvignon and shiraz that cellar with the elegance and longevity to rival anything in Australia” Jeremy Oliver - www.jeremyoliver.com.au. The first to ripen of the three Cabernet Sauvignon sites, these old vines and special place deliver fruit of extreme concentration and complexity. Harvest occurred around three weeks earlier than Shays Flat. Once hand harvested the fruit was entirely de-stemmed, then partially foot crushed before transfer to open fermenters where it remained for three weeks. The must was allowed to soak until natural fermentation commenced and was then extracted with a combination pumping over, delestage and pigeage before basket pressing. Elevage took place in a combination of new Stockinger 300l (30%) and seasoned thin staved Bordeaux coopered barriques for 12 months, before four months in stainless steal after assemblage. The only addition to the wine is a small dose of sulphur. Deep, dark garnet. A wine which immediately makes one sit up and focus. Refined and complex with iron, sweet cassis, cedar spice, violet and rose, air reveals infinite nuance and detail. The palate is flooded with wave upon wave of Cabernet fruit, braced by a strict but not overbearing tannic structure, finishing with sweet violet and cassis and a wave of perfume. The most refined of the six Cabernet cuvées, but also the most concentrated and finally balanced. A very worthy follow up to the 2021 vintage and a wine that displays my most prized characteristics - effortless complexity and power without weight. Please decant well prior to drinking, or cellar for as long as you like.
Joshua Cooper
Josh Cooper was brought up on the Cobaw Ridge wine estate in the Macedon ranges, a cool spot north of Melbourne. However as a winemaker, Josh is 'ploughing his own furrow' (as Huon Hooke put it).
After extensive travel and experience at vineyards as far afield as Domaine JJ Confuron and Chablis, but also closer to home with Yabby Lake and Hanging Rock, Josh started in 2012 by specialising in Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from the Macedon ranges and nearby areas. He has now been led by his admiration of some of the great old 'claret' styles of the 70s and 80s he has tasted, to try his hand at Cabernet as well, including buying fruit from the oldest block (planted in 1970) at Balgownie Vineyards in Bendigo.
A low-intervention winemaker sourcing fruit from organic or biodynamic vineyards where possible, Josh uses SO2 but nothing else, to make whites which are pure and racy (one year in barrel with no lees-stirring), but with enough flesh to be gourmand too. The reds are concentrated, aromatically precise and true to their origins, while remaining beautifully balanced and harmonious, drinkable from the off, but with the Cabernets being capable of long aging like the old wines he so admires.
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