Halliday Wine Companion Top 50 Wines of the Year - #23

Halliday Wine Companion Top 50 Wines of the Year - #7

5+ Wines to Help You Wind Your Way Through WinterA classic red beauty. Renowned vigneron Pierre Seillan and his son Nicolas harvest fruit (Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon) from their south by southwest-facing hillside vineyards to produce Lassègue, which has become known for its simple elegance, striking balance and rich complexity. The 2011 is an austere, full vintage, with notes of ripe blackberries and aromas of leather, baking spices and graphite. This polished wine features a velvety softness with silky tannins that move in crescendo towards a pressingly long finish. A classic expression of Saint-Émilion, Lassègue offers both brightness and sophistication to grace your table any time of year.

The vines were just over 70 years old at harvest. The thought crosses my mind every now and again that Yangarra may be the best producer in the country. Or is a contender for that mantle, anyway. $35 for this kind of quality is really quite something. It’s a superb grenache. It takes time in the glass to hit its straps but once its does, wow. So intricately tannic, so fresh faced and yet so sturdy, so dialled in. Woodsy spices and red berries, savouriness and sweetness, X factor. Seriously impressive.

This standout varietal wine is complex and lengthy in a wealth of juicy red and black fruit, with lasting accents of dried herb, sage, lavender and violet. Built to last, it should develop even more in bottle. Drink 2024–2026.

Sourced from vineyards at 984-feet in elevation in the Upper Yarra, the nose of this wine is intensely reminiscent of truffles, but there's plenty of fruit, florals and spice, too, expressed in tones of red berries, roses, white pepper, dried herbs and minerals. Beautifully nuanced and textured on the palate, it's both broad and laser-focused, slinking with savory tannins, crunchy red fruit and herbs. The finish is long and complex, making it impossible not to take another sip. It's delicious now, but it could cellar until 2029.

All the Giant Steps single vineyard chardonnay is found in this wine. A combo. The wine is fermented and rested in 600 litre clay egg vessels. Cool. But we’ve been here before. Giant Steps’ winemaker Steve Flamsteed puts very little feet wrong in his quarry. This is another wine to keep his (Flamsteed’s) brain ticking, while delighting and audience no doubt. This one is right on the pace of the 2018. A multi-dimensional chardonnay of easy pleasure but lots of fine detail. There’s a slickness but also light chew to the wine, concentration of flavour is pronounced but acidity is too, lifting the wine and keeping all that green apple, faint cookie dough and citrusy zing all integrated and brought precisely and compact across the palate. There’s a sense of general ‘purity’ too, though a quiet, yeasty savouriness might pop question marks up around that statement. It’s a wonderful chardonnay, character-filled, delicious, just shy of medium weight, bright and vivacious. You’d do well getting into this.

Wild ferment, whole bunches, whole berries, classy oak but only where it’s needed. Beautiful expression of shiraz. Just so effortless. One sip and you just know. Black berried fruits, spices here and there, ultra-fine tannin, impressive length. Great value in the overall scheme. Class written all over it.

This 100% varietal wine offers earthy sage, diesel, tar and dried herb tones around a core of tart black fruit. Additional accents of gunpowder and toasted oak creep in on the midpalate. The structure is impressive and well-integrated.

Vibrant ruby color with a ripe cherry nose; velvety and rich with dense flavors of cherry and raspberry. Lush yet mellow and balanced.

Juicy and textured in Bartlett and Asian pear, this is an impressive white that offers length and breadth around a core of fresh acidity. Stone, mineral and lasting notes of Meyer lemon and peach combine seamlessly on the finish.

New wine to the Yangarra range. Blend of 40% Grenache, 21% Mourvèdre, 14% Shiraz, 12% Cinsaut, 11% Carignan, 2% Counoise. They’re about to plant picpoul noir and muscardin for use in future releases; Yangarra never does anything by half measures. It’s a great wine to drink. Spicy, herbal, fragrant, a bit different, plenty of character, the fruit to carry it. Sparks fly. I guess you’d call it red fruited and medium bodied but that’s just the start of things. You have to seek this out. It’s got something.

This north-facing single vineyard, from talented winemaker, Steve Flamsteed, sits along one of the Yarra's unofficial golden slopes. With the vines now over 20-years-old, layers of complexity are creeping in. Savory mushroom and hoisin notes mingle with bright blueberry, rhubarb, wild strawberry and dried violet characters, smudged by stony minerals. The palate shows lovely texture and balance, unraveling gradually: tangy fruit first, an earthy midpalate followed by sinewy tannins, then back to fruit and spice on the long finish—a tightrope walk of fruitiness and savoriness, delicacy and power.

The vineyard is set in the newly confirmed Van Duzer Corridor AVA. Its black cherry fruit comes with an assortment of stem, leaf and wood highlights. The tannins show tea-like astringency and a touch of sweet spice.

Steely at first, with an underlying lushness that refreshes the palate, this white is floral and exotic in rich layers of quince and Meyer lemon. It shows balance and varietal character, hinting in dried herb.

After a full two years of ageing in oak, this 2015 jumps from the glass thanks to a lively mix of 76/20/4 Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot/Malbec. The nose is an attractively scented red and blue affair with spices, while the palate is fresh from front to back. The blue/black fruit sits above its slightly grippy tannins, suggesting this will age well. The longer we left it open, the more it improved. It is a beautiful bottle of red that delivers the approachable but serious style of Knights Valley. Polished. You can drink or hold.

Juicy black and red fruit highlight a weighty, full-bodied and fruit-forward style of powerful flavor in this well-made appellation wine. Baking spice and cola round out the profile.

Soft and smoothly textured in measured richness, this wine offers rounded flavors of strawberry, dark cherry and cola. With integrated tannin and oak, it presents a seamless experience across the palate, seasoned in hints of black tea and cinnamon.

Supple and smooth, this is loaded with sweet purple berry fruit and a lush streak of mocha. The blueberry pie flavors come with enough of a tannic spine to give the wine good focus through the finish. Drink now to 2025.

Delicate and light on the nose, this bottling begins with crisp aromas of squeezed grapefruit and Meyer lemon peel. It's clean and down the middle on the palate, showing flavors of apple slices drizzled in lemon juice and lime zest.

This is fruity and forward, with easily likable fruit-driven flavors. It falls off slightly in the midpalate, then resumes its black raspberry-black cherry march into a finish with cocoa and coffee highlights. Some 30% was aged in new French oak, the rest in neutral barrels.

Smelling of fresh, fully ripe white melons with sweetening accents of Meyer lemons and showing a nicely measured complement of the variety’s tell-tale grassiness that always plays support to fruit, this slightly rounded, medium-full-bodied effort is a bit fuller and richer than most, and, as such, it is a Sauvignon Blanc that will find particularly fine affinity to meaty fish and chicken recipes that themselves are a little more flavorful and richer in character. GOOD VALUE

This extroverted wine has the classic varietal aromas of snap peas and cut grass followed by lively citrus and herb flavors. The 13% of it that was barrel fermented contributes to the smooth texture.

Your classic oaky California Chardonnay. Deep gold. Medium nose with lots of fruit: papaya, pineapple, apricot, pear and vanilla from the oak. Full body with more oak on the palate, a bit of grapefruit bitterness and good acidity offsetting the sweet apricot nectar, apple and pineapple flavours. Best served not too cold to those who like their wines a bit over the top. Did I mention the oak? Drink up.

100 Top Values Great Wines for $25 or Less Elegant Wines - La Crema Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast 2017