(2024) Rogers & Rufus is a partnership between English entrepreneur Rufus Clevely and Australian Rogers Hill-Smith - you may recognise the Hill-Smith name as owners of Yalumba and its associated brands. The wine was designed as a summery, lunch-time sipper with only 11.5% alcohol, and is made from unirrigated bush-vine Grenache in the Barossa Valley. It's an homage to Provence, though the nose has a little more passion fruit and even nuances of lychee than might be found in the south of France, the palate bright and peachy but shimmering with an elegant, stony acidity that leaves it bone-dry in the finish. A successful rendition of this style. Watch the
video for more information and food-matching ideas. A few stockists have it a bit cheaper by the six-bottle case.
(2022) Again, less than 2g/l of residual sugar in a dry style, vines are over 30 years old. Much waxier and even a touch towards the paraffin spectrum of aromas, the wine one year older of course and from a warmer vintage. Bone-dry on the palate, this is all lemon juice and lime, a pithy, mouth-watering quality again, but still fresh as a daisy with pristine acidity.
(2022) A single vineyard wine, planted in 1999 on gravels, with a mix of Chardonnay clones. Fermented with indigenous yeasts in French oak barriques (40% new), 60% went through malolactic and the wine stayed in barrel for 11 months. Most attractive, with the oak on the mint and butterscotch, rather than toasty, spectrum. Buttery with succulent stone fruits. On the palate equally poised and sophisticated, such lovely clarity here, thanks to the knife-edge acid line, but also a crystalline sense of purity to the fruit, the oak again just adding a cashew and almond finesse rather than anything too aggressive.
(2022) A wine from various sub-zones including the Helderberg Coast, Jonkershoek and Simonsberg, 100% Cabernet Sauvignon which was matured for 24 Months in 225L French oak barrels, 76% new. There's a complex mix of soils including decomposed granite, shale and clay, with vineyards rising from 100 to 325 metres. Vineyards between 10 and 24 years old. Vivid and dark in colour, a really intense, graphite-touched nose of concentrated and tightly-wound black fruit, a real Pauillac-like character here, but a blueberry density of fruit too. So sweet and plush on the palate, layers of blue-black fruit, creaminess and fabulously juicy character sit over ripe, chocolate-rich tannins and beautifully judged acidity. The smoky swirl of the barrels adds a layer beneath, in a fabulous wine of endless length.
(2020) Stanton & Killeen's Classic wine has an average age of 12 years in the solera, vines planted in 1921, 1968, 1985, 1996 and 2002. It has 282.5g/l of residual sugar and is aged in large oak casks. Another dark wine, amber on the rim, and the aromatics brighter than the Chambers, but there's a dry, nut husk note that grounds the aromatics, maybe something like physillis, coffee and raisins. In the mouth fabulous richness and a lovely edge of red apple acidity to this that balances the sumptuous sweet, dark, raisined vine fruits and lusciousness.
(2020) The wine with the longest name in the history of grape juice. 54% is Merlot. This has a nice floral touch, a nuttiness, a cedary style too. There’s juiciness to spare here, quite high acid adding a sour cherry bite, and firm, drying tannins.
(2019) Older French oak for 75% of this, plus 25% of new American oak. Luis says it's a deliberate move to make a style more similar to New World wines, but still all Portuguese varieties (60% Touriga Franca, 25% Touriga Nacional, 15% Tinta Roriz). Slightly balsamic, more spicy opening, but the vinous Douro fruit is there, savoury, dark, lovely deep plummy vine fruits.
