Impressive wine with dinner

When one thinks of Argentinian wine, we generally turn our attention to Malbec; dense dark wines with full-bodied richness and fine soft tannins, which they have made so famous.

The other night I had the pleasure of tasting (drinking) an exceptional wine from Argentina, which in this case was not a red. The 2010 Catena Zapata White Stones Adrianna Vineyard Chardonnay was fine, elegant and beautifully structured with fresh dried pear and citrus fruit flavours, and looked like it would live for many years.

The wine comes from the Tupungato sub-region of the Uco Valley in Mendoza. The region lies at the foot of the Mt Tupungato volcano where the high altitude affords crisp clear air and water with low humidity – perfect for making high-quality wines.

Very much a terroir-driven wine, the White Stones takes its name from a selection of vine rows that is covered with an oval shaped white gravel, which was the site of an ancient stream bed.

This producer also makes another high end Chardonnay from the same vineyard known as White Bones, which I'm pretty keen to try in the near future.

Steve James,
Manager of Winemaking and Viticulture

2012 Cabernet Tasting

One of the great pleasures of our work here at Voyager Estate is doing benchmark wine tastings and a recent look at some Cabernet Sauvignon wines from the 2012 vintage was no exception.

We blind tasted 12 Cabernet Sauvignon based wines from 2012 which included one international benchmark from the Napa Valley and the other eleven from Margaret River. 2012 was an exceptional vintage for both Margaret River and the Napa Valley so our expectations were high. We were not disappointed, with my personal scoresheet revealing 6 Gold Medal (18.5 plus scores) and the remainder not too far behind. Overall I was blown away by the serious quality of these wines.

The wines from the Wallcliffe area were across the board outstanding. The Voyager Estate, Cape Mentelle, Xanadu Reserve and Leeuwin Estate all displayed beautiful ripeness with great purity of fruit, excellent fine tannins and great structure, which will ensure considerable longevity. The Cullen Vanya and Woodlands Thomas were exceptional examples of Wilyabrup Cabernet – both displaying superb fine tannins with layers of complex, silky ripe fruit and again excellent structure.

It was certainly one of the best line-up of wines that I have tasted in quite a while and I will certainly be making sure there is quite a few stashed in my cellar!

Steve James,
Manager of Winemaking and Viticulture