Stats
- Grapes: 100% Cabernet Sauvignon
- Vineyard: Shay's Flat Vineyard - Landsborough Valley
- Vine Age: 22-years-old
- Soil Type: Shale, sandstone, quartz, and clay
- Viticulture: Certified biodynamic
- Fermentation: Native – stainless-steel fermenters (whole-cluster with some foot crushing)
- Skin Contact: 3 weeks
- Aging: 12 months in Stockinger 300L hogshead (30% new) then 4 months in stainless-steel
- Alcohol: 13%
- pH: 3.8
- Total Acidity: 5.5 g/L
- Total SO2: 60 ppm
- Total Production: 333 cases
Tasting Note
Deep, dark purple. Reticent on opening, aeration shows intense sour cherry and cassis, mulberry, lavender and black olive with a sweet mint top note and alluring graphite complexity. A compact palate opens with time to reveal deep dark berry and cherry fruit, before a rumble of fine layered tannin and cleansing acidity with a persistent trial of graphite, dark cocoa and Dutch licorice.
Press & Reviews
The Wine Front
95
"This has energy and sleekness. A firm and tightly wound cabernet of cassis and currants, liquorice, brined black olive and autumnal leaf characters. Flavours and aromas are similar here. Ultra fine, al dente tannins are slippery then build into a lingering, generous pucker. While fruit feels ripe and rich it’s settled into strong, minerally sluices and the wine finishes mouth-watering and grippy at once. This is very good."
- Mike Bennie
- Mike Bennie
Wine Advocate
95
"Joshua Cooper is a producer whose wines I buy in my spare time and drink when I'm not working. The wines are detailed and interesting, and that's something I really value, along with distinction, specificity, place and identity. So, the 2021 Shay's Flat Cabernet Sauvignon leads with a leafy, cassis-riddled nose, which is brambly and spiced, with lotus leaf/humidor (to quote a friend), star anise, mountain herbs, coal dust, salted licorice, ash/embers and blackberries. In the mouth, the tannins are svelte and streamlined—they shape the fruit but it's an invisible caress—and their finesse is like finely milled powder. While tasting, the rockiness of the place evokes earth and minerals in the mind. The cool part about this wine is its austerity of line and structure: it packs flavour and complexity and freshness into a fine-boned package. It's awesome. Thrilling, actually."
- Erin Larkin
- Erin Larkin
Halliday Wine Companion
95
"Always an interesting expression of cabernet from this region – more eucalyptus, more savoury and tannins slightly more drying, in a good way as there’s plenty of fruit to temper all that. Cassis and blackberries loom large, spicy oak and potpourri with a fuller-bodied palate and just a slight green edge, a cardamon character, on the finish."
- Jane Faulkner
- Jane Faulkner