$49.00 original price tag 375ml

I have had this bottle in climate-controlled storage for a number of years and only just spotted it recently whilst poking around for my Christmas wines.

I remember tasting a bottle and thought I would like to tuck it away for 10 years and give it a try. Well, it’s now 20 years old and it is stunning, well beyond my expectations. 

On opening the wine, the cork crumbled in the bottle and the wine’s perfume rose up from the bottle as if in a screaming hurry to escape, I knew straight away I was in for a treat, it smelt good, very good.

In the glass:

A rich honied bourbon colour with clear legs as it runs down the side of the glass. 

On the nose: 

As a teenager, I grew up on a farm in South Gippsland we had a bee hive in the old redwood shed near the veggie patch and we would harvest honey every now and again and that smell of redwood honey was the first thought that sprang to mind, that and the smell of warm ripe apricots picked from the tree

In the mouth:

The taste of an aged wooded apricot nectar,  the wine is intense and sweet as you would expect however not cloying, even at this age there is a fine line of rather tasty acid running the length of the wine, a very well made and balanced wine at 20 years.

It is the perfume of the wine that lingers on in your mouth after you have swallowed the last drop with the lingering acid has made this wine such a memorable treat. 

I have said this many times, it is indeed a privilege and a pleasure to drink good wine.

The Cheese Platter:

Consisting of beautiful smelly washed rind, English stilton, crumbly cheddar, and pitter bread crisps. 

Michael Lillis

the Rot has set in.