2012 Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz
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Tasting notes
The tone and timbre here is quite a gear-change from the wines up to 2010 – red fruit instead of black fruit, more stony minerality and the acidity in a higher, soprano pitch. Raspberries and raspberry bud and blood orange and slate dust. Heady. Almost recklessly wild and beautiful. So much blood orange and orange peel infusing this wine. It’s stunning. A shimmer of tannins, weighty yet weightless, like brocade silk swag. Incandescent with flavour and richness so lustrous that it feels like freshness. (TC)
Critic scores
Average Score
Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, Wine Advocate
Jancis Robinson MW
More reviews and scores
54% Cabernet Sauvignon, 46% Shiraz. The fruit aroma has something of a crudeness to it, most strangely – it seems more forced than earlier vintages. Perhaps that’s just youthfulness? The tannin is certainly too furry to approach right now, and there’s a strong acidic spine too. Certainly worth cellaring, though it perhaps doesn’t have the same potential as the 2010 and 2008. (RH)
54% Cabernet Sauvignon. Mainly Wrattonbully for the first time. Sweet and dense with masses of acidity. Very youthful indeed. Leathery. (JR)
A blend of 54% Cabernet Sauvignon and 46% Shiraz made with fruit from Wrattonbully, Barossa, McLaren Vale, Langhorne Creek and Robe that was aged 12 months in American oak hogsheads, 40% of which were new, the deep garnet-purple colored 2012 Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz is slightly closed with the Cabernet / cassis leading the nose marked by warm red and black plums, Mediterranean herbs, pepper and cedar. In the mouth notes of vanilla and cedar wrap around the warm black fruit core that is framed by firm, chewy tannins and just enough acid. It finishes long.
About the producer
Penfolds is Australia’s most famous wine producer, known best for their iconic top wine, Grange. First produced commercially in 1952, Grange has since gone on to become one of the world’s most famous fine wines. In 2001, the wine was listed as an Australian heritage icon.