It may not have won the top prize but I can’t stop thinking about this wine
I may have denied it a trophy it deserved, but it’s the one I’ve made room for in my cellar.
Just as the American Constitution limits a president to two terms, wine shows tend to restrict judges to three-year stints. Long enough to get a real feel for the region, not so long you get complacent. I was wrapping up my Chair of Judges duties at my third, and final, Margaret River Wine Show late last year when I did something I never do. The final stage of any wine show is the awarding of the major trophies, where the best wines of various classes come to contest the significant silverware. Judges taste and then vote for their preferences, and while I’ve always allowed democracy to manifest and gone with majority rule, when it came to the trophy for best cabernet blend I broke my own rule.
We were looking at two outstanding wines, either one a very worthy trophy winner. Most judges went for the wine from the blessed 2022 vintage and it was easy to see why. But I just felt the other wine, from the trickier ’21 vintage, demanded recognition, applying the probably questionable principle that a great wine from a tough year is a greater winemaking achievement than one from a benign season.
So a “Captain’s call” gave the trophy to the 2021 Evans & Tate ‘Redbrook’ cabernet merlot. But there was something about the other wine, the 2022 Windance cabernet merlot, that gnawed at me. I may have denied it a trophy it deserved, but it’s the one I’ve made room for in my cellar. Windance is a vineyard Billie Brent-White’s parents planted on her grandmother’s farm near Yallingup in 1998 that she now runs with her winemaker/viticulturist husband, Tyke Wheatley, in accordance with bio-dynamic practice. There’s sensitivity and soulfulness at the heart of all the wines, a fine tuning and intricate detail that comes from a deep connection to place and a commitment to light-touch winemaking that allows it to shine through. That’s the greatest prize of all.
WINDANCE ESTATE ‘GLEN VALLEY’ CHARDONNAY 2023
$46
Glen Valley is the original name of the property, so the top-tier wines carry this striking label. Pure and precise at the outset, but a discrete suggestion of a wilder side begins to emerge. Grapefruit pith and white peach fuzz at first, some lemon verbena and nutty nougat. Then an underlying flinty funk.
13.5% alcohol, 95 points
WINDANCE ESTATE ‘GLEN VALLEY’ SHIRAZ 2022
$46
Chiseled and coiled, a wine with the finely sculpted musculature and taut sinews of heroic ancient sculpture. Brambles and black cherries, pipe tobacco and fennel seed. Power without heft, intensity without density. Fine, grainy tannins.
13.8% alcohol, 95 points
WINDANCE ESTATE CABERNET MERLOT 2022
$30
There’s a cooling calm, a quiet precision, to this wine. Bay leaf and blackcurrant, a whiff of rubbed lavender and smoking sage. Superfine, high-def tannins taper the wine beautifully, finishing with a dry, willowy grace. At this price, if it had actually won the trophy last year, would be long gone now. Let my error be your benefit.
13.8% alcohol, 97 points