2021 Joshua Cooper Balgownie Cabernet Sauvignon
WINEMAKER: Joshua Cooper
REGION: Bendigo, VIC
VARIETAL: Cabernet Sauvignon
VITICULTURE: Sustainable
Deep, dark garnet. A wine which immediately makes one sit up and focus. Incredibly refined and complex with iron, sweet cassis, cedar spice, violet and rose, air reveals infinite nuance and detail. The palate is flooded with wave upon wave of Cabernet fruit, braced by a strict but not overbearing tannic structure, finishing with sweet violet and cassis. The most refined of the three Cabernet cuvees, but also the most concentrated and finally balanced. Please decant well prior to drinking, or cellar for as long as you like.
Balgownie Vineyard is a name that should need no introduction to lovers of Victorian wine, an icon of the 70’s and 80’s it has produced some of the most remarkable mature Australian wines I have had the pleasure of drinking. Indeed my cellar is well stocked with them thanks to 10+ years of collecting. Established 1969 200m above sea level near the banks of Myers Creek in Maiden Gully on Ordovician shale, quartz and ironstone rubble, thanks to current winemaker Tony Winspear it now supplies me a small amount of old vine Cabernet Sauvignon from some of the earliest plantings, 1970. The first to ripen of the three Cabernet Sauvignon sites, these old vines and special place deliver fruit of extreme concentration and complexity. Harvest occurred around three weeks earlier than Shay’s flat. Once hand harvested the fruit was entirely destemmed, then partially foot crushed before transfer to open fermenters where it remained for three weeks. The must was allowed to soak until natural fermentation commenced and was then extracted with a combination pumping over, delestage and pigage before basket pressing. Elevage took place in a combination of new Stockinger 300l (30%) and seasoned thin staved Bordeaux coopered barriques for 12 months, before four months in stainless steel after assemblage. The only addition to the wine is a small dose of sulphur.
The son of biodynamic power couple Alan & Nelly Cooper of Cobaw Ridge, Joshua Cooper is one of the most exciting young winemakers in Australia. Unbelievable precision and focus. Tiny quantities, high demand, a producer to watch.