2021 Paul Hobbs "Nathan Coombs Estate" Coombsville Cabernet Sauvignon

Paul Hobbs' 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from their Nathan Coombs Estate was hand-sorted while still cold from night-harvesting, fermented in small, closed-top, stainless steel tanks with native yeasts, cold soaked for five days and macerated for 30 days with gentle pump-overs and délestage, aged 20 months in 96% new French oak barrels, including Darnajou, Taransaud, Boutes, Leroi, Baron, La Grange, Marchive, and Vicard coopers and bottled unfined and unfiltered. This is an immaculate wine. It is positively brimming with incredible upfront drinking appeal, but this is a wine you could lay down for a generation. It's a masterful creation, imbued with tension, density, ironstone, and black rock minerality so prominent that you taste pulverised igneous and metamorphic rocks in powder form. The mineral component is just remarkable. Medium-bodied with beautifully pure black cherry and blackberry fruits, black olive, and liquorice, underscored by such precision-focused tannins that the textural feel is so delicate, pixelated, and silky, the wine glides over the palate with ease. An undercurrent of expressive acidity keeps everything light and refreshing, and nuances of tobacco, brown baking spices, salty dark chocolate, and cedarwood layer in a tapestry of flavours that will meld together over over the years to form a wine so pleasing it might simply be overwhelming. (JC)