Jim Barry The Benbournie Cabernet Sauvignon 2012
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This wine is a deep crimson red in the glass. Intensely aromatic with a mix of dark vine fruits, dark chocolate, fresh garden herbs, cedar oak and a touch of earth. The palate is flooded with generous dark berry flavours with savoury notes of earth, clove and cedar. Very fine, mineralic tannin lends length and style to a wine of great presence and persistence. The Benbournie has been created with the Jim Barry philosophy to be enjoyed upon release after a period of long term cellaring (under correct conditions) to enhance the wine’s qualities.
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Wine Enthusiast
Jim Barry's premium Cab is a good example of the elegance that can be achieved with this grape when its grown in cooler climes. Aromatically, there's a lot going on here: savory soy-sauce notes and smoky ones, too, fuse with green leafy herbs, red currants, violets and pencil lead. It's full bodied but age has been kind to it thus far. The powerful savory tannins and oak characters are still prominent, but crunchy red fruit keeps things bouncy. Harmony seems to have been found. Drink now–2028.
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Wine Spectator
Plump wild blackberry and blueberry flavors are generous and rich, with hints of black olive and black tea lingering on the finish, backed by a velvety mouthful of tannins. Drink now through 2030.
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A noble variety bestowed with both power and concentration, Cabernet Sauvignon enjoys success all over the globe, its best examples showing potential to age beautifully for decades. Cabernet Sauvignon flourishes in Bordeaux's Medoc where it is often blended with Merlot and smaller amounts of some combination of Cabernet Franc, Malbecand Petit Verdot. In the Napa Valley, ‘Cab’ is responsible for some of the world’s most prestigious, age-worthy and sought-after “cult” wines. Somm Secret—DNA profiling in 1997 revealed that Cabernet Sauvignon was born from a spontaneous crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc in 17th century southwest France.
The Clare Valley is actually a series of narrow north to south valleys, each with a different soil type and slightly different weather patterns along their stretch. In the southern heartland between Watervale and Auburn, there is mainly a crumbled, red clay loam soil called terra rossa and cool breezes come in from Gulf St. Vincent. A few miles north, in Polish Hill, is soft, red loam over clay; westerlies blowing in from the Spencer Gulf influece this area's climate.
The differences in soil, elevation, degree of slope and weather enable the region to produce some of Australia’s finest, aromatic, spicy and lime-pithy Rieslings, as well as excellent Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec with ripe plummy fruit, good acid and big structure.
Clare Valley is an isolated farming country with a continental climate known for its warm and sunny days, followed by cool nights—perfect for wine grapes’ development of sugar and phenolic ripeness in conjunction with notable acidity levels.