2016 Tyrrell's VAT 1 Semillon, Hunter Valley, Australia

Full bottle 1,241 g. Screwcap. Their wettest winter in a decade and then ‘a wild summer of hot days and afternoon storms’. Hand-picked fruit from their best blocks including some old vines planted in 1923, growing in ancient sandy loam soils. The youngest block was planted in 1990. Hand-sorted. Crushed and pressed as quickly as they can. Cold-settled. 

Fermented using a neutral yeast, racked off gross lees and aged in stainless steel. No malolactic. No oak. Bottled June 2016. Bruce Tyrrell says he is picking a bit riper it used to be 10%), but he doesn’t care about the sugar – it’s about when the grapes taste ripe.

Delicate trace of struck-flint smokiness. Bergamot and green apple. Whippet lean and racy, tensile steeliness with a hint of hazelnuts and cobnuts. Stone-sucking lime-licked minerality forming the long, long spine of the wine. Not an ounce of flesh, and yet the fruit is there, beautifully formed. As it opens in the glass, a waxiness develops, and a grace note of frangipani. The vigour of this intellectually playful wine lasts forever in the mouth.

Drink 2022 - 2045

There's a wow factor to this wine, the way in which it manages to harness such impressive power and concentration and deliver it in such smooth, seamless and tubular shape is a thing to marvel at. Aromas of gently flinty lime and lemon fruits lead to flavors of the same ilk, really astonishingly pure, long and polished, green apple flavors close it out fresh and bright. 

Drink now or age, superb