CLARENDON HILLS Sandown Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, McLaren Vale

Planted in the early 1940s, low-yield, small berries make for a cabernet that has a gently herbal edge with sage and roasting herbs, slate and graphite. Some blueberries and blackcurrants, too. The palate has powerful and intense, dark-berry flavors, carried on strapping, intense tannins. Big, powerful cabernet. So intense and long. Fresh, clear-cut finish. Impressive core power. Try from 2026.

WYNNS COONAWARRA ESTATE Cabernet Sauvignon, Coonawarra

Classic Coonawarra Cabernet. I tasted this over the course of a few hours and with every sip, these were the words that came to mind. It’s medium in body, laced with fine-grained tannin, leafy in an infused way, shows notes of peppercorn and mint, and has the perfect pitch of redcurrant and darker berry flavours. It feels squeaky clean in the best of ways, is taut but not wrenchingly so, and feels generally immaculate. You could cellar this for a long time and it would hold true. The longer I sat with this the more it just seemed to extend.