Pour & Play: Seppeltsfield EC4. Langton’s Head of Auctions Tamara Grischy and Curly Flat Winemaker Matt Harrop (married to wine and each other) share the latest drops they’re enjoying from their home and matching them with their other passion, music. Tam picks the wine and Matty picks the playlist.
It’s so dark and purple. Really dark. Dark mint chocolate and cocoa, almost a crystallized violet perfume here, black coffee, Xmas spices, plum duff and black fruit. It’s rich and thick, packed with 85% dark chocolate tannin and flavour, orange and dried raspberry, and carries long and tannic as it goes, and surprisingly fresh. Great tannin too, mind you. Drinking it is like entering a black hole. Cellar it, probably, until the universe implodes.
95 points, The Wine Front (April 2020)
Very deep, dark, concentrated purple/red colour, with a blackberry and violet aroma, ripe and rich, dense and concentrated throughout. The tannins are likewise powerful, bold and emphatic. There's a tinge of bitterness and the finish is grippy and shouts 'go away and come back in a few years'. Superb fruit, though: delicious blue and black fruits and violets to sniff. This should be spectacular in a few years time. Patience!
95 points, The Real Review (April 2020)
"Deep colour. Intense blackberry praline cedar graphite aromas with roasted chestnut notes. Well concentrated vigorous wine with dense chocolatey, blackberry, mulberry flavours, muscular assertive tannins, a rich voluminous core, underly roasted chestnut vanilla oak and chalky minerality. A long leafy cabernet finish giving the wine extended vinosity and length. A lovely traditional style. Delicious wine. Best to keep for a while."
95 points (2020)
Although the blend in the 2018 No. EC4 Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz is 53% Cabernet Sauvignon and 47% Shiraz, this comes across as more Cabernet in style, with lifted, minty, leafy and cassis aromas on the nose. Likewise, it matured in 30% new French oak hogsheads, but it doesn't seem oaky at all, with the fruit allowed to take center stage. It's medium to full-bodied, silky and firm but nicely balanced and long on the finish, with sufficient tannin and concentration to support a decade of cellaring.
92 points, Wine Advocate (August 2020)
Barossa Valley
Colonel William Light, the South Australian colony’s Surveyor-General, named the Barossa in 1837 after the site of an English victory over the French in the Spanish Peninsular War. In the mid-1800’s Silesian and English immigrants settled in the area. The Barossa itself comprises two distinct sub-regions: Eden Valley and the warmer Barossa Valley floor at 270m.The Barossa Valley enjoys a warm Mediterranean climate characterised by hot dry summers and relatively low rainfall. Cool sea breezes from the Gulf of St Vincent modify the temperature, however hot northerly winds can occasionally dominate creating considerable vine stress. Many older established vineyards are dry-grown, but supplementary irrigation is also extensively used. The valley is comprised of rich brown soils and alluvial sands. A long history of uninterrupted viticulture in the area means the Barossa valley is home to Australia’s largest concentration of old-vine Shiraz, Grenache and Mourvedre with many over 100 years old. Although most famous for Shiraz, the Barossa can also produce fragrant and deliciously fruity Grenache blends and beautifully rich, chocolatey Cabernet Sauvignons.Seppeltsfield is a showpiece of the Barossa Valley, a magnificent complex of 19th century winery buildings surrounded by almost 100 hectares of vineyards. Seppeltsfield was a focal point of the fledgling Barossa wine industry from the 1850s and now boasts the world’s longest unbroken chain of vintage wines, going back to 1878, enabling the release of a genuine 100-year-old fortified wine each year since 1978. Apart from the extraordinary range of fortifieds, Seppeltsfield today also produces a range of limited production table wines, including blends of Shiraz, Grenache and Touriga, and sparkling wines under the Gert’s Blend label.
