Top-rated vintage ever of one of the world’s greatest dry white wines for a chorus of top critics worldwide.
Halliday 98:
2017 was a rare Hunter vintage, rain absent, and both shiraz and semillon flourished. The pale straw-green colour of this wine is startling, showing no development. The palate is superb, lime and lemon fused with mouth-watering, diamond-drill acidity. Drink by 2048
And 98 from the Real Review:
Bright, light yellow colour with intense lemongrass aromas, hints of straw and wax, barely any toast evident at this stage, the palate intense and long, concentrated and driving, without bigness or heft but light on its feet and super-precise. Fills every corner of the mouth effortlessly: an outstanding semi-mature semillon. Superior concentration and persistence here. This is ageing very slowly and will be long-lived.
97+ from the Wine Advocate:
The 2017 Vat 1 Semillon represents an excellent Semillon vintage in the Hunter Valley, and it is here that we start to see the majesty of aged Semillon begin to unfold. Sun-drenched hay, caper brine, wisps of black tea, crushed shells, a whiff of Szechuan peppercorn, lemongrass, green apples and cold buttered toast. In the mouth, the wine is texturally silky (with a weighty fall, like heavy gauge silk) and lingering. It moves with momentum rather than outright speed (like watching a whale shark swim: they might move slowly, but they swim fast), and it has a clarity and freshness in the mouth that is astounding. This is a super wine, an evocative wine, an imaginative wine. It's a wine on the up, with miles to go before it sleeps.
Simply phenomenal – and again, only 11.5% alcohol – and from vines planted in 1903!
