SOUTH AFRICA AUSTRALIA FRANCE RUSTENBERG WINES PETER BARLOW CABERNET SAUVIGNON, 2019 STELLENBOSCH Founded in 1682 and owned since 1941 by the Barlow family, Rustenberg Wines is run by third-generation winemaker Murray Barlow, who studied oenology in Australia. Murray brought a modern perspective to this historic winery, focusing the estate towards proven varietals on perfectly matched vineyard sites while taking a less interventionist approach in the winery (limited new oak, no added enzymes) – efforts epitomised by his Peter Barlow Cabernet Sauvignon, from the estate’s oldest vineyard. “It’s an amazing vineyard,” he muses. “The fruit comes in and it’s yours to mess up. The old way of thinking was, we must replicate the same style every year. But with this wine, I decided to tell the story of the vintage and own it – to respect that we’ve been given that vintage, and simply guide it along without trying to put too much of your own imprint. Some vintages are cool, the wine won’t be as bombastic, others are warm and concentrated, and you’ll have a blockbuster.” As for the 2019 vintage, a powerful, richly layered wine of concentrated cassis, black cherries and herbaceous notes, in 2022 Master of Wine Tim Atkin named it one of the wines of the year, awarding it 95 points. YALUMBA THE VIRGILIUS 2019 The Hill-Smith family has owned the Barossa Valley’s Yalumba winery for over 170 years. Today, chairman Robert Hill- Smith is grooming the sixth generation – his daughter Jessica Hill-Smith recently joined Yalumba’s marketing team. Ever a man of vision, Robert established Australia’s First Families of Wine, a group promoting the savoir-faire of the country’s 10 most iconic, family-owned wineries in 2009. But perhaps his most visionary project was to pioneer viognier in Australia in 1980, a challenging grape which had never flourished outside the Northern Rhône. In a “labour of love” across decades, he oversaw viognier’s establishment on Eden Valley’s cool elevated slopes. Today, with veteran winemaker Louisa Rose, they’ve revealed viognier’s true potential here with The Virgilius, Yalumba’s flagship white wine, wild fermented in old French oak. The James Halliday Wine Companion, Australia’s leading wine guide, awarded the 2019 97 points, writing, “Yalumba has firmly positioned itself at the pointy end of the Australian viognier hierarchy.” A steely, complex, textural wine for connoisseurs of the mysterious alchemy arising from the fortuitous meeting between a grape and a terroir. CHAMPAGNE GUILLAUME S. LARGILLIER, 2018 EXTRA-BRUT CHAMPAGNE Anselme Selosse revolutionised champagne by importing Burgundian terroir philosophy and winemaking techniques to create singlevineyard champagnes of never-before-seen richness. Yet when Anselme passed the torch to his son Guillaume in 2018, wine lovers were hardly disconcerted – that’s because, since 2009, he has been making extraordinary champagne under a separate label, Guillaume S. “It’s the story of my youth,” he muses. “Guillaume S was about asserting my freedom, experimenting and getting to know my own palate.” After “Au Dessus du Gros Mont”, from a microvineyard of old chardonnay his grandmother bequeathed him on his 18th birthday, in 2012 came Largillier, from Jérôme Coessens’s monopole vineyard in the Aube, of 45-year-old pinot noir vines over chablisesque Kimmeridgian chalk. An electric, mineralesque wine with a huge personality, barrel-aged three years on its lees, redolent of ripe peach, walnuts, pears, Mirabelle plum and marzipan. “I describe Largillier as l’autre même, meaning, ‘the same but different’ – you see the family resemblance, but it’s not a Selosse estate wine.” Nor is Guillaume his father, but the likeness is uncanny. 96
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