TOURIGA TEMPRANILLO
80% Touriga and 20% Tempranillo. Blackberry and cherry, dark chocolate and liquorice, sarsaparilla, and sage. Delicious berry fruits and juicy to start, inky and earth core, toasted slightly salted nuts, then ferrous with silty tannin. Not too tough, but a bit wild for sure: rich, and lavish for the medium body, the two varieties playing in unison, coastal and refreshing.
Reviews of the 2022 Touriga Tempranillo:
93 points, Silver Medal, 2024 National Wine Show
95 points, Gold Medal, McLaren Vale Wine Show 2023
93 Points, The Vintage Journal Summer Wine Guide 2023:
Bright cherry ruby. This opens up with a delicious core of berry fruits - blackberry and dark cherry laced with red strawberry and tobacco spice. It then flows through to a chocolate, inky and earthy core of flavour with tannin torque through to a beautifully sustained finish. Very impressive.
92 Points, Gary Walsh, The Wine Front, April 2023:
These blokes make some very tasty wine. So purple and intense. There’s salted plum, sarsaparilla, violet, a fair bit of ozone, dark chocolate and liquorice, and toasted hazelnut. Fleshy and ripe, all the toasted nuts and cherry chocolate, are also quite salty and umami, with silty tannin, lavish flavour, ferrous and wheaty, with a rich finish.
Reviews of the 2021 Touriga Tempranillo:
89 Points, MaryAnn Worobiec, Wine Spectator, December 2023:
Starts with blueberry syrup, black liquorice and floral details of violet, segueing to toasted green tea on the juicy core. Reveals firming, earthy tannins and a hint of fresh mint on the finish, Touriga Nacional and Tempranillo. Drink now.
16.5/20 Jancis Robinson, September 2023:
Pleasing dark fruit with the black tea-leaf note that I sometimes associate with Tempranillo. Finish has lots of medicinal qualities, proper complexity and fragrance. Savoury and tight in structure. (RH).
94 Points, Andrew Caillard MW, The Vintage Journal, December 2022:
Medium crimson. Musky plum, blueberry, red cherry aromas with lifted aniseed notes. Subtle, sweet and juicy with blue fruits, slinky loose knit tannins and refreshing pure acidity. Finish is chalk and mineral. Attractive early fruit forward drinking style. Drink now, soon.
92 points, Wine Advocate 2022, Erin Larkin:
The 2021 Touriga Tempranillo is layered with salted licorice, pomegranate, raspberry leaf tea, garden mint and brine. This is thoroughly enjoyable and not at all the "prohibitively tannic" wine I was expecting. (I love tannins, and these are very fine.) It is mineral and juicy and all kinds of good. Highly recommended.
92 points, The Wine Front 2022, Mike Bennie:
Touriga and Tempranillo, blended for your pleasure. Oof, so purple-fruited, juicy-slurpy and outrageously delicious. It’s inky dark in colour and vibrant as all get out, a cavalcade of raspberry liquorice, blood plums, woody spice and cherry cola. Gently savoury in all that too, but its way more about that friendly and bombastic nature and a vivid portal to the varieties, with come-hither attractive everything. While it does all this, it sits quietly complex in its detail too. A no brainer. Slosh it around with abandon.
92 points, Halliday Companion 2022, Ned Goodwin:
This is delicious drinking, attesting to the future of the Vale as makers become more proficient with better suited varieties. Touriga services the floral perfume and vibrancy, while Tempranillo fills the mid-palate with dark cherry, thyme, mint and sage, pushing the flavours long across a twine of dusty chamois tannins. Mid-weighted of feel, immensely versatile and nicely savoury.
