Ever since its earliest days in the 1960s, Lake’s Folly has happily confounded wine critics and enthusiasts alike. Sited on one of the most perfect sloping and red-soiled vineyard sites in the Lower Hunter Valley, it continues to fly in the face of conventional wisdom by excelling with chardonnay and the red Bordeaux varieties, which it’s simply just not supposed to do. Yes, there are other excellent Lower Hunter chardonnays, Tyrrell’s Vat 47 paramount amongst them, but Lake’s Folly’s wine combines rare concentration of surprisingly ripe fruit with a length, tightness and longevity that sets it apart from all the region’s other chardonnays from a stylistic perspective. It’s the Lake’s Folly red, these days a cabernet blend, that really takes the biscuit. The 2001 vintage is one of the estate’s best yet. I’ll shortly be participating in a vertical tasting of this wine, and will present in OnWine a rating of the respective releases. While some in the past have flirted rather closely with horsey, farmyard complexity likely to be related to brettanomyces, this wine is a pristine and translucent expression of fine, elegant cabernet. The 2001 release comprises 60% cabernet sauvignon, 20% petit verdot and 10% of each of shiraz and merlot. It’s deeply scented with a fragance of violets, dark berries, plums and raspberries, with a background of sweet vanilla, cedary and chocolate oak. Aromas of dusty dried herbs lend appealing complexity. Smooth and satiny, the palate presents clear, bright flavours of black and red berries harmoniously integrated with cedary oak and framed by silky tannins. It’s long and lingering, with a persistent savoury finish of undergrowth and barnyard influences. I rate the wine at 19.0, best drinking between 2013 – 2021+. Price ex cellar is $40.
