Yesterday I tasted unbottled but final blend samples of four upcoming Giaconda wines from the 2002 vintage. The wines had recently been sulphured in tank prior to bottling, so they looked about the most knocked about they will ever be, unless someone cellars them poorly or for too long. It didn’t matter; the tasting was exceptional. The Chardonnay and Shiraz are unquestionably outstanding wines; the Cabernet Sauvignon has excellent long-term potential, while each marginally outshone the elegant and willowy Pinot Noir. While I rate each of the four wines at or above a gold medal minimum of 18.5, I will not publish scores until I taste them as finished wines. As an aside, I think it is irresponsible and misleading for critics to publish scores of unfinished wines, especially barrel samples. Rated by Rick Kinzbrunner as his best Chardonnay yet, the 2002 release is scented with lime juice, mineral and honeysuckle. Sumptuously endowed with a deep core of citrus and melon fruit, it reveals typically tightly crafted influences of butterscotch, creamy/earthy lees and nutty/matchstick oak. Smooth and unctuous, it finishes savoury with the classic Beechworth minerality and length. It’s a wine of both power and refinement, whose only question mark remains a slightly warm and spirity influence of alcohol, which I expect to integrate better when the wine settles after a few months in bottle. The Pinot Noir is very briary and perfumed, with complex suggestions of undergrowth, smoked meats and duck fat. Piercingly intense, it’s long and pristine. Although its texture would clearly have suffered with the sulphur dioxide addition, it retained sufficient fleshiness to suggest it will fill out beautifully. Certainly one of the best wines ever made under this label. Robust, firm and bred for distance, the Cabernet Sauvignon is deeply scented with an array of cabernet aromas, from the lightly herbal/crushed leaves, to violets, plums, cassis and mulberries, to dark olives and blackberries. Tightly integrated oak and a powerful, rather gravely spine of tannins perfectly offset its deep flavours and length, culminating in a very long and lingering finish. If you dialled up a concept car version of an Australian-made Rh̫ne-style shiraz, you couldn’t do any better than the Giaconda 2002. It’s deeply fruited and savoury, with less apparent fruit sweetness than previous releases. Furthermore, it’s exceptionally fragrant, exotically spicy and alluringly complex. Meaty, briary and rustic, without a suggestion of any untoward spoilage characters, it’s long and powerful, finishing with fine, drying tannins and pleasing acidity. It will last and last. Naturally, these wines are going to be hard to get. They sold very quickly from the Giaconda website, but their sheer importance as role models in this industry more than justifies this coverage. Seek them out if you can.
