DAN'S WINE BLOG- THIS WEEKS WINE REVIEW

THIS WEEK'S WINE REVIEW

This week I am talking about one of the most amazing wines in Australia, DE BORTOLI NOBLE ONE BOTRYTIS SEMILLON.

Why amazing you may ask? Well, until #DeBortoliWines made the first vintage of this wonderful wine back in 1982, there were no botrytis wines made in Australia. All the sweet wines such as Sp?tlese, Auslese and Trockenbeerenauslese were all made from increasingly late-picked grapes, but not from Botrytis Cinerea infected grapes. Don’t get me wrong there were some excellent wines like the McWilliams Mount Pleasant and Lindemans Hunter Valley Porphyry series – the 1975 of which was still drinking fantastically a few weeks ago.

This year marks the 40th Anniversary of the DE BORTOLI BOTRYTIS SEMILLON, now called “NOBLE ONE”.

Starting with the 1982 vintage, this wine has had a stellar career winning more medals than you can poke a stick at – many vintages ran out of room on the back label to list all the accolades they had received.

The first time I tasted this marvelous wine was the 1982 vintage, back in 1988 at a “Sensory Evaluation” class held at Roseworthy College while doing my Wine Marketing Diploma (no degree in those days). By sheer happenstance I ended up being the pourer, out of an unlabeled, 2.0litre flagon of the dessert wine for the class. Thanks to judicious pouring there was around 100-125mls left at the bottom of the flagon. We tasted the wine, had our minds blown, and then the lecturer revealed that it was the DE BORTOLI 1982 BOTRYTIS SEMILLON, and quoted the amazing number of awards it had received thus far. This was the last wine before lunch, so while everybody headed off to lunch, I sat in the lab and was quietly enraptured by the remaining wine from the flagon. This was followed by a little nap out on the oval and I was ready for the afternoon lecture.

I have enjoyed the 1982 vintage on a number of occasions since then, the last being about 10 years ago, and it had matured fantastically and was still divine. I suspect it will live almost indefinitely, like most quality Sauterne wines do.

To celebrate this Anniversary I dug out the one and only bottle of NOBLE ONE left in my cellar, the 1988 vintage. At 34-years-old it was almost brown in tawny colour. When poured the complex bouquet of dried apricots, raisins and honey effused out of the glass. The palate is so sweet, rich, complex, deep and superbly structured with gently drying acidity on the finish so that it didn’t cloy. In fact, it is still slightly tight on the finish. It is ever so utterly moreish and it is hard if not impossible to imagine being able to pack any more flavor into a wine than what this mana from heaven has. It is literally “breath-taking”! OMG! As some would say, “heaven on a stick” or in this case, “heaven in a glass”.

Whilst I haven’t tried the latest release, given the effort and TLC that De Bortoli put into the making of the NOBLE ONE, I am sure that the quality, deliciousness and ageability are there, like they have been since the very first vintage 40 years ago.

A huge thank you to De Bortoli Wines for creating this superb, seminal wine, which continues to delight and proves that we can match it with the rest of the world. FRICKING AWESOME!!!!!

Winery Link:

www.debortoli.com.au