We love St Ignatius Vineyard and their fastidious commitment to producing wines of old world quality. Even for a reserve range, how many wineries can you name today that release a wine over three years after its underlying fruit has been picked? Two years in quality oak and a year in the bottle before it reaches you? That is how wine used to be. That is how wine should be. That’s how reserve wine still is at St Ignatius Vineyard. And it pays handsome dividends, as we discovered when we recently tried their 2019 reserve Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec:
* St Ignatius Vineyard 2019 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon – Inky, reflective black in colour, like the face of the ocean in the late of night. Cracked pepper, black currant and whispers of cardamom greet you on the nose. On the palate, a luscious, opulent, generous, powerful & lingering wine – several adjectives there, but these are the words that roll through your mind one-by-one as this wine’s waves of flavours slowly unfold across the palate. Primary fruit flavours are warm blackberry framed by hints of vanilla. No green pinch or grip at all. This is more of a black hole of flavour that bends all attention toward it as it sucks you in with its mesmerising power.
St Ignatius vineyard does not advertise itself as a Cab Sauv specialist, but they may well be the Pyrenees’ best Cabernet house! (This wonder follows up their 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon – the best we’ve had from the region and one of the best we’ve had from all of Australia.)
Score: 95/100 (drinking in 2022)
We believe this wine has years to run and may well advance to a 96 or 97 in three to five years, but gosh it’s hard not to just love right now.
(We also highly recommend you try St Ignatius Vineyard’s 2019 Reserve Malbec. Another glorious long-finishing wine that gently pushes and pushes its tobacco, warm violet and archetypical blueberry compote Malbec flavours across the palate. An ultimate steak wine. 92/100.)
For more wine and winery reviews, follow along at: