Monday, 13 July 2009
Tahbilk 1994 Cabernet Sauvignon
I was scratching my head, absent-mindedly trying to think of a suitable present for a sixtieth birthday present and tidying the bookshelves in the office when the penny dropped. A flier in a carton of wine from Tahbilk a while back advised of a special good customer offer. I’d noted the offer at the time, but at $18.95/bottle or $210/dozen for the 1994 Shiraz I’d had a full wine rack and other fish to fry.
Glancing at the flier again, however, I subtracted 1994 from 2009, multiplied the answer by four and came up with sixty. Need a sixtieth present for a wine drinker? Look no further. A glance at the vintage chart on the back of the latest Tahbilk Wine Club Newsletter showed that they rated the ‘94 as improving and, as a result I was on the phone a couple of days later looking for a dozen.
Unfortunately, the same flier had turned up in each of the previous shipments from Tahbilk. and, predictably, by the time I got around to calling the ‘94 Shiraz was all gone.
But we do have the Cabernet...
Same price? was a predictable query from a cagy customer.
When that turned out to be the case, a case was duly ordered, along with a restock in the everyday drinking department. The courier service Tahbilk uses is remarkably efficient, and wines ordered on Monday morning arrived on the doorstep on Thursday afternoon. There’s a lot of road between Nagambie Lakes and Bowen, so the usual practice with any wine shipment is to give the bottles a day to recover from travel trauma.
Since I was going to have to wait till tomorrow (at least) for a taste, I thought I’d just sneak by Mr Halliday’s website to see what he had to say about the wine. The result of the inquiry wasn’t promising - a May ‘97 tasting rated it at 78 (not good, if we’re giving it away as a birthday present). The tasting note wasn’t too off-putting - touches of mint, pleasant mouthfeel but a drink by date of 2003 suggested that someone had blundered. I was back looking at the vintage chart tout suite, I can tell you, but there it was improving, code 5 (which equates, according to the winery to 10-15 year cellar period) and the ‘93 was ready. Still, I wasn’t convinced.
I cracked a bottle on Friday night, wanting something to to go with a Hungarian Gulyas, figuring that if anything went wrong I had a week to come up with something for Jimbo’s sixtieth.
The reservations were still there when Madam took her first sip. Wines don’t last fifteen years in these parts, so we don’t get to sample too many aged bottles, but from the first mouthful it was obvious that we’d got it in time. The mailer that came with the carton suggests the next year to eighteen months as the optimum, and who am I to argue?
Elegant, obviously Cabernet with that characteristic touch of mint, nicely balanced with a lingering finish. Given the absence of Hughesy’s favourite hearty winter red (the Westend Calabria Saint Macaire) from The Wine Society’s monthly magazine this looks to be the perfect substitute. I’ll definitely be back for more, assuming their supplies last.
