2014 Inkwell Blonde on Blonde Viognier
The Wine front - Review by Gary Walsh
#1595 of 2400 bottles. So much detail on the back label but it’s “just the facts ma’am.’ Dudley Brown, is one of the great intellectuals and stirrers in the Australian wine game. We share one trait, at least.
He’s nailed it this year, I reckon. Feels entirely natural and unforced, and the balance and texture in the mouth is spot on. Juicy stone fruit, floral perfume, light spice and fennel. Quite fat, but it glistens and rolls through the mouth quite fine, and there’s a gentle chalky texture to corset it, anyway. Love drinking it, which given it’s Viognier, is amazing in itself.
Rated : 92 Points
Tasted : Nov14
Alcohol : 12.9%
Price : $25
Closure : Screwcap
Drink : 2014 - 2019
Posted on 09 November 2014
InDaily - review by Philip White
25; 12.9% alcohol; screw cap; 91 points
It seems that a few Australian winemakers have reached a new level of appreciation of Viognier, which had almost entirely disappeared from its home in France by the time the quirky Peter Wall decided it would become Yalumba’s top white nearly 30 years ago. Now, with wines like the sublime Castagna Ingénue 2013, we see an enlightened change of gear. Here’s another example: heady with a sort of royal oiliness that reminds me of avocado, but with balancing, paler flesh, with aromas and flavours like a salad of carambola, cherimoya and sapodilla.
Such wines are moving the variety from a Chardonnay alternative made pretty much to be like an ordinary Chardonnay canned with thicker syrup by a different mob to a true alternative in the sense of radical departure. I know it’s the wrong album, but you really “don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”. To pause a mo on His Bobness’s Blonde on Blonde, sooner or later one of us must know that while this wine is no idiot wind, it’s clearly blowing from somewhere else. It has that subtle confident oiliness that caresses and soothes the mouth rather than rinsing or bleaching it, but it never begins to paint and coat it to the point of sealing it from the weather. Rather, its fatty acid unction is calming and satisfying, and provokes no urgent hunger, a famishing quality I usually like in wine.
So what does it make me wanna do, other than snooze? It makes me put it back in the fridge and begin the careful construction of a red pork curry. Which is a contradiction, but who cares?
Published on 6 November 2014
The Key Report - review by Tony Keys
Faint peach on the nose (the traditional descriptor being apricot) but this was a hint of peach, rich and with weight on the tongue but not overpowering, just right, clean even journey across the palate with spikes of flavour as it travels, long on the finish, beautifully constructed wine a silken thread from beginning to end 94 points and worth $25