Very good depth to the colour; a died-in-the-wool classic Coonawarra cabernet, with both bouquet and palate exuding blackcurrant and blueberry fruit sustained and complexed by persistent but silky tannins and judicious use of French oak (70% new)." Drink 2031 96 Points James Halliday
It’s not fashionable but … I’m a fan of Lindemans St George cabernet sauvignon. Epitome of Coonawarra cabernet.
Cabernet can be a doughnut of a wine – all start and finish, with a hole in the middle of the flavours. This is a bit like that, but don’t despair: there is an excellent future ahead of it. It tastes earthen and curranty and dusty, with quite a deal of tannin churning through the finish. Excellent violetty, chocolatey, pencilly hit on the finish, too – but drinking it at its best is going to require patience. I tasted this late last year and its tannin sturcture seemed more muscular than it does now, though I still reckon it’s still nicely set for the future. Drink : 2013 - 2021 93 points Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front
The grapes for the Lindemans St George Vineyard Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon are sourced entirely from 30-year-old vines on the celebrated 12-hectare Lindemans St George Vineyard. This particularly low-yielding vineyard is located directly on the Limestone spine of the Terra Rossa strip and produces a wine that is the very essence of Coonawarra. This illustrious wine is full bodied, complex and intense with the ability to age gracefully.
Lindemans Coonawarra winemaker Brett Sharpe, who made the outstanding 2006 Coonawarra Trio of Limestone Ridge Shiraz Cabernet, St George Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon and Pyrus (the best for some years; all three wines appear in this month’s 100 new tasting notes) has an interesting history.
Born in 1962, he grew up in the towns of St George and Toowoomba in Queensland before his family moved to Sydney in 1979. His interest in wine started to develop in the mid-1980s while studying horticulture, with two wines (1973 Lindemans Hunter River Burgundy and 1976 Lindemans Limestone Ridge) seizing his imagination.
He put a tentative foot towards a wine career by working in a bottle shop, but then the travel bug bit, and his interest in the Middle East led to his residency in Israel just before the start of the first Gulf War, and he remained there throughout that war.
He continued his travels, and by chance was in Bordeaux during Vinexpo in 1990, where he met the owners of an Austrian winery, and was offered vintage work. This became his European base, but he took time to enrol in the wine science degree at Charles Sturt University in 1993 before returning to Austria for another vintage, followed by South Africa for eight months.
He graduated from Charles Sturt University in 1997 while working at Goona Warra Vineyard at Sunbury, Victoria, before moving to Wynns prior to the 1998 vintage working as cellar team leader. At the end of that year he was appointed winemaker for Lindemans and Rouge Homme, and there he has remained for 10 years. Coonawarra Trio James Halliday, October 1, 2009
