Noon Winery Reserve Cabernet

"The fruit for the Reserve Cabernet has been sourced from the same vineyard (the Fruit Trees block in Langhorne Creek) since the first Reserve Cabernet in 1996. Earlier bottlings of this wine; 1993, 1987 and 1986 (when Drew’s father David was the winemaker) were simply known as Noon’s Cabernet.We love making and drinking Cabernet, the international benchmark for red wines. Noon Reserve Cabernet is a riper style of Cabernet, emphasizing blackberry fruit over herbal characters. We are not afraid of high ripeness levels in pursuit of flavour and the wine should always be complex and well structured for cellaring. A journalist once gave our Reserve Cabernet quite a good review but commented that it was not very Cabbish (probably because he had read the alcohol level on the back label). We think this wine is very Cabbish! Almost Cabernet essence, in a pure blackberry/blackcurrant and cedar kind of way.The back label recommends cellaring for a 5 to10 year plus time frame but this is conservative, as recent tastings of earlier vintages demonstrate. Of all of our wines, the Cabernet generally benefits the most from extended cellaring. I suspect many of the recent vintages, since we have refined our winemaking, will still be drinking very well at 20 years plus. For further information on cellaring, individual vintages and how they are drinking please click on the tasting notes button above. Consistent with our other wines, we have noticed the Cabernet goes through a dull period around the 4 to 7 year mark when it is between youth and maturity.Lamb and Cabernet is a proven and classic match. Roast leg or rack of lamb with lots of rosemary and garlic and roasted vegetables is an ideal accompaniment for our Reserve Cabernet. In fact just about anything roasted.......a small roast chicken wrapped in pancetta or stuffed under the skin with herbs or with an old wine, roast pork with black olives. In that sense Cabernet for us is a bit of a Sunday wine. A wine for important or significant meals. It is definitely a good idea to decant the wine, anywhere from half an hour to 24 hours prior to serving (especially if the wine is young), the aeration will help encourage the wines aromas."Noon Winery