The Auswine Forum

Pale yellow in colour, belying it's age.

Toasty nose, with lots of honeysuckle and lanolin, possibly a little chalkiness. Very faint lemon. Quite typical Hunter Valley Semillon.

The palate has stronger lemon across the palate, with some refreshing acidity and a degree of honey and toast. Reasonable length.

I'm not overly familiar with this brand, and I suspect it is still young and needs another few years. Alternatively, it's fully developed and a little thin and light on for its age.

Cheers
Allan

Screwcap right?

While I'm all for screwcap on Semillon...They seem to take unbelievably long to develop that way....Hopefully producers have started using some screwcaps with more ingress oxygen..

Early Vat 1s under screwcap are still another 10+ years away if not more from where they need to be...and they're 15+ years at this point....

I don't even think I've had any great aged Sem for the last 4 years...98/99 Vat 1s are drying up and half of them are goners...Everything else under screwcap have all had great potential but need a lot more time...Hopefully in the next 5 years some of them start coming into their own...

Thanks Polymer

Your screwcap comments would suggest my "too young" assessment is the right one. Certainly, the colour did not hint at excessive development.

Time to keep my hands off the remaining Semillons (which are all in the 2004-2009 age range)

Cheers
Allan

It is the one wine that feels like I have too many because the same wines have been there forever.

To put it in perspective though, I'm often using Vat 1 as a measuring stick..and it is probably a terrible one to use. Most Semillon will be riper and a bit more accessible and will take less time to age...and I really have no idea what the timelines will be because I haven't seen them really come into their own yet under screwcap....it also means I've stopped buying any because if Vat 1 takes as long as I think it will, I have more than enough and if we finally get to a point where the screwcaps are looking good, some other nice fellow will be selling them and I'll pick them up then..

Allan,

I am not familiar with this wine but surely eight years is not old for a Hunter Valley wine.

There hasn't been much Hunter semillon available here in my hometown in Canada so I am rather poverty stricken when it comes to old semillons. I was first enamoured with an old semillon when I bought and drank a cellar release semillon from Woodstock in the McLaren Vale. It was an '88 and we were drinking it in 2001. At first it was rather shy but a half an hour later it started to blossom. Why I have '98 Woodstock shiraz in my cellar and not the semillon is a puzzle to me. What was I thinking?

I did bring back a few semillons from Australia, Mount Pleasant Elizabeth and Rockford, but the only others that I have are one-offs that I randomly threw in the cellar. One of them, a '91 Basedow, was something I completely forgot about and only came across it a month ago. It's in a burgundy bottle and both the level and colour looks okay. I also know that there is a Rosemount with a black label lurking around somewhere. It's also likely a 90's wine. I'm likely to be disappointed with these two but when it comes to wine one never knows, thats half the fun.

Mahmoud.