Opening a 2010 bottle of Hamlin Bay Cabernet Sauvignon with my father to watch the 2nd semi final between North Melbourne and Geelong on Friday night was an interesting affair. After being introduced to Hamlin Bay through a wine club a number of years back, I always seek out a bottle whenever I am in a bottle shop.
You have to look hard at the smaller bottle shops, the large chains tend to only carry certain lines of high producing vineyards, this smaller boutique winery struggles to supply the chains with volumes. What the do serve up though is high quality at small volumes.
Looking at the tasting notes; the 2010 was described as having aromas of red fruits and cassis dusted with chocolate and cocoa on a savoury background. That got me thinking, I have no idea what cassis flavours are so a quick google search of cassis first landed me on webpage describing a commune east of Marseille in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of southern France near Bouches-du-Rhône.
After redefining my search to cassis flavours; I then learned this refers to an intense blackcurrant flavour, this I actually determined for myself. I was then intent on identifying the cocoa and chocolate overtones, they were there, although not big and bold, there was hints of chocolate flavours.
The tasting notes also described the wine as having a deliberately moderate pallet, a refined line of flavour, resting on a fine grainy tannin backbone. I thought the tannins were fine, this cab sav was full bodied whilst remaining subdued and stylish. This wine has a fairly good pedigree with 14 months in French oak, 25% was new oak with the remained second hand. I like this winery, I love drinking what they produce.
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