Briar Ridge Big Bully Cabernet Stonefields Vineyard 2022
- 94
- $65
- Drink by: 2025-2035
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Wrattonbully Cabernet from a very fine vintage, the wine spent a year and a half in French oak barriques, 40% new. Hard to imagine that the team saw this as anything other than a wine for the long haul. It has serious promise and should enjoy a very long life. Under diam. An opaque maroon hue, the nose is full of plums, mulberries, mocha, a hint of aniseed, cigar boxes and supported by deftly handled oak. It is seamless, finely balanced and the intensity is maintained all through the very long finish. Ever-so-fine tannins, give the wine good grip as the palate sees the emergence of notes of coffee grinds and cloves. A ten year proposition.
Ken was born and bred in Brisbane, Queensland. He had a non-trendy, perfectly happy childhood, in a family convinced alcohol meant instant condemnation to Hades. But a break fishing on the Great Barrier Reef, and some good wine, started a serious obsession that eventually took over. It did not stop Ken being chastised later for drinking Pol champagne, disgusted he’d drink anything made by a Cambodian dictator. Now, Ken mostly writes on wine, champagne and spirits for various newspapers, magazines and books, but is perhaps best known for his work in The Courier Mail. He also has a little sideline writing on cigars, fishing, travel and food. When not writing, fly-fishing for trout in NZ or bonefish on the flats of Cuba, travelling or smoking cigars, he is no doubt following a variety of sporting teams – the occasionally glorious Queensland Reds rugby, the dysfunctional Washington Redskins, the dodgy Arsenal and especially revels in the world restored to its proper axis with the return of the Ashes to their rightful home.
