Brown Hill Ivanhoe Cabernet Reserve 2020
- 93
- $50
- Drink by: 2022-2030
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A varietal Cabernet Sauvignon from Margaret River, from a superb vintage – what more could you wish for? The fruit is sourced from various blocks from a single site vineyard. The grapes go over the sorting table and then to fermentation tanks for 18 days on skins. Following fermentation, the wine is pressed to a selection of French Bordeaux barriques, where it spends a year and a half maturing. Dark maroon in colour, this is all about coiled power. We have notes of leather, aniseed, blackberries, some earth, tobacco leaves and bitter chocolate. The culminates in delightfully silky tannins, a fine line of acidity, good length and impressive balance; this is a very fine Marg River Cab. A focused wine with good structure, this would be better left for a year or two before opened, and then drunk over the next six to eight years, longer from a good cellar.
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.
