Curtis Family Durif Small Batch 2025
- 91
- $80
- Drink by: 2026-2036
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The Small Batch program allows the team room for innovation and exploration. Durif is certainly not a variety we see regularly, but it can make some wines of character. The fruit undergoes destemming and then cold soaking for two weeks before a further fourteen days fermenting. Maturation is in a mix of new and two-year-old American oak barrels. A black core here with an opaque maroon rim, this is a wine of powerful aromas. We have notes of smoked meats, chocolate, black fruits, soy, raspberries, grilled gourmet sausages, kirsch and herbs. Quite a muscular style, it is of moderate length, but it does fade perhaps fractionally sooner than ideal. Soft tannins linger on the finish, but a touch more length would lift it to the next level. Perhaps in time? Worth giving it five to ten years, although a bottle or two at your next fabulous barbecue would not go astray.
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.
