Kirrihill VSS Leasingham Cabernet Malbec 2021
- 93
- $35
- Drink by: 2025-2035
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A blend of 87% Cabernet Sauvignon and 13% Malbec – this includes 10% Cabernet Sauvignon from the 2024 vintage and 2% Malbec from the 2025 vintage, all perfectly legal, of course. The fruit comes from the Schrober’s Vineyard in the south of the Clare Valley. The Cabernet vines are over half a century in age. The wine spent eighteen months maturing in French oak, 20% of which was new. The colour is an inky dark maroon whilst the nose exhibits notes of cloves, leather, soy, spices, blackcurrants, tobacco leaves, aniseed and graphite. Good intensity, there is very good and persistent length here, through to fine-grained but firm tannins. The palate sees the emergence of chocolate and espresso notes. Good focus, this is very much in the austere, savoury mould. It should drink beautifully for at least the next decade.
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.
