Nightfall Draco Cabernet Sauvignon 2019

This is the Nightfall flagship, their icon, the Dragon, a straight Coonawarra Cabernet. Just 1,200 bottles made. From vines planted around 1980, only the best bunches are included. Crushing, destemming, hand plunging twice daily, this has a week on skins and was then pressed directly to barrels where it matured for two years. A final barrel selection of the best eight barrels gave us the Dragon.

An opaque magenta. The wine is immediately and quite obviously still very young with ample concentration at every level. Notes of aniseed, chocolate, vanillin oak well integrated, a hint of mint, dry herbs, tobacco leaves, blackcurrants and cassis. This is seamless throughout and maintains its intensity right through to a very long finish with good balance and silky tannins. This really needs five years before you should even think about opening one, but will then drink superbly for the next decade to fifteen years, during which time, there is every reason to believe that the score will increase.