Nightfall Draco Cabernet Sauvignon 2019
- 96
- $250
- Drink by: 2023-2038
Share
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.
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.
