O’Leary Walker Pinotage 2024
- 94
- $35
- Drink by: 2025-2031
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Okay. Let me say from the start, when I first tasted Pinotage many years ago, I thought it was a practical joke. But then I’ve gradually come to appreciate what this distinctively created variety has to offer. Its home is in South Africa, where they love the stuff. But a chance tasting by one of the O’Leary Walker growers some years back encouraged him to bring some cuttings into Australia and to plant the variety. A small planting, but important. So, the guys at O’Leary Walker have decided to do something with it, and it turns out it’s a mighty, mighty good drink. It gets fermented in small fermenters, hand plunged, and the aim is to try and preserve that aromatic that is so important to pinotage. The oak treatment was largely older oak, but there was 15% new French. And it received about 12 months. There’s sort of black plummy fruit characters here, but with some nice spicy dried herb nuances that appear to be part of the variety. This one has a brilliance about it with bright crimson colours, a slightly floral aroma, and a rather delicious, seamlessly integrated palate. So, if you’ve heard about Pinotage, and you’ve heard some of the negatives, don’t be put off. This actually is a wine that you need to have a look at. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.
Ray Jordan has been writing about wine for more than 40 years. His first articles were published in the early issues of national wine magazine Winestate in the late 1970s when he worked in Sydney as a newspaper correspondent. From 1989 Ray wrote more than 3000 columns as a regular newspaper wine columnist. He currently writes a regular column for the special business publication Business News and is one of the main contributors to national wine platform Wine Pilot. In 2017 Ray co-authored The Way it Was – A History of The Early Days of the Margaret River Wine Industry and previously wrote Wine in the Blood: Australia’s Family Wine Estates, published in Mandarin and English. In 2011 Ray was awarded WA Wine Press Club Jack Mann Memorial Medal for his contribution to the WA wine industry. His love of wine is as strong as his love of the blues and tasting the thousands of wines that cross his bench each year allows him to indulge in both.
