Payne’s Rise Cabernet Sauvignon 2024
- 94
- $39
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Twenty-five years of Cabernet for Payne’s Rise, and as ever, it is glorious in its typicity. Yes, you heard me: Yarra Valley Cabernet has it, like Bordeaux, like Tuscany, like Napa, like Margaret River. There’s a cool mint-chocolate vibe, with capsicum, spearmint and blackcurrant, almost in liquid form, alongside blackberries, red liquorice and macerated violets. Herbal and savoury notes of graphite and turned earth, with a persistent thread of spice, carry through onto the palate, where the fruit feels more restrained than on the nose. The tannins are slowly building, ever-present and granular. The wine stops a little abruptly in its attempt to travel long distance, leaving the question of whether it is simply too early in its life, or whether this is the shape it is built for.
Lisa Cardelli is an Italian-born wine professional who has been based in Melbourne since 2010. She worked as a sommelier in some of the city’s leading fine-dining restaurants for over ten years before leaving hospitality to become a wine sales representative. Lisa is now a journalist for Il Globo, the newspaper for Italians in Australia and around the world, where she also curates her own wine column. She continues to write about wine for both local and international publications and is on track to become one of the few prolific bilingual wine writers in Australia. A certified WSET Educator, she teaches at various venues across Melbourne. She also judges at local wine shows and for the prestigious Australia’s Wine List of the Year Awards and China’s Wine List of the Year Awards. Lisa was the recipient of the 2022 Wine Communicators of Australia award for Best Published Feature Article, a finalist for the same award in 2024, the recipient of the 2022 Sydney Royal Wine Professional Development Scholarship sponsored by the Len Evans Foundation, and one of twelve carefully selected Len Evans Scholars in 2024.
