Penfolds Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon 2023
- 98
- $800
- Drink by: 2025-2055
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This vintage hails from vineyards in McLaren Vale, Barossa Valley and Padthaway. Maturation is in American oak for a year and a half, all of it new. This release is a monumental wine. Impressive, exhibiting such length and exuberance. The highlight is a sweet core of dark cherry/chocolate. The colour is an opaque maroon while the nose opens with plums, chocolate (which never really abandons us), spices, bergamot, plenty of oak deftly handled, cassis, licorice, spices, nutmeg, cold tea, smoked meats, graphite and black cherries. Time in the glass saw the cassis/dark cherries/kirsch notes emerge more and more. There is refinement here, though it quickly morphs into a hedonistic energy, balance and focus, with fresh acidity running the length. This will easily sail through the next twenty to thirty years.
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.
