Home > Robert Oatley The Pennant Frankland River Cabernet Sauvignon 2018

Robert Oatley The Pennant Frankland River Cabernet Sauvignon 2018

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The Pennant collection comes from wherever the team can source fruit which achieves that standard. In this case, it is Cabernet hailing from Frankland River. In particular, a single vineyard in the region, the Justin Vineyard (even more specifically, Block 12 in that vineyard). Even then, the final wine comes from a careful barrel selection. The handpicked berries “run down an individual berry sorting table into small vessels to macerate and ferment on skins for 4-6 weeks”. The wine was then matured for another fifteen months in ‘new, tight-grained, low toast’ French oak. A vibrant opaque magenta hue. It is immediately obvious that we have seriously good concentration here. The perfumes include cherries, warm earth, leather, chocolate, bay leaves and black fruits. The wine is muscular, with good intensity for the full journey, and finishes with plenty of tannins plus fine silky tannins. A very attractive style of Cabernet from the region which promises good drinking for a decade.

Ken Gargett

Contributor at Winepilot

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.

Wine writer and critic