2018 Yalumba The Menzies Cabernet Sauvignon

95 POINTS

Halliday Wine Companion

Another beautiful release. Mint, mulberry and blackcurrant flavours drift with tobacco and forest herbs. It's a cooling cabernet but a ripe one, fluid and refreshing but firm and solid. This wine needs to be stashed in a cool, dark place for at least a handful of years to start showing its best. Campbell Mattinson Published 06 July 2023

95 POINTS

Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate

The 2018 The Menzies Cabernet Sauvignon is luscious and velvety in the mouth, with a lustrous core of shimmering purple Cabernet fruit. The tannins are typical of Coonawarra in that they are firm, yet they are seamlessly inlaid into the fruit, which feels as if it spills over the edge of the glass. Seductive but rigid, it will have a long life in front of it, make no mistake. You get cassis, resin, licorice, raspberry, gravel/iodine, bay leaf, dark chocolate, after dinner mints (the only brand to be had is the After Eight mints, of course), and notions of cedar spice. Brilliant. 14% alcohol, sealed under cork.

95 POINTS

Campbell Mattinson - Halliday Wine Companion

Another beautiful release. Mint, mulberry and blackcurrant flavours drift with tobacco and forest herbs. It's a cooling cabernet but a ripe one, fluid and refreshing but firm and solid. This wine needs to be stashed in a cool, dark place for at least a handful of years to start showing its best.

94 POINTS

Campbell Mattinson - The Wine Front

I’ve looked at this wine from a couple of bottles and have sat on the glass that I have in front of me for quite some time. Some wines take me a while to really see. There’s a strictness to this wine. I thought it was a bit awkward at first but I think that the tannin is just taking its time to properly roll out. The roads of Rome weren’t laid smooth, but boy did they last. This wine is medium in weight, it carries some floral perfumes, it has a creaminess to its texture but there’s some race to the acidity too; a friskiness; a cool refreshment to the power of the blackcurrant-driven fruit. Peppermint and cedar are in play here too, and tobacco, the latter with an earthen almost-dryness to it. Forest berries; deserved of a mention. Hold back on this; give it some time. I’ve come to see it as beautifully constructed.

93 POINTS

James Suckling

Aromas of blackberries and cassis with dried lavender, violets, notes of walnuts and spices. Full-bodied, firm and structured with bright and fresh black and blue fruit character, highlighted with a steady acidity and mineral backbone. Long and even.

93 POINTS

Angus Hughson - Vinous

The refined 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Yalumba The Menzies is intriguing thanks to its sage and thyme layers perfectly matched to an effortless core of blackcurrant, with subtle oak sitting in reserve. Those herbal elements continue through the palate, supported by a firm backbone of sinewy tannins to support a long, youthful and vibrant finish. This is far from ready and needs time to blossom.

91 POINTS

Christina Pickard - Wine Enthusiast

Still quite young, ripe and oaky at first pour, then expanding with aeration, Menzies offers dense aromas of black cherry jam, plum preserves, black pepper, bay leaf atop a layer of toasty sweet oak. The palate is tightly wound in drying, granular tannins. Heightened acidity and tangy red and black fruit make for a structure that should take this another decade at least.

91 POINTS

2024 - Decanter World Wine Awards

Inviting and aromatic, with sharp blueberry and blackcurrant leading to a palate of redcurrant, thyme, black tea and cedar. Award: Silver - DWWA 2024