98 POINTS
Sarah Ahmed - Decanter
Ripe. slippery blueberry, blackcurrant, mulberry and salty plum fruit reflects the warm, near-drought year and measly yields. Opening up, iodine, tea leaf, tobacco, dried rose and violet nuances emerge. Chocolatey wrap-around tannins gently embrace and build. Gorgeous fluidity and mouthfeel, with an ethereal, gossamer finish, pronounced minerality (lead shot, terracotta, ironstone), and soft but lingering grip. Aged in barriques and puncheons, 50% new, some biodynamic, with 9% amphora-fermented.
98 POINTS
James Halliday - Halliday Wine Companion
Has the usual estate blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc and malbec (92/4/3/1%), the grapes hand picked on fruit days between early February and early March, the components matured in French oak (50% new) for 13 months. The perfumed bouquet has already soaked up the new oak, the purity of the fruit in a cassis-redcurrant-blueberry spectrum. The small berries of a quasi-drought summer might have imposed awkward tannins, but the medium-bodied palate is so perfectly balanced it has a drinking span of 30 years and counting.
96 POINTS
Mike Bennie - The Wine Front
Great detail in that the wine comes from nine picks across fruit and flower days of the biodynamic calendar, spread across a month-ish lunar cycle. The Cullen way.
Another beautiful, soulful release, this one a bit darker, a bit bolder, a mesh of tannins over train tracks and tension, but a wine of significant pedigree and wow factor nonetheless. Dark chocolate and graphite aromas with salted plum, black olive, bay leaf and oyster shell. Flavours ripple with authority in that weave of tannin, dark choc again, panforte perhaps more apt, dark cherry, saline minerality, more bayleaf and cinnamon spice. Succulent in the finish, mouth-watering and very fresh. Compelling stuff.
96 POINTS
Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate
The 2020 Diana Madeline is both pure and muscular in the glass, with layers of cassis and dark chocolate, bramble and clove, aniseed and fennel. Pastrami nuances create dimension on the palate, as the ductile tannins provide chew and shape the finish. It matured for 13 months in French oak, a mixture of puncheons and barriques. The fruit spent between 10 and 99 days on skins (average 27) and comprises a blend of 92% Cabernet Sauvignon, 4% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc and 1% Malbec. As always with this Diana Madeline wine, there is no additions of yeast, acid or malolactic acid in its production. 13.1% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.
96 POINTS
Christina Pickard - Wine Enthusiast
Diana is a wine built to last the ages. It's expressive now, though, via layers of heady aromas like black currant, blackberry, pencil shaving, briny black olive and spice box. Dusty, fine, sandy-textured tannins cinch the fresh, plummy fruit in the mouth. A tightrope of power and poise.
This is bright, layered and gently herbal cabernet-based blend with a deliciously textured array of black fruit, mint chocolate, iodine, olive stones, eucalyptus and bay leaves. Medium-bodied, with firm yet well-integrated tannins. Savory. Creamy and fine at the end. 92% cabernet sauvignon, 4% merlot, 3% cabernet franc and 1% malbec. From biodynamically grown grapes.
95 POINTS
Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate
The 2020 Diana Madeline hails from a vintage that perhaps we underestimate its significance, purely by virtue of the fact that we may be too close to it currently. Similar to the World War years, any wine made in 2020 was done so under trying conditions heretofore not experienced by the global community. Widespread lockdowns, the threat of a then-unknown virus weighing down upon us all, uncertainty rife and mobility greatly restricted, the wines of the 2020 vintage are a triumph in themselves. In Margaret River, the season was warm, dry and early, and it has yielded a tranche of structurally powerful wines, as this is. The tannins here feel firm, and they serve to encase the fruit rather than exist within it, as other Diana Madelines exhibit. It is perhaps a wine that needs more time, and it is certainly a historical vintage to collect—if not for us now, then for our children later. 13.1% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.
Cullen Wines supplied the following technical details: The 2020 harvest dates included two moon-opposite-Saturn events and two full moons—one being a fruit day perigee and the other a moon-opposite-Saturn flower day—and took place from February 8 until March 10. The blend is 92% Cabernet Sauvignon, 4% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc and 1% Malbec. Closed tanks, open fermenters, barrels and amphora were all used in the fermentation process, and the period of skin contact lasted from 10 to 99 days, depending on the batch of wine. This wine spent 13 months in 50% new oak in a mixture of barriques and puncheons, with some biodynamic oak featuring. No additions of yeast, acid or malolactic acid were made to this wine.
94 POINTS
Angus Hughson - Vinous
The 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon Diana Madeline is stylish, poised and precise boasting an intense and enticing core of graphite, blackberry, and black olive aromas. Classically structured, there is immense density to the dark, cedary fruit flavour and tannins, with underlying vitality and freshness. A long, tight and sinewy finish bodes well for the future but it clearly needs time to fill out.
