2021 Hickinbotham Mr Grant Malbec

94 POINTS

Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate

The Hickinbotham wines are routinely classy expressions from the eponymous vineyard in Clarendon, in McLaren Vale, planted 1971. This 2021 Mr Grant Malbec leads with peppercorns, purple flowers (lavender, violet, etc.), cinnamon sticks, star anise and blackberry pip. In the mouth, the tannins wrap around the fruit, the oak is sweet and dusty (good, like cocoa power), and the draw of flavor across the palate is long and deep. This is an excellent wine. It is poised, rocky and mineral, with some graphite and brick dust. Very impressive. 14% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

94 POINTS

Cassandra Charlick - Winepilot

Malbec 99%. Cab Franc 1%. This is the first release of this wine and certainly won’t be the last. This is powerful stuff. Ripe, concentrated fruit and that glorious shade of inky magenta that only Malbec can provide. Juby notes of redcurrant and salted red plum, with a lightly woven knit of spice and musk lolly. Cardamon, cinnamon and ruby red fruits – it’s like a journey down the silk route full of heady opulence and swaying bejewelled rose hips. Tannins are chewy and morish, weighted perfectly in line with the power of the fruit which is gently nestled in 60% new oak. It seems sizeable, but this fruit can hold it with ease. One of those wines you sip and forget to spit.

93 POINTS

Ned Goodwin - JamesSuckling.com

This is joyous. A round, floral, deeply weighted and resinous malbec. The classy French oak (60% new) harnesses lilac, blueberry confiture, a slick of licorice, mulberry and bramble. The oak is present, yet beautifully embedded. While far from profound, there is a great deal to enjoy here, with the signature of class that one expects from this address. Will age effortlessly across the mid-term.

93 POINTS

Ned Goodwin - Halliday Wine Companion

This is joyous. A round, floral, deeply weighted and resinous malbec. The classy French oak (60% new) harnesses lilac, blueberry confiture and a slick of licorice, mulberry and bramble. The oak is present, yet embedded beautifully. While far from profound, there is a great deal to enjoy here, with the signature of class that one expects from this address. Will age effortlessly across the mid-term.

93 POINTS

Gary Walsh - The Wine Front

A new wine for Hickinbotham. Vineyard planted in 2013. Campbell said he was going to review all the Hickinbotham wines today, though he missed this one. I wonder what he thinks of it? A whole lot of blue and black fruit, some violet perfume, and no shortage of creamy mocha oak, also some iodine and crushed dried herbs. It’s full-bodied, rich in flavour, a Turkish coffee feel to tannin, chocolaty oak, dried blueberry and raspberry, lavish silty tannin to close, with oak and fruit having a fair old crack at each other, though the density of the fruit is probably the winner. It’s a bold wine, inky and ferrous, with no shortage of stuffing. It’s a throaty, almost Napa style of wine, and kind of showy in that way, though there’s no doubt it’s high quality.