2024 Quealy Halarah Pinot Noir

92 POINTS

Kasia Sobiesiak - The Wine Front

Almost every day, before or after I taste wines, or just before or after I post the reviews, I run a conversation in my head about the objectivity of things and the silliness of the work that I do, but in fact love doing. It’s a dialogue, perhaps; I take into account all the arguments about tasting wines blind, to remove any bias, but then actually how to tell the story if it’s all blind, because isn’t the context the most important thing about wine? The people, the place, the motive? Anyway, I think I just wanted it to be known that I go through this every single time: the duality of things, the existential crisis of a tortured wine taster trapped in a material world trying to communicate the spiritual (don’t pity me, it’s a cool job). So, about this wine, I pondered on it, in the ‘biased context’ over two days. I actually do that with many of the wines that I taste: give them time, give them air, second chance, trying to understand the background and what the artist wanted to communicate… Rant over. Day 1: First up, a whack of black olive tapenade; there’s definitely a vibration of green olive here too, leafy-stemmy notes (fully destemmed wine) and a woody bitterness. It has some compelling perfume that changes and improves with air exposure and time, but it’s quite a sour-savoury expression, perhaps a bit lean and feels ‘bunchy’, although it’s not. I’m baffled. 89 points Day 2: Given a second day chance, as it was bothering me. Still peculiar. Lots of savoury, slightly vegetal tones, wet forest, moss on stones, fresh woody spice, pine needle resin, dark amaro bitterness; this can be a difficult wine, edgy, moody, quinine-driven. But now, it’s intriguing, compelling. Has a character and made me stop; this must count for something in the AI era. Maybe needed time. Who doesn’t. 92 points