NV All Saints Estate Museum Muscadelle

100 POINTS

Jeni Port - Halliday Wine Companion

A once-in-a-lifetime treat, this fortified has an average age of 100+ years. Few makers can release a museum fortified, All Saints Estate does it with ease such is its library (solera) of old vintages laid down year after year. This is vinous history and it shows, in its deep, olive green hues and level of absolute intensity and concentration. But it also comes with a fineness and a freshness. Flavours are remarkably precise and not at all overly sweet, full of rancio with nuts, dried fruits, toffee, orange peel and so much more that saturates the palate. Remarkable. Miniatures also available for $160.

100 POINTS

Jeni Port - Halliday Wine Companion

The base wines for this magnificent fortified were laid down by generations of Sutherland-Smiths, the founders of All Saints Estate. The Brown family continues their dedicated work, and we are the recipients of a truly memorable wine. With an average age of 100-plus years, your senses are alight. Dark walnut in colour with an olive green edge. Muscadelle-deep intensity in swirling aromas of dried fruits, panforte, malt, orange peel, prune, caramel and grilled almonds. So deeply complex to taste, and yet so fresh through the just-so addition of neutral clean spirit. A true taste of history. 375ml.

100 POINTS

Jeni Port - Halliday Wine Companion

Takes you immediately to the heart of a flavour so intense, so deep and complex with a rarity of age on display, and yet so alive and positively vibrant – it's surreal. This dark olive/walnut elixir is vinous joy, full of rancio, nuts, dried fruit, caramel toffee, honey cake, orange peel and soused raisins layered, long and unwavering. A wine of the ages – literally – with base wines of 100+ years. An intoxicating beauty. Consider mind blown! 375ml.

100 POINTS

Jeni Port - Halliday Wine Companion

2026 Fortified Wine of the Year. JP writes: The stuff of dreams or, to be precise, history. With base wines reaching back 100-plus years, this offers a rare and privileged taste of extraordinary age, complexity and sheer hedonistic pleasure. Dark olive and walnut hues introduce a commanding, luscious fortified in dried fruits, caramel toffee, honey, chocolate praline, orange peel and a lasting, enticing rancio nuttiness. The art of the blender is on show, combining deep-set intensity of flavour with a remarkably clean, neutral spirit freshness. A few years back the winemaker decided to increase the aged component, putting stress on aged stocks of muscadelle. For that, we thank him. This is indeed special. 375ml.

99 POINTS

Jeni Port - Halliday Wine Companion

Ripened to 20 baumé; hand picked, destemmed, crushed and pressed; fortified to 16% alcohol; aged in 50–100yo oak barrels of 144–5500L; modified solera first blended in the early 1900s, hence now including components over 100yo; annual release of 100 bottles, filled to order. Very, very few fortified makers in Australia have the depth and breadth of cellaring material to enter into Museum territory. Wines need to have been put aside for generations, as they have here to produce this special wine. It reaches across time to present this glorious, concentrated wine that glides across the palate unwaveringly and long. It's surprisingly not all about sugar intensity and richness but fineness and a deep intrigue of flavours. Stunning. 375ml.

99 POINTS

Huon Hooke - The Real Review

150th anniversary bottling. An extraordinary wine: the deep amber to nut-brown colour coats the interior of the glass, and it possesses an explosive bouquet of breathtaking character and complexity. It has enough freshness to still exhibit intense muscat fruit, combined with the rancio characters of long-time barrel aging. There are dried fig, raisin, prune and old leather aromas. The taste is very concentrated and liqueury, rich and almost luscious, the balancing influence of acidity and rancio helping to dry the finish and leave the mouth clean. The aftertaste lasts for minutes. A great old wine presented in delightfully fresh and vibrant condition.

99 POINTS

Campbell Mattinson - Halliday Wine Companion

Intensity, complexity and quality are beyond measure and words. James Halliday's note in the 2020 Wine Companion it says it all. 'Its concentration and searing intensity are such that you want to physically bite the wine. Amid the fireworks and white-light display there is a certain calm of the so-fine spirit, the sweet/sour flavours of ancient balsamic vinegar amazing.' 375ml.

98 POINTS

Jane Faulkner - Halliday Wine Companion

Magic. Excellent walnut, plum pudding colour with an olive-green tinge; wonderfully fresh; what's extraordinary, given the museum release has an average age of 100+ years, is just how fresh it is. Toffee brittle flecked with lemon and orange zest, beautiful balance of tamarind tartness and freshness to the palm sugar sweetness - but the overall effect is not sweet, instead it's an exercise in complexity and depth of flavour. Breathe this, taste this and reflect on the century past.