The Annual Cabernet Classic
A Public Holiday Tasting of 16 Benchmark Cabernets across Australia and New Zealand.
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14 Producers:
Cherubino | Cullen Wines | Devil’s Lair | Forest Hill Vineyard | Grosset | Houghton | Moss Wood | Mount Mary | Plantagenet | Te Mata Estate | Vasse Felix | Woodlands | Yalumba | Yarra Yering
Across 8 Wine Regions:
Barossa Valley | Clare Valley | Coonawarra | Frankland River | Hawke’s Bay | Margaret River | Mount Barker | Yarra Valley
Monday, June 1st
Public Holiday Cabernet Tasting
Hosted By JJ (John Jens)
Tasting:
4:00pm-6:00pm, 16 of Australia & NZ’s Greatest Cabernet’s & Delicious ‘Help yourself’ Cheese Platters | $295.00
The Wine List (In alphabetical Order)
Cherubino Budworth Cabernet Sauvignon, Frankland River 2019
Ranked #2 of 21 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon from Great Southern, Huon Hooke’s The Real Review
This was the wine that damn near spoilt the nine teen track playing in my head. Sappy, more tannic and more blunt than the other two Cabs, this is a muscular wine that craves cellar time, but it is already clear that it is prodigious with dreams of greatness. Whether this beautifully complex flavour will add the half point needed to reach a perfect score in years to come is irrelevant because Riversdale Vineyard clearly has a stash of twenties buried in its soil, and they will blossom when they are good and ready.”
19.5/20 Points, Matthew Jukes
Hand picked, sorted and macerated on skins for two months; matured in new and one-year-old French barriques. This fragrant, medium-bodied cabernet is something quite special. I've no doubt whatsoever that Block 6 has once again provided excellent fruit that could have been left to its own devices (great wine is made in the vineyard, isn't it?) but skilled vinification, patience and attention to the smallest detail have made a glorious cabernet sauvignon, the palate akin to a string of shimmering, lustrous pearls.
98 Points, James Halliday, Halliday Wine Companion (August 2023)
Cullen Diana Madeline Legacy Series Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River 2023
Not many wineries can claim to have three flagship reds, but for Cullens, not a problem. As well as the standard, Diana Madeline, not that there is anything standard about it, we have this wine and then the Vanya. All three were produced in the wonderful 2023 vintage. Obviously, the Diana Madeline is the value play, but the three wines are all different and all spectacular. They each have so much to offer that I couldn’t split them and gave them each 99. I would never argue with anyone who went the extra point, but my concern is that when Vanya tops these, as she surely will, where do you go?
99 Points, Andrew Caillard & Ken Gargett, The Vintage Journal
Devil’s Lair Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River 2022
Trophy – Best Cabernet Margaret River 2024
Trophy - Best Red Margaret River 2024
Trophy – Best Wine Margaret River 2024
Trophy - Best Cabernet Perth 2024
Trophy - Best Cabernet Canberra
2024 Trophy - Best Cabernet Adelaide
2024 Trophy - Best Cabernet Brisbane 2024
Gold Medal – Margaret River 2024
Gold Medal – Perth 2024
Gold Medal – Canberra 2024
Gold Medal – Adelaide 2024
Gold Medal – Brisbane 2024
Quite beautiful cabernet from this excellent year. IT’s generous and opulent with a tremendous intensity of dark fruits, led with blackcurrant black olive dominance, and then yielding to blue and red fruit characters. Has a slightly bay leaf nuance with a cracked sea shell minerality. It’s firm and bold with the structure and power to handle extended cellaring.
95 Points, Ray Jordan, rayjordanwine.com
Devil’s Lair Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River 2023
Cabernet Sauvignon of the Year, Halliday Wine Companion Awards 2026
James Halliday Cabernet Challenge Winner
2023 Gold Medal – Wine Show of WA Gold Medal - Hobart Royal Wine Show 2025
Every now and then, a wine makes my heart skip a beat. It’s the confluence of all the elements – the aromas, the flavours, how it feels, how it makes me feel, everything perfectly poised. And of course, the X-factor. The magic stuff, which can’t be decoded. Take a bow the wine team at Devil’s Lair. A stalwart producer yet flying under the radar when it really shouldn’t. Here’s the reason why – this is the epitome of elegant Margaret River cabernet. A harmonious blend of mulberries and cassis, baking spices, and cedary oak which is superbly integrated. The mid-weighted palate is finely tuned with beautiful, shapely tannins and acidity stretching out to a lingering finish. Devil’s Lair is on a roll, get onboard. Although, bittersweet as I wish the wonderful Simon Robertson (who passed in '24), its long-time viticulturist could have witnessed the success of this wine.
98 Points, Jane Faulkner, Halliday Wine Companion (March 2025)
Forest Hill Vineyard Block 5 Cabernet Sauvignon, Mount Barker 2022
What a sensational wine. Perfumed and powerful with tremendous concentration and power. Used some concrete fermentation and stainless steel. Has beautiful elegance and weight through the palate with fine chalky tannins and fine-grained oak influence. Has such an ethereal aroma of violet and red berry. Tremendous power here yet it’s elegant and pretty. This is 100% cabernet.
98 Points, Ray Jordan, rayjordanwine.com
97 Points - Cassandra Charlick, Decanter (January 2024)
Forest Hill Vineyard Block 5 Cabernet Sauvignon, Mount Barker 2023
Awarded Australia's Best Cabernet - 2023 James Halliday Australian Chardonnay and Cabernet Challenge
I’ve been waiting for this wine to emerge from the shadows of the cellar. This is a great vintage, and the result is one of the best wines, if not the best, yet from Forest Hill. This is a single dry-grown bock planted in 1975. This is cabernet in its most beautiful, structured and dominant form. Light leaf over blackcurrant with a black olive and minerally oyster shell layer. The palate is sublimely integrated, featuring a firm yet linear and fine tannin thread, complemented by perfectly weighted oak. A gem.
98 Points, Ray Jordan, rayjordanwine.com
Grosset Gaia Cabernet Sauvignon Cabernet Franc, Clare Valley 2024
Very deep, bright purple colour that stains the glass; the aroma is fiercely intense, mulberry, cassis and blueberry to the fore, proudly fruit-driven and bold with primary fruit bursting from the glass. The intensity, concentration and precision are all evident in the mouth as well, with extreme depth and penetration, the energy of the wine obvious at every turn. It's jumping out of its skin, and will age superbly. This wine oozes class.
98 Points, Huon Hooke, The Real Review (15 Mar 2026)
Houghton Jack Mann Cabernet Sauvignon, Frankland River 2021
Halliday Wine Companion ‘Best Cabernet of 2025’
This is elegance personified. So smooth, so luscious, so rich and yet it finds levity and a sense of drive. Inky cassis, lavender and violet floral lift, fancy feeling mahogany and new leather elements, clove spice, bay leaf and faint sea spray characters in the mix. It feels quite tightly wound despite its velvety suppleness and flow, tannins in a web of fine, graphite-like mineral accents delivering tension and poise. It's a wine that delivers an experience and visceral pleasure. Drink now after a lusty decant, but save some for long cellaring, too. Drink: 2025-2045."
98 Points, Panel decision, Halliday Wine Companion
Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River 2023
I've been waiting for this wine to be released for some time. I had great expectation that this wonderful vineyard from this exceptional vintage would produce something equally exceptional. Well, guess what? It has. This is such a beautiful example of what Moss Wood cabernet is all about. There's nothing big and brutish here. This is elegance. This is precision. This is brilliance. High-end florals on the nose with traces of violet, red currant, and then on the palate, that beautiful, restrained suppleness that deceived so many people in the early years of Moss Wood reveals itself, and yet as always, there's a deep and lingering intensity that persists through to an exceptionally long finish. This is simply stunning. I do not believe there has been a better Moss Wood.
99 Points, Ray Jordan, rayjordanwine.com.au (April 2026)
No doubt many winelovers have been eagerly awaiting this wine, one of the last of Margaret River's big guns from the stunning 2023 vintage. This brilliant Cabernet saw all parcels harvested fermented separately in small open fermenters. Maturation was in French oak barriques, 15% new. The final blend included 4% Cabernet Franc and 4% Petit Verdot. Deep maroon with a magenta edge, there is such power and finesse in this wine. Balance, length and structure are all world class. A take-me-now-Lord wine if ever there was one. The great 2023 vintage strikes again. Is this the best wine Moss Wood has ever made? It certainly must come very close. The nose reveals aromas of cassis, mulberries, plums, charcuterie, cigar boxes and blackberries. The structure is seamless through to the silkiest of tannins. There is great length and persistence here and the balance is knife-edge. If you doubt me as to the brilliant quality of this wine, please see if you can find a wine from Bordeaux at this price which comes close to this quality. Then we'll talk. This is just a cracker. Thirty years standing on its head.
99 Points, Ken Gargett
Mount Mary Quintet Cabernet Blend, Yarra Valley 2023
The palate is mid-weighted, with finely integrated tannins and balanced acidity leading into a textural, rounded and seamless mouthfeel. There’s an excellent balance of fruit, florals, earth and herbs, anchored by a mineral core. This Bordeaux blend with New World freshness is built for the ages, yet offers plenty of early drinking appeal. What a wine.
98 Points, James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com (August 2025)
98 Points, Huon Hooke, The Real Review (November 2025)
97 Points, Philip Rich, Halliday Wine Companion (August 2025)
97 Points, Erin Larkin, The Wine Advocate (October 2025)
Plantagenet Lionel Samson Cabernet Sauvignon, Mount Barker 2018
First release of this premium cabernet, named after one of the foundersb Lionel Samson. Fruit is sourced from the Wyjup vineyard, planted in 1971. Salted cassis and blackberry pie on the nose and palate. This is supple and elegant and although concentrated, it doesn't have the palate weight of the shiraz. This is not a bad thing, just interesting. Elegance and longevity live here side by side. A masterful first release, and quite delicious now or in decades to come.
97 Points - Erin Larkin, Halliday Wine Companion
Te Mata Estate Coleraine Cabernet Sauvignon, Hawke’s Bay 2024
Vasse Felix Tom Cullity Cabernet Sauvignon Malbec, Margaret River 2020 (Magnum)
James Suckling Top 100 Wines of Australia 2024
Tyson Stelzer Top 250 Australian Wines of 2024
I expected this to be good, and it has delivered. I see the power and concentration of the 2018 and the elegance of the 2019 with the restraint of the 2017. Beautiful, perfumed fruit with tremendous intensity. The palate is totally seamless with a velvety feel to it. So vibrant with an energy and drive that takes it effortlessly to a very long finish. Everything and everything in its place. The intensity of the blackcurrant and red fruit combination is extraordinary, yet it delivers with finesse and poise. Pretty and at the same time powerful, with a degree of delicacy and grace. A great, great wine.
99 Points - Ray Jordan, WA Business News
Woodlands Eleanor Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River 2020
Ranked #1 of 82 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon from Margaret River, Huon Hooke’s The Real Review
Awarded: Top Rank & Wine Classification: 3 Merits | The Real Review
Winemaker Stuart Watson has been pumping out outstanding Cabernets and this one is at least the equal of any he has made. Time may well judge it the best. Comes from the oldest vines planted on the Woodlands vineyard. It’s a tremendous example of the season and the style that Woodlands have been crafting. Super concentrated and powerful core of fruit is held tightly by fine firm tannins, tight grained oak and a vibrant natural acidity. Blackcurrant, graphite and oyster shell with some nice bay leaf lift on the nose especially.
99 Points - Ray Jordan, rayjordanwine.com
Good depth and hue of red-purple colour, with a lovely elegant and beautifully modulated bouquet of mulberry, blueberry, violets and cedar. It’s full-bodied and powerful, with concentration and drive, assisted by abundant tannins providing firm grip and texture, and a long, long carry. An outstanding cabernet, already superb but promising so much more if cellared a few years.
98 Points - Huon Hooke, The Real Review
Yalumba The Caley Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz, Coonawarra & Barossa Valley 2018
Awarded The Great Australian Red 2023 and The Antipodes Trophy for the Best Cabernet-Dominant Blend, Andrew Caillard MW
Winner of Trophy for Best Cabernet-Dominant Blend, The Great Australian Red 2022
Good depth and hue of colour it’s still purple-tinted at this age. The bouquet is fresh and bold, replete with forest-floor/mint and dried-herb nuances, while the palate is very powerful, concentrated, full-bodied and firmly constructed. Deep-set cassis fruit as well, still partially in hiding. This is a dense, power-packed cabernet-driven red with abundant tannins. Tremendously long finish. A magnificent wine, which has what it takes to age and reward cellaring for the long term.
99 Points - Huon Hooke, The Real Review
98 Points - Dave Brookes
98 Points - Andrew Caillard MW
98 Points - Steve Leszczynski, Australia’s Wine Business Magazine
97 Points - James Halliday
Yarra Yering ‘Dry Red Wine No. 1’, Yarra Valley 2023
Langtons – 1st Classified
3 Merit Wine – The Real Review Wine Classification of Australia
Cabernet & Blends of the Year, Halliday Wine Companion 2026
99 Points - Halliday Wine Companion 2026
97 Points – Huon Hooke, The Real Review
96 Points – Ray Jordan, Winepilot, 2025
95 Points – Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front, 2025
94+ Points – Erin Larkin, Robert Parker Wine Advocate, 2025
Gold Medal, Yarra Valley Wine Show 2025
A blend of 58/23/15/4% cabernet sauvignon/merlot/malbec/petit verdot, the cabernet coming from the original '69-planted vineyard. Matured in barrique (35% new). A deep, bright purple. Classic cool-climate cabernet aromas of black cherry, blackcurrants, cedar, licorice and subtle iodine. The palate is simultaneously concentrated, structured and refined, finishing with an ironstone minerality. Approachable now with food, but anyone who buys some will want to make sure they still have a bottle, or three, 10 to 15 years from now.
2026 Cabernet & Blends of the Year and 99 points - Phillip Rich, Halliday Wine Wine Companion