Nocturne Wines Single Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2021

Julian Langworthy "Ladies and gentlemen, drum roll if you please. Cabernet is back, you know it, you can’t deny it… Suggesting Cabernet is tannic and unyielding while sculling three-year-old Nebbiolo always left me a little bemused. The long and the short of it is that Cabernet, AKA the greatest grape, is a vinous dream and makes some of the world’s best, most accessible wines. Tannin? It’s a thing and a wonderful, cerebral thing at that. Something to be celebrated and embraced. If ya wanna drink cordial, find some overpriced Pinot and marvel at its lack of complexity.

2021, I’d be lying if I said it was easy, I lost hair, and the hair I had left went grey but we got there in the end…  Due almost entirely to the inherent quality of the Sheoak vineyard. Inheritably elegant is how this ‘21 Cabernet Sauvignon should be described: resolved, gentle tannins with lovely, lightly framed red fruits and great length. 

We started picking Sheoak Cabernet on 7th April. Underwhelming at first, it’s a wine that’s grown in charm but possibly not stature from the start.  Instantly perfumed but lightly framed, the wine spent 12 days on skins with a peak fermentation temperature around 28˚C. The wine was pressed to tank and settled briefly, before being transferred to a combination of new (30%) and two and three-year-old barrels to undergo malolactic fermentation. The wine was only racked once in this time and, after 16 months in oak, was emptied from barrel. 

100% Cabernet from 100% this very cool site.

The Sheoak vineyard makes expressive, medium-bodied, silky structured wines.  More red fruit in spectrum with crunchy cranberry characters framing the high notes of cassis and the suggestion of cedar like oak this is a very fine boned release of the Nocturne SV."