McGuigan, Bin 9000 Semillon, Hunter Valley, New South Wales 2014 (11%)
This is the sixth time a Hunter Valley Semillon has featured in our Best in Show selection. A very early, pre-ripeness pick is followed by protective stainless steel fermentation and, importantly, long bottle age to draw out the latent characters, which are all but invisible in earliest youth. Its low alcohol and palate-rousing acidity further grab your attention. This has a pungent petrichor and bean-flour aroma and a quenching flavour driven by the wine’s lime-laden acid cut. It makes a refeshing and palate-cleansing sip at any time, but you’ll find it matches most summer foods surprisingly well, too. Needless to say, you could alternatively give it a decade or two in your cellar.
‘Our winery is built on a philosophy of making the wine the hero,’ says McGuigan’s winemaker Ryan Andrew, who has been with McGuigan since 2017 and whose favourite part of the gig, he says, is ‘processing the season’s fruit, and the blending and fine-tuning of wines in preparation for bottling’. This can mean ‘hours spent in the tasting lab but is hugely rewarding when you get it right’.
McGuigan’s history in the Hunter Valley stretches back over four generations and more than 100 years, an era during which it has become keyed into the heartbeat of a land that has, as Andrew explains, proved to be a generous bedfellow for Semillon: ‘One of the varieties best suited to the warm Hunter Valley, Semillon matches well to sandy loam soils, which are common [there],’ he says. ‘And we source our Semillon from old, low-cropping vineyards across the Upper and Lower Hunter Valley, which produce intense and flavoursome fruit. With this wine, we aim to express the exceptional quality of the 2014 growing season in the Hunter. It was crafted to be enjoyed when it went into bottle, or it can be cellared for up to 20 years, during which it will evolve into a classic, toasty Hunter style, epitomising the region’s legacy of excellent winemaking.’ ▶