Hickinbotham Mixed Case
2021 Hickinbotham Trueman Cabernet Sauvignon
The 2021 Trueman Cabernet Sauvignon hails from the Hickinbotham vineyard in Clarendon, in McLaren Vale. It is truly one of the lovely vineyard areas in Australia, with rolling hills, dramatic valleys and a proximity to the ocean. From memory, this vineyard was planted to Houghton clone, or includes some of the Houghton clone selection in it (from Western Australia), and the wine feels structural and velvety at once. You get cassis, raspberry compote, dark chocolate, tobacco, licorice (salted black cats!), cardamom and mulberry off the bush in summer. It's a wonderful wine, pleasurable, complex, poised and rounding out with a delicious delivery of ductile Cabernet tannin. Ripper.
14% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.
96/100pts. Drink 2024-2046
Erin Larkin | Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
A large-framed wine defined by a serendipitous ripening season and skilled craftsmanship. The tannins, perfectly managed and refined. The oak, so enticing and appealing. The sheer density of currant, sage, black olive, rosemary and thyme, an immaculate forcefield. This is one for the cellar. An Australian wine that tastes, as it always has, as if it was made by an American with a deep comprehension of tannin management. Drink or hold.
95/100pts James Suckling
2021 Hickinbotham The Nest Cabernet Franc
The 2021 The Nest Cabernet Franc is beautifully textured. I know I usually start with aromas then flavors, but I tasted this after smelling it for a while, and the tannins are surely the most alluring part about this wine; they're finely gravelly, gritty, chewy and pliable and extend out through the finish, beyond the cassis and cocoa, beyond the raspberry and bramble. They beckon for another sip. Done. I like it, and it will cellar well.
14% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.
94/100pts. Drink 2024-2046
Erin Larkin | Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Deep, vibrant garnet. Intensely ripe fruit but real freshness and some pyrazines, too. Pure and convincing in a currently unfashionable vein in Australia (because of that leafiness). There's an impressive peacock's-tail finish on this wine.
Drink 2024-2030
17/20pts. Jancis Robinson MW