WTN: a juicy Coonawarra cab

A family dinner last night, at the Edinburgh Hotel. Excellent steak, with anchovy butter.

The red wine on the table was Penley Estate Phoenix cabernet sauvignon 2006 (Coonawarra, South-East South Australia).
A very drinkable wine: smooth, with lashings of aromatic fruit. Dark-purple in the glass, velvety on the tongue, with aromas and flavours of lavender, cassis, and blackberry pie. Not exactly a fruit bomb, but close to it. I thought it was very enjoyable but unchallenging. Easy-drinking, a better class of crowd-pleaser. Surprisingly, it was 15% alc; there was no obvious alcohol burn.

Read about Penley Estate at http://www.penley.com.au/

Matilda
We drank 3 bottles of the 2001 vintage of this wine and it was a more than decent wine at a good price - though from TN's I've read it does seem to suffer quite wide vintage variation. Presumably this is the classic '2nd wine' approach, picking the best fruit for Reserve wine and letting this wine take it's chances with the remainder.
regards
Ian

Probably right, Ian. It was a very gentle and enjoyable wine, which I would expect to have wide appeal.