Firstly, the 2005 Orlando Steingarten Riesling is now labelled the Jacob's Creek Steingarten Barossa Riesling. Bad move, IMHO. Jacob's Creek has always been associated with an entry level quaffer. Trying to raise it's status to Orlando's premium label is just rank stupid. The colour is a very bright but incredibly youthful pale straw with a very light green tinge, a bouquet that literally soars from the glass offering up intense musk, herb and under-ripe pines over a solid core of minerals, wet stones and a strong undercurrent of lime and kaffir leaf. The palate is a little spiky with slightly phenolic chalky/minerally acidity yet to integrate with the tightly-coiled lime and herb-tinged fruit. Currently in what I call "Tyson's hole", a transitional phase between the floral primary and toasty/honeyed secondary stages where the wine can tend to become somewhat unfocused, disjointed and compartmentalized. At this point of its life, I'm loathe to score the wine over 90 points but I'm almost certain this wine will come into its own with another 3-4 years sleep in a dark, cool place. I've left a reasonable quantity in the fridge for another 24 hours rest and I'll report back on any significant developments tomorrow night. Sealed with a screw cap, 12.5% A/V and obviously built for the long haul, this excellent riesling revealed immense potential with a drinking window predicted between 2013 and 2020+. Please note - I rated this wine slightly higher last night and slightly higher again at release. Expect it to regain most of that ground in several years time.
The Orlando St Hugo Cabernet Sauvignon 1988 is a most impressive mature Coonawarra red blessed with remarkable staying power. Now opened for over 24 hours, there has been, astonishingly, almost no degradation in quality. If anything, I'm enjoying it more tonight! The colour is a rusty red with a solid light ruby core and plenty of bricking towards the edges. The sensational elegant bouquet boasts a bevy of immaculately presented descriptors - weedy blackcurrants, cedar, iodine, beef blood, capsicum, herbs, sweet earth, licorice and saddle leather. The palate lithe and silky, of light- to medium body, superbly honed, sweet-fruited with ample counterbalancing greener notes (aka the nose) but with an eerie dose of lively acidity retaining a wonderful sense of freshness and vigour and, no doubt, to aid more longevity. The ripe tannins are now rounded and fully resolved but still perfectly meshed to the wine's overall personality - smooth, generous and ohso long but housed in a marvellous slender but well-wrought frame. 93 points. A drink now proposition for sure, but somehow I think this might keep keeping on for another five, and quite possibly a few more years, if cellaring has been of the highest order. A classic Coonawarra Cabernet in the old mould. Bravo.