J Langworthy Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon 2023 x P JOHNSON
Dearest P Johnson Vinophiles,
With well over 1000 medals, trophies and other accolades, Pat and my old college pal Julian Langworthy, the official King of Cabernet, must be the winningest of winemakers in the country. His tenure as chief winemaker of Fogarty Wine Group is richly gilded and rightly so. Julian's wines are things of great precison, intention and act as the new reference point of quality and knowhow in this country and abroad.
Wines of power, intensity, freshness and fruit flavour transparency. I can say all this without any hyperbole because the independant assessment has been completed time and time again by the highly credible and objective Australian capital wineshow system.You may remember the first P Johnson wine release was also made by Julian, and this wine is an unmissable follow-up to that, from the very same vineyard and from a season that was simply too good to overlook. In fact Julian called me later in 2023 and said 'you're going to want some of this, it's nuts'. When Julian says it's nuts, it is nuts, the duck's nuts.
The 2023 vintage in Margaret River, and specifically the Yallingup subregion was what Julian refers to as a 'goldilocks' vintage. Simply put it was a great year to a be grape, perhaps a historical best (but only time will tell). Caressed by warmth and sun then gently cooled by seabreezes on a daily basis with little jerks and almost no vissitudes leads to perfectly balanced wines of great flavour saturation and tannin ripeness. It was so good there was no need to add the Malbec like we did back in 2019. The Cabernet itself was so complete and replete with flavour intensity and richness that it stands confidently alone. So Julian cherry-picked us a tiny little bit, the creme de la creme, and here it finally is and just for P Johnson clients. It is worth noting we held it over for one more year so it could calm-the-hell-down in bottle since it was so nervy and twitchy, it had much youthful energy to resolve and it will be resolving it for some time to come.
Cab-er-yay!
Julian is leading a renaissance of this old power-grape from Bordeaux. The inconsistency and often weedy tone of Pinot, the often flabby structure of Shiraz and the many misses surrounding the newer darling Nebbiolo are leading people back to faithful Cabernet and its cassis and savoury depth, consistency, reliability and ageworthiness. Margaret River is best seated to ride the resurgence of Cabernet, with vine age and best practice and stalwarts like Julian, a passionate advocate for Cabernet Sauvignon.
TASTING NOTES
This wine is shimmering purple and black centred. the nose is full of currents, iron, violets, iodine and the sea. The palate is compacted with cassis and red fruits that keep unloading in waves. It is fleshy, three dimensional and long.
There is also leather, 'ripe sauvignon' character, olive, earth, iron, violet and the distinctive hint of oystershells and nori brought in by the sea breeze. It is young and tense and will age for 25 years easily (if you store it under 16 deg c).
I would recommend opening it 12 hours before drinking, or decant a few hours ahead at least.
Goes live at 10am Thursday 26th June.
-Tom Riley.