
Vasse Felix, Tom Cullity Cabernet Sauvignon Malbec
This wine is made with 76% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Malbec and 4% Petit Verdot. It had a 100% wild ferment and 2% carbonic maceration and matured in French oak for 19 months (61% new). The 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon Malbec Tom Cullity was the first of the new flagship Tom Cullity wine, after the cessation of the Heytesbury red. The 2013 vintage, on release and for several years afterward, was a buxom, full, almost vivacious wine that spoke of purple fruits, tobacco leaf and plenty of fleshy tannin. Here, a decade later, the 2013 Tom Cullity has evolved into a savory wine that speaks of lotus leaf, saltbush, nori, enoki mushroom, blackberry, cassis and the telltale raspberry that I often find in the Tom Cullity Cabernet. It's really coming into its own now, and yet it still has more ascension in front of it. The drinking window here is indicative of the fact that the older Margaret River Cabernets (made from younger vines and with different technology and insights) persist for 40 years with