Wine Reviews and Awards

Hanging Rock

Max Allen  The Future Makers. Australian Wines for the 21st Century

The following is an extract from Max Allens latest book..........

"The Jim Jim sauvignon blanc is consistently powdery, nettle and bracing; the Jim Jim RS Fifty Riesling has a lovely core of ripe grapey fruit, balanced by a super-tangy zestiness and a light (9 percent alcohol), clean finish; the Petit Noir, a fresh, 11 per cent alcohol red made from Jim Jim – grown pinot noir and bottled under Hanging Rock’s quirky Odd One Out label, has sappy, strawberry-fruity perfume leading onto a juicy, fresh and lively mouthful of cranberry and cherry.

The real stars of the Jim Jim vineyard, though, are the sparkling wines, made with extraordinary passion and patience. John Ellis started making and putting aside reserve wines, the juice of pinot noir and chardonnay fermented and aged on gross lees in barrel, for Hanging Rocks Macedon Cuvee in the mid-80’s. This stock of increasingly nutty, rich, complex, aldehydic blending components gives each release of the Cuvee an amazing depth of flavor and personality. Not to everyone’s taste, perhaps, but I but I love its tangy yeastiness and sherry like overtones.

In 2006 Hanging Rock took this already take no prisoners style to another to another level with the first release of a late disgorged version of the Macedon Cuvee. The wine – and subsequent releases, all disgorged after spending nine years on lees – is startlingly complex, with aromas of wholemeal bread, creamy ripe brie and truffle, and amazingly full bodied but dry in the mouth, with a minerally, satisfying finish that lasts for ages. Exactly the kind of powerfully flavorsome bubbly that makes for heavenly drinking with fat, creamy, freshly shucked oysters. An I don’t even like oysters."