Yalumba The Cigar Cabernet

Australia's oldest family owned winery continue to produce wines from the famed Coonawarra terra rossa strip that offer quite simply amazing value. Considered by many to still be the region's best kept secret, The Cigar is a truly delightful Cabernet Sauvignon with lifted violet and blackcurrant aromas with a balanced note of cedar and tobacco. Known to many as the 'Baby Menzies', the Cigar is a brilliant modern take on Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon and has always shown a propensity to sell out quickly each vintage. Fruit sourced from the Menzies vineyard •Several important critics have rated this Coonawarra wine highly: Wine Spectator gave the 2011 vintage a score of 91. •Numerous prizes have been won by this wine: the Decanter World Wine Awards awarded the 2010 Silver and the Dallas Wine Competition awarded the 2009 vintage Silver. •This is one of the most popular wines from the region (with Wine-Searcher users). Interest in this wine is less pronounced than in previous years. Cabernet Sauvignon is probably the most famous red wine grape variety on Earth. It is rivaled in this regard only by its Bordeaux stablemate Merlot, and its opposite number in Burgundy, Pinot Noir. From its origins in Bordeaux, Cabernet has successfully spread to almost every wine-growing country in the world. It is now the key grape variety in many first-rate New World wine regions, most notably Napa Valley, Coonawarra and Maipo Valley. Wherever they come from, Cabernet Sauvignon wines always seem to demonstrate a handful of common character traits; deep color, good tannin structure, moderate acidity and aromas of blackcurrant, tomato leaf, dark spices and cedarwood. Used as frequently in blends as in varietal wines, Cabernet Sauvignon has a large number of common blending partners. Apart from the obvious Merlot and Cabernet Franc, the most prevalent of these are Malbec, Petit Verdot and Carmenere (the ingredients of a classic Bordeaux Blend), Syrah/Shiraz (in Australia) and Tempranillo (in Spain and South America). Even the bold Tannat-based wines of Madiran are now generally softened with Cabernet Sauvignon. DNA profiling carried out in California in 1997 confirmed that Cabernet Sauvignon is the product of a natural genetic crossing between key Bordeaux grape varieties Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc. Most wine authorities agree that this crossing happened only within the past few centuries, making the variety's global fame and dominance all the more impressive. (© Wine-Searcher)