Last night I attended a tasting of Abbey Rock wines. The wines were quite good and steered away from the typical sweet, jammy, rich style seemingly favored by Oz wineries.
By far the standout wine was the Abbey Rock Hahnford Rise Adelaide Hills Pinot Noir 2003. The nose of this wine is just incredible in its multi-layered complexity. It starts out with obvious mint supported by some strawberry fruit. It evolves after about 15 minutes in the glass now offering up tobacco leaf aromas. Some herbal qualities also make an appearance. Through all of this, it doesn't lose the mint which comes up again and again. It's such a pleasure to just sniff this. The oak influence is very muted, perhaps because of the use of old, French oak.
It's a light wine but juicy and sweet. Mostly strawberry and a hint of raspberry are prominent on the palate. Very easy to drink and nicely balanced with enough acidity to give it structure although the tannins seem to be quite subdued. The palate doesn't quite have the complexity of the nose but still, it's a very nice drink. It gives a decent medium length finish.
This is a fun, easy to drink wine with enough stuffing in the nose to satisfy any wine geek. All this and QPR too. While this will only be commercially available in Manila next month, at an estimated retail price of about $ 13.00, this beats most of the other wines at this price point.