Fire Gully Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2021

94 POINTS

Ray Jordan

Sleek, refined and beautifully constructed cabernet from this cooler vintage. It's medium bodied with notes of chalky, seashell over deeper blackcurrant fruit. The oak integration has been beautifully handled to provide support and not dominate. Lovely perfumes and a palate that has structure and poise to carry through to a long finish.

93 POINTS

Gary Walsh - The Wine Front

Fire Gully, such an Australian name for a winery. This vineyard sits next to Moss Wood, and I kind of see some similarities, I must say. Red fruits, cedar and tobacco, kind of autumnal too, with cocoa and some gently minty and grassy character to the wine, but it’s charming, and it’s svelte, and I like it’s almost Pinot Noir-like profile too. Light dusty tannin. The finish is bright and sweetly red-fruited, and the wine drinks so well. Nice.

91 POINTS

Jane Faulkner - Halliday Wine Companion

All lighter accents this vintage, from the flavours to the weight of the wine, which is just shy of medium bodied. A hint of cassis, redcurrants, wintergreen, tobacco, freshly ground coffee and warm earth. Feathery, if grainy, tannins and puckering acidity within keep this reined in, while a bitter green walnut finish slightly detracts but is not overt with food.

90 POINTS

Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate

The 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve leads with a bouquet inflected with green that leads into a palate that speaks of green olive tapenade, cassis, bramble, straw, oat biscuit and licorice. The season was challenging in 2021; plentiful rain and moderate temperatures caused ongoing work in the vineyards in order to stay on top of yields, growth and disease, and it seems to me that this wine is the product of that year. Having made that statement, however, we know that the Cabernets through the 1980s in Margaret River had the capacity to age beautifully, albeit at the lower end of the alcohol spectrum, and this may be what we have here. A wine for the future, one that will evolve into a fine, leafy Cabernet. For now, however, it feels firm and verdant. 13.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.