Stella Bella Margaret River Suckfizzle Cabernet Sauvignon 2022

Here we have a wine from the brilliantly named Suckfizzle vineyard – the most southern in all of Margaret River. Beautiful deep ruby colour with a purple hue. Vibrant dark cherry melds with moreish saline and umami laden nori first off before some graphite and forest floor earthiness emerge. A swirl of the glass offers up delicate charred capsicum, cacao powder and deeper fruit notes of mulberry and blackcurrant with the fine cedar in support. There’s an ethereal sensibilty here thanks to complexity that’s both subtle and restrained while still immense. The palate has great intensity coiled within a cool and linear frame. Black cherry pie, espresso, blackberry, cedar, graphite, nori and bitter dark chocolate glide through the mouth within a velvety texture before ribbons of fine grainy tannins frame all it up. There’s excellent latent waves of freshening and elongating acidity here that pull the wine incredibly long through the mouth. This is beautiful wine that is at once restrained, plush, complex and poised.