Vasse Felix Margaret River Tom Cullity Cabernet Sauvignon Malbec 2021

From the cool and somewhat tricky 2021 season, here we have Vasse Felix’s top red wine – an ode to founder Dr Thomas Cullity. I wrote of the 2020 release that it provides quite a ride as it evolves in the glass. Such is the case again here. Sweet and fragrant mulberry and raspberry pip meld with vanilla bean and cracked cardamom first off, with emerging notes of potpouri adding colour and prettiness. From there it’s a cascading and unfurling with deeper notes of graphite, warm gravel, gentle bay leaf, tilled earth and sweet biscuit. It’s deep and lush but never ponderous. Air reveals more savoury notes of black olive, tomato bush and hints of nori umami. There’s flickers of dark chocolate and espresso, too, and a graphite minerality underpinning it all adding further class and interest. The palate has beautiful texture – it’s silky smooth, elegant and harmonious. Vibrant notes of mulberry and red plum lead, followed by fine cedar, delicate milk chocolate, blackberry, gentle graphite and earth. All of this before a sheath of wonderfully integrated and fine espresso tannins frame it up along with a freshening and cooling line of minty acidity. There’s wonderful detailed and elegant length here, seamingly endless, in fact. This is wonderfully balanced and deeply complex. An exciting Tom Cullity release.