Yalumba the Caley Is Challenging Penfolds Grange for Aussie’s Top Wine

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Wine lovers often reduce regions or entire countries to a single top-reference wine as if there aren’t any others worthy of attention. If you mention outstanding wines from Spain, the first bottle brought up is Vega Sicilia; in Italy, we have Sassicaia; for Napa, Screaming Eagle has been held in the highest esteem for more than two decades; and from Australia, the wine to which no others can hold a candle is Penfolds Grange. While we don’t want to knock the wind out of anyone’s sails, we believe that this oversimplification disregards dozens of other wines that are equal to, if not better than, these category killers.

In Australia alone, producers such as Torbreck, Bass Phillip, Henschke, and Yalumba make incredible wine year after year, and while they get their due from critics, we don’t think they always break through and get the accolades they deserve from the wine-buying public. So, when a bottle of Yalumba 2019 the Caley No. 7 crossed our tasting table, we sat up and took notice. A multi-regional blend, the Caley 2019 is made with 77 percent Cabernet Sauvignon from Coonawarra and 23 percent Barossa Shiraz. While this would be considered an unusual blend if the wine were from France, Yalumba winemaker and head of sustainability Louisa Rose explains that the Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz blend goes back to the 19th century, when both varieties were planted in Australia. “In the Barossa, these varieties were planted together as early as the 1840s,” she says.

Combining grapes from different regions has a long history in the Land Down Under as well. “Unimpeded by the appellation laws of the Old World, Australians have strived to make great wines using all the blending options that they have, including varieties and regions,” Rose points out. Even Penfolds follows what Europeans would consider an unconventional formula; Grange 2019 is a blend of 97 percent Shiraz and 3 percent Cabernet Sauvignon from vineyard sites in South Australia’s Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale, Coonawara, and Clare Valley. In the case of Yalumba, which celebrates its 175th anniversary this year, the winery has been growing grapes in Barossa Valley since 1849 and Coonawarra for about 100 years, making single-variety and blended wines from these two esteemed regions for many years.

The block used for the Cabernet Sauvignon has slightly heavy clay soil that imparts beautiful fragrance to the wine, including rose petal, violet, cassis, and sea-spray, as well as the “distinctive line and tannin drive of great Cabernet Sauvignon,” Rose says. “The Barossa Shiraz fruit merges together with the Cabernet Sauvignon, wrapping and twining around the line of tannins, delivering a long and seamless palate.” While she thinks the 2019 can mature gracefully for decades, her ideal drinking window, if she has the patience, is 15 years from now.

The Caley debuted its 2012 vintage in 2020 and received 98 points from Jamessuckling.com, which awarded the same score to 2012 Grange. Subsequent releases have consistently garnered scores in the mid-to-high 90s from a variety of publications, including another 98-point score for the 2019 from Australian site James Halliday Wine Companion,which gave 97 points to the same vintage of Grange.

The wine is named for Fred Caley Smith (1864-1913), grandson of Yalumba’s founder Samuel Smith. A horticulturist who had a profound impact on the development of Yalumba’s vineyards and orchards, Fred is best remembered for the ground-breaking research journey he undertook from May 1893 to December 1894 visiting the USA, U.K., Europe, the Middle East, Sri Lanka and India, which he chronicled in detailed letters back home.  

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Fred is also commemorated by this sumptuous wine, which is born from a sunny and dry season that offered ideal conditions in both Barossa Valley and Coonawarra. Matured for 19 months in a combination of new and used French barriques, Yalumba 2019 the Caley No. 7 is deep violet-red in the glass and has aromas of blackberry, violet candy, and saline with a hint of cedar block. It is full in the mouth, offering plush tannins and flavors of cassis, black cherry, rose water, clove, and dark chocolate with a distinct vein of chalky minerality that graces the long finish. Drink now or cellar for up to 40 years.

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