In the mid-1990s, when Australian wine was hot, hot, hot and we were selling large-and-in-charge Barossa Valley Shiraz and McLaren Vale old-vine Grenache like crazy, a customer first brought my attention to the Bass Phillip Estate, asking if I could source it for him. Aussie Pinot?? That’s a whole different ball game! And I was aghast at the three-digit price. But I discovered a winery with such a local cult following that virtually none makes it out of the country, as well as true cognoscenti who consider it amongst the world’s very best Pinots.

 

Bass Phillip’s 17K, named after the tight 17,000 vines-per-hectare spacing that makes this old vineyard so special, is a savory, earthier style of Pinot with spicy cool red-blue fruit that runs to mulberry through plum on its way from cherry. We love the slow-to-reveal-themselves notes of violets, forest floor and stony mineral. This is a simply lovely, middle-weight Pinot whose Burgundy-like charms and gravitas intensify with airing. This is quite a find!