Australian red blend over £10

DWWA Reguional Trophy

(Image credit: DWWA Reguional Trophy)

Find out who won the regional trophy for over £10. And the winner is...

2007 Houghton CW Ferguson Cabernet Malbec

Jack Mann himself spanned 51 consecutive vintages of making wine at Houghton starting 1932. His influence turned him into a Western Australian legend, ensuring that Houghton itself, recently taken under the wine of the giant Constellation group (now Accolade), continues to flourish.

The Ferguson name first appears with Dr. John Ferguson, who in 1859 bought the Houghton property for £350 from one of its first owners British Army Officer Lieutenant Colonel Richmond Houghton. Houghton had purchased the land in 1836.

By 1860, Houghton had already received its first award, the Order of Merit at the Melbourne Exhibition. The C.W. Ferguson Cabernet Malbec 2007 is the first release of this wine, marking a tribute to early Houghton wine maker, Charles William Ferguson, born in 1848, who took Houghton into the twentieth century.

Today’s custodian of the Charles William Ferguson and Jack Mann heritage is winemaker and manager Ross Pamment, who started his career as a cellar hand at Houghton in the Swan Valley just outside Perth before spending time making wine in Europe and, after qualifying from Wagga Wagga, Mountadam in Eden Valley and Salitage in Pemberton.

With some cabernet sourced from the Langton Vineyard in Mt Barker, the lion’s share of the blend, Cabernet Sauvignon (46%) and Malbec (25%), comes from the old degraded granite gravels of the Justin Vineyard in the Great Southern regions of Frankland River, where the much-garlanded Jack Mann Cabernet itself comes from. 2007 itself is regarded as one of the better recent red wine vintages in Western Australia.

Written by Anthony Rose

Anthony Rose is the wine correspondent of the Independent and i newspapers and contributes to various other publications, among them Decanter Magazine. He was a solicitor in a previous incarnation but decided it was time to get a steady job. He is co-chair of the Decanter World Wine Awards Australia panel and has won a number of awards for wine writing. In 2014 he published The Tapas Bar Guide (Grub Street, £10.99), co-authored with Isabel Cuevas, a guide to tapas bars in the UK. Anthony spends far too much of his time nosing his way around the world in wine competitions, having judged in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile, California, Japan, China and France. He is fascinated by Japanese sake and is co-Chairman of the Sake International Challenge in Tokyo and teaches a consumer course at Sake No Hana in London. Anthony is also a published photographer and a founding member of The Wine Gang at ,. Anthony lives in South London and in what spare time he has, he likes to cook, eat and drink the best wines and sakes he can afford on a wine writer’s budget.