New World Cabernets
Credit: Mike Prior/Decanter
(Image credit: Mike Prior/Decanter)

Peter Dylan, Birmingham asks: I noticed in your ‘Top 35 New World Cabernet’ article (April 2017 issue) that many of the tasting notes mentioned ‘blood pudding’, ‘game’, blood’ and ‘meat’. I think more of Syrah/Shiraz as a meaty wine, not Cabernet Sauvignon. So what makes a wine taste like this – is it the grape itself, the soil or the oak?

Anthony Rose replies: I’d divide the answer to this perceptive question into two categories, one positive, the other negative.

On the plus side, descriptors such as these as often as not have to do with characteristics of evolution. As the pigments and tannins in red wine age and the flavour compounds associated with primary aromas fade, so secondary and tertiary aromas and flavours with more savoury elements such as those described come into play. Three of the six wines with such characters in our selection were from 2012 vintage, one from 2011, one from 2009 and one 2008.

More negatively, the spoilage yeast brettanomyces is often associated with descriptors like Elastoplast, animal, meaty, horsey and sweaty saddle. Elastoplast was once thought a positive character in Pauillac, sweaty saddle in Rhône and Australian Shiraz. We know better now. A dozen wines we tasted with such, less-flattering, animal-related descriptors didn’t make our top 35.

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Credit: Nina Assam/Decanter

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Anthony Rose
Anthony Rose
Decanter Magazine, Wine Wwriter & DWWA Judge
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.