Cape Mentelle International Cabernet tasting in London

Universally considered a legendary year in Bordeaux, 1982 also marked a watershed moment for both Cape Mentelle and Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon.

With its 1982 Cabernet Sauvignon, the Wallcliffe-based winery in Western Australia’s premier wine-growing region won The Melbourne Royal Wine Awards’ top gong – the Jimmy Watson Trophy for the best one-year-old Australian red wine. (They did it again with the 1983 vintage the following year.)

On the back of such success, why not pitch Cape Mentelle Cabernet Sauvignon against the best in the world, not just Australia’s finest?

Scroll down for tasting notes and scores of the 10 wines at the mini Cape Mentelle International Cabernet Tasting in London

And that’s precisely what they did, the winery holding an international Cabernet Sauvignon blind tasting every year since that landmark 1982 wine show victory put them on the map.

David Hohnen, who founded Cape Mentelle in 1970, might have been influenced by the headline-grabbing Judgment of Paris tasting of 1976, which brought California’s Cabernet Sauvignon to global attention. In 1978, he worked the vintage at Napa Valley’s Clos du Val, a participating winery.

But Hohnen’s idea for the Cabernet Sauvignon tasting was never just about profile. He wanted to learn from international peers. He saw the event as a benchmarking opportunity – a talking shop – for the nascent Margaret River region, whose first commercial vineyard was only planted in 1967. As an example, remarks from the late Paul Pontallier of Château Margaux, a prestigious guest in 1985, encouraged Hohnen to extract less.

London calling

To celebrate the 40th year of the event, Cape Mentelle held an abridged version in London for the first time, featuring a blind tasting of 10 top flight 2017 vintage Cabernet Sauvignons.

It was hosted in November 2022 by Master Sommelier Stefan Neumann and Charlotte Gordon, the UK wine development ambassador at Moët Hennessy (Cape Mentelle’s former owners), both of whom were still buzzing from attending the sell-out tasting in Margaret River the month before of 20 Cabernets from the 2019 vintage.

The London attendees may have only had half the number of wines shown in Australia, and missed out on the Bordeaux first growths but, as Neumann pointed out, the consolation prize for tasting 2017s over 2019s was the added bottle age. Cabernets of this calibre only improve with time – indeed many we tasted might well warrant higher scores in future.

While Cape Mentelle continues to look for inspiration from its annual tasting, the goal is not to replicate but to remain distinctive.

Through the prism of a single vintage, this celebration of 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon from six countries (Australia, France, Italy, USA, South Africa and Chile) showcased the grape variety and explored individual terroir and winemaking philosophy. Correspondingly, the 10 wines were suitably diverse – ‘which is the whole point!’ exclaimed Neumann.

Diverse and distinctive

In both Margaret River and Victoria’s Yarra Valley, where the Australian wines in the London tasting hailed from, the 2017 vintage was a cooler year with beneficially higher rainfall than average, so the long growing season suited late-ripening Cabernet Sauvignon. Similarly, 2017 was a ‘superstar vintage’ in South Africa.

Elsewhere, the vintage did not have the best reputation, said Neumann, though noted that ‘with great winemaking teams, you definitely find great wines’.

Neumann described the ‘earlier-drinking’ 2017 vintage as a challenging one for Bordeaux, which was frost-plagued and very dry, with yields down 40%. Tuscany had a very hot year – 3°C warmer than usual – so the September rains were welcome.

The hot, dry year in Chile produced the earliest harvest in 20 years: ‘altitude is the sacred’ for top wines like Santa Rita’s Casa Real from Alto Jahuel at 565m above sea level, said Neumann. In California, heat spikes resulted in wildfires but for those who picked early, ‘there is a lot of freshness to be found’.

There were some marmite wines in the line-up, such as Ornellaia with its atypically high alcohol (15%), the herbaceousness of Mount Mary and the savoury suggestion of brettanomyces in the Santa Rita.

But there was mass consensus on the Château Pichon-Longueville, Chateau Montelena and competitively priced Boekenhoutskloof with their charm offensive of silky ripe fruit and smooth tannins. Dense and brooding, the Château Léoville-Barton and Cape Mentelle (always one of Margaret River’s sturdier Cabernets) begged to be left alone.

A celebration of Cabernet

I was lucky enough to be invited to speak at the Cape Mentelle International Cabernet Sauvignon tasting in 2018. Before flying out, I took the opportunity to quiz the late, great Steven Spurrier about the change in perceptions of world-class Cabernet since he organised the 1976 Judgment of Paris.

‘World judgements have changed for all wines of high quality in that they should have a sense of place above the expression of the grape variety,’ he told me. ‘Cabernet Sauvignons from Margaret River are now Margaret River first and Cabernet second.’

That was very much apparent from my experience tasting in Margaret River in 2018 as well as in London in 2022. Cape Mentelle’s International Cabernet Tasting is less a competition and more a celebration of the many shades of this great grape.

Cape Mentelle International Cabernet Tasting in London: 10 wines from 2017

Related articles

• Looking back: Margaret River icon wines and top vintages
• Henschke 2018: Single-vineyard releases
• First taste: Ornellaia 2020