Cassandra Charlick: My top 10 wines of 2024
From Tasmanian sparklers to Margaret River classics and an exciting Italian varietal debut, Cassandra Charlick selects her 10 favourite bottles from a year of tastings in Australia.
I like to start the year with a word. 2024’s word was ‘equilibrium’. The previous year, 2023, was rather full and I figured a year of moderately paced work, travel and rest was a reasonable thing to aim for.
Intentions are wonderful, but let’s be honest; they are called intentions for a reason… It turns out that 2024 has been a huge year of wine, tasting and travel.
As warming climates and challenging seasons threaten to play havoc with traditional viticultural areas, rich in wine history and culture, some of the Aussie wines I tasted in 2024 reminded me just how outstanding our greatest iterations are.
Scroll down for Cassandra’s top 10 wines of 2024
The brief for this piece was to pick a selection of ‘favourite wines, wine moments, visits, discoveries of the year and tastings’. However, let me be clear: to me, a great wine IS a great wine moment. But great wine moments don’t necessarily equate to the most technical of wines – or even the wine that makes the loudest noise in the room.
Great wine moments
For me, there are three core elements that a great wine moment includes: a visit, a discovery and an expansion of the senses.
A great wine moment should include a visit of some sort, whether a physical visit to the place of its creation or a mental journey back to the moment the bottle arrived in the cellar. Or even how the world looked at the time those grapes were harvested.
A great wine moment must also include an element of discovery. Whether it is the first or 50th time that particular wine has been tasted, it should still harbour an element of surprise. An evolution in the glass or bottle, or perhaps the company sharing the bottle added a new dimension to its narrative or the narrative of those who made it.
And, of course, a great wine moment MUST include an expansive sensory element. A split second that makes the world stand still. The most complex and beautiful wines are often those I could sit on all night, simply inhaling the perfume in the glass.
But it is only when the liquid washes over the palate that the experience is complete, and lives collide: the life of the wine, from creation to its current age in the bottle, and the life of the drinker, a rich tapestry of experiences.
The union of the two is a wine moment, a split second that will never repeat itself. Tomorrow is always a new day with new variables.
Some of my greatest wine moments of 2024 haven’t been included here, and that is because there were more than I could fit. But it’s also because some of them will forever remain as shape-shifting memories, not tasting notes jotted down in a notebook.
Both types of wine moments are valid, and both play important roles in our relationship with wine.
Tasting Tasmania
Of course, some of my most memorable wine moments include the wines I’ve chosen below. For example, it was a joy to visit Tasmania as the keynote speaker and ambassador for the 2024 Effervescence Tasmania festival.
I tasted many wines in situ and at my tasting desk on my return.
The Bellebonne Vintage Rosé had an entire room transfixed, and I earmarked the Pirie Late Disgorged 2011 for a spot at my Christmas celebrations.
The magnum of House of Arras EJ Carr Late Disgorged 2006 stopped me in my tracks during my presenting duties – and it is in a fantastic drinking window right now.
This little island has a grand future on the global stage of sparkling wine, so if you’re looking for an unexplored wine destination for your 2025 travel list, add it to the top.
Margaret River highlights
While you’re at it, pop by a few other Aussie wine regions that are doing wondrous things. Margaret River’s white Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon blends might be overshadowed by the region’s spectacular Chardonnay and Cabernet, but after tasting through its white Bordeaux blends, it’s clear to me that these wines deserve a place at the table.
There is nothing like tasting a wine where it was grown. The 2024 harvest in Margaret River was the earliest on record. While the vineyards were a hive of activity, I was busily tasting through 2021 Cabernets and 2022 Chardonnays for Decanter’s first-ever Margaret River Vintage Report.
The hardest part was whittling down the wines to just a handful for print. 2022 was a fantastic year for Chardonnay, and the 2021 vintage revealed some finer-boned reds with incredible elegance and perfume.
Italian grapes
My final pick this year is a little curveball, but it is a glimpse into the future of Australian wine. Alternative varieties continue to grow in popularity and plantings, with Mediterranean grapes doing well in the warm and dry summers that so many of our wine regions experience.
A speedy visit to McLaren Vale included a stroll through the Falanghina Beneventana vineyard with the bundle of energy that is sixth-generation winemaker Corrina Wright of Oliver’s Taranga (below).
Her 2024 vintage is the first from these vines, the variety imported by Chalmers, with mother rows planted in 2015 and 2016. I tried Chalmers’ delicious iteration (the first commercial release in the country) last year during a visit to their nursery in the Murray Darling region.
Fiano might be hitting its Australian stride, but there’s a future for Falanghina. If anyone can devise a creative campaign to overcome the variety’s pronunciation hurdles, it will be the Aussies…
And as December closes, it’s time to look towards the next year and the excitement of new wines, people and places I’ll cross paths with. 2025 brings a house move and a state move across the nation to the cooler climate of Tasmania.
While the move is for family, I’ll be keeping one foot firmly in my home state of Western Australia, with the other in a thermal sock and gumboot (wellies to you Brits) in Tasmania.
Wine is a vehicle for connection. It builds community, and it facilitates togetherness. If there was ever a time that we needed what wine provides, it is now. I look forward to raising a glass with you in the new year, whichever continent, state or region it may be in!
Cassandra Charlick’s top 10 wines of 2024
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