Yalumba 175th anniversary: Museum Collection wines released

Yalumba winery was established in 1849 by Samuel Smith, whose success as a gold prospector bolstered his fledgling Barossa Valley property. At the time it stood out as a fiercely independent enterprise built on the endeavour of a strong-minded family that focused on steady growth.

Now, 175 years later, as the Hill-Smith family’s sixth generation is being introduced to the business, careful balance is maintained. One eye is focused respectfully on Yalumba’s history, while the other focuses on the future of a medium-sized wine company with ambitions to have its best wines regarded more seriously.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores from an exceptional celebratory tasting

As Australia’s oldest family-owned winery, Yalumba is acutely aware of its place on the world stage. Respected for providing generous wines of superb value, it now strives to attain higher peaks of excellence with a range of elite varietal examples and exceptional blends.

Family values

The family has a passion for history, tradition and self-sufficiency. This was best exemplified when current chairman and former CEO Robert Hill-Smith, his mother Helen Hill-Smith and brother Sam Hill-Smith bought back all the company shares in 1988 to ward off threatening corporate raiders and ensure Yalumba’s tight family ownership. This has allowed the Hill-Smiths to steer their own course, retaining things they value that many wine corporations may consider superfluous.

Click here to read Decanter’s Yalumba Producer Profile

For instance, Yalumba maintains its own cooperage to ensure wine barrel quality control. It also established a vine nursery to propagate less-familiar grape varieties – most notably Viognier, which Yalumba has championed since 1980 – and superior clones to improve underperforming vineyards. This also fuelled the Hill-Smith family’s expansion beyond the Barossa and Eden Valley to include significant vineyard holdings in Coonawarra and the Riverland in South Australia.

Old vines and wines

The winery has been a steadfast champion of preserving and caring for ancient vines. Key Barossa vineyards include Clifton Estate (Shiraz planted in 1854), Shorts Vineyard (Shiraz planted in 1900) and the Tri-Centenary vineyard (Grenache planted in 1889).

It was Yalumba that helped draft a charter to accurately classify different ages of ‘old’ vines into four definite categories – Old (+35 years), Survivors (+70 years), Centenarians (+100 years) and Ancestors (+125 years). In the Yalumba playbook, such attention to detail makes a significant difference.

Yalumba has also maintained an extraordinary cellar at its Angaston winery and headquarters – to examine the quality of the company’s own wines as they age, and to store great wines of the world as benchmarks for the education of its winemakers.

Museum Collection

Central to this vast wine vault is the Yalumba Museum Collection, which is being issued on 17 May as a milestone anniversary celebration. More than 20 years ago, the company encouraged its winemakers to identify wines from superior vintages that would be ideal for long-term cellaring, and reserved significant quantities of these vintages for later release.

Now, the stellar examples of this programme – The Octavius 2009 and 2014, The Caley 2014, The Menzies 2014 and The Signature Cabernet Sauvignon-Shiraz 2009, 2012 and 2014 – are being sold in a limited release.

These wines formed the centrepiece of an extraordinary invitation-only tasting event to mark the winery’s 175th anniversary. It saw the seven mature Yalumba wines presented in the company of many iconic international wines, to compare similar vintages or observe stylistic contrasts.

To mark the unique nature of such an expansive tasting, Robert led a discussion with the assembled group of about 100 media and wine industry tasters about each of the 36 featured wines.

Highlights of the tasting

Both Robert and leading wine critic Andrew Caillard were particularly pleased with the 1974 Yalumba FDR 1A Claret: a model for Yalumba’s extensive history of Cabernet Sauvignon-driven blends with Shiraz. They noted it was: ‘In particularly good shape, with surprisingly good structure, still bound by fine tannins and prevailing acid to retain long flavour notes.’

Hill-Smith Family Estates chief winemaker Sam Wigan highlighted Yalumba’s 1923 Shiraz Port, a rare treasure from the Yalumba Museum Cellar. ‘It was stunning for its complexity, nuttiness and savouriness after so many years,’ he said. ‘A glassful of Australian wine history.’

The expansive discussion even sparked some curious debate, with former chief winemaker Louisa Rose – recently appointed Hill-Smith Family Estates’ first head of sustainability. She defended her belief in Viognier producing wines of distinction from lengthy cellaring, which is a view not shared by Robert.

Final destination

It all served to shed light on Yalumba’s philosophies, its changing views over the years, and the intellectual rigour that it brings to winemaking – particularly its blends of Cabernet Sauvignon with Shiraz. This style stretches back to the 1800s, but advances made in recent decades by senior red winemaker Kevin Glastonbury – especially with The Caley, a blend of elite fruit parcels that was first produced in 2012 – shows Yalumba performing at its best.

According to Glastonbury, the tasting and the selection of Museum Collection limited releases vindicates many of Yalumba’s winemaking intentions and selections. He particularly singled out the lavishly oaked The Octavius old-vine Shiraz that now looks smartly in balance after a decade in the cellar. ‘Like all winemaking, it’s a journey,’ he said, ‘and it’s very pleasing to see these wines arrive at their intended destination.’

Yalumba Museum Collection wines

Tasting notes for the new Museum Collection and a selection of older vintages tasted at the launch event.

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