The Hunter Valley is unquestionably the best known and most highly prized wine region in NewSouthWales. Its most famous wine style is its distinctive Dry Semillon, while Shiraz, is also long-established. It is also regarded as a pioneer of Australian Chardonnay.
Hunter Valley Semillon
Semillon was first planted here in the 1830s.
Hunter Valley Semillons are renowned for their ability to improve with age. The better examples develop in bottle for more than 15 years.
Classic examples are made simply from early picked fruit and bottled Young, with Alcohol levels between 10 and 12 percent. The wines start out with a fresh, grassy, citrus taste with tangy Acidity.
However they evolve into Golden wines with nutty, honeyed notes and a luscious mouthfeel. Though unoaked and not having undergone malolactic fermentation, they can be mistaken for oaky chardonnays, even by experienced tasters.
The valley's relationship with Chardonnay is 100 years shorter, but no less significant. It was here that Australia's first Chardonnay was made – from vines planted by the Tyrrell winery of Pokolbin in 1968.
Cabernet Franc is one of the oldest red grape varieties in Bordeaux. The Libourne region is its terroir where it develops best. The terroirs of Saint-Emilion and Fronsac allow it to mature and develop its best range of aromas. It is also the majority in many blends. The very famous Château Cheval Blanc, for example, uses 60% Cabernet Franc. The wines produced with Cabernet Franc are medium in colour with fine tannins and subtle aromas of small red fruits and spices. When blended with Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, it brings complexity and a bouquet of aromas to the wine. It produces fruity wines that can be drunk quite quickly, but whose great vintages can be kept for a long time. It is an earlier grape variety than Cabernet Sauvignon, which means that it is planted as far north as the Loire Valley. In Anjou, it is also used to make sweet rosé wines. Cabernet Franc is now used in some twenty countries in Europe and throughout the world.
red wines from the region of Hunter Valley go well with generally quite well with dishes of beef, lamb or veal such as recipes of beef tongue with vegetables and madeira sauce, oven-baked lamb stew or bigos (polish sauerkraut with paprika).
On the nose in the region of Hunter Valley often reveals types of flavors of cherry, leather or earth and sometimes also flavors of oak, red fruit or black fruit. In the mouth in the region of Hunter Valley is a powerful with a lot of tannins present in the mouth.
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