2009 Pipers Brook Estate Pinot Noir

Posted on 10/02/2012

$42; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92+++ points

Highly refined, yet almost melancholic in an autumnal decay sort of way, this moody salon cat puts me somewhere between Morticia Addams with a martini and Eartha Kitt on the Campari. It’s never droll. With apologies to both women, its top note is old white pepper box. Marello cherries this time. With Red currants and some estery banana cream. Just between you and me, it’s too much of a tightwad to put on flesh, but it remains nicely sensual, as in a very close thing. I love the way the acid snakes away through all that black velvet tannin.

There’s some hedgerow stuff there too, almost like basil or peppery cress like the stuff Colonel Light’s doctor left growing all up the Delamere Creek. This wine is sufficiently well-mannered to be ideal with fat tuna steaks as raw as you can get them with about 5 ml of pink-white-black (in that order) char-grilled flesh on the outside. Oh yes. I haven’t mentioned fruit. Well I sort of did. Bit it’s more as if those fruits were poached in Sauternes and whipped into a crème. It’s custardy. Very tidy.

Philip White - Indaily (www.indaily.com.au)