2017 Yalumba Sanctum Cabernet Sauvignon Menzies Estate Vineyard Coonawarra South Australia 750 ml

A tiny, cigar-shaped strip of land in the heart of the Limestone Coast in South Australia, Coonawarra is home to some of the finest Cabernet terroir in the world. It’s just 16 miles long and a mile wide, and wineries lucky enough to have vineyards there parlay frigid blasts off the Southern Ocean and the area’s well-draining red clay and limestone soil into Cabernets that are as concentrated as they are complex.

Fortunately for Cabernet lovers, Yalumba—which Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate calls the “Aussie icon”—has staked a claim in Coonawarra, and after taking a single sip of their generously layered 2017 Sanctum Menzies Estate Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, we snapped up an allocation on the spot. It’s one of the few $20 wines we’d wait a year and a half for, and now that it’s landed stateside, the bottle’s even more irresistible.  

The Sanctum Cabernet unlocks aromas reminiscent of classic Bordeaux, with a kiss of Aussie warmth. Black currant, tobacco leaf, pencil lead, and bay leaf aromas lead into riper black plum and smashed blueberry flavors, as wild notes of purple flower, spiced blackberry, and forest floor slowly unfurl. Rich and muscular on entry, it’s got a fine, distinct tannin structure that lingers long into the finish, ensuring this assertive Cab will continue to evolve for at least another decade.

When we visited Australia last year, we were particularly keen on finally meeting the 171-year-old winery’s rising star winemaker, Natalie “Nat” Cleghorn. When we arrived, Nat greeted us with a brief tour of the Mars-like terrain in Yalumba’s famed Menzies Vineyard, then filled our glasses with an experimental barrel sample to thaw us out.

But its impressive layers only intensified our goosebumps. Noting our raised eyebrows and grins, she laughed and waved it away as “just a little something new I’m working on.” She moved onto her more famous bottlings of The Menzies and The Cigar (both as tremendous as we’d anticipated), but our curiosity had been piqued by the mystery pour.

Over roast beef sandwiches in the cellar with Nat’s harvest interns, we pressed her for more details. She finally relented, telling us she didn’t make much, but that this was her first attempt at “a lunch wine—something that would be perfect to open right now, actually.” We decided right then that we needed to have more lunches with Nat, and that we were going to secure as many bottles of this as we could for Wine Access members.

Swayed by our readiness to double down on the first vintage of her “little experiment,” Nat promised us an allocation of the 2017 Sanctum Cabernet. That was well before Halliday assigned it his Red Star Special Value distinction for “wines considered to offer special value for the money.” 

It remains an incredible value at its $26 winery price, and even better at $19.99.