Wine of the week: a labour of love from Australia

published 14 July 2017

2015 Circe, Pinot Noir, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, Australia (£29.95 or £323.40 for a case of 12 bottles, Berry Bros. & Rudd, 0800-2802440;BBR.com).

I first wrote this wine up in my100 Best Australian Wines 2016/2017 Report,which was published over a year ago. At the time there was only a dribble of stock in the country. Now Berry Bros. & Rudd has a goodly amount of cases in stock, so I feel compelled to alert you to its existence.

Circe's wines come from the scholarly academy of winemaking. These are fastidious, labour-intensive creations made with no care for the man-hours or pain invested. They are veritable labours of love and this is plain to smell when you lower your proboscis into the glass. This carmine-hued Mornington Peninsula Pinot has a stunning sheen and arresting aromatic promiscuity at the same time as being unnervingly elemental, wearing its stems on its sleeve. Youthful and crammed with cherry-stone fruit, this "green" flavour plays good-cop-bad-cop with your senses, taking turns to flatter and then sock you hard in the chops.

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I expect the Pinot freaks to fight to the death for bottles. Owners/winemakers Aaron Drummond at Craggy Range and Dan Buckle at Domaine Chandon will head back to their day jobs oblivious of the street brawl they leave behind them.

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year (MatthewJukes.com).

Matthew Jukes has worked in the UK wine business for well over three decades and during this time has written 14 wine books.

Matthew regularly lectures, judges, speaks at wine conferences and runs masterclass tastings for both corporate and private clients all over the world. Matthew is also the creator of his ground-breaking initiative, the One Day Wine School, an indulgent day of tasting and learning first performed in 2006.

He has been the MoneyWeek wine correspondent since 2006 and has written a weekly column for the Daily Mail’s Weekend Magazine since 1999. His four highly-acclaimed, annual wine reports – the Burgundy En Primeur Report, the Bordeaux En Primeur Report, the Piemonte Report and the 100 Best Australian Wines – are published on his website, www.matthewjukes.com.

Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on Australian wine and, with Brisbane-based wine writer Tyson Stelzer, runs an annual competition in Australia to find ‘The Great Australian Red’. He was made Honorary Australian of the Year in the UK at the 2012 Australia Day Foundation Gala dinner.

Matthew is a winner of the International Wine and Spirit Competition's Communicator of the Year Trophy. His thoughts, recommendations and tastings notes are followed very closely by the wine world at large.