1998 Howard Park Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot Tasting Notes

The 1998 grapegrowing season was warm and dry throughout the Great Southern and Margaret River regions of Western Australia producing fruit with great concentration of colour, flavour and tannin. There were a few batches of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot that were identified in vineyards as being of extraordinary quality and were kept separate, fermented in small open topped tanks with extended time at the end of fermentation on skins to further enhance tannin texture. The wine was matured in 100% new French oak barriques for 24 months prior to final blending.
The Howard Park Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot is the product of the most stringent selection criteria all the way from the vineyard to the bottle, only the best and most balanced fruit was chosen at each successive selection step to continue the path to bottle.

The wine immediately betrays its quality with an extraordinarily dense appearance, blood red with a dark heart. On the nose the wine further asserts itself with a massive brooding of aromas all packed very tightly due to its youth. Ripe berry cassis aromas typical of Cabernet Sauvignon are the first aromas to come to the surface with underlying briary characters, aromas reminiscent of a forest floor litter and just a hint of dark chocolate. The whole nose is tied together by wonderful cedary oak aromas. The palate is a seamless extension of the nose from which the ultimate conclusion is that this is still a very young wine. The palate is rich and generous but still tightly structured and keeping hidden its full array of flavours. The tannin structure is a highlight of the wine and suggests great promise. This wine is clearly a good wine with its true potential not to be revealed for some years yet.
Decanting and breathing of this wine is recommended in its youth.

Long term cellaring will realise this wine’s true potential.