Pooley Pinot Noir Butcher's Hill 2024

At The Stunned Mullet, our wine list has carried a  3 Glass Gourmet Traveller rating for years on the strength of one simple idea: every bottle on it has to earn its place. Pooley's Butcher's Hill Pinot Noir earns its place easily.

This is Tasmania's Coal River Valley at its most serious. Pooley Wines was founded in 1985 by Denis and Margaret Pooley on the banks of the Coal River, and is now recognised as Tasmania's first three-generation wine family. The Butcher's Hill site — planted on dolerite, black cracking clays and limestone over sandstone on a steep north-facing slope — is the more powerful, structured sibling to the family's Cooinda Vale vineyard. Long sunlight hours, protection from cold southern winds, and mineral-rich ferricrete soils all combine to produce fruit of real depth and complexity.

In the glass: dark cherry and cocoa, layered with sage, oregano and lavender, lifted by a prickle of green peppercorn. The palate is vibrant and structured — cherry, citrus peel, allspice — carried by velvety tannins and firm acidity through to a finish of liquorice, cardamom and dark chocolate. Gary Walsh of The Wine Front rated it 95 points, calling the wine's combination of earthiness and perfume "appealing and distinct" — his kind of Pinot, in short.

It's exactly the kind of wine our guests look for when they want serious Australian Pinot Noir on the list — something that holds its own next to Burgundy without trying to imitate it. A natural pairing for our  mushroom-forward dishes, and anything off the slow-cooked end of the menu.