Yarra Yering Dry Red No 1 2012

Yarra Yering was founded in 1969 by Dr Bailey Carrodus, an Oxford-trained botanist. He planted the first Yarra Valley vineyard to be replanted after the region's collapse in the 1920s, on a north-facing hillside above Coldstream. The 1973 vintage produced the first Dry Red No. 1 (a Bordeaux blend) and No. 2 (a Rhône-style blend), and the plain numbering was typical of his idiosyncratic approach. His winemaking was whole-cluster and hand-plunged, and he refused to filter most wines. After his death in 2008, the estate passed to new owners who had long admired it, and Sarah Crowe has made the wines since 2013. In 2022 Yarra Yering became the first producer to win both Winery of the Year and Wine of the Year in the Halliday Wine Companion awards, the latter for this wine's 50th vintage.

The wine is Cabernet Sauvignon-led, with Merlot, Malbec and Petit Verdot. The Cabernet and Malbec, and some of the Merlot, come from the original 1969 plantings in Block No. 1, which gave the wine its name. The 2023 blend is 58% Cabernet Sauvignon, 23% Merlot, 15% Malbec and 4% Petit Verdot. In style it is a classic cool-climate Cabernet blend: black cherry, blackcurrant, cedar and liquorice, with a savoury, iodine-like complexity and fine-grained tannins. Palate texture comes from the Merlot, freshness from the Malbec and fragrance from the Petit Verdot. The 2023 earned 99 points and a Halliday Cabernet & Blends of the Year award, and Huon Hooke scored it 96. It is built to age, with older vintages drinking beautifully for decades