Rockford Cabernet Sauvignon Rifle Range 2015

Robert O'Callaghan spent two decades working for various Barossa winemakers before buying an 1850s stone settler's cottage in the village of Krondorf in 1971, gradually building a courtyard-style winery from the same era-appropriate materials, and finally founding Rockford in 1984. He's since been spoken of in the same breath as Max Schubert, Peter Lehmann, and Brian Croser — genuine visionaries of Australian wine — and his hands-on, old-school "Rockford school" of winemaking (basket presses, open fermenters, minimal intervention) has shaped a whole generation of winemakers who trained under him, including Chris Ringland and Dave Powell. Rifle Range takes its name from the road running parallel to Krondorf Road, once home to a small-bore rifle range and now lined with the vineyards that have supplied this wine's fruit since Rockford's very beginning. Cabernet Sauvignon has been grown in the Barossa since at least 1888, and the vines here sit on the distinctive "Biscay" soil — heavy, black, cracking clay that gives the wine its characteristically rich, earthy texture. True to house style, it's aged a full two years in large, seasoned (never new) oak vats and hogsheads, letting the fruit and site carry the wine rather than winemaking flourish.

The result is classic, old-school Barossa Cabernet: rich, soft, and full-bodied, with plum, blackcurrant, and chocolate meeting Cabernet's characteristic dried sage and crushed green-leaf herbaceousness. The tannins are notably medium rather than firm, and the palate leans earthy and savoury rather than simply fruit-driven — James Halliday has called Rockford "an icon, no matter how overused that word may be."