It was good to catch up with old friends and make a few new friends at the Decanter New World Fine Wine Encounter on Saturday May 19th, and I tasted my way around the wines I had chosen for the ‘New World Excellence’ masterclass with some relief. The wines have to be selected well in advance for obvious logistical reasons. Practicalities mean that I hadn’t tasted most of them recently, and those that I had tasted were often now on a new vintage. Thus I got a first and final look 30 minutes before presenting them. Some trepidation is involved …

In the event, I scraped through without too much heckling. I defined excellence as equating to the right grape variety in the right place, that place being a site of distinction, and the wines being made with solicitude and restraint. Here’s a little of the thinking behind the individual wines — and a note about how they showed on the day. Plus, for fun’s sake, a score out of 100.

2006 Sauvignon Blanc, Groote Post, Darling Hills, South Africa.
This was the Sauvignon which impressed me more than any other during my visit to South Africa in 2005, and I felt when I tasted the 2004 vintage that the Darling Hills may have a great future for Sauvignon Blanc. The 2006 was good, though perhaps a little more pea-poddy than I remember. I note that a Reserve is now also being produced and it did strike me that this may have affected the quality of the standard bottling. But still a lovely fresh glass of Sauvignon with real palate depth to it. 87/100
[In UK: www.Sawinesonline 0845 496 2365: £8.99]

2006 Sauvignon Blanc, Old Renwick Vineyard, Marlborough, Craggy Range, New Zealand
I’m a great admirer of Steve Smith’s approach and it was good to see Steve on the day. This wine was tasting poised, complex, long and close-textured: I love the lack of grass clippings and the delicate haze between fruits and vegetal notes. I’m still looking for that stony mineral finish, and as the vine roots get deeper every year, it can’t be far away now. 90/100
[In UK: Waitrose £10.99]

2005 Arneis, Keyhole Ranch, Seghesio, Russian River Valley, California, USA
I think everyone present thought I was teasing when I said how much I liked Italian whites and how much I missed that kind of delicacy and restraint and food-friendly understatement in the New World. But it’s true! Anyway, if you want it, get it here — lovely pear, quince and peach fruits; great grace and charm; a wonderfully seductive bottle to share with someone else with unusual tastes. 90/100
[In UK: Liberty Wines, 0207 720 5350, £18.74]

2004 Chardonnay, Belle Cote Vineyard, Peter Michael Winery, Knights Valley, California, USA
I love the luxury of California Chardonnay — but there must be something lurking behind all that lip gloss if the relationship is to deepen. I’d really like to have spent an hour or two with this wine. Is it because it’s high-grown on volcanic soils, or simply because it gets all the right sort of attention? I don’t know, but it’s convincing either way. 91/100
[In UK: Vineyard Cellars, 01488 681411, £52.57]

2004 Shiraz, Cederberg, South Africa
There’s only one Cederberg — hence the classily short address, rather like ‘Buckingham Palace, London’. I’ve loved South Africa’s highest-grown Shiraz from the off. I note it was the Cabernet which landed the Trophy this year at the Decanter World Wine Awards, but this was still tasting lively, vivacious and perfumed, with stylishly natural articulation. I’d love to see a 100% French oak version — for me that 30% of American adds a note of sweetness which I’m sure the wine would be better without. Lovely label, by the way. 90/100
[In UK: Stone, Vine & Sun, 01962 712351, £11.95]

2005 Syrah, EQ, Matetic, San Antonio, Chile
A fascinating comparison with the Cederberg: great heat mitigated by height (providing big diurnal temperature swings) at Cederberg compared to great heat mitigated by the effects of the cool ocean current (providing cool day starts and a more fretful growing season) here in San Antonio. This was one of the themes of the tasting as a whole, with Belle Cote and Fabre Montmayou also playing the height card, and Groote Post and Seghesio’s Arneis being cool-ocean-current wines. This is a wine with fewer bass notes and even more liveliness than the Cederberg; I love its pepper and discreet floral hints. The EQ Syrah has had a great start, but the vines are very young, and what often happens with Syrah is you get a dazzling debut followed by a four or five years where it sinks back into a shell. I suspect that may happen with these young vines too, but it’s certainly one to watch. 89/100
[In UK: Wine Society, 01438 740222]

2003 Neyen, Apalta, Colchagua, Chile
This blend of 70% Carmenere (30 years old) with 30% Cabernet (100 years old) is one of the most complete Chilean wines I know. I love its steadiness: the way it combines intrinsically sumptuous fruit with a calm, stately balance. It’s not trying too hard, as so many aspirational Chilean reds do. The uniqueness of Apalta is based on dry-farmed hill sites AND old vines (thanks to a naturally high water table), a rare combination in Chile. (Of course there are a lot of new plantings there too now.) The Carmenere-Cabernet blend is a very happy one, too. 91/100
[In UK: Berry Bros & Rudd, £23.95]

2005 Malbec, Gran Reserva, Fabre Montmayou, Vistalba-Lujan de Cujo, Mendoza, Argentina
This has been a long-term favourite of mine; indeed I can’t really think of a better red wine from the Southern Hemisphere in the UK at the price. Great old-vine raw materials (the vines celebrate their 100th birthday next year), careful viticulture, fine fruit handling and sensitive wine making. The best Malbec from Argentina has the disarming fruit qualities of so many of its Southern Hemisphere rivals; but it also has superb tannic mass and a profundity of extract rare elsewhere. The stark day-night temperature variations leave the wine with wonderfully dashing acidity, too. Chapeau! 94/100
[In UK: Vinothentic from June 15th: £10.85]

2000 Cabernet Sauvignon, Domaine A, Coal Valley, Tasmania
This wine gave me the shock of my tasting-note life on May 12th 2005, when Andrew Caillard brought 114 wines from the Langton’s Classification pool over to the UK and served them blind. This was my pick of the Cabernets and Cabernet blends (I gave it half a point more than Cullen’s Cab-Merlot), yet it was so different to the rest of its peers. In place of all that rigid acidity which defaces so many Australian Cabernets, it had a naturalness of articulation which fell across the palate like balm. The tannins had a real Bordelais briskness to them, too; and the fruit was, happily, just on the cusp of ripeness. What was it? Cabernet from Tasmania: tu blagues! Chatting to Paul Hopkins from Domaine A on Saturday, I discovered a little more — the longest sunshine hours in the country, for example, thanks to the low latitudes, and only 400 mls of rain. Its seventh birthday (picking is usually in May) and it’s still looking good, though perhaps not with the depth and penetration of fruit I remembered from 2005. Maybe we should have tasted it before the Cederberg Shiraz? 89/100
[In UK: www.everywine.co.uk: £23.45]

2004 Cabernet-Shiraz, Whalebone Vineyard, Tapanappa, Wrattonbully, South Australia
I’m enormously enthusiastic about Brian Croser’s new Tapanappa venture (which will unite a number of ’sites of distinction’, including those beyond Australia’s borders, in due course), and the Whalebone Vineyard from Wrattonbully (formerly Koppamurra) makes a fine foundation stone. Brian is always looking for length rather than breadth and some have criticised him for going too far in that direction. This wine is perfectly pitched, it seems to me, between those two planes: the fruit qualities are outstanding, with a helix of ripenesss turning at the wine’s core; acutely judged tannins, too, purring in the background. It is (as its geographical position between Coonawarra and Padthaway suggests) a kind of Coonawarra refocussed, with the wind-harried blade of acidity draped in velvet and a little more old-continent generosity in evidence. 94/100
[In UK: Harvey Nichols, Averys, Noel Young, Fine & Rare and others: £30]

2004 Shiraz, Georgia’s Paddock, Jasper Hill, Heathcote, Victoria, Australia
My two top-scoring wines on May 12 2005 (see above) were Georgia and Emily from Jasper Hill, and I regard Ron and Elva Laughton’s single minded pursuit of terroir in Australia with awe. Nothing quite summarises the Australian landscape for me like these Sidney Nolan-esque wines. Despite their evident concentation, wealth and generosity, they seem to me subtle and full of hint and nuance; their acid balances are always supple and accessible; the alcohol seamlessly incorporated into the body of the wine. I would only like to have spent longer with this magnificent wine. 95/100
[In UK: Yapp, 01747 860423, £29]