TN: De Bortoli 'Noble One' 2017

[Waiters Friend]

G'day

I have a few dozen stickies in the cellar, and rarely open one. Most of them are based on Semillon, as this one is, or SSB (Sauternes).

Deep gold colour. An intense nose of glace pineapple, apricot, vanilla, honey and sticky figs. The palate is also pronounced, with more apricot, honey, pineapple and toffee. Freshening acid which contributes to a very long and clean finish. Delicious and no wonder this is the benchmark for Australian stickies.

Cheers
Allan

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[JamieAdelaide]

I opened a 2013 for a guest at a dinner party we hosted last week. Nobody else interested such is the fate of stickies these days . I finished it over a week.

De Bortili know what they are doing with screwcap. At 12 years colour was intense and the wine appropriately developed. Such a classical style.

Hard for many to find occasions for? I did buy 4 x 96 from auction a few years ago. They were dark and looking abused. Unctuous and heavily toffeed, all disappeared at a large birthday dinner party.

[GraemeG]

It's a decent wine, although I think they've been a bit acid-deficient this century. They certainly darken very quickly nowadays. I don't think they age (as in develop tertiary interest) as well as local riesling-based botrytis examples. Or even non-botrytis examples; for interest at a decade old I reckon Mt Horrocks Cordon Cut knocks Noble One into the proverbial cocked hat.

[JamieAdelaide]

Interesting comments re modern iterations Graeme.

This was probably my first experience with stelvin and Noble One. A wine always better with a charcuterie board rather than pudding for mine.

[GraemeG]

They've had time to work the screwcap out. Looking at my old CellarTracker notes, every vintage from 2005 & onwards has been screwcap, every vintage 2003 & earlier was under cork. I've never had an export bottling (still under cork?), nor a 2004!

[JamieAdelaide]

By your evidence, they’ve changed the style to fit the closure?

[GraemeG]

By your evidence, they’ve changed the style to fit the closure?

I wouldn't argue the two are related, no. I don't think it's particularly built to age any more - it feels like that change happened around the turn of the century. All the screwcap's done is given you a better chance of avoiding oxidation or TCA, but I don't think it's done anything about the underlying structure of the wine. Just my opinion.