Voyager Estate Cabernet Merlot 2001 (review)

88 points.

Margaret River, Western Australia. 14%

From a very good WA vintage.

Dark shiny wine with spicy sweet aromas reminiscent of food, perhaps like a tomato & herb based pasta or pizza. Very enticing.

I'd swear this was a Coonawarra, not Margaret River, cabernet - the flavours and acids are so frisky with a touch of capsicum/eucalyptus.

Quite delicious with food, like Italian pasta.

If this were a Bordeaux I'd guess it was a new promising chateau, in a ripe vintage, with very young vines. In that it has quality fresh fruit and alcohol with no great physiological ripeness, ie no flavours into the deeper, more savory, even bitter spectrum.

Well made but lacking real substance. It will undoubtedly improve with 2-3 years of age. There is some, but not much, potential to gain complexity.

PS Gourmet Traveller Wine magazine gave it 93 points with Jancis Robinson selecting it in her top five out of a Coonawarra, Hawkes Bay and Margaret River cabernet tasting. In her defense Jancis Robinson described it as "very clean, brisk and lively; not at all opulent" - I concur.