Mount Pleasant Single Vineyard Lovedale Semillon 2009

The 2009 Lovedale Semillon provides intense lime juice and lime leaf aromas with a muted undercurrent of lemongrass, chalk and orange blossom. Very crisp on the palate with nice nervy intensity though youthfully tight/closed. Minerally with a long citrussy finish. McWilliams’ Mount Pleasant is one of Australia’s oldest and most historically important sites. The former home and vineyard of the legendary Maurice O’Shea, in the 1930s McWilliams took a share in the property from O’Shea, purchasing it outright from him in 1941. Today it is the Hunter Valley base for a much larger though still family-owned McWilliams group. The estate wines are modern tributes to this great property’s past, led by the single vineyard Lovedale Semillon. With the older vines on the Lovedale vineyard planted by Maurice O’Shea, this wine is all about the vineyard with very little winemaker input. Reductive handling and preservation of fruit are critical here with early bottling conducted in August as part of the style. On average just 3000 cases of Lovedale Semillon are made each year. Part of the Lovedale vineyard has been replanted but only cuttings of the 1945-7 plants are used for the Lovedale label with fruit from the younger vines going into the Elisabeth label. Apr 2010, www.robertparker.com