The 2021 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon is tight and fine, and still one and a bit vintages away from release onto the local market. The wine will ease into itself in that time, so the release cycle makes sense here. Tightly wound cassis, boysenberry and graphite define the nose in this 2021 Reserve Cabernet, and the palate plays out with tension definition. There is rapier cut and thrust here. It parries, too. It is pretty, with loads of raspberry fruit and choc/malt oak. Lovely wine. Will be better. 14% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

The 2020 vintage in Margaret River was warm, compressed (earliest starting pick and earliest wrap up—producers and viticulturists home for Easter) and low yielding. The wines, as a result, and specifically in the context of Cabernet Sauvignon, are powerful, tannic and lushly fruited. Here, the 2020 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon meets all of these vintage characteristics: black dirt, iodine, cassis, char, clove, pepper berry and graphite. The tannins are a highlight here and show the curve and density of both the region and the maturation vessel. It matured for 18 months in tight-grained French oak. 14% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

I have tasted the 2019 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon blind, on several occasions, without knowing it was to be included in the lineup. It performed in a most impressive way on each of those occasions, and only once did I pick it as being from Margaret River. Whether that's a good thing or not, or even relevant, is up to you. However, the density of tannin and fruit in the mouth, sculpted as it is by high-class French oak, speaks more of quality Bordeaux or Napa. Yet, once the origins of this wine become clear, the fruit shines with the obvious red/purple fruit spectrum endemic in the Houghton clones (particularly in Wilyabrup, in this part of Margaret River). There are notes of nori, sun-dried kelp, raspberry, pomegranate, tobacco leaf, freshly turned earth, ironstone/iodine, pencil shavings and cigar box. It is both classical and modern in one fell swoop. This is a super wine. I love the tannins through the middle palate and finish. This will live an age. Easily the greatest Cabernet made at Fermoy Estate so far. 14% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

The 2018 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon is forthright, full-bodied and complex, shaped by a savory skein of tannin that thrusts through the mouth. There are notes of tobacco leaf, blackberry bramble, cassis and raspberry. This is a step up from the 2015 and 2017 tasted prior, and it shows a balance and power that feels naturally inherent in the wine. The season was excellent, unmarred by heat spikes or weather events, the seemingly unending hunger of the silvereyes (birds) sated by the profusion of marri blossom during that summer. You can drink the 2018s now; they are plush and full of pleasure, but they are at the beginning of a very long road and are only just starting to hint at the potential to come. 14.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

The 2017 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon smells of its oak in this cool and wet vintage: high-quality oatmeal/malt oak melds with a svelte flow of cassis and blackberry in the mouth. The tannins are a little stringy and ungiving through the finish. Complex, closed and well made, this is an excellent wine from a divisive season in the region, one that isolated those who had the prescience to bravely and, on occasion, firmly manage vineyards, and those who did, or could not. 14% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.