Perfumed up front, with notes of dried violet, white pepper, luscious cream soda and milk chocolate, plus aromatics of chai tea, tarragon, toasted cedar and green olive. The tannins are dense but fine-grained, and there's an epic finish where all the flavors fit together in harmony. Drink now through 2044. 50 cases imported.??–MW??Region: Australia / Coonawarra Select to Add

The 2021 Bin 169 Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon is the premium Cabernet in the range that matured in French oak (16 months, 51% new) and (70% American oak), and as a result, perhaps unsurprisingly, it is the more elegant wine of the pair on release. You get leafy cassis, raspberry, red apple skins, ferrous notes, pomegranate molasses, tobacco and some bay leaf—very pleasing. An intensely powerful wine, it's robust in its way but lithe too. 14.5% alcohol, sealed under natural cork.

Stunning, this red opens dusty, with cocoa powderlike tannins, and the flavors just melt away from there into silky accents of fresh rosemary, cardamom, chocolate-covered maraschino cherry, salted caramel and wild blackberry. Reveals aromas of bakhoor incense, with a finish that's exciting for its persistence. Drink now through 2035. 50 cases imported.??–MW??Region: Australia / Coonawarra Select to Add

Made only in appropriate vintages, and always from Coonwarra, the 2019 Bin 169 Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon is aromatically reticent at this stage, however the power of the fruit in the mouth in unassailable. It blossoms on the back palate and shows pedigree and impressive stature. This is a supremely elegant wine of poise and detail, couched in a framework of power and dense muscly tannin. We all have our preferences between Bin 707 and Bin 169, but for me, my heart has always been with the 169. I think Cabernet deserves an elegant casing, and that is made from French oak (17 months in French oak, 56% new, to be precise). This is pure, but far too young right now. We know this has decades of graceful development ahead of it.