2020 Craiglee Cabernet Sauvignon, Sunbury

Slick and silky, medium weight, spicy, herbal, dark fruited but cooling, laced with woodiness, sweet spice, peppery elements, mint and some soy sauce and umami-mushroom characters. Fragrant, lithe, refreshing in its way, and wholly in its youth as a wine, resplendent and remarkable in freshness and detail of primary elements. Proper stuff here, a drinkability and yet a pause and reflect condition too. Tannins superb, coming in late and palate-resetting. Fine wine.

95 points Mike Bennie for The Wine Front, January 2026

It’s ripe yet somewhat sinewy with tart fruit, but still comes out super savoury. It’s an unusual cabernet – as in not overtly varietal – just a hint of cassis with crushed herbs, alongside cedary oak, pomegranate and sumac. It hovers around mid-weight with chewy tannins; to enjoy this now, it needs hearty fare. Drink to 2032.

90 points Jane Faulkner for Halliday Wine Companion, August 2024

The first vines were planted at Craiglee in 1863 by Melbourne businessman and MP James Stewart Johnston. He planted a number of varieties, of which Shiraz (then Hermitage) was to be the most notable one. His sons continued making wines at Craiglee into the 1920s, but the paddocks were later turned to lamb production.

In 1972 a number of Johnston’s 1872 Hermitage bottles were opened at a function in Melbourne. John Brown Sr. of Brown Brothers was so impressed by the vintage that he decided to visit the Sunbury site, only to encounter Pat Carmody, then a young agricultural science student whose family farm now included the former Craiglee vineyard site. Pat saw potential in diversifying the land, and planted vines on the original site in 1976.

Pat continues to make wine from fruit grown, hand-picked and bottled at Craiglee, and is involved in every step of the process alongside his wife Dianne. Using the same bluestone winery that Johnston built over 150 years ago, Pat’s approach to winemaking has been resolutely founded on a respect for the site’s history and a commitment to wines that reflect its origin.

Known for its Shiraz wines, the Cabernet is a singular expression of the variety that does not always fit in the mainstream idea of the variety. In the words of Pat Carmody: “I overlook cabernet as well. Shiraz is my priority. About a hectare of cabernet exists at Craiglee. It’s the last variety pruned each year and my wife says every year, ‘what are we doing here, cut it out and we will finish earlier’. After all the years I don’t really understand it but hope to get fruit flavour and savoury characters. I taste shiraz at any time on the vine and can say what it will do at any point in the growing season and know what it will do as a finished wine, but with cabernet, nah, I have no idea. More the point, I sort of don’t really care to.”