2022 Flametree Cabernet Merlot, Margaret River

A red combination that created a brand within a brand for Margaret River. This was a year of excellent flavour intensity and power. It’s captured beautifully here. The Cabernet is fully ripe and concentrated with a slightly spicy oyster shell minerality. The palate is more elegantly medium-bodied but with a deep intensity supported by firm chalky tannins and oak. The Merlot is not just a second fiddle, but an important structural addition. Nice wine. Drink to 2034.

94 points Ray Jordan for Wine Pilot, November 2024

Medium-depth red with a good tint of purple and aromas that are reserved and youthfully under-developed, tinged with cedar and sandalwood, the palate medium-full bodied and elegantly structured, intense and focused, finishing with a little tannin bitterness which is more positive than negative, adding a refreshing vitality to the aftertaste. Very stylish and good value. Drink to 2034.

92 points Huon Hooke for The Real Review, August 2024

Margaret River producers can easily claim to be producing some of the loveliest examples of this blend in the world. This wine would sit well on the weekend lunch table, paired with a mushroom, eggplant and pecorino lasagna, master stock braised duck, or grilled lamb cutlets with Romesco.

More about this wine

After a cool start, Margaret River’s 2022 season was shaped by a hot, dry summer, with sustained high temperature days and moderate to warm nights. Fruit quality was excellent, and the season considering, the wines are showing surprising elegance.

Fruit for Flametree’s Cabernet Merlots is cold-soaked before the ferment is started with select yeast strains and kept at a steady 26 degrees. The wines are matured for a year in French oak, of which roughly a third are new.

The final blend is two-thirds Cabernet Sauvignon, the Merlot third being of the well-regarded Q45 clone.

About Flametree

Established by the Towner family in 2007, Flametree built its reputation quickly by winning the Jimmy Watson Trophy with their very first red wine and establishing themselves as a serious Margaret River producer from day one. Winemaker Cliff Royle selects fruit from growers across the region’s distinct subregions, with the S.R.S. — Sub Regional Series — representing the pinnacle of that selection.