2024 Canobolas Cabernet Sauvignon, Orange

Gold (95 points) Orange Wine Show 2025

Fruit is drawn from the rocky, stony parcels of the vineyard, where vines planted in 1985 are anchored in red ferrosol soils. The fruit was cold soaked and matured in oak (10% new) for 11 months. This is a cabernet sauvignon well worth your attention. Notes of red toffee apple and raspberry weave through blackberry and kirsch, creating both lift and depth. Beneath the fruit lies a reservoir of spice, clove, mahogany and a hint of maple nestled within the bramble. Unsweetened pomegranate juice brings a tart edge, while silty tannins and a subtle black volcanic minerality carry through the finish. There is a striking purity here, as though tasting grapes straight from the vine; a lucid and confident expression of site. Drink to 2038.

96 points Shanteh Wale for Halliday Wine Companion, March 2026

Deep, bright purple-red colour; lovely fresh lifted cassis, mulberry and cedar cabernet fruit on full and showy display. The palate is medium full bodied and well balanced, with ample tannins which are ripe and smooth if slightly—and appropriately—youthful. Pristine cabernet fruit; they've nailed the ripeness. This has a bright future and will be so much more ready in a year or two. Drink to 2039.

95 points Huon Hooke for The Real Review, December 2025

The grapes for this wine were harvested by hand over for days between the 24th of March and the 1st of April from vines planted in 1985 and 1986.

The fruit was chilled overnight, sorted by hand and destemmed into small stainless-steel fermenters for a four-day cold soak. Fermentation started with indigenous yeasts and was managed with twice daily plunging and the occasional foot stomping. The wine spent 17 to 27 days on skins, pressed to tanks and racked to French oak barrels of which 10% were new. The wine was not fined and was bottled unfiltered after eleven months in barrels.

About this producer

Canobolas Wines is the third oldest vineyard in the high-altitude Orange region of NSW, established by the Smith family in 1985 within the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri people. The Mattick family have been custodians of the place since 2022, with winemaker Jonathon Mattick working with viticulturist Laura Arnold.

The vineyard is planted on a north to northeast facing slope of Mount Canobolas. The site rises from 775 to 820 metres in altitude, with wines standing in deep red ferrosol and clay soils over free draining basaltic rock.

The name Canobolas comes from ‘coona’ meaning shoulder and ‘booloo’ meaning two, which the Wiradjuri pronounced Gaanha-bula. This was traditionally an important occupation site for sourcing and sharing of food, and for corroborees and ceremonies particularly relating to men’s business. To the Wiradjuri people, Gaanha-bula is a place of spiritual connection through worship of Baiame (the Creator God and Sky Father) and through the dreaming story of Gaanha-bula as one of three feuding brothers.