Cabernet and Craiglee don’t always fall off the tongue easily, but a shame for those who seek out only the shiraz accolades, cabernet is fiercely good in this vineyard.
This has that succulence, that glide and slippery glisten, sweet but (medium weight) dark fruited, blueberries and mulberries with brined black olives, mint, white pepper and brambles. It’s effortless and mouth-watering, a refreshing expression of cabernet with a coolness and finesse. It slips along so merrily, quietly complex, that texture superb and the vitality up high. It’s an absolute ripper.
94 Points, Mike Bennie, TheWineFront, JUN 2022, Drink 2022 - 2040
It’s not all shiraz at Craiglee – cabernet still features, even if it's losing ground. It would be a shame to disappear. This is good. Currants and cassis, menthol and licorice, very earthy – almost a terracotta aroma – and oodles of sweet cedary oak. Full bodied, with firm yet ripe tannins and definition across the palate.
93 points Jane Faulkner winecompanion.com.au
It’s telling that Craiglee cabernet sauvignon has never been reviewed on WineFront before. Vigneron Pat Carmody is one of a kind, a bloody legend in the greatest Australian sense, and, of course he says as a dyed in wool shiraz man… “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”. There is only one Pat Carmody."