2015 Fowles Farm to Table Cabernet Sauvignon Victoria Australia 750 ml

This is as good as under $20 Cabernet Sauvignon gets!

This is as good as under $20 Cabernet Sauvignon gets!  Few wines capture the recent evolution of Australian wine better than those from Fowles’s Victoria-based estate, which Australian wine guru James Halliday named a 5-star winery — his highest accolade. During my visit there last November, I spent an afternoon tasting wines with Matt, where I first enjoyed this 2015 Fowles Wine “Farm to Table” Cabernet Sauvignon. The 2015 season had ushered in extraordinary growing conditions with Wine Spectator reports calling it “one of the best years in recent memory.” The proof is in this red: as far as under-$20 Cabernets go, I was awestruck by its density, full-bodied core of ripe dark fruit, structure and nuanced layers of oak spice and dark chocolate.

On the day I was scheduled to meet Matt Fowles and his wife at their eponymous estate in Australia’s stunning Victoria region, an hour and a half inland from Melbourne, I arrived in the midst of a downpour. And though inclement weather obscured the stunning hilltop views of the Strathbogie Ranges from Matt’s sleek, space age-inspired winery, he more than made up for it as we settled in for a lunch and tasting — he opted to prepare a hardy dish of wild boar to showcase just how food-friendly his “Farm to Table” Cabernet, and other wines were. As Matt shared his winemaking vision and stories, we all but forgot about the rain.

The 2015 harvest season was one for the record books. “I’ve been raving about it since we picked the last grapes more than two years ago,” Matt told me. A long, cool summer with no heat spikes provided the grapes with plenty of time to ripen evenly, allowing the fruit to develop soft tannins and deep fruity essence. The rugged, loamy soils of the family-owned Upton Run and Bill’s Vineyard yielded an elegant, approachable red with enough backbone to play nice with beef, game, and other hardy dishes. This is an essential purchase for anyone who lives for the thrill of wine-pairing feasts.  

Sincerely,
Vanessa Conlin
Master of Wine Candidate
Vice President of Wine, Wine Access