2017 Yering Station Pinot Noir Yarra Valley Victoria Australia 750 ml

When Yarra Valley Does Value, Who Can Compete?

There are only a handful of regions capable of producing truly world-class Pinot Noir. From a short list that includes California’s Sonoma Coast, Burgundy’s Côte de Nuits, and New Zealand’s Central Otago, just one—Australia’s Yarra Valley—can deliver a $30 bottle with a stunning 96 point score today.

The 2017 Yering Station Pinot Noir is a seamless marvel of ripe strawberry, cherry blossom, and cedar, laced with anise and forest floor, showing long, delicate, seductive tannins and Gevrey-Chambertin-like power and concentration. Elevating it to elite status with his 96-point rating, James Halliday declared it “lovely” and “finely structured.”

For years this has been our go-to value Australian Pinot Noir for weeknight dinners, but with 2017 it’s achieved a new height. Today, we’re thrilled to share with you a deal you can’t afford to pass on—a gorgeous, savory-tinged Yarra Valley release that would undoubtedly be at least twice the price from anywhere else, New World or Old.

Thanks to a large contingent of wine business friends working and living in Victoria, we were Yering Station devotees long before their Pinot Noir appeared on Wine Enthusiast’s Top 100 last year, and before Vinous named them among the “all-star lineup of Australian producers.” It’s a historic property, the first winery established in Victoria and perennially a top performer.

We knew winemaker Willy Lunn back when he was at top Willamette Valley winery Argyle, and he’s since become a star of Australian viticulture and one of its best-known cool-climate specialists. For this Pinot, he hand-picks the MV6 clone—said to come from Clos Vougeot—from 25-year-old vines with roots spidered deep into alluvial loam and mudstone clays, ideal for producing complex, perfumed wines. Eleven months in French oak puncheons, 23 percent new, completes a treatment that would lead most winemakers to tack on dollar signs.

2017 was an extraordinary vintage in the Yarra Valley, sending winemakers and critics all the way back to 1992 to find a season of comparable quality. The mercury ticked up just a tad warmer than usual, driving ripeness, while dry weather and cool nights ensured balletic balance. For lovers of precise, cherry-scented Pinot Noir, the price-to-quality ratio rarely if ever gets better than this.