2018 Penley Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Helios Coonawarra Australia 750 ml

“A well-aged and carefully cellared Coonawarra Cabernet,” wrote Josh Raynolds for Vinous, “has fooled me more than a few times into thinking I was drinking a top-notch Left Bank Bordeaux.” 

Crafted by a Winemaker of the Year from vineyards tended by one of Australia’s most revered viticulturists, the 2018 Penley Estate’s Helios Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the finest examples of Coonawarra Cabernet out there. A double-95-point wine so rare it’s not even available in Australia, Wine Enthusiast called it a “knock-out wine,” crowning it with Editors’ Choice honors and making it their highest-rated Australian Cabernet of 2018. 

Australian wine authority James Halliday gave Penley Estate his highest honor: a “red” 5-star rating, reserved for “a winery with a long track record of excellence—truly the best of the best.” The Wine Advocate called them “one of the finest Coonawarra producers, fashioning wines of greater richness, nuance and aging potential than most of their peers."

Coonawarra is one of Australia’s most famous terroirs: a mile-wide, 13-mile long strip of rich, rust-red “terra rossa” soil. Penley Estate took shape in 1988, when the heirs to the fifth-generation wine family Penfold and Tolley bought and planted optimal vineyard land in Coonawarra. Today their vines are over 30 years of age and in their absolute prime. 

In 2016, the Tolley sisters hired Kate Goodman as winemaker, an alum of Wirra Wirra and Seppelt. Today she’s the winemaker for Paxton, Penley Estate, and her own Goodman wines, and she was named Winemaker of the Year at the 2018 Australian Women in Wine Awards. With this gifted winemaker at the helm, we don’t see that red five-star rating going anywhere soon.