1966 McWilliam’s Mount Pleasant Philip Hermitage Hunter Valley – New South Wales 5 Medium-deep crimson. Beautiful apricot, crème brûlée, dried roses, leafy aromas and flavours with superb mid-palate viscosity and volume, fully resolved loose-knit/lacy textures, and well-integrated acidity. A classic peacock’s tail at the finish. Perfumed and still beautiful to drink. Described accurately by Adam Bilbey as ‘Autumnal’. No obvious sign of Brettanomyces , although a hint of rusticity. One of the most memorable wines in this line-up. About 96% shiraz, 4% pinot noir. The mystery and magic of aged wine. Tyrrell’s was also a significant name in the Hunter Valley. By the 1960s, Murray Tyrrell had taken over the family property Ashman’s and was stridently taking the family business into the modern era. Arguably, he would become the most famous vigneron in the region during the following years. His high profile, determination, and belief that every successive Hunter vintage was a great year brought him the reputation of being the ‘Mouth of the Hunter.’ Under his watch, Tyrrell’s became a reference for fine wine. Along with McWilliam’s Mount Pleasant, he pioneered the modern Semillon style. More famously, he introduced 1971 Vat 47 Pinot Chardonnay and began new directions for this variety (which was first brought into New South Wales in 1832). But in the early 1960s, red wine remained at centre stage. While its historic holdings were significant at the time, the family-owned Tyrrell’s now possesses the largest acreage of 19th and early 20th century direct-producing vineyards in the Hunter Valley. It owns some of the oldest surviving vitis vinifera vines in the world (shiraz: 1867, 1879, 1892, 1921, 1923, 1927; semillon: 1908, 1933; and chardonnay: 1908). In 1966, most of Tyrrell’s vineyards were ‘scattered over a square mile or so of the extinct volcanoes and outcrops in the foothills of the Brokenback and some on the alluvial flat on the north-east side of Broke Road’. Since the death of Dan Tyrrell in 1959, Murray Tyrrell had made efforts to improve and expand his white wines, with some critics believing he had neglected his reds. But the prolonged drought of 1964–1966 had, according to Dr Max Lake, ‘brought the wine full circle to the old round, soft flavour typical of the Tyrrell style’. Having read several narratives, it seems Hunter Reds from the early 1960s were more lightly framed, but the drought had led
Hong Kong, March 2026
17
Powered by FlippingBook