Cabernet grapes tend to be thick skinned with bunches of small berries, and also only give moderate sized crops in general. This means that wines made from these grapes will have plenty of skins from which to get color, flavor and tannin, and have plenty of flavor as a finished wine.

Cabernet based wines can tend to be quite tannic when they're young, but age very gracefully with a softening of the tannin and the slow development of complexity, cedar and cigar box aromas. In regions where the grapes do not quite ripen there can be a ‘capsicum’ or ‘green bean’ character. This can add complexity to the wine, but if more than a trace it tends to distract from the experience and be a fault. Very ripe Cabernets from warm climates tend to be less distinctively Cabernet, and develop chocolate and richer flavors, and while delicious young, do not cellar as well. The flavor profile in Cabernets tends to be black and red currant, blackberry, and cassis, with occasional hints of mint, chocolate and even regional earthiness.

Regional versions of this wine can be noticed and I will mention these below along with some recommended wines to try from each region.

Coonawarra
Consistently Australia's best Cabernets are made in the Coonawarra region of South Australia. This is a small cigar shaped region with red ‘Terra Rossa’ soils over limestone, free draining and with a cool climate. The wines from here tend to be well balanced with a very good cellar potential.

• Wynns John Riddoch
• Lindemans St George
• Bowen Estate
• Majella
• Gartner Estates
• Zema Estate

Barossa Valley
The warm climate here tends to produce richer dark and fleshy wines with typical chocolate hints. Blackberry more than blackcurrant is often the dominant fruit flavor.

• Penfolds Bin 707 (although very much a multi region blend these days)
• Charles Melton
• Elderton
• Grant Burge
• Wolf Blass

Victoria
In Central Victoria there is often a mint/eucalyptus hint to these wines over classic cassis and blackcurrant.

• Balgownie
• Mitchelton
• Taltarni
• Mount Mary
• Oakridge Estate

Margaret River
Very good region indeed for Cabernet wines, slight gravelly hints with red berry fruit and usually great length and cellaring ability.

• Moss Wood
• Leeuwin Estate
• Pierro
• Cape Mentelle
• Chateau Xanadu
• Cullens
• Great Southern
• Alkoomi
• Howard Park
• Plantagenet

Hunter Valley
Very regional as all their reds seem to be, earthy style whose regional nature continues as they age.

• Lakes Folly
• Brokenwood
• Rosemount

The wine is made to capture the essence of the grape, no oak, few wine maker's tricks, just grape to wine. After picking, the grapes are crushed then generally removed from the skins either immediately, or after a brief period, while the rest of the task is to control the speed of fermentation and keep the oxygen away from those fragile flavors The wine will ferment in stainless steel containers, chilled to control the fermentation speed, and under an inert gas blanket. When finished the wine will be stored for a short period then bottled to keep those primal fruit flavors In fact, we have been drinking the 1996 Rieslings now for some months, and very good indeed they are.

Best Regions
In Australia Rieslings are grown in many regions, but only in 3 or 4 areas are the best wines produced. The regions to watch out for are, in my order of preference only, Clare/Watervale, Eden Valley, Great Southern, Western Australia and pockets of the Adelaide Hills and Tasmania. Good wines are produced elsewhere, but not with consistency or reliability.

Young Riesling will smell of freshly crushed grape, lime, citrus, tropical fruit and floral smells. A friend of mine once described a Riesling as smelling like “orange blossom dipped in lime juice,” flowery language, but that is what the wine smelled like.

They tend to have firm acid finishes, the Clare region typically producing steely or flinty finishes with tropical overtones in the young wines. They taste of fruits, limes, lemons, and passion fruit, often with floral and even mineral edges to them, are long and zingy on the finish, and are the perfect accompaniment to a range of sea food.

Aged Rieslings
Rieslings that taste so fresh and exuberant when young age surprisingly and remarkably well. As the years go by the primary fruit fades to be replaced by toast, honey, nuts and 'kerosene', that traditional yet hard to describe smell of good older Rieslings. In fact, it is often a difficult choice, drink young or cellar.

Many go through closed periods between youth and maturity, so personally I like to drink them young and fresh, or after 5 years, but they can become slightly awkward at about 1 to 4 years of age.

Food Matching
These wines are absolutely designed for seafood, especially freshly grilled fish. It also goes really well with lobster as long as you avoid heavy sauces, just the delicious lobster flesh and the zesty limes and citrus of the wine—a match made in heaven.

Another worthwhile fact is that now is the time to try these wines. The currently available 2002 vintage is the best of the previous 10 or more years. Most are still available and almost all of them are great wine bargains at $Aud 20 or less per bottle (That's about $12 USD or less per bottle).

2002 Tin Shed Wines Wild Bunch Riesling: Wow, what a way to make Riesling; whole bunch pressing; use wild yeasts; this is not playing it safe, but what a great result; delicious Eden Valley Riesling; hand picked from old Eden Valley vineyards, and made the old-fashioned way with whole bunch pressing and a wild yeast ferment without chemicals. This amazing Riesling's a fair-dinkum blast from the past—tight pear and lime with that beautiful mineral base tone of the best vintage in yonks; its a work of wonder.

2002 Petaluma Riesling: Brian Croser (wine maker) has no doubts about the 2002 Riesling vintage, “It was the perfect Riesling year,” he says. “Fruit quality was superb. Acid was wonderfully high. Flavor was excellent—it was a great, great Riesling vintage.” His own Riesling release is one of the first off the ranks and the verdict is it's intense. Intensely grape-like, intensely mineral-like, intensely lemon/powdery with an acid structure that seems both obvious and soft. There's clearly lots of acid here, but it has an Alsatian super-softness to it. The result of all this is that unusually it's not too attractively young, but should cellar magnificently.