Mount Pleasant Tasting

 This tasting was a revelation! Mount Pleasant has experienced tumultuous times over the years. Finally, it went into administration and was sold to a Sydney hospitality group about 18 months ago. The first thing they did was turn the tasting room into a glitzy space. It works.

Understanding the offering is not easy. Semillon is straight forward; Elizabeth is the value offering, Lovedale, one of the best Semillon vineyards in the Hunter, the premium offering. Shiraz is more complicated. At the top sits Maurice O'Shea with best berries from the four old vine vineyards, then the single vineyard wines from the Old Hill and from the Old Paddock, then a number of others at the third tier.

1880 Vines at Old Hill

I will briefly comment on the four wines I liked best. The 2018 Mountain A Shiraz is sourced from the 1965 vines at the Rosehill vineyard. The wine has a light colour. Red berries and violets deliver a medium bodied, quite easy drinking wine. The wine is fruity and quite seductive with its elegant mouthfeel (93 points).

Label simplification

The 2017 Rosehill 1946 Vines Shiraz is a step up. Again, this is quite an open wine, with lovely violet and red berry flavours. There is more depth and complexity on the palate and a long finish. The superb elegance is the defining feature, though (96 points).

The 2019 Old Hill 1880 Vines Shiraz is a little different. It is dark fruited, with licorice and very elegant earthy, yet silky tannins. This is a very balanced, medium-bodied wine, where everything in the glass is at peace with itself. This is a classic Hunter Valley Shiraz (96 points). 

The 2021 Maurice O'Shea has great depth of flavour, mainly blackberry and mulberry. The tannins are very silky. This is not a blockbuster, just a beautiful, superbly elegant wine with a very long finish (97 points)  

The transition from the bigger wines previously, started before the new ownership, but it seems will be carried on. These wines offer a third way for Shiraz, not the full-bodied South Australian wines, not the spicy cold climate Shiraz, but red fruited, elegant and silky Hunter wines.

Big changes will be a reduction of vineyard sizes from 120ha to about 50ha of old vines, and a focus on premium wines. Sadly, a doubling of prices (it seems to me) has already been implemented.