2016 Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon

Brilliant very pale straw colour with flashes of green around the edges and a watery hue. Elevated spicy green apple and lime aromas mix with toast, bees wax, lemon butter, wet steel and oily kerosene like notes. Possessing an understated intensity along with great focus and acid structure, lemon, lime and granny smith apple flavours are complexed by notions of oily toast like characters, bees wax, wet steel, kerosene and lively minerals. Finishing dry and crisp it will continue to build texture with further bottle age. Long precise laser like aftertaste.
Drink over the next 8-10 years.
Alc. 11%

Other Reviews....
A cull of the most propitious plots across the single dry-grown sites. Additional lees time in the modern era has promoted a winning approachability after a few years, rather than several. And yet Vat 1’s capacity to age is prodigious. Barley water, honeysuckle, lemon drop, dried straw and a skein of evergreen freshness that quenches, drives and balances the myriad of accents and textures. This is a long sheath of nervous energy, readying itself for calm into the later stages of development. Drink by 2031.
95 Points
Ned Goodwin MW - James Halliday's Wine Companion (December 2020)

There's a wow factor to this wine, the way in which it manages to harness such impressive power and concentration and deliver it in such smooth, seamless and tubular shape is a thing to marvel at. Aromas of gently flinty lime and lemon fruits lead to flavorus of the same ilk, really astonishingly pure, long and polished, green apple flavor s close it out fresh and bright. Drink now or age, superb.
96 Points
JamesSuckling.com (July 2016)

It’s $50 for Private Bin members, but as a mature release, the price is as below. Anyway, it’s been ten years now of tasting these wines before they go on sale, which I reckon’ is a good thing for Wine Front subscribers, but also a bit of a task for your (not so) humble scribe. The business of describing, and rating baby Hunter Semillon is an interesting task. The wines are barely formed, and the descriptions of flavours do not exactly leap out of the glass, nor cause a flurry of typing. What I’m looking for, I guess, are the following fundamental things – balance, line and length, and no off flavours. If those are right, then the rest will follow. Oh, and maybe a bit of X-Factor too.
Fresh lime and lemon, a whiff of white peach, subtle white flower perfume. Light and fine, almost a vanilla fragrance in the mouth, crunch of ripe citrus, a little chalky texture, and then the big ticket item – a superb long finish – replete with latent flavour and power. Vat 1 delivers again. Drink 2019 - 2039+
95 Points
Gary Walsh - The Wine Front (August 2016)