2022 Joshua Cooper Dash Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon

Described by wine commentator Mike Bennie as "one of Australia’s brightest young winemakers”, Joshua Cooper is steadily forging a reputation for thoughtful, elegant, and confident wines from grapes grown in Macedon and surrounds. Established in 1999, Dash Farms is nestled at an elevation of 450 meters, positioned on the southern slopes of Mt Alexander (Leanganook), just outside of the Macedon Ranges. The mountainside nature of Dash Farm provides incredible freshness to the wine. After three weeks of fermentation, the wine was pressed to a combination of new Stockinger 300L barrels (30%) and seasoned thin-staved Bordeaux barrels for 12 months of maturation. The wine is then racked to stainless steel tanks for four more months of settling, before bottling without any additives except a small amount of sulphur. This medium-weight cuvée is notably intense and embodies the classic "Claret" style. It's filled with dark berry fruit and is complemented by finely textured gravelly tannins. While already quite enjoyable, this wine will become even more complex and rewarding with some moderate aging. Decanting well is recommended when drinking in its youth.

The 2024 Halliday Wine Companion Best New Winery of the Year

Other Reviews....
Just outside the Macedon Ranges wine region border, a cool site nonetheless and an attractive proposition to bolster Josh Cooper’s cabernet suite.
It’s a wine not quite in its groove but the DNA of fine wine is in here. Concentrated mulberry, black olive, black plum, hazelnut, piquant dill and white pepper meshed together in the bouquet and palate. There’s good depth of flavour and requisite, finer grain tannin profile, a sluice of blood orange acidity keeping things perky, but the feel isn’t quite as seamless as the higher grade cabernet releases of Josh Cooper. That being said, you can see that the folding in of everything will be nigh, and the wine will mellow into its savoury and dark fruited elements well. Drink 2026 - 2035+
93+ Points
Mike Bennie - The Wine Front