2022 Joshua Cooper Flynn & Cooper Williams Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon

The Williams Vineyard, established in the 1970s near Kyneton, is historically significant in the Macedon Ranges region. Laurie Williams originally planted it, and later, it was managed by Alec Epis. Over the years, the vineyard has produced high-quality, age-worthy wines under various labels, including Flynn and Williams and Epis and Williams. This wine is a collaboration between Joshua Cooper and Tim Flynn, whose father was the winemaker for the original Flynn and Williams wines. This vintage is likely to be the final one from this important site. After three weeks of fermentation, the wine was pressed to a combination of one-year-old Stockinger 300L barrels 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. 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...
Well, this is something else. And something that a few of the older gen have been raising an eyebrow over, knowing the vineyard, the older wines, the legacy. Meanwhile Josh Cooper forges ahead with his cabernet/Claret agenda with an eye on medium weight reds of that vin de garde style. While Josh drinks an obnoxious amount of cabernet, and foists it onto all and sundry, he’s making a pretty good point about fine wines of this ilk and turning a freight train around on ideas around avant garde winemaking and what it encompasses – I love this.
It’s magnificent. It delivers on the promise. It feels like whimsy met deliciousness in a dark alley and made a pact. Sleek, silky, so fine and lacy, dark fruited, midnight but with that shimmer of moonlight. Poetry in a glass, the ultimate wine wankers dog whistle and yet here we have a wine of immense and broad appeal for those seeking vitality, fine tannin, freshness, drinkability. Dark cherries, violet floral lift, rhubarb, sweet earthiness, alpine herbs, faint mahogany and new leather, anise in scents and flavours. So very compact but feathery, succulent to the max and a swish of the finest, dried herb-laced, silty tannin. It’s impossibly good, impossibly delicious. And, I bet, will last a generation. Sheesh. Drink 2023 - 2040+
96+ Points
Mike Bennie - The Wine Front