Wynns has always held a special place in my life of wine. For it was the 1976 “Black Label” Wynns Coonawarra Cabernet that I cut my teeth on in 1983, giving me the impetus to start my twenty-five year association with most things vinous.

Wynns make two flagship reds - their Cabernet Sauvignon - the John Riddoch, and a Shiraz - the Michael. And 1991 was an exceptional year in Coonawarra with many a heralded scribe now giving this particular year more accolades than the massively hyped (but perhaps a little more forward and riper) 1990 vintage. Over the last several years some bottles of the 1991 Riddoch I’ve tried have been utterly sublime, some a little unready, but never one anything like the bottle reviewed below. Previous bottles of the Michael from the same year had never overly impressed. In more recent years I’ve much preferred the 1990 version of this label, the inaugural re-release of the label commemorating the brilliant and quite freakish 1955 Wynns Michael Hermitage (100% Coonawarra Shiraz) - a wine, with proper provenance, still drinks incredibly well today.

So what went wrong here?

Both wines were sourced at release by the owner (a long standing and very good friend) and have been stored in what I can only describe as a relatively good “passive” cellar over the last decade or so. Seeing I know this person (and his wine inventory) very well, we have opened and shared glorious bottles from his Australian red wine collection dating as far back to the seventies and eighties with very few problems with oxidation, heat damage, senility or the like. Both wines were decanted and served double blind and drunk from Riedel Bordeaux and Shiraz glassware at about 16 degrees celcius ambient temperature on a fine, cool Autumn day.

Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon 1991 - Mature hue. Planky, volatile nose with a distinct “aged” green bean character over weak greenish fruit. Big, lumpy, varnishy oak-dominant palate over tired, fading green herbaceous fruit followed by a rather rough, soulless, hard tannic finish. Barely drinkable! 70 points. Could only think (after the wine was revealed) this was an errant bottle.

Wynns Michael Shiraz 1991 - Drunk immediately after the previous wine, this fared a little better but, unfortunately, shared several of the previos wine’s trait/faults. Colour a tad more youthful but definitely mostly brick red; fruit a little fresher and sweeter but veering to the cooked plum/pruny spectrum. Palate not so bad with jammy/pruny fruit behind a wall of high-octane/dill-infused oak; in better balance than the Riddoch, but overall a big clumsy over-extracted red revealing only a little varietal or regional character. 82 points and going nowhere in my book. My friend began asking me the usual questions/options to those of the Riddoch and the first question was grape variety …. Cabernet/Shiraz? ….. I answered “Shiraz and it’s the ‘91 Michael”.

So it’s difficult to say what caused the poor showing of the 1991 John Riddoch. Perhaps the wine was just old and tired. The Michael - pretty well as I remember it from a few years back, only worse. Whatever the problem/s, the only positive I can muster is I own not a bottle of either!