2001 Penfolds Cabernet Sauvignon Bin 707

Community Tasting Notes (38) Avg Score: 91.5 points

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  8/24/2023 - Tangeray Likes this wine: 90 Points

  Tawny color on the rim, deep cab color otherwise. First sip and knew it needed to breathe and open up. Thirty min later a wafting of dried fruits. Very soft tannins but high acidity brought a freshness to the aged cab. After 90 min, I felt its moment had passed but the others there appreciated the leather and earth flavors building.

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  6/17/2023 - MC2 Wines Likes this wine:

  Wine Bros: Australia Part II (Orsay): I think my WOTN. Served side by side with the 2002. Both good years although I feel like ‘02 might have gotten a bit more credit. This is more restrained and a touch classic compared to some other wines of the evening. Very interesting. Penfolds was one of my favorite wines and probably the entry for me into ‘fine wine’ (in the most basic definition - more than $10 a bottle back in the day). I still find myself drawn to it esp their more well made versions. This just hits all the buttons. Always a bit more interesting and deep. Very well aged. More age to go but not sure these live like Granges do.

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  10/17/2020 - empire80 Likes this wine: 93 Points

  Hard to describe. So many flavours going on, but nothing unduly prominent, just completely rounded and balanced. Sweet multi-dimensional fruit, subtle oak, hint of coconut. This was a difficult year but the outcome is drinking perfectly now.

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  10/14/2019 - graemeg wrote:

  NobleRottersSydney - meant to be Grange (360 Bar & Dining, Sydney): [Geoffrey] {cork, 13.5%} Bottle 00951. Currant nose, with olives, tight coconut oak and a british racing green kind of aura. The palate is partly-developed, with some asparagus and glue, soft acid, but also sour and assertive fruit. A bit raw and disjointed. Medium-full weight, but offset by a real dip in the mid-palate. Medium powdery tannins. Seems like it will keep – almost forever – but will it come together and blossom? Feels like the fruit has had everything thrown at it in the winery in an attempt to overcome the odd-year-vintage-curse that lies on South Australia most of the time. Just not quite convincing by the standards of the label, although more time won’t hurt.

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  6/27/2018 - Bin707LoversDetroit Likes this wine: 95 Points

  Two pretty amazing things happened with this bottle, and never before has either of these occurred with any wine we have ever cracked.
  
  First, the moment we inserted the wine fork (which we like to use instead of a corkscrew because of corks that have cracked in half before) and it penetrated the cork/bottle seal, the bouquet flew out, enveloping us in panoply of fruity-good-sophisticated wine bouquet. We looked at each other. Wow! That’s never happened!
  
  And after the bottle was history- enjoyed by us once again at The Huron House, four years after our first 707 from the 2001 vintage- about an hour later, standing at the beach chatting with some tourists, hubby licked his lips and the finish regrouped and said hello again. It was rich, opulent on the lips an hour after the bottle was empty- pretty unheard of for us, and pretty cool.
  
  That said, in between, we are not near the 98 we scored it four years back. Not like we are going to change our rating from before. That bottle, that day, still set the All Time wine standard for us…
  
  We brought this year's gem up to the beachfront B&B but we failed to have our decanter tag along, so unfortunately, this seventeen year old beauty was a pop & pour. We swirled a lot. We made it last in our glasses. We enjoyed it over three hours or so. As it unfolded in the glass, its smooth richness continued to develop. But, it may have offered more had we had it open for that long before we even put it to our mouth.
  
  Now, perhaps our palates have changed,... but we don’t think it’s that, perhaps we have, in the last four years, consumed many more delicious beverages, so we have a better- or more complete 'palette' from which to choose and write about and score vins. We had not been introduced to the Don Melchors, Ilatraias, Heitz, Duvals, Gajas, RWT and more, of the wine world, when we gave the 2001 Bin 707 a score of 98 pts back in 2014…
  
  This bottle still certainly offered us a WOW of peppery, substantive, layered complexity; velvety smooth licorice, the spice box in your pantry, the sweet bite of tobacco, exotic, cinnamon stick and cider scents; the complexity just goes on and on, so much to chew on, to get into, and to dig up and turn over… What do we taste next? This is a powerful, masculine vin with good definition and structure. We melt in our chairs. So Completely Yum. Opaque and heavy with quite a bit of sediment. Wonderful legs. We had no bitey-tannins, the vin was so beautifully smooth, it went down like a luscious coating of extra virgin olive oil, the viscosity just a bit lighter… Absolutely delightful.
  
  This was our last Bin 707. We do have new gems in the cellar, and still a number of 2001-2009 beauties, so we’ll just keep on keepin' on, and continue to write about what we experience, and still- count on it- most certainly put you all to sleep.
  
  NOTE: The bottle photo at the beach with the fence was from 2014. The other same-framed photo was from this 2018 visit. Note how much Lake Huron beach has been lost in four years. Same season and time of day... Rising waters?
  
  Thanks for reading.
  
  Noroc!

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