Tyrrell’s, Vat 1 Semillon, Hunter Valley, New South Wales 2016 (11%)

£38-£47 Fareham Wine Cellar, Fells, Hedonism, Lay & Wheeler, Noble Green, Soho Wine Supply POA $ Broadbent Selections

Those who long for freshness, restraint and petite shapeliness in white wine paired with a bracingly acidic palate shouldn’t confine their search to the northern hemisphere. Australia’s great original, Hunter Valley Semillon, offers just this profile in youth – with the added lure of additional layers of perfume, complexity and character as the cellar years pass. This classic example is, at six years old, on the cusp: those unique scents of lime, parsley and rue are beginning to deepen, while the lean, saline edge of youth is beginning to soften. It’s as pure and pristine as any Riesling, any Coteaux Champenois, any Txakolina, though its restrained fruit characters if anything make it even more amenable than those wines at table.

Bottle-aged Semillon from Hunter Valley has become one of the most distinctive and cherished wine styles. Its reputation is seemingly attributable to a small act of deceit on the part of one of the wine world’s most distinguished characters, Bruce Tyrell, who in 1989 hid a thousand cases of Vat Semillon from his father, in a corner of the family winery, which were eventually released seven years later.

‘Vat Semillon comes from our best old vines planted in dry-grown vineyards,’ says Tyrell. ‘These blocks – the oldest of which was planted in 1923 – feature ideal, sandy, free-draining soils that give these wines their unique character.

‘Tyrrell’s is as much a part of the fabric of the Hunter Valley as the Semillon and Shiraz vines we’ve been nurturing since our founder, English immigrant Edward Tyrrell, first planted them during the mid-19th century.’

This regard for the family silver is shared by Bruce’s son, fifth-generation winemaker Chris Tyrell: ‘It’s a humbling experience to be able to work with vineyards that were planted by my grandfather, great-grandfather and great-greatgrandfather,’ he says.