McLaren Vale’s Scarpantoni Estate Wines was awarded this year’s Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy at the Royal Melbourne Wine Show for its 2006 Brothers Block Cabernet Sauvignon.
Awarded annually to the producer of the best one-year-old dry red wine in the Wine Show, it is the most eagerly sought after wine award in Australia.
Described by judges as a luscious, full-bodied red, grown on Ironstone soil and aged in French oak, Scarpantoni’s win is a hattrick for South Australian wine, with winners having come from the SA region for three consecutive years.
Other winners included the 2005 McIvor Estate Shiraz, from Tooborac, in the Heathcote wine region, which received the Premier’s Gold Trophy; rotating between red, white and fortified wines each year.
Maintaining its commitment to the development of the wine industry, the Royal Melbourne Wine Show this year introduced two new classes of white wine and a single vineyard class to the 2007 award categories.
The inaugural Single Vineyard class, aimed at acknowledging winemakers producing handcrafted wines, was awarded to Giant Steps for its 2005 Sexton Vineyard Chardonnay.
“The Royal Melbourne Wine Show is Australia’s most comprehensive, rigorous and prestigious wine show and the annual awards are recognised by the wine producers as an important competition in which to benchmark their produce,” Royal Melbourne Wine Show chairman Stephen Shelmerdine said.
A judging panel, including international judge, US wine writer Josh Raynolds, spent two weeks assessing more than 3845 entries from more than 490 wineries and across 79 individual classes of wines.