A cigar-shaped strip of red earth barely fifteen kilometres long, Coonawarra is one of wine's most precise terroir arguments: a shallow band of iron- rich terra rossa over free-draining limestone, cool enough for Cabernet Sauvignon to ripen slowly and evenly. Growers have fought over its exact boundaries in court, so clearly does the red soil mark out the great sites.
The Cabernet it grows is unmistakable — deep, cassis-scented, with a distinctive note of mint or eucalyptus and a firm, ageworthy structure. Remote in the far south-east of South Australia, Coonawarra remains the country's benchmark for cool-climate Cabernet.