Dr McMahon wines are crafted in tribute to Seville Estate’s founder, Dr Peter McMahon, who planted our first vines with his wife Margaret in 1972. These wines feature hand selected bunches of fruit to express the unique site through a bold winemaking approach. Each release will benefit from careful cellaring and continue to reveal complex layers 10+ years into the future.
A fantastic vintage for later ripening varieties; Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon. Good rainfall through winter and early spring ensured that our nutrient rich soils were full of water, leading to a period of average rainfall through the later months of 2018 and then a dry summer. The season was reminiscent of 2016, warm and with high fruit yields. Thankfully canopies were well established, helping to protect our bunches and enable a long ripening period. Overall, it was a good vintage to be in our elevated and secluded pocket of the Upper Yarra, where we were able to control fruit ripening to ensure complex flavour development.
Fruit was handpicked early in the morning into small buckets, with bunch selection done in the vineyard. The fruit was placed directly into two new 500L French oak barrels (100% whole bunch) and left on skins for 60 days, with wild primary fermentation and wild malolactic fermentation taking place. The wine and must was then drained and pressed back to one of the 500L barrels, then matured for 10-12 months, then bottled using no fining or filtration.
100% whole bunch | 100% wild ferment | 100% wild MLF | 100% barrel fermented | 100% new oak.
The nose is rich and forthcoming with ripe blood plums, crème de cassis and warm blueberry pie. Further reflection takes you through a English garden, where a soft herbaceous saddles up alongside Christmas pudding – crushed fennel seeds, grated nutmeg and subtle notes of mint dark chocolate.
Soft and supple, the wine glides across the palate, leaving stewed strawberry and cream in its wake. The fruits of the forest (blueberry, blackberry and raspberry) are all accounted for with warm baking spice continuing the correspondence from nose to mouth. There’s body and weight, but it’s kept light and fresh by dried apricot acidity and blocky tannins that lay a firm foundation. A remarkable wine at release that will continue to develop. Drink 2023 – 2040+.
96 points - Halliday Wine Companion 2023
“Super-aromatic with red and black fruits, pink peppercorns and cedar from new oak. Textured, structured and balanced, there's an elegance to this wine, despite its inherent power. There's plenty of fine-grained and chewy tannins and it will be fascinating to see how this develops…”
Philip Rich, August 2022
