This is a quick note to call your attention to a number of morsels that arrived from the iconic Australian producer Greenock Creek. We were heavily involved with these wines when they were first imported by Grateful Palate right around the ‘turn of the millenneum’. Greenock Creek was an established entity that really vaulted to fame as the wines received huge initial press from Wine Advocate as they came to the U.S. market. We’d go so far as to say that Greenock was a notable catalyst in the whole Aussie boutique movement that was exploding at the time.
The short story was that Dan Phillips was advised on certain labels to seek out on his first buying trip to Australia. One of the recommendations was Rockford Winery and, in pursuing that label, Dan met winemaking superstar Chris Ringland who was at the time also the winemaker for Greenock Creek wines that were being produced at Rockford. The rest is history.
In any case, these wines came from the Grateful Palate library and were all made under Ringland’s tenure. The reviews are consistently spectacular and the wines are are excellent representatives of their genre. A lot of the knock on Australian wines after the ‘golden era’ of the first decade after they established a strong beachhead here was that they don’t age. We beg to differ.
In all fairness, a lot of the bad rap on Aussie wines was based on a second wave of less established labels that benefited from the goodwill established by proven producers like Greenock Creek, Rockford, Clarenden Hills, and Kay Brothers. A number of them were from growers who wanted to have labels and may not have been ready for ‘prime time’.
The Greenock wines are a testament to the fact that the truly exceptional Aussie reds age very well, thank you. Have a look at this little slice of Australian wine history when the wines were made by an Aussie winemaking legend who has his own label now that sells for $400+ per bottle. Quantities, as you might imagine of library bottlings, are limited. There weren’t huge quantities in the first place. Good hunting. These are very rare.