Stefano Lubiana Brut Reserve

This wine picks up where its predecessor, the Stefano Lubiana NV Brut, left off. Essentially, it’s a multi-vintage blend, with the wine’s core carefully crafted around some top quality fruit from the excellent 2008 vintage.

The season’s warm summer, and our winery processes of oxidative juice handling, barrel fermentation, and reserve wine addition have all combined to deliver a sparkling wine with a rich, pale gold hue and vigorous, fine mousse. Its chardonnay dominance (60 percent of the blend with pinot noir) is reflected in its ripe citrus aromas and honied/toasty flavours. The finish is powerful yet elegant, with balancing acidity.

 

2010 Stefano Lubiana Pinot Grigio

This release of our popular PG reflects my first attempts at taking Alsace’s classic grey grape down a new path at Stefano Lubiana Wines. Stylistically, it has a toe or two inside French territory, thanks to the inclusion of some winemaking components that spent time in oak – small and large format French oak.

Our aim has been to take a deliberate but measured step away from our signature, fruit-driven style of pinot grigio in favour of something that places greater emphasis on texture and flavour complexity.

In the glass, there is still plenty of appealing aroma and flavour in this attractive youngster. The nose is typically varietal, with notes of glacé fruits and ginger/mandarin adding interest to the wine’s lifted citrus and exotic/musk characters. It’s fresh and inviting, with just the right amount of spice and fine acidity to balance the wine’s enhanced creamy texture and underlying phenolic structure.

2010 Stefano Lubiana Sauvignon Blanc

Good sauvignon blanc is light on its feet and dances across the palate. This wine is the ideal entertainer for sharing around family, friends and friends-to-be. Its nose is particularly expressive, and moves quickly from the variety’s traditional herbaceous territory into far more exotic climes, with resonances of fresh Dutch freesias, ripe Japanese lemon, and New Zealand kiwifruit. The palate has surprising depth and texture for such a babe in the bottle. Its fine phenolic structure balances the wine’s rich limey fruit and nervous acidity.

‘Very pale colour with lemonade, ginger and suggestions of snow peas and passionfruit on the nose before an intense, concentrated, wonderfully lush and seamless palate overlaying some leesy depth and complexity, the richness cut and freshened by lovely juicy acidity.  A sophisticated, very sexy style of sauv blanc.’ *****’ Graeme Phillips, Sunday Tasmanian, September 12, 2010

2008 Stefano Lubiana Estate Chardonnay

Like the red wines produced from 2008, our new Estate Chardonnay provides ample proof that the wine gods really smiled down upon us during that warm, dry vintage. In the glass, it’s an attractive pale gold colour, with plenty of green flashes that indicate that this is still a wine in its youth. It’s similarly alive and vibrant in aroma, with the citrus notes that are typical for our style of Tasmanian Chardonnay already coming to the fore. And the palate? That is building beautifully, but already brimming with flavour, thanks to our commitment to artisan winemaking techniques such as lees-stirring. It’s exactly what we love to see in the glass –
a just reward for patient care and effort.

 

Wine is the juice of grapes. Every drop of liquid filling so many bottles has been drawn out of the ground by the roots of the vine. All these different drinks have at one time been sap in a stick.

Hugh Johnson, WINE