Sainsbury's Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2004

You may remember that this is on offer in Sainsbury's, and that I've heard on the grapevine that it's suprisingly good - so I bought a bottle to find...
And yes, it is really very good - it makes sense really it's made by Katnook a really good maker, and the fruit is sourced from Coonawarra, rather than one of the mass production areas of Murray Darling and Riverland and compared to a lot of it's rivals it's got a little bit of age - if you look around the budget Australian wines in the supermarket chances are that the majority of them will be 2005 with a smattering of 2006 - in fact I'd go so far as to say that I think this is the best value Cabernet to be had in the UK right now.
A deep purple core, with aromas of blackcurrant, vanilla, oak and a slight minty/eucalyptus with high, but soft and integrated tannins and flavours of blackcurrant and coffee. Acidity is bang on giving the wine lovely balance - I was a little worried by the 14% alcohol, but you know what? This wine carries it off with aplomb - it really is delicious and if you want to spend £6 on a bottle of wine you'd be hard pressed to find anything better - the one thing that bothered me was the back label - "consume in 1 year after purchase" - you what? Cabernet? Drink when less than 4 years old? Are you sure? Now it may be that they expect you to store this upright next to a cooker - in which case storage may not happen - and it does have a synthetic cork so ageing for a long time may not happen - but it might - and it's got to be good for 3 years minimum I'd have thought - this is something that's not going to go away - so it's something I'm going to look at around the place and try and find some answers. Watch this space!