Published by Jeremy.
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Whenever we have dessert Muscats, they're often quite young, fresh, and vibrant.
Yalumba in Australia makes one that is a bit different as it comes with a great deal of age on it (at least 10 years, per the label). While this bottle itself is non-vintage such that we do not know its exact age, what it does come with is an impressive complexity of flavors that age provides.
Paired with a robust dessert, like miso cheesecake, and we enjoyed the bottle even more.
Yalumba Antique is a Robust, Aged Muscat
This fortified muscat from Australia was medium brown in color with medium aromas of candied orange peel, orange marmalade, honey, golden raisin, cedar, vanilla, white blossom, almond, white pepper, and an eucalyptus/menthol note that came out as the wine opened up more.
On the palate, it was sweet with medium(+) acidity, medium alcohol, full body, pronounced flavor intensity, and a long finish. We had notes a lot like the nose with orange marmalade, honey, golden raisin, candied lemon, wet stone, peanut, almond, and a more pronounced eucalyptus/menthol note on the finish.
Fortified Muscat Food Pairing – Miso Cheesecake
We paired this wine with a homemade miso cheesecake that was a perfect balance of sweet, savory, and salty as we added some of our homemade miso into every element from the crust to the cheesecake itself and even in the caramel sauce. This was one robust slice!
The citrus elements of the wine here worked beautifully with the richness of this particular cheesecake, as that plus the higher acidity helped add back some of those characteristics that we did not incorporate into the cheesecake itself. That said, the lingering eucalyptus or menthol notes here built up a bit as we were eating, and was slightly off-putting after a while.
Score 4 / 5
We'd buy another bottle of this one.
Overall, I want to say that we quite liked this bottle of Yalumba Antique Muscat, and would buy it again, but the minty notes in this one were a bit detracting. As this was a non-vintage bottle, we really have no clue how old it is. I know I purchased it a few years prior, and then the store we bought it from likely had it for an indeterminate period of time, so we really can't say whether the minty notes came out because it is a character of the wine itself or that this one was simply aging in the bottle much longer than it should've been.
As such, we'd try it again, but if those notes were just as prominent in our next bottle, we could downgrade the score slightly- that flavor isn't for us.
Yalumba is located at 40 Eden Valley Rd, Angaston SA 5353 in Australia. We purchased this bottle on Wine.com and enjoyed it in 2024.
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