Press Reviews of BackVintage® Wines Reviews by James Halliday
BackVintage® Hunter Valley Semillon 2002, $10.99
Plenty of length and vitality; lemon and lemon grass characters;
good length and back-palate flavour. Cork. 11% alc.
90/100 drinking to 2012. 4.5 glass rating
BackVintage® Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir 2005, $11.99
Predominately red cherry with some plum; overall very firm (perhaps low ph)
and needs a bit more time. Screwcap. 13.7%
89/100 drinking to 2010. 4 glass rating
BackVintage® McLaren Vale Shiraz 2004 $11.99
Nicely balanced and structured; moderate alcohol helps the gentle blackcurrant fruit express itself along with nuances of chocolate and vanilla oak. Great Value. Screwcap. 14%
89/100 drinking to 2010. 4 glass rating
BackVintage® Margaret River Cabernet Merlot 2003 $11.99
Attractive, medium-bodied well balanced wine; a mix of blackcurrant, some cassis, fine tannins and a touch of French oak. Screwcap. 14%
89/100 drinking to 2009. 4 glass rating
2004 BackVintage® Central Ranges Rose $10.99
Nicely balanced; has ripe cassis fruit without undue sweetness, and some length. Screwcap. 14.5%
88/100 drinking to 2008. 4 glass rating 
Reviews by Huon Hooke
Bargain
BackVintage® Barossa Shiraz 2004, $12 (Good Living 12th December 2006)
Simply one of the best-value reds I've tasted all year. This is terrific: ripe blackberry and dark-cherry aromas laced with vanilla and charred oak overtones. An excellent wine of lovely, sweet fruit depth and strength. Best now to five years. 92/100
Food Lamb chops
copy of article
Bargain
BackVintage® Hunter Valley Semillon 2002, $10.99 (Good Living 5th December 2006)
This has a toasty, developing bouquet and delicate, smooth flavour with low alcohol subtlety. Ageing gracefully and could be cellared several more years, it's dry, light and balanced: the perfect fish wine. 88/100.
Food pan-fried flathead
Retail watch
BackVintage is a new "virtual winery" started by marketer Julian Todd with wine selections by consultant and master of wine Nick Bulleid. Having begun with Chippendale Cellars as exclusive stockist, BackVintage is graduating to internet direct marketing, bypassing the usual distribution chain to cut prices.
2004 BackVintage® Adelaide Hills Chardonnay (Good Living 4th October 2005)
Extraordinary value for money. Delicious peachy, creamy, cashew nut and tropical fruit aromas and flavours are subtly oaked and beautifully balanced. It has good underlying complexity - the wine was barrel-fermented in French oak.
2003 BackVintage® Margaret River Chardonnay (Good Living 14th September 2004)
Another excellent wine at an amazing price from this internet supplier. Cashew-nut chardonnay fruit plus oak aromas are not very complex, but clean and true. It has tangy freshness on the palate and the merest hints of sweetness. Eminently drinkable.
2001 BackVintage® Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon (Good Living, 3rd August 2004)
A new label with big plans whose medium-bodied cab punches above its weight. Cedar, tobacco, toasty oak aromas. Good cabernet character, good weight and plenty of flavour with a typical dry-tannin cabernet finish. Best with food, now to 2007.
Review by Peter Forrestal, author of "Quaff" and www.quaff.com.au
Review of 2004 BackVintage® McLaren Vale Shiraz
This wine came to me in the usual way. It was sent to my office address, catalogued by Claire, and included in my next new release tasting of a range of shiraz. I tasted it blind - in a bracket of seven - as part of a tasting of 28 shiraz at different price points. I only learnt of its identity after I had made all my notes and discussed the wine with the tasting panel (in this case there were four of us tasting). Back Vintage has been set up by Julian Todd and some of his former colleagues from Southcorp days. The group sell through the internet www.backvintage.com.au. Unlike other operators, they do not buy cleanskins. Rather, they buy bulk wine and bottle it for distribution under the Back Vintage label. In some cases, it's as simple as that. On other occasions, they might blend a parcel of bulk wine with one or more other parcels to which they have access. The key to all of this is their independent consultant, Nick Bulleid MW (another former colleague from Southcorp) who makes all the decisions about wine quality including the need to blend. [By way of a declaration of interest, Nick is a friend and colleague of mine and we taste together regularly on the Gourmet Traveler Wine panel. I regard him as one of Australia's finest palates and one of our top wine writers.] One of the things that I like about the Back Vintage operation is that they focus on producing regional styles - Mornington pinot, Coonawarra cabernet, Margaret River cabernet merlot and Eden Valley riesling. This 2004 shiraz is from McLaren Vale and is an excellent example of the style - juicy, fleshy and vibrant with ripe, black pepper and dark plum flavours, impressive richness and concentration and marvelous approachability. It's pretty oaky but I think it has the depth of fruit to balance that.
RATING- BLOODY GOOD
Reviews by Stuart Gregor, author of "Don't buy wine without me, Australia's best value drinking"
Review of 2004 BackVintage® New Zealand Wairarapa Sauvignon Blanc
The BackVintage are a group of wine professionals seeking out good parcels of fruit and then making them to the specifications of the very talented Nick Bulleid MW. They are then sold exclusively through a website. It's yet another magnificent manifestation of the plentiful supply of good wine around at the moment, and maybe the way of the future. This outstanding NZ sauvignon blanc rings all my bells.
Reviews by Greg Duncan- Powell
Budget Buy, Full Bottle-Spectrum Liftout, The Sydney Morning Herald, 3rd February 2007
2004 BackVintage® McLaren Vale Shiraz
The mission of this internet retailer is to provide quality wines at great prices. This Shiraz is a bargain: earthy, gutsy and typical of the region. It's an excellent quaffer or a worthy short-term cellaring proposition.
Reviews by Peter Bourne (The Wine Man)
the (sydney) magazine - Issue #25, May 2005
Another interpretation of the cleanskin concept comes from BackVintage® in Northbridge....
Although the range is modest, the quality is second to none.
Review of 2004 BackVintage® Eden Valley Riesling
Aromas of rose petal and freshly squeezed lime juice intermingle with a whiff of bath talc and wet slate. The palate is lean with an intense core of citrus fruit. The brisk and zesty lemon sherbet acidity drives the finish almost to infinity.
the (sydney) magazine - Issue #53, September 2007
Another niche operation is BackVintage® Wines. International wine judge Nick Bulleid selects a small portfolio of classic regional wines, which are labeled under the BackVintage brand and offered as an individual case or as a mixed quarterly dozen.
Review of 2006 BackVintage® Eden Valley Riesling
Australian rieslings offer fantastic value. This example has lifted aromatics of white blossom and lemon sherbet. The palate is vibrant with fresh lively flavours and a soft, almost creamy texture. Match it with Kind George whiting fillets.
Reviews by Gourmet Traveller Wine
100 Top New Releases, Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine, Feb-March Issue 2007
2002 BackVintage® Hunter Valley Semillon
An amazing bargain. It has a toasty, developing bouquet and delicate, smooth flavour with low alcohol (11 per cent) subtlety. It's ageing gracefully (albeit under natural cork) and could be cellared several more years. Dry, light and balanced: the perfect fish wine 88/100 ****
Reviews by Chris Shanahan
Backvintage Wairarapa Sauvignon Blanc 2006 $11.99
& McLaren Vale Shiraz 2004 $10.99
Like every winegrowing country Australia has a rich heritage of ‘merchant’ labels – wine brands created by merchants who buy, blend and sometimes even make wine from numerous regions. Backvintage is a newcomer to the ranks, founded in 2003, and offering its products direct to drinkers from its store in salubrious Northbridge, Sydney, and via www.backvintage.com.au. Canberra-based Master of Wine, Nick Bulleid selects the wine and seems on the money with several that I’ve tasted. The Kiwi sauv blanc is the real thing – pungent and in-your-face, with rich mid palate and high-acid, truly dry finish. The red shows the attractive aromatics of the vintage with lovely soft, satisfying tannins.100 Top New Releases, Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine, Feb-March Issue 2007
Reviews by Ralph Kyte Powell (Epicure, The Age - Melbourne)
Backvintage Barossa Shiraz 2005 $12.99
It's nice to see a young wine that shows genuine Barossa personality of the old style, back when fruit character stood out from oak, sweetness and alcohol.
Blackberry, dark chocolate, spice and pleasantly restrained oak mark the nose, ahead of a seamless, medium- bodied palate of ripe, persistent flavour and easy tannin.
Copy of article
Reviews by Paul Foster (Formerly of the Wine Society)
"World Wine Web" - Charter Magazine September 2005
Don't look for bottles of BackVintage on the shelves of your local; look instead on the web. BackVintage is an online retail wine company that's growing fast and proving to Julian Todd and Glen Cunningham, its founders, that their idea is a winner.
“We're a wine company that does everything except grow the grapes,” [Julian] claims. “Our system bypasses the middlemen in the distribution chain and wines that we sell for $11.99 might otherwise cost $24.95. Our clients are in effect paying wholesale prices.”
Each of the 12 BackVintage wines I've tasted has impressed me, always from the point of value, and almost as often, quality.
Review of 2002 BackVintage® Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon
Coonawarra cabernet through and through. Blackcurrant fruit, cedary oak and the leafiness some describe as mint. Elegance and a grippy finish. Three years old, already, it's starting to show the texture and flavours of maturity. Tender rare beef.
Review of 2003 BackVintage® McLaren Vale Shiraz
True to region and grape. Loads of dark shiraz fruit flavour with the chocolate tones of McLaren Vale. Ripe and rich. Full in the middle and firm on the finish. Charred oak draws out the whole caboodle. Lamb roast.
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Reviews by Geoff Wood (former associate wine judge, Royal Sydney Show)
2004 BackVintage® Adelaide Hills Chardonnay (September 2005)
[The Adelaide Hills Chardonnay] was great; really fine, lovely grapefruit/citrus cool climate varietal character, terrific acid, nice, quite subtle barrel ferment complexities, and all coming together seamlessly. In a word, classy. I vacu-vinned it and drank the second half three days after the first, and it was even better!
2003 BackVintage® Margaret River Chardonnay (August 2004)
No, it's true! Our friends at BackVintage Wines (whose Master of Wine Nick Bulleid sniffs out great parcels of wine from across the nation) have done it again- this time with a delicious 2003 Margaret River Chardonnay for only $143.88 a case (ie $11.99 a bottle), plus $6.00 delivery for the first dozen you order (additional cases are delivered free!). This is the best bargain I have seen in 2004.
Margaret River Chardonnay usually starts at about $30 a bottle, with plenty a lot more than that, and the daddy of them all, Leeuwin Estate Art Series, setting you back about $75 a bottle. Now I'm not going to kid you that this BackVintage wine is in the Art Series' league, but it is a truly sensational bargain at this price. It has beautiful melon/tropical fruit very typical of the region, lovely nutty oak, and is balanced, smooth and very long on the finish, with lovely fresh acidity throughout.
As with all good Chardonnay, the trick is not to over-chill it; half an hour in the fridge is plenty. Overchilling Chardonnay kills the fruit richness and makes the oak stick out on both nose and palate, and for me explains why a lot of people think they don't like Chardonnay- it's really because restaurants almost invariably serve it way too cold! This wine just kept getting better and better as it warmed up in the glass.....
2002 BackVintage® Margaret River Shiraz and 2003 BackVintage Eden Valley Riesling (April 2004)
The first three BackVintage wines, which we brought to your attention a few months ago, proved very popular with our Wine Club members - I received a lot of positive feedback about them and what good value they were.
The BackVintage team have now added two more wines to their line up - a 2002 Margaret River Shiraz and a 2003 Eden Valley Hand Picked Riesling - and, having tasted them recently, I am happy to report they are excellent, and again terrific value for money.
Both are excellent quality wines representative of each region. (see Nick Bulleid MW's tasting notes).
I liked the (Margaret River) Shiraz in particular, a very complex, spicy and food friendly wine, which is, at $12.99 a bottle (plus delivery charges), extremely cheap for a high quality red from this premium region, which usually start around the $25 mark, and range up to $85 a bottle!
The Riesling is also good, being in the dry, herbal style, rather than overtly floral, and with excellent acidity giving a long finish. At $11.99, it is good value, although not as cheap looking as the Shiraz, given the large number of excellent South Australian Rieslings around from this excellent vintage.
