Wines

The Margaret River region, in the southwest corner of Australia, is a biodiversity paradise.

Our farm is located on rich bushland connecting to the           Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park, which extends down to the       edge of the Indian Ocean. We work within the sound of the sea whose influence on the grapes is tangible. Cooling maritime breezes mitigate warm daytime temperatures, allowing our grapes to ripen slowly and to gather flavor.

Animals of all kinds live in or visit the vines. Our practices consciously integrate the wild into what we cultivate. Everything we do is interrelated with the cycles of nature. 

Vintage 2010

2010 Cloudburst Chardonnay

The 2010 Vintage was preceded by a winter of abundant rains. The growing season however, was warm and dry, resulting in excellent fruit set. Hot summer days coupled with cooler nights worked magic on the Chardonnay, which was harvested at the end of February. Our 2010 exhibits exquisite balance, flavor and concentration. 

This wine shows a golden straw color. The nose shows great aromatic complexity, combining quince and stone fruit, with a suggestion of whipped fig and pineapple compote coupled with a flinty note of struck stone. Rich in taste, the palate has pear and almond and lemon curd, underlain by a strict line of refreshing acidity. This elegant wine has great length and a beguiling complexity.

Alcohol content: 14%

2010 Cloudburst Cabernet

The 2010 Vintage was preceded by a winter of abundant rains. The growing season, however, was warm and dry, resulting in excellent fruit set. The hot weather moderated during March and April, leading to perfect ripening conditions for red varieties, characterized by excellent deep color, superb fresh flavor, well-balanced acids and silkily mature tannins in our Cabernet Sauvignon. 

The wine has a brilliant deep blackcurrant color. The nose shows a rich collection of violet, blackcurrant, raspberry and dark plum, overlaying a chocolaty mocha nuance. The palate is soft and inviting, with flavors of cherry, mulberry, anise and dark berry fruits with a hint of nutmeg spice. It has a lingering finish with a savory complexity and robust tannins.

Alcohol content: 13%

Vintage 2011

2011 Cloudburst Chardonnay

The 2011 Vintage began after a fairly dry winter followed upon by a dry spring. Some relief arrived in January with some light rains. This was followed in February and March by extremely hot summer days, with quite unusually warm summer nights, speeding up the growing season. The resulting 2011 Cloudburst Chardonnay has a powerful intensity of flavor and a refreshingly stony line to the palate.

Pale golden straw with a delicate brightness. Complex and bold aromas of mango, vanilla wafer and caulk, lingering with faint spearmint. The mouth feel is exquisite: very seductive soft and delicate with an exciting burst of fruit in the mid-palate. The middle notes continue to show mango, but with pineapple and bananas, vanilla bean, graham cracker, cinnamon and creamed caramel. A touch of dried grass, ginger and bitter greens elevate the fruit flavors to another dimension. The finish is an everlasting mix of lemon zest and cream, like a lemon meringue pie. This wine has bright acidity and subtle oak allowing it to be paired with foods, but balanced and elegant enough to drink on its own.

Alcohol content: 14.1%

2011 Cloudburst Cabernet

The 2011 Vintage began after a fairly dry winter followed upon by a dry spring. Some relief arrived in January with some light rains. This was followed in February and March by extremely hot summer days, with quite unusually warm summer nights, speeding up the growing season. 

A brambly bright wine carrying delicate lifted aromas of blueberry perfume and cedarbox with a hint of mint. Tasting of briar fruit, mostly blackcurrant, with notes of mulberry, dark cherry and satsuma plum. The delicate soft pallet has supple, velvety tannins, a vibrant acidity and a clean mouth-watering finish. This is a wine of finesse and subtlety, which carries a delicious liveliness all the way to the lingering perfumed end.

Alcohol content: 13.2% 

Vintage 2012

2012 Cloudburst Chardonnay

The 2012 Vintage repeated 2011's hot conditions, with warmer than usual nights accelerating the time of vintage several weeks advance of its usual timing. The heat created intense flavors in the Chardonnay and it was picked earlier than previous years, enabling the retention of strong natural acidity and great freshness and length. 

The Cabernet benefited from the moderating temperatures which arrived towards the end of vintage, developing intense fruit flavors with well ripened tannins, assuring great longevity.

The color is a pale gold straw with highlights of lime. The complex aroma blends stone fruit and almond and wet river stones. The elegant palate is layered with nectarine, pear, quince honey, marzipan and flint. The subtly creamy mouthfeel gives away to a fine minerality and persistent acid finish. A wine of tremendous depth and elegance.

Alcohol content: 13%

Vintage 2013

The 2013 vintage was characterized by early season coolness right up to the beginning of the year, when the heat of summer fully arrived. Summer was typified by warm to hot days followed by warm nights. This was accompanied by lower than normal rainfall in January and February Chardonnay benefited from these conditions and the grapes developed great vibrancy and intensity. Good Marri flowering resulted in minimal bird pressure, and lack of rainfall and good sea breezes led to an absence of disease pressure. March brought cooling temperatures, allowing our reds to ripen gradually; developing extraordinary depths of flavor, weight and concentration. Truly a great year.

2013 Cloudburst Chardonnay

The 2013 Cloudburst Chardonnay is a richly satisfying wine. On the nose, fine lemon myrtle dances with a waxed grapefruit character, underlain by notes of gunflint and gunsmoke. These flavors are picked up in the lovely palate, which has a poised citrus character with a fresh quartz restraint. There are traces of roasting walnuts, acorns, lemon blossom, sunflowers in bloom, maize dust, semolina and lightly toasted marshmallow. An elegant wine, its strong line of acidity holds it together even as it warms up in the glass. This is truly a wine that can be served at room temperature. A powerful and satisfying wine that lingers in the mouth and imagination.

Alcohol content: 13.9

2013 Cloudburst Cabernet Sauvignon

The 2013 Cloudburst Cabernet Sauvignon is a dream of the darkest forest fruits ever seen, combining black plums and blood plum reduction, with notes of seasoned black pudding, morcilla sausage, and a smokiness of doused campfire and peat, all lined with salt spray with a dash of seaweed, seasoned with a splash of Speyside single malt whiskey.

Alcohol content: 13.5%

2013 Cloudburst Malbec

The 2013 Cloudburst Malbec vibrates with crème de violette, blood plum, apple and clove reduction, light balsamic, wet tobacco leaf, and the essence of garrique, as if oils of lavender, thyme, sage, and wormwood hover in the sun. A slight sour plum skin character intrigues and plays with your tongue. While tannins so firm, they pucker, lending the finish a mouthwatering grip that doesn’t let go.

Alcohol content: 13%

Vintage 2014

Winter was characterized by abundant rainfall and blustery winds. Spring was quite warm with intermittent storms, especially at flowering. Summer was evenly warm, sunny and dry with consistent mild ocean breezes and abundant Marri blossom.

2014 Cloudburst Chardonnay

A beautifully poised wine of elegant style. It’s complex bouquet is reminiscent of freshly cut yellow flowers, dandelions and buttercups exhaling in the sun. This carries into scents of loquat and yellow plum blended with traces of juniper and lemon myrtle and a hint of fresh mint. In the mouth, pink grapefruit frothed with white marshmallow and soft anise, melds with roasted pecan, toasted barley and malt to create a wine of great interest. Beautiful balance and acidity gives the wine extraordinary length and concentration.

2014 Cloudburst Cabernet Sauvignon

A powerful, yet graceful wine of great purity, texture and complexity, the 2014 Cloudburst Cabernet Sauvignon has striking vitality, opulence and generosity. It sets the palate alive. This is a delicious, clean, intense and ripe wine, with a vitality that is simply lovely to drink.

The wine is profoundly perfumed, with violets to the fore, floral yet fleeting, followed with blueberry, black olive and bayleaf, a mahogany bass note, and a suggestion of anise and lifted exotic spices. In the palate, the wine is fine, glossy, and concentrated. It is a precise and pure miracle that frolics between flavour and texture, at once a silken sheet and web of light -- cedary tannin underlays a richness of delicious ripe mulberry fruit, with black olive and chocolate and tobacco leaf and satin cassis dancing with a flourish of spice that extends all the way to the astonishingly long finish.

2014 Cloudburst Malbec

A densely flavored, deeply layered, majestic wine with tremendous vibrancy, the 2014 Cloudburst Malbec is absolutely delicious.  From the first aromatic sniff, to the fantastically long finish, it is a wine that satisfies on every level. Intense, yet poetic, the wine is an inky magenta, with terrific weight.

This wine is a perfect melding of crème de violette, damson plum, baked apple, mocha, blackstrap molasses, ripe black cherries, boysenberries, blackberries, and black currents. A line of hickory smoke, dark wet tobacco and black pepper adds mystery, depth and grip to a very rich, delicious and alluring wine with a profound and satisfying finish.

Vintage 2015

Spring 2014 was the rainiest so far for Cloudburst, yet was characterized by consistently mild temperatures. The vines took off with great vigor immediately after pruning, and had an extended and perfect flowering. This was followed by a warm and dry summer, gracefully free of excessive heat spikes. This consistent warmth, coupled with mild nights and low velocity maritime breezes, resulted in deeply flavorful grapes. Virtually no rain fell during the first few months of 2015, which created perfect ripening conditions. All grapes were hand harvested and completed wild primary and secondary fermentations well in advance of the heavy rains which arrived in late March. Winter was warm and wet, setting up good soil reserves for vintage. Spring was cold and very rainy especially during flowering, somewhat impacting fruit set.  Summer however, was warm, dry and sunny enhancing brilliant fruit development.   Particularly noticeable was an absence of Marri blossom.  Autumnal weather arrived in mid-March with cloudy rainy days and cool nights.

2015 Cloudburst Chardonnay

A vibrant wine of great depth and purity, the 2015 Cloudburst Chardonnay has a mineral intensity and effortless length that resonates and captivates. 

This is a powerfully delicious wine, with gorgeous complexity and outstanding balance.

A concentrated honeyed marzipan confection melded with dark peach, acorn, roasted chestnuts, peanut skin, river stone, brioche, butterscotch and Meyer lemon curd. 

2015 Cloudburst Cabernet  

A superbly graceful wine of perfect balance, depth and complexity. Cassis, cherry and violet give way to ripe dark plum, black currant, mocha, mineral and spice in this heady elixir. The wine’s exquisite length and sexy finish is abetted by an elegant and ethereal tannic structure. This wine gets under your skin and stays there.

Alcohol content: 12.5%

2015 Cloudburst Malbec

A delicious and opulent wine of brilliant fruit purity and exceptional length, the 2015 Cloudburst Malbec is velvety, seamless and evocative. A thrilling amalgam of black currant, bramble-fruit, red cherry, satsuma, dark chocolate, pepper and clove, this vivacious wine is compelling from the first heady whiff to the last tangy drop.

Alcohol content: 13.7%

Vintage 2016

The temperate Winter was characterized by abundant rains resulting in terrific flowering and fruit set during the mild and dry Spring. An unprecedented heavy rain in mid-January set up the Chardonnay for an atypically early harvest. Otherwise dry and warm conditions persisted throughout Summer along with constant afternoon sea breezes. These conditions produced a Chardonnay with great flavor, depth and length and a Cabernet of amazing precision and mineral depth.

2016 Cloudburst Chardonnay

A wild voluptuous wine of extraordinary majesty and intensity, the 2016 Cloudburst Chardonnay is mouth-wateringly complex.  Layers of yellow peach. fluffed melon, pink grapefruit and whipped lemon-curd fold into freshly baked pastry, creamed cashew, crushed sea shell, river stone and ginger flower. The embodiment of generosity, texture and length, the wine is powerful and profound.

Alcohol content: 13.0%

2016 Cloudburst Malbec

A deeply compelling wine of alluring complexity, brilliant structure and perfect ripeness. Beginning with the first brambleberry and sage whiff, through a delicious blast of blueberry, blackberry, mulberry, olive, anise and iodine flavour, this wine unfolds with successively profound layers of taste and texture, all underlain by Cloudburst’s signature salinity. Something profoundly mineral and irresistible drives this powerful, long and poised wine.

Alcohol content: 12.5%

2016 Cloudburst Cabernet

A sexy, seamless and haunting wine. From the first heady whiff of cassis, violet, dark cherry, black olive, graphite, cedar and sage through its astonishingly long clear black and blue berried chocolatey mineral depths, this luminous wine has a persistent intensity of flavour that never wavers through an incalculably long finish. Its perfect ripeness, scintillating tannins, and intoxicating tension makes for an unforgettably vibrant wine.

Alcohol content: 12.2%

Vintage 2017

In the run-up to vintage, rain was the operant theme, beginning with above average Winter rainfall which continued well into Spring. Spring in turn was characterised by consistent unusually cool temperatures which contributed to a late but very strong budburst and substantial canopy development. Cold weather continued into Summer and the prolonged cool and wet growing season led to late harvests. Good Marri blossom kept bird pressure to a minimum. 

2017 Cloudburst Chardonnay

A focused and brilliantly structured wine with richly textured layers of ripe white peach compote and grilled hazelnut brioche, spiced with ginger, coriander, oyster shell and salt. Perfectly weighted – though full in body, remaining lithe and energetic – the wine is simply, effortlessly integrated. Its plush texture and stunning tension extend with remarkable vivacity to culminate in a concentrated and lingering finish. 

Alcohol content: 13.6%

2017 Cloudburst Cabernet

A powerfully detailed wine of incredible complexity and length yet remarkable gentleness and finesse. Dense layers of black currents, mulberries, violets and plum combine with tobacco leaf, sea shell, slate and garrigue to create an exhilarating wine of intense interest.  From the first sniff to the last lingering drop this is a wine that beguiles as it unfolds, transporting the drinker.

Alcohol content: 13.1%

2017 Cloudburst Malbec

A Malbec of luscious intensity balanced with remarkable restraint. Deep aroma of briar and berry, herb and smoke gives way to flavours of deep tangy berry and damson plum framed by cedar and stone. Tannins so fine they seem to melt away, yet the soul of this wine lingers - generous, intense, and profound. A truly delicious wine of great natural structure, and marvellous length.

Alcohol content: 13.6%

Vintage 2018

Winter brought heavy rains, thoroughly recharging the soils and setting up reserves of moisture for a great vintage. Spring began wet but turned mild with super dry conditions during budburst, flowering and fruit set, leading to a generous yield. A big rain in December was followed by warm and dry conditions with extraordinary Marri blossom. Summer was marked by a virtual absence of rain coupled with abundant warm days and cool nights.

2018 Cloudburst Chardonnay

A formidable, vivid wine with terrific structure, tension and length. Wild flavours of grapefruit skin and white peach meld alluringly with creamy roasted almonds and hints of cinnamon, ginger, smoke and slate. This exquisite Chardonnay is voluptuous, yet agile, easily carrying a powerful balance of pure fruit, spice and mineral. An unalloyed pleasure with incredible length, vitality, and brightness.

Alcohol content: 13.9%

2018 Cloudburst Cabernet Sauvignon

A luscious, deeply concentrated, spicy black current, mulberry, and satsuma treat, with tremendous drive and length. This intense and alluring wine, imbued with pristine fruit accented with iodine, tar, smoke, violets, and rose petals, is framed with a scrumptious savoury undertone. Very lively bright acids and finely structured tannins give the palate spring, fabulous length, and a smouldering finish. 

2018 Cloudburst Malbec

A thrilling, textured, juicy sarsaparilla and blood plum blast, profoundly underpinned with layer upon layer of red fruit umami, velvet cake, dark chocolate, cinnamon, cardamon and clove. An intrinsically robust wine that’s absolutely driven by perfectly ripened fruit and sprightly tannin — a delight to drink, balanced, complex, and oh so long.

Vintage 2019

Spring and Summer were atypically cool. An unprecedented frost during Chardonnay budburst significantly reduced yield. Midsummer rains coupled with long periods of cool overcast days slowed grape maturation, and harvest commenced two weeks later than customarily. Absence of Marri Blossoms post veraison resulted in sustained bird pressure throughout the harvest.

2019 Cloudburst Chardonnay

A rich complex wine of shattering intensity and high wire balance. Tasting like a draught of morning brioche with Creme Chantilly and caramelised sugar cradling luscious ripe apricot in oyster shell. Lime flower and a slice of pink grapefruit shimmer alongside toasted macadamia, grilled almond and raw cashew caramel. Like drinking a fine boulangerie praline pastry that persists all day long. Fearlessly big and bold, yet balanced and decadently delicious.

2019 Cloudburst Cabernet Sauvignon

A formidable wine. Powerfully aromatic, as though an internal combustion engine were pumping the aromas out of the glass, broadcasting the wine’s freshness, clarity, and purity with a compelling perfume of rose petal-tinged blueberry and the blackest imaginable, impeccably ripened fruit, infused with exotic wood spice. The fruit presents at the perfect point of ripeness, bursting on the palate with pure black cherry, black current and blackberry. The wine is soft, sweet and textural, with elements of rich charry earth, purple lilac and violet, all carried by a perfect measure of powdery tannins. There’s an extra potent dimension of umami giving the wine a lithe, sexy elegance and old-world precision. And its beautiful length and purity resonates remarkably long.

Vintage 2020

A wet winter gave the vines a good start and was followed by a relatively warm spring, ideal for early growth. The summer was hot, and characterized by successive heat waves and very dry conditions. This resulted in smaller bunch sizes with intense concentrated flavours. These dry hot days accelerated ripening and Chardonnay harvest finished quite early. This was followed by a series of rains in late February which persisted into March, and prolonged hang time in the Cabernet and Malbec. The result was softer, riper tannins, concentrated flavours and optimally ripened reds.

2020 Cloudburst Chardonnay

 A brilliant wine of grace, power, and structure. Marvelously aromatic and deeply evocative, its complex fragrance spills out of the glass with a powerful essence of ripe pear, Meyer lemon, and dazzling citrus blossom tinged with hints of sandalwood incense. The wine’s superb, perfectly weighted texture thoroughly envelopes the palate with concentrated pear and Meyer lemon, flawlessly entwined with exotic wood spice and river stone. So beautifully assembled, it’s cerebral in its sensuality, intriguing in its complexity, and persists astoundingly long.

2020 Cloudburst Cabernet

A stunningly elegant wine of great beauty, finesse and complexity. Structured layers of briar and biscuit with liquorice, iodine, and graphite, are held together with tantalising tension. Cerebral, sensual, vibrant and transparent, this wine casts a powerful spell.

  2020 Cloudburst Malbec

A vivid and shapely, lavishly fruited, and perfectly structured wine of sheer deliciousness. Juicy, nutmeg infused, perfectly ripe dark berries are tinged with iron and spice and wrapped in velvet. A wine of tantalising tension, texture and tang.