Review: Smith & Sheth CRU Heretaunga Albarino 2022. The best new world Albarino I’ve had.

October 20, 2023

Review: Smith & Sheth CRU Heretaunga Albarino 2022. The best new world Albarino I’ve had.

This stopped me in my tracks.

The Smith & Sheth CRU Heretaunga Albarino 2022 comes from Steve Smith MW’s (ex-Craggy Range) Hawke’s Bay project. That part isn’t surprising. What is head-turning here is the kaleidoscopic complexity. Hawke’s Bay Albarino is not meant to be this evocative!

If anything, the subtle varietal signature drives the style here. Barrel fermented, there’s quite a deal of artifice to build flavour layers – milk bottle reduction, whipper butter lees and vanilla bean oak. Yet it’s the nashi pear fruit that tips this over the edge, with a tension between the nectarine/pear flavour and then the creamy edges which had me thinking about Condrieu (for a half-baked analogy).

Arguably more full-bodied textural white than Albariño, but still the best new world Albarino I’ve had.

(note, RRP is in $NZD).

THE VERDICT

Best drinking: now
Score (out of 20): 18.7
Score (out of 100): 95
Alcohol %: 13.5
RRP (in $AUD): 40
Winery website: https://www.smithandsheth.com/
Would I buy it?: Sure would

2022, Albarino, Hawke’s Bay, Top Wine

Andrew Graham was once voted the 23rd most trusted wine critic on the planet. A WCA Journalism Young Gun now old hack with 25yrs as a buyer, judge, journalist, marketer and too much more.

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2 responses to “Review: Smith & Sheth CRU Heretaunga Albarino 2022. The best new world Albarino I’ve had.”

Peter Sharpe

October 21, 2023 at 8:18 pm

Hi Andrew

Some of my mates (not just blokes) and I try to organise an annual wine region tour. we’ve been to the Hunter, Tassie (Hobart and extended area Eg Coal River), Margaret River, Barossa, and this year McLaren Vale. At McLaren Vale we visited a very small operation called Graham Stevens Wines. It’s almost a one man show (but I know there are some others involved). Graham s in his 80’s, and looks it too. But if you take him cheaply, he has a way with words to bring you down to Earth in a flash. Anyway, reason for the note, I quite like his more expensive wines, but his labelled clean skins (how does that work?) are in my view the best value reds I have ever come across, by a country mile. My cellar is pretty modest (about 400 bottles), so I am accustomed to paying $30, $50 and sometime a lot more for wines when I am looking for complexity, richness, long after-taste, and longevity. I never buy to resell at a profit! buy to drink. Graham’s clean skins are a treasure to my taste. If you haven’t come across him, please check him out. He may not even want publicity, he certainly didn’t seem driven by the need for profit when we talked to him. But his clean skins are so good I felt I should at least pass on our experience to you.

Oh, I forgot, he sells his clean skins at $120 for a dozen. If he charged $35 a bottle, I would happily buy more. I am waiting for the bubble to burst, so in retrospect, please just enquire anonymously and don’t give him any publicity unless he agrees.

Keep up your great work.

Avid fan (and one time donator – should I donate again?)
Peter

Reply
1. Andrew Graham
  
  October 21, 2023 at 8:23 pm
  
  Peter, I loving hearing stories like this. I don’t know the Graham Stevens wines but I feel like this is a story replicated all across Australia with great unknown producers
  
  Reply