92/100 James Suckling
90/100 Wine & Spirits
97/100 Jane Faulkner (Halliday's Wine Companion) (2019 Vintage)
97/100 Campbell Mattinson (Halliday's Wine Companion) (2017 Vintage)

5 Red Star Winery (James Halliday Wine Companion)

Halliday's Wine Companion Winemaker of the Year 2022 (Michael Dhillon)

James Suckling “A fresh and bright red with sliced strawberry and cherry character to the lemon and watermelon flavors. Medium body. Firm and silky. Crisp finish.”

Wine & Spirits “This is a blend of fruit Michael Dhillon declassifies from his single-parcel bottlings. It needs a lot of air after opening to move past the initial brown and green notes of oak and bell pepper. But as it evolves past those complications, it gains stature and turns toward gentle plum and strawberry flavours.”

Jane Faulkner "A blend of fruit off the original vineyard planted in 1988 and the Kaye vineyard planted in 2001. It's morphed into a complete and compelling wine. Fragrant with florals and warm earth. There's a depth of flavour, with dark cherries, amaro and bitter Italian herbs that slip across the fuller-bodied palate. Two key elements here; freshness within and beautiful, plush tannins. What a wine." (2019 Vintage)

Campbell Mattinson "It has polish and power but the spice notes have been turned up and so too a murmur of undergrowth. It's silken to the touch but electric with spice, and while flavour runs healthily through the palate it reaches its height on the finish. Bindi's Dixon Pinot Noir is coming of age; this release is proof." (2017 Vintage)

Described by James Halliday as “one of the icons of Macedon” whose ”Pinot Noir as remarkable”, Bindi are a family wine producer in the Macedon Ranges, one of the coldest wine-producing regions of Australia.

Winemaker Michael Dhillon is the 2022 winner of the prestigious Winemaker of the Year award from Wine Companion. According to Tyson Stelzer and Jane Faulkner “his wines speak of Macedon and of Bindi, never overworked but with effortless purity and distinctive refinement.”

The Macedon Ranges pans a relatively small area (vineyards here cover just over 200 hectares / 500 acres) around Mount Macedon itself, a part of the Great Dividing range. It is around 50 kilometres northwest of Melbourne, Victoria.

Pinot Noir is the dominant red wine grape of Burgundy, now produced in wine regions all over the world, including western Germany, northern Italy, Chile, South Africa, Australia and, perhaps most notably, California, Oregon and New Zealand.

The essence of Pinot Noir wine is its aroma of strawberry and cherry (fresh red cherries in lighter wines and stewed black cherries in weightier examples), underpinned in the most complex examples by hints of forest floor. Well-built Pinot Noirs, particularly from warmer harvests, also exhibit notes of leather and violets, sometimes approaching the flavor spectrum of Syrah.