I was not impressed with the Villa Maria Cellar Selection Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon 2000 when I tried it a few months ago and indeed my notes were not very complimentary. I wrote "tight in the tannin department and showing a touch of green - not a touch on the reserve wines, which are simply stunning".

So it was a young wine I had tasted and the tannins could quite acceptably be tight but the warning bell should have rung on that word green! For this was a Villa Maria wine from perhaps, in my opinion, the best ever Hawkes Bay red wine vintage.

Although the Cellar Selection wines are the second echelon - sitting below the 'Reserves' and above the 'Private Bin' range - 2000 was such a great vintage for reds in Hawkes Bay. There should have been no green fruit and if there was, I would not expect Villa Maria to compromise on quality for this label. In fact it is hard to fault many Villa Maria wines these days.

So thank goodness for a subsequent tasting to set things right. Indeed the wine was the star of the night's tasting at the Orewa Winetasters' Bordeaux varieties wine class.

This is a fantastically coloured wine - deep and opaque purple black in the centre with pinky-red rims - imagine the colour of ripe blackberries on the vine.

The scent is fragrant, opulent and alluring with creamy vanillin oak, cherry and spice.

Then in the mouth the flavour is full of ripe blackcurrant and plum fruit with smoky oak, cigarbox, hints of chocolate and a creamy spiciness. Sure there are tannins, quite firm tannins in fact, but they are so in balance as a whole.

Quite simply the wine is juicy and drinkable and the finish is long, luscious and flavoursome. Swirl it often in the glass to open it up and let those subtle and complex flavour emerge. Try the dregs over a few days and you will be amazed at how this wine develops. It becomes quite outstanding.

Thanks goodness the wine was revisited. I put the remarkable change down to bottle variation. Now that Villa Maria have announced that they will bottle with screwcaps in the future for most of the their markets, perhaps the bottle variation problem will be solved. I hope so.

Villa Maria Cellar Selection Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon 2000 has a recommended retail of NZ$21.95. That makes it pretty good value in my book.

The Villa Maria website did not list this wine at the time of writing. The notes I have say the grapes were harvested from one of the company's reserve vineyards and two contract grown vineyards - one on the Tukituki Terraces and the other on the Gimblett Gravels. As well as Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, there is a hint of Malbec. The wine spent 16 months in oak and has 13% alcohol by volume.

© Sue Courtney