2014 Henskens Rankin Tasmania D2 Blanc de Blanc $105

03/07/2025

Freida Henskens and David Rankin and their eponymous wine brand emerged from the wine shadows in early 2019 when their first vintage of sparkling - the 2010 Vintage Brut - won gold and two trophies at the Tasmanian Wine Show. The wine had been eight years in the making and swept aside several vintage of Arras - including the EJ Carr - to confound almost the entire Tasmanian wine industry who'd largely never heard of the couple before.

Henskens is a no-compromise winemaker whose entire focus is traditional method sparkling wine. That inaugural release from 2010 proved the couple are in the industry for the long haul, biding their time until they're convinced their prestige offerings will be well received by the market. The volumes are minuscule but the responses from wine judges, media and adoring buyers are invariably stupendous.

D2 is the second release of the wine. I would have preferred an alternative moniker. The one that springs to mind is OMG.

This is an extraordinary sparkling - and if you think $105 sounds a bit rich, take a good long look at vintage Champagne prices. It began life as a single vineyard base wine, produced from Chardonnay planted at Winkleigh in the Tamar Valley back in 1988. Essentially the work of an artisan who gets a real buzz out of the process of handcrafting these wines, it was disgorged in March 2022 and spent the next couple of years quietly lying in wait.

Blanc de Blanc sparklings are among the world's wine treasures and this is an archetypal iteration. The subtle citrus, white flower and green apple aromas stand toe-to-toe with barrel ferment and leesy notes in the current battle for olfactory supremacy. The palate meanwhile is incredibly tightly focused and rapier-like, suggesting the wine will evolve very slowly indeed over the next decade or so. The finish is very long and very dry, following dosage of around 2.5g/L.

If there's a better partner to freshly-shucked Tasmanian oysters at the moment, show me the way.

Source: Cellar door during Southern Open Vineyards Weekend, Wine South, March 2025