Big Rutherglen Fortified Muscat Tasting at WSET London Bridge

When you study WSET level 3, usually you are studying the more famous regions and grapes involves focusing on well-known regions and grape varieties, like Bordeaux reds, Rioja’s Tempranillo, or Port from the Douro Valley. If you take a tactical approach to the exam, you might notice that some chapters, like Fortified Muscat, carry more weight in the scoring compared to others in comparison to other chapters that overall has a lighter point load. Hopefully, you agree that this is a decent introduction to a tasting of Australian Fortified Muscat – more specifically from Rutherglen in this case.

Where is Rutherglen, you may ask? It is near/on the border between Victoria and New South Wales in Australia near Chiltern-Mount Pilot National Park in between the capital Canberra and Melbourne, quite deeply inland. Their wines are divided into four main categories which is Rutherglen, Classic, Grand and Rare Muscat.

The main classification is how long the average age is starting with Rutherglen that has 3-5 years of age and show fresh primary fruit flavours. Then we have the Classic which has an average of 6-10 years of age with increased richness and intensity as well as wood character (oak). Sweetness also increases. After this, things change with the Grand being 11-19 years and the Rare being over 20 years of age.

In this tasting, we tried 14 wines from 4 producers which were Stanton & Kileen, Pfeiffer, Morris as well as Chambers Rosewood with 3 of these having all four types except Morris that only had the Classic and Rare.  All these wines were between 17.0% and 18.5% in alcohol.

What I love about wine is that there is so much to learn but perhaps more importantly, my palate undergoes a change in unusual ways where I have trends and desires that often have a slow buildup and then make me interested in trying something new. For example, light reds and oaky whites used to be my least favourites combined perhaps with sweet wines but currently, these are the wines combined with aromatic whites that interest me the most. I hope fortified Muscat will be the same for me.

To be honest, though, I found the Rutherglen and Classic quite nice in general but the Grand and Rare were way too sweet and intense for me and they were less enjoyable for me overall. My impression at the tasting was that I would be very happy to stick with Rutherglen and Classic for now, without considering the price. As an example, the Stanton and Kileen for 375 ml was £14.99/22.30/38.99 and 62.50.

Having this said, my palate may change and perhaps there will be a moment when I can appreciate the Rare muscat but as a fortified muscat novice, I am happy to leave this one for later. 

Tasting Day – 10 sep 2024

Wines: 14

Location: WSET London Bridge School

Price: Around £60.