2024 Decades Pinot Noir
2024 Decades Pinot Noir

2024 Decades Pinot Noir

96 pts
Decades |Coal River Valley |Pinot Noir
The second release of one of the most exciting new projects in Tasmania. Experience, vine age and a decades' long friendship culminating here in a beautiful Pinot.
5.0
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
2 Reviews
Price:
$80.00
Stock:
In stock, ready to ship
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Description

Thirty years ago, Steve Flamsteed and Brad Rogers were two Queensland mates at Roseworthy Wine School, sharing beers and a love of music, dreaming about the vineyard they’d one day own together. Fast forward to today, and that dream has become Decades Wines - one of the most exciting Australian wine projects we’ve seen in years.

Why the Coal River Valley? For Steve and Brad, it had to be Tasmania: cool-climate Pinot Noir country, where the long growing seasons, intense sunlight, and unique soils could produce world class Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The vineyard they found is small but remarkable. Black cracking clay over limestone gives the vines stability and helps produce fruit with an unmistakable blue-fruited character - wild blueberries, mulberries, even a touch of campari in cooler years.

Steve and Brad have long loved the Pinots from their neighbours, names like Stargazer, Tolpuddle, and Pooley and now they have their own entrant into that upper stratosphere of Tasmanian Pinot Noir.

Steve, one of Australia’s most accomplished winemakers and the mind behind Giant Steps’ benchmark Pinots for almost 20 years, has brought all his experience to bear here. His focus has always been on letting the vineyard shine, and that philosophy is at the heart of Decades. The wine was hand-picked, fermented with a mix of whole bunches and de-stemmed fruit, and aged in seasoned French oak to preserve its purity. The result is delicious, perfumed, and impossibly elegant - a true expression of this exceptional site.

With only 350 cartons made, the Decades Pinot Noir promises to be one of the most exciting new developments in Tasmanian wine. We're happy to share our small allocations with you while stocks last.

"We both love Pinot Noir , it had to be cool climate and we worked out that you can’t go much further south in this country."
- Steve Flamsteed

96 points
"There's a beautiful flow and presence to this wine, the ripe fruit travelling with grace and fine detail."
- Dave Brookes (Halliday Wine Companion)

 

Shanteh Wale

Shanteh Wale

Wine Pilot 96 Points

Alluring is an understatement. This is bayberries, mulberry and wild raspberry compote, in swirls through a mascarpone cream. Slivers of thistle and fresh bay leaf nod to the careful selection of whole bunch from Dijon clones. Oak enters in a tree bark savouryness, perhaps cassia and more red gum strip. Red lingonberries come to the fore on the palate with the crunch of white strawberry and leaf too. There is a harmony of silty tannins, punchy fruit circles back and it’s the medley of red, winter green and tactile brown spice that keeps you sipping and marvelling. It is a wine of article and design but effortless and pure at the same time. This is clearly the Coal River Valley but with utter sophistication and it’s giving Tassie a whole new groove. Kumquat and five spice roast spatchcock on the menu?

Campbell Mattinson

Campbell Mattinson

The Wine Front 93 Points

This is a structural Pinot Noir with ageability written all over it. It’s surly right now, and backward, but long chains of minerally tannin and abundant undergrowth-y complexity suggest that it will age handsomely. Stewed cherries, loads of spice, boysenberry and earthen, ashen, forest floor characters make a distinctive impression. Smoky oak is present here but so well integrated that it presents as a textural element and little else. Tuck this away for a few years. Patience is this wine’s best friend.

Dave Brookes

Dave Brookes

Halliday Wine Companion 96 Points

A supple and spiced pinot noir from Tea Tree in the Coal River Valley, on black cracking clay over a calcareous Triassic sandstone. Dark cherry, wild strawberry and dark plum mesh seamlessly with underlying hints of amaro herbs, medina spice, Campari, sandalwood, pomegranate, raspberry coulis and turned earth and leaves. There's a beautiful flow and presence to this wine, the ripe fruit travelling with grace and fine detail. A flair of powdery, silty tannins provides support and a bright, minerally cadence drives the wine forward. The dance between bunchy nuance and fruit purity is bang on here as the wine finishes complex, long and enduring.

Huon Hooke

Huon Hooke

The Real Review 94 Points

Deep, bold, promising purple colour, very young and intense. The aroma is full-on bold black cherry and dark plum, fruit driving it. There are some background notes of straw/hay and flake tobacco, the palate intense and bright, bold and full weighted, with plenty of neatly tailored tannins which are fine and subtle. The aftertaste is all bold blood-plum fruit and the wine cries out for time in the cellar: it is very primal and somewhat unready. This has potential and it would be a shame to open it under two years from now.

Customer Reviews

5.0
Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars
Based on 2 reviews
Total 5 star reviews: 2 Total 4 star reviews: 0 Total 3 star reviews: 0 Total 2 star reviews: 0 Total 1 star reviews: 0
2 reviews
  • DW
    Derek W.
    Verified Buyer
    11 months ago
    Reviewing
    2023 Decades Pinot Noir
    Rated 5 out of 5 stars
    2023 Drop

    Great drop!

    Was this helpful?
  • JC
    Jeff C.
    Verified Buyer
    1 year ago
    Reviewing
    2023 Decades Pinot Noir
    Rated 5 out of 5 stars
    Classy Pinot noir

    A very stylish and multi layered wine. Unique yet with varietal hallmarks.

    Was this helpful?

The 2024 season was wonderfully long and cool.

The fruit being able to hang out a little longer on the vines, before harvest, allowed for greater phenolic/tannin/flavour ripeness to come together in a slow delicate manor.

Intermittent rain also meant the vines remained in excellent health and vigour right through to harvest.

Our 2024 Pinot Noir has all the classic blue fruits that come from the Coal River Valley’s unique black clay soil. The fruit characters are dense, with a touch of Campari spice aroma, from the small whole bunch parcel. The region does fruit density exceptionally well, but we’ve tried to tease out a little perfume delicacy.

The fruit was hand-picked in two parcels. The first parcel fermented entirely as whole bunches. The second was de-stemmed, then cold soaked for 5 days before a slow wild fermentation. Both parcels were pressed into small seasoned French oak for malolactic fermentation and left on lees for 9 months.

The wine was bottled on 4th February 2025 and is limited to only 350 cartons.

Price Bracket $51 to $100
Type Red
Body Light Bodied
Variety Pinot Noir
Country Australia
Region Coal River Valley
Australian State TAS
Size 750ml
Vintage 2024
Closure Screw Cap

Decades

Decades Wines began as a shared dream between Steve Flamsteed and Brad Rogers, hatched over beers and Joy Division records at Roseworthy in 1991. Three decades on, that dream found soil in Tasmania’s Coal River Valley - a cool-climate pocket tailor-made for expressive Pinot Noir and razor-sharp Chardonnay.

The site they landed on isn’t just scenic - it’s seasoned. Planted in 1990, the vineyard sits on black cracking clay over limestone riddled with ancient shells. That subterranean character shows in the glass: Pinot that hums with blue fruit and spice, Chardonnay with a citrus spine tight enough to snap.

Steve, a pillar of Australian winemaking, and Brad, a craft-brewing trailblazer, aren’t here to fuss. They work simply - hand-picked fruit, whole-bunch pressed, wild ferments in seasoned oak - trusting the site to do the talking. The wines are light-touch, deeply considered, and fiercely site-driven.

Decades is a passion project, yes, but it’s also a study in patience, precision, and place. Just two mates, a remarkable patch of dirt, and a commitment to doing things the long way.

Brad Rogers and Steve Flamsteed Decades Wines

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