Halliday Wine Companion Reviews
2023 Syrah Viognier – The Halliday Wine Companion – 96 points GOLD
Coal River Valley syrah with 3% viognier added as whole bunches. Black cherry, boysenberry and macerated plum with notes of orange blossom, stone fruit, spice, fennel tops, roasting meats, rose petals, vanilla bean, black pepper and earth. Purely fruit and layered with spice, pepper and meaty facts, there is a gorgeous savoury aspect to this wine with a vivid mineral line and a really lovely energy and flow. “I could drink a lot of this” is about as good a recommendation as you can get and this bottle is in big trouble tonight.
Dave Brookes
Published 23 June 2025
2023 WKR Pinot Noir – The Halliday Wine Companion – 96 GOLD
This is just lovely. Juicy dark cherry, red plum with a splash of raspberry. There is a real purity to the fruit, both aroma and flavour. Hints of medina spice, rose petals, jasmine, mineral salts, turned leaves, char siu and some stone fruit glimpses further back. The fruit and flow on the palate has a distinctly contemporary feel with superb fruit purity and energy, a slide of umami, plenty of saline acid drive and stony, powdered river pebble tannins. There’s a real effortless drinkability to this wine. What a cracker!
Dave Brookes
Published 14 April 2025
2024 Riesling – The Halliday Wine Companion – 94 POINTS – SILVER
Pale in the glass with a flash of green and aromas of lime and Granny Smith apple with an expression of grapefruit. There’s a great energy to this wine. It’s sapid, crisp and clean as a whistle with hints of crushed stone, wildflowers, whispers of herbs and fennel and that glutamic ache of umami that gets the saliva going.
Dave Brookes
Published 14 April 2025
The Wine Front Reviews
Bubb + Pooley Pinot Noir 2024
From 25 year old vines in the Coal River Valley. Matured in concrete with a small amount of French oak.
It’s dark, spicy and earthy, but also perfumed and rosy. Medium-bodied, lovely texture with fine grainy tannin, a little ferrous and ‘minerally’, cherry and raspberry, black tea, a cranberry crunch to acidity, with a fine and firm finish of excellent length, with a twist of orange peel. Such good balance and character here. All just so. It’s a terrific wine.
Rated : 95 Points
Tasted : Oct25
Alcohol : 13.5%
Price : $70
Closure : Screwcap
Drink : 2026 – 2035+
Gary Walsh
Posted on 09 October 2025.
Bubb + Pooley WKR Vineyard Pinot Noir 2022
WKR=White Kangaroo Road. 22 year old vines from the Coal River Valley. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a white kangaroo. Though perhaps like the Thylacine, the idiot white settlers killed them all? Well, OK, I just talked to my better half, who’s spent a bit of time in Cenny Vic, and she tells me […]
Rated : 95+ Points
Tasted : Sep24
Alcohol : 12.5%
Price : $95
Closure : Screwcap
Drink : 2025 – 2035+
Gary Walsh
Posted on 11 September 2024.
Bubb + Pooley Riesling 2023
Old vine Riesling from the Coal River Valley, fermented and raised in a concrete egg. Texture seems to be the calling card for Bubb + Pooley, and there’s no change here. Lots of floral perfume, green apple and lime, a little sweet spice, with something more savoury in the mix too. It’s flinty and stony, […]
Rated : 95 Points
Tasted : Jul24
Alcohol : 12.5%
Price : $45
Closure : Screwcap
Drink : 2024 – 2033+
Gary Walsh
Posted on 19 July 2024.
Bubb + Pooley Syrah Viognier 2023
Well, I would not normally say this, but the Viognier in this wine is a positive. I think, with Viognier, both Shiraz and V. need to be grown in a cooler climate for it to work to best effect. This is svelte and fine and aromatic. I’m thinking almond biscotti, boysenberry and apple pie, pepper, […]
Rated : 93 Points
Tasted : Jul24
Alcohol : 14%
Price : $70
Closure : Screwcap
Drink : 2024 – 2033
Gary Walsh
Posted on 18 July 2024.
Bubb + Pooley Chardonnay 2023
Gee, pretty impressed with these B+P wines from 2023. A different expression of Chardonnay here, tasted alongside the Pooley Butcher’s Hill; this one is more saline and nutty, a nod towards Jura perhaps, whereas the Butcher’s is more ‘classic’ in style, if you’ll pardon my wine bore indulgence here. In short, the Pooley is more […]
Rated : 96 Points
Tasted : Jul24
Alcohol : 13%
Price : $70
Closure : Screwcap
Drink : 2024 – 2033+
Gary Walsh
Posted on 18 July 2024.
Bubb + Pooley Pinot Noir 2023
Coal River Valley. Matured in concrete with a small amount of French oak. Gee, this is a good Pinot Noir. Plenty of juicy cherry, a jasmine, rose oil and almost apricot perfume, a bit of spice and something a little earthy. It’s the feel of it, though, that really gets me in. It’s bright, but […]
Rated : 95+ Points
Tasted : Jul24
Alcohol : 13%
Price : $70
Closure : Screwcap
Drink : 2024 – 2035+
Gary Walsh
Posted on 18 July 2024.