MUSCAT, MOSCATO etc

Innocent Bystander Victoria Moscato 2009
$12.50 (375ml.); 5.5% alcohol; drunk very quickly on 18 JUL 09; crown seal; 94 points
This little cuteness is so russetty pink it needs a matching lipstick. It's the perfect size for the handbag; just remember you'll need a bottle opener. It has a tantalising balance of sweet pink fruity smells and bone dry husky smells. Like blood orange, strawberries, raspberries, loquat, persimmon and sapodilla freshly picked and chopped into a psychedelic salad. But this raw fruitiness slurps about in such daring counterpoint to a topnote of piquant hessian and quarry dust the effect is something many a parfumier would be very proud of. Then, when you drink it, it seems to belong within you: there is no doubt what it was made for. Perfect eleven o'clock pick-me-up; just the slightest hint of prickly frizzante, and lovely tapering acidity beneath that modest gay syrup and fine dry tannin. Makes me happy.

Schild Estate Barossa Frontignac 2008
$14; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 93+ points
To the Barossadeutscher, fronty was always just plain front'n'backs already ... nobody knew it was really called muscat blancs a petit grains. When I was a kid, they also called it frontignan if they were puttin' on airs. They should make more of it: it was devislishly popular in the seventies and eighties. This one's a beauty: really stony and gravelly at the top, like a Sancerre or Pouilly Fume sauvignon, beautifully tropically fruity in the middle, and more and more tropically fruity the further down ye go. I reckon there's lemon juice at the bottom. And I'm only talking aroma. Take a schluck, and ye're swimming in delicious elegant fruitiness, as sweet as nashi pear. The flavour's so concentrated and syrupy that you'd really think it was a lot more syrupy and oily in texture, but it's not. It manages that fabulous pirouette that only front'n'back can perform, giving all that sweet, spongy heart and soul, but on a framework that's as elegant and svelte as a Mersault. There was never a chilli in the Barossa until I smuggled the first habaneros through in the 390 Hemi Val called Shiva (after my mate Shiva Naipal) in 1988, so I can't recommend it with a fair dink Barvy nosh, but if you were to souse a spit roast Seppeltsfield porker with really hot sweet chilli this would be the swallowing fluid for her. Knockoutskavitch! 3 MAR 9

Chateau Tanunda Barossa Tower Moscato 2008
$??; 8% alcohol; screw cap; 91 points
Some bonk nailed me in The Ex last week and demanded to know how I could possibly point "a bloody moscato higher than most of the bloody cabernet in the bloody country". Easy. It's in this glass right now: the perfect thing to separate ice blocks in a huge cognac balloon while it's 44 degrees C outside. That's 111.2 in the old money. I wouldn't even pour cabernet on my dog if it spontaeneously combusted today. I'd tell him he's lucky, take a photo if there was time, and commit suttee in his ashes before he went out. Roses, nashi pear, honeydew ... honey do you give a damn? Not too sweet, not too fizzy, not too dim and simple, lovely acidity ... this is Tim Smith's answer to Global Warming. I've got creme fraiche, walnuts and thin sliced habaneros on cracked pepper Vita Wheat biscuits, another bottle in the freezer, training up for the sacrifice, and sit here, sans culottes, remembering the snow at Breakfast Creek and the lascivious grin she wore. Praise The Lord! FEB 09

Jeanneret Clare Valley Mosquito 2007
$18; 5.2% alcohol; screw cap; 90 points
“None of the fruit used to make this wine has been irrigated with River Murray water”, boasts the naughty Mozzie’s back label, taunting the Clare water junkies who ran a big pipe from Morgan just in time to see the River shrivel. The wine’s a taunt, too: made from muscat blanc à petits grains, which is moscato d’Asti in Italy, frontignac or fronti here, or front’n’backs in the Barossa. It’s the opposite of staunch Clare riesling: simple, unashamedly sweet, cute and just fizzy enough to leave little pricks of CO2 dancing round the tongue. Sunday breakfast wine for smoky bacon, eggs, and Tabasco. www.jeanneretwines.com.au

Tempus Two Moscato 2006
$20; 7% alcohol; crown seal; 89 points
I can’t say “Lisa McGuigan” without seeing her omnipresent father, Brian, who plies the shallowest edges of the market. Typically, this bottle’s ostentatiously heavy, wasteful and expensive for such a feather-weight slurp, spoiling the mood, but I swallow my reserve to praise this nifty sizzle of a drink. It’s slightly frizzante, or fizzy, fairly dry, and firmly acidic and austere in a Sunday School Lite sort of way: a neat guzzle for summer antipasto. www.tempustwo.com.au

Madfish Western Australia Moscato 2008
$22; 5.5% alcohol; screw cap; 82 points
This lacks the fresh rosy lift I expect from copies of moscato d'Asti, which this obviously is. The flavour does a lot more of the sort of business moscato should do; the frizzante's just about right, and the sugar's way up there, but so is that price. Why should this cost 20% more than that delightful, fresh, zippy, highly entertaining Mosquito at the top? JAN 09

Anvers South Australia Pink Moscato 2009$20; 8% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 09JUN10; 78 points
Blood orange, raspberry, cranberry jelly and the sacky skin of the canteloupe seem to be the smells; slightly aerated is the viscous texture; all the above, and very much sugar is the flavour. This should be more appetising and satisfying than it is: it seems a bit thick and cloying. We need more cooler climate fronti. Dunno what I'd do with this.

Evans & Tate Classic Pink Moscato 2008
$19;6.5% alcohol; crown seal; 71 points
"Refreshingly pink!" says the propaganda sheet. I can think of a lot of the smells of things that are pink, some of which are very close to my heart, and this doesn't fit anywhere, except maybe it reminds me of some pink dishwashing gloves she who would file her nails whilst sitting on the toilet wore. The wine has some freshness on the palate, called sugar. And it's appropriately frizzante, but you know the trouble? The CO2 that gives this its fizz will preserve the wine, so all these things will stay entrapped within it. Not enough love. 04 APR 09