D R A N K S T E R

ROSÉ

2012-01-27T17:24:00.001+10:30

Castagna Allegro Beechworth Syrah Rosé 2010

$30; 14% alcohol; Diam cork; 95++ points

This is like one of thosepeople who radiate such cornflower-blue health that they make you feelsick. It’s riddled with well-being: watermelon, pomegranate, raspberry …and I was just about to switch over through the blood orange and its pith tothe bone china tannin when the dry edge was violently installed by a falconwhacking into a juvenile Wattle Bird on the veranda behind me. When Iasked why the little bird was trying to get into the bedroom they explained ithad just escaped the talons of a hungry demon from the blue, but didn’t tell mebecause it was all over in a flash. That’s the first time that’s everhappened in my immediate vicinity in the middle of a wine appraisal. Youdon’t get raptors in vineyards managed under the old petrochem regime. When you use poisons, you get sick insects. Sick insects mean sick birdsand snakes, and sick birds and snakes means dead raptors, as they’re the end ofthe food chain. Nothing sick about that hungry, heaving falcon. Anyway, once I got the feathers outa my carby I realized that this wine has adelicious bitterness which is almost along the lines of a Campari with soda,and while its acid might seem a tad brittle it actually slithers round one’sgustatory stage like a viper. These rosés of Julian’s are always prettymuch the best in the country: out of thousands of entries, the 2001 Allegro wasoutright winner of all classes in my Top 100 in 2002; the only time a rosé everrose to such heights. Tasted November 2011

Castagna Allegro Beechworth 2008
$30; 14% alcohol; Diam cork; 95+ points
This is probably the best rosé I’ve had, excluding the odd Crystal or Krug. Nocavities in this one, though: it’s pure cool smooth stone-shaped beauty, like aBrancusi head. It smells like the caramel aroma of roasting crayfish shells.With an absolute gush of rosy fruits and petals, from blood orange to cherrynougat. It’s syrupy, but before you begin to think that, there’s lemon andcrisp white plum, and then there’s the fine stony tannins, and then there’s themaraschino crunch, and pickled orange peel, like Campari, and saffron. Itfinishes dry, but you never feel cheated like most dry drinks make you feel ifthey’re much short of perfect. Hang on. It’s not shaped like a Brancusi head.It’s shaped like a bullet. 23 NOV 08

Charles Melton Rose of Virginia 2008
$22; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 94 points
Rosey’s twenty one this vintage, and man, she’s so cute and cool on account ofGood Time Charlie picking her before the heat set everyone’s cleavageperspiratin’. This year she’s a flirty daughter of grenache, cabernet, pinotmeunier and shiraz,and just about the best, brightest, pink this rosé sot can recall. Dry,beautifully viscous, concentrated and lush, she’s up there with the CastagnaShiraz, the Old Mill Touriga Nacional, and anything pink or puce made byDominique Portet. She’d break hearts with Tony Bilson’s snapper poached insaffron court bouillon or coddled salmon with red wine sauce. www.charlesmeltonwines.com.au

Old Mill Estate Langhorne Creek TourigaNacional Rosé 2007
$18; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 93++ points
Ferrari scarlet, this baby’s a racer in every other sense of the word, rightthrough to its cheeky smokin’ tail. Chockers with maraschino cherries,raspberries and cranberries; fleshy with a sharp lemony topnote, and an acridterroir edge that’s somewhere between hot clutch and struck flint, this is aserious XXX-rated toy that will actually improve in the cellar, if you can onlymanage to get outa the driver’s seat and let her cool down. Made from the grandvintage port grape, touriga nacionale, it has texture and mouth-fillingviscosity like no other pink. Take it for a squirt to your nearest fishmongeror fowl rotisserie.

Gomersal Wines Barossa Valley ShirazRosé 2008
$??; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+ points
Instead of helping his lovely wife, Gabriella, with running the show, Baz Whitespends most of his day telling people what to do whilst he glares at his shirazacross dusty Gomersal Road from the winery’s ample veranda. This stare seems tokeep the starlings, pardalotes, odiums and mildews at bay, and I think alsofrightens the grapes into ripening. It terrified this poor 2008 mob sothoroughly they’ve obviously started to bleed: for this smells slightly bloody,and like previous vintages actually reeks of blood orange. There’s the classicwhiff of the dusty road, too, and while there’s some of the softer unction thatGabriella offers within the cellar, along with perfect snacks and coffee,there’s more of that macho bulldust in the finish. You can feel it caking uparound the edge of your mouth, as if you’re perishing in the friggin’ desert.But you’re not. You’re simply thirsty, and at 14.5% alcohol; this is not goingto be quenching any thirst today. Just get inside safely with Gabriella, andtry not to look at Baz glowering at you from George Grainger Aldridge’sfearsome portrait of the bastard that’s hanging there on the wall, also staringat the vineyard over the road. I reckon this would go perfectly with thoseslices of candied orange dipped in bitter dark chocolate, no? JAN 09

Old Mill Estate Touriga NacionalLanghorne Creek Rosé 2006
$16; 12.2% alcohol; screw cap; 93+ points
This is a much more complex and earthy drink than the 07 and 08. It immediatelysmells more like a dry red, with leather and walnut, and then the dusty aromaof its country in summer, with a rustic twinge of the tractor shed. Think moreof a classic, ageing Penfold’s Barossa blend of grenache, mourvedre and shiraz – it even has aninsinuation of old oak, which must have come from the slowly oxidising naturallignins of the grape pulp. Think of opening the door of a dusty old Jaguar inyour grandfather’s shed, to discover a basket of fresh plums on the back seat.The palate still has plenty of the ripe red and pink fruits of the youngervintages, and these rise steadily as the glass sits on the table, but there arealso more meaty dry red characters oozing up with time, and the developingtannins are more like those from a much more full-bodied red. This lovely wineis to be served cool, not chilled, as you would a good dry red. 01 MAR 09

Clancy Fuller Two Little Dickie BirdsBarossa Mataro Grenache 2006
$18; 11.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93 points
This is the best Barossa rosé I know. While some makers add a dash of mataro to lighter stylesof pink to give them complexity, this brute’s made of the stuff. It veryhappily dominates the much simpler grenache. This is deadly alluring: onceagain showing the gunpowdery, flinty edge of indigenous yeast, which opens thewhole crunchy-crisp adventure. It could come from the south of France, butit’s actually Chris Ringland. Hearty bouillabaisse. pclancy@winepoublishers.com

Dominique Portet Fontaine Yarra Valley Rosé 2006
($20; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 93 points)
Fontaine she is. Squirtin’ cherries and raspberries and strawberries all overyour nosé. There are dry shots of tannic things in this joyous bouquet, too,like maybe a shot of pickled walnut juice, so it’s not simple teenyboppersugar. The palate’s juicy, dry and fairly tannic for a pinky. It’s a see-saw,tipping from sweet maraschino to dry furry peach pith. Best use of Yarra Valleycabernet, merlot and shirazI know. Santamaria sardines on rye with raw Spanish onion.
www.dominiqueportet.com (28.20.6)

Fairbank Sutton Grange Winery CentralVictoria Rosé 2007
$??; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 93 points
Gilles Lapalus makes this scrumptious, austere, pheasant eye rosé with agreat deal of respect for the beauties of the south of France. This one’s whathe calls syrah (shiraz),with cabernet and merlot. Frost, hail, and drought buggered 2007 for most inhis neck of the woods, but this is no tank of waste from that carnage, like somany contemporary rosés. Rather, it’s a triumph of intelligent, traditional,respectful winemaking, with its bouquet of musk, raspberry, blood orange andmarzipan, and its neatly viscous palate of all those, plus. One for thegastronome. Smoked mackerel, char-grilled. www.suttongrangewinery.com

J.E Ngeringa Adelaide Hills Rosé 2008
$28: 13% alcohol; screw cap; 93points
Once the stalks were removed from the biodynamic 2008 shiraz, and the berrieswere left for twelve hours, this juice was simply dyin’ to run out the bottomof the vat. This suited everybody, because the shiraz left behind would be more intense, notto mention the little matter of us getting this sassy menace to drink. Imaginemaraschino cherries in a squirt of lemon juice, on a linen frocked table in themiddle of a flowery pasture just browning off in the first breath of summer.The anticipation of company. Crusty bread, goat cheese. Watercress, alfalfasprouts. The flavours of raspberry and blood orange. Acidity that makes yourlips swell with blood. Swoon. I feel Fellini looking over my shoulder.www.ngeringa.com

Margan HunterValley ShirazSaignée 2006
($20; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 93 points)
The French word reflects the manner in which this exemplary rosé was made: youbleed the free-run juice from your shirazbefore pressing. The vineyard’s deep, loose, red volcanic soils give a tidyacrid edge to the raspberry and maraschino fruits that vibrate around thisglass. Drink it, and you’re wallowing in a pot pourri of chopped red fruittopping from your granny’s best ever trifle. Have it with smoked mackerel ondark rye with lemon juice.
www.margan.com.au (28.10.6)

Mt. Bera Adelaide Hills White Cabernet2006
($16; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 93 points)
One of the nicest things I ever had in Hindley Street was a 10 y.o. Houghtoncabernet rosé, in Ceylon Hut. It was like clairette - Bordeaux made quick - as Billy Shakespaw sunkin the Boar’s Head. That became claret, a word the EU now forbids us fromusing. But this proves we can still make it! Not white: darker than rosé, butsimple: dry, with lemon, walnuts, Cherry Heering, medlar, kippers, war paint,lipstick, prosciutto, etc., and best had cool with heaps of that stuff.www.mtberavineyards.com.au (2.12.6)

Mt. Billy Southern Fleurieu Saignée 2006
$20; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93 points
Pinot meurnier is a relly of the noir, and tends to be a little more feraland meaty. Here, John Edwards has used his cool climate cut of it toperfection. It has a similarly sharp acrid edge to the masterly Gibbston,offsetting the comforting texture of chicken stock or fish stock below. Thatpleasing roll of puppy fat, cute and fresh, balanced the huskily sexy edge inthe bouquet. Iot’s a bonnie, fun drink for grown-ups and fish.www.mtbillywines.com.au

Old Mill Estate Touriga NacionalLanghorne Creek Rosé 2005
$16; 12.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93 points
If you had a beautiful comfy old cracked leather chesterfield, and just gave ita big drink of saddlesoap or R. M. Williams’ fabulous leather dressing, thesmell would be a little like the aroma of this really complex ageing rosé.There are plenty of red fruits, of course, but these are gradually becomingmore along the lines of dried fig, date and pear, than the fresh plums, marellocherries and blood orange which are on the decline. It smells a little likelipstick; a little like Italian smokehouse meats, like cacciatora orprosciutto. The palate is elegantly slender and dry with fine walnut tannins,and should be served just cool, as if it were fresh from a particularly coolcellar. It leaves a cheeky little dollop of raspberry on the palate after it’sswallowed, reminding the drinker of its bright rosy youth. Perfect wine forserious tapas, mezes, or antipasto. 01 MAR 09

Yangarra Estate Vineyard Small Pot McLaren ValeCarignan Grenache Mourvèdre Rosè 2011
$25; 12.9% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 30October – 2 November 2011; 93 points
Down-the-line Provence style rosé served a year early. But better. From Australia. This drink seems to undress itself right in front of you. But very slowly. Suspended in its watermelon juice and blood orange plasma, comes itspears-and-strawberries opening, through all those neat little fatty acids tothe citrus and bitter cherry sector and then the pithy tannins that pull youback for more pears and strawberries. It’s all over you. It is a tease ofa wine, never quite letting you see everything at once … letting you suspectthat maybe you have, then unveiling a glimpse of some other surprise. Itgives a cheeky illusion of simple and cute sweetness, then washes that awaywith an authoritative sweep of something bitter and very adult, like Campariand soda. I want it with smoked salmon, fennell, raw spanish onion,capers and horseradish cream on thin dark rye. This was the made from theco-fermented juice of the new baby bush vines, left to tick through a carbonicmaceration before pressing into tank. The winery stank of roses,maraschino cherries and Turkish delight.

Cape Jaffa La Lune Rosé de Syrah 2008
$25; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 92++ points
After twelve years of hard experimentation, Derek and Anna Hooper have finallygot their accreditation from the Australia Certified Organic mob; this is theirfirst sale of fully accredited biodynamic fruit. Unlike most shiraz rosés,which are the free run from normal dry red shiraz, allowed to dribble outovernight so the remainder of the tank is more like the sort of thick blackmuck beloved of the Parkerilla, this wine was even picked with rosé in mind,while its natural acidity was still quite high. Pity more shirazmakers didn’t follow suit with their normal wine: nearly all our shiraz would benefit fromhigher levels of natural acidity. So we end up with quite an explosion ofvibrant healthy pink in the mouth division: tart cranberry or yellowsalmonberry more than raspberry, astringent wild cherry more than sweet farmedones. Maybe even blood orange, but with the zest of the Seville orange, whichis what they use to make Cointreau, Curacaoand Grand Marnier. It’s lovely, dry, crunchy rosé that would perfectlyaccompany some greasy smoked mackerel and chêvre on rye. One lesson: becausebiodynamic practice tends to turn the volume up on every aspect of your fruit,it will also turn your astringency up; if this had some of the viscosity of themagical Castagna rosé, it would be better balanced. It will be better in two orthree years. Nice now, but for grown-ups only.

Old Mill Estate Touriga NacionalLanghorne Creek Rosé 2008
$17; 12.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92++points
Immediately bright and cheery, this big pink shunts out evocations of allmanner of rosy fruits with a slightly wild, vegetal edge: ripe ox-hearttomatoes, red currant, cranberry, wild cherry, blood orange, rocha pear,feijoia, persimmom, tamarillo, watermelon, pomegranite -- even a slice of red spanishpineapple. Beside these vibrant fruits rises a brightly sharpened edge ofburlap and dust, which makes the nostrils flare with anticipation, and eventickles them. The palate’s perfectly viscous and comforting to feel, with agentle, homogenised syrup of all those fruits settling the sensories until themore acrid and edgy reflections of the vineyard’s complex earths and alluviumsrise with the acidity to put anticipation and hunger back into mind. It’sbeautiful, evocative, appetising and tantalising wine which can handle a deepchill, even a big ice block with a mint, cherry and strawberry garnish, but isbest served just cool in a big glass. 01 MAR 09

S. C. Pannell McLaren Vale Rosé Prido 2009

$26; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 92+ points

Only a mug would leave anopened rosé in the fridge for a fortnight, but being a perverse torturousbastard, I did exactly that to this exquisity. It’s better! So it’ll cellarbeautifully, and be big-time go in two or three years. Fresh? At the BushingKing lunch, where the Crowned glory was not to be seen, this won serious bling,and the winemaking throng guzzled it like there was no tomorrow, which theremust have been. It’s scrumptiously crunchy served cool, not freezing, with allmanner of nutty soft nougat aromas and turkish delight, raspberries andcranberries, and a very adult, stone-dry finish. Tuck your pretty knees under atable at Fino and let Shazza manage the solids.

Margan HunterValley Shiraz Saignée 2008
$??; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 92+ points
Funny thing. This rosé has the same aroma of dry summer grass and thebasalt-derived dust of Broke Fordwich that I found in Andrew Margan’s stunning2007 semillon – even down to the hint of juniper. (Andrew grows horny goatweedbetween the vine rows, which may explain some of that acrid herbaceousness, andjustified his suggestion that the best thing to drink this with is an amorousfriend.) But instead of the delicate lemon butter of the semi, this has rudecharcuterie meats, maraschino cherries and cranberry in the second row. It’sreally live cheeky wine: it gets right up your nose. The palate’s not asfullsome as that meaty bouquet might suggest, but rather pleasantly juicy andbone dry, with tannins like a number ten bus, and crunchy natural-lookingacidity. It does make one feel rather like hopping through a hole in thehedgerow for a spot of lusty frotting in the sward, but there’s a serioussurfeit of sward around here these days, so I’ll have it near a bed, thanks.Prosciutto and melon; baguette with ripe tomato, bocconcini and fresh basilsort of stuff would be handy. Nothing like a little bocconcini and breadcrumbsin the cot, eh? You don’t even need glasses, really. JAN 09

Port Phillip Estate Mornington PeninsulaSalasso Rosé 2009
$22; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; drunk5-7MAY10; 92+ points
Crisp goju berries (a.k.a. medlar) seem to grow in this glass: along with aneat carbide reek and a shot of guano, or burlap phosphate sacks. In otherwords, acrid, appetizing smells. There’s a cute lozenge of goju left in themiddle of the tongue as the bone dry tannins wrap about it, making the soulvery hungry indeed. Seafood on the char grill, please. Prawns and scallops;squid.

Old Mill Estate Touriga NacionalLanghorne Creek Rosé 2007
$17; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 91++ points
Squishy ripe strawberry, raspberry, and blood orange are the principal aromashere, backed up with the fleshy smell of the white pith of the strawberry. Itsmells like these fresh ripe fruits have been diced, doused in pink champagne,dusted with confectioner’s sugar, decked with a handful of maraschino cherries,and served with ice blocks, a chunk of meringue and a dollop of fresh whippedcream. But then another wave of aroma rises: the acrid, edgy smell of the drydelta alluvium, and the hessian/hemp/burlap aroma of dry meadow grass. Withtime, there’s a whiff of charcuterie meats, like pancetta, which simply makesit all the more alluring. The palate has quite fat viscosity, like fruit syrup,before those chubby fruits arise, and the finish is clean, crisp, bone dry andappetising. While this seems a more frivolous and chuggable drink than the2008, it takes on a more serious air as it opens and warms with time in theglass. 01 MAR 09

Domaine de Saint-Antoine Costières deNîmes Rosé 2006

$13; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 91+ points
All the better for a couple of years' age, this meaty little south-of-Francewonder comes from Nimes, the home of the cloth de Nimes, as in jeans. Sailors'pants. I can see a few sailor boys setting off in this lovely pomegranite andprosciutto profusion: it needs bouillabaise, fast! Just a few mackerel or snooksmoked on the char first, and then, the full-bore bouillabaise. Some granapecorino would be good, too. Oh ma Lawdy. Thirteen bucks. Bone dry. Juicy andmeaty and nothing like that Rockfordgoo. Vintage Cellars for Aussies, and 1st Choice. Thirteen bucks. 05 MAR 09.

Stoneleigh Marlborough Pinot Noir Rosé2006
$19; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 91 points
There are two extremes of drinkable rosé. The first is the lollypop sweetraspberry cordial stuff like the famously mis-spelt Alicante Bouchet. Far toosweet for me. Then there’s the rare adult one with tannin instead of sugar.This falls between the two, being not particularly sweet, but having no tanninto dry its finish and tease the palate. It’s all maraschino and raspberry,slippery smooth and satisfying. While it sang with seafood tomato sauce onvegeroni, it was more The Blind Man than Pavarotti. www.stoneleigh.co.nz

De Bortoli Yarra ValleyPinot Noir Rosé 2011

$22; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 90+ points

On the other hand, thisone’s more slender, staunch and vegetal. It smells more like turnipgreens and burlap onion sacks – it is indeed the colour of a pale brownonion. That burlap character, which I imagine, perhaps foolishly,to derive from a methoxyopyrazine, as occurs in Sauvignon blanc, is devilishlyalluring and appetizing. The wine then shows a cheeky and relieving twistof its sister’s puppy fat in its strapping acid and summer dust tail – perhapsthis is Dame Nellie’s manager. He carries just the memory of the lastbrief sniff of her pink cheek. Otherwise, it’s just a skinny dude in asuit. Jolly good company, however, with smoked chicken or rabbit,chillies notwithstanding, or a juicy hare stew.

False Cape Kangaroo IslandMontebello Rosé2007
$18; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 90+ points
Here’s a grown-ups’ slippery pink that’s as dry as the country it grew in. Evenif it’s an accident, it’s a gastronomically intelligent blend of merlot,cabernet and shiraz.Sacky burlap whiffs and blood orange fill the bouquet; the palate’s complex,elegant and bone dry, and had me immediately yearning for mackerel straight outof the smoker. It’s the closest Island pink to the XXX-rated beauties you slurpwith your bouillabaise in Marseilles,corks willing. 10 OCT 98

Gundog Estate Canberra Rosé 2009

$20; 13% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 07JUN10; 90points
Blood orange, poached quince and Iberian ham seem to be the aromas here, alongwith some nostril-tickling acrid split stone and maybe some burlap. Thepalate's viscous and sweet, a bit like cranberry jelly. To use an emulsionalmetaphor, if Cochise was a Maori, he'd have this with his lamb. Only theBratash Kiwis use mint sauce for aftershave.

Taltarni T Series Victoria Rosé 2006
$15; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 90 points
When the cold reality of this glut-busting vintage settles on thoseplonk-mongers who have their hands on, among other things, the levers of wineindustry power, our current flood of rosés made from bleached, sugared dry redwill evaporate. But I fervently beseech the mighty Bacchus to ensure thecontinuation of lovely smart dry ones like this. Made from free-run juice bledfrom dry red fermenters, the wine is fresh, viscous, and brilliant, whilst thestuff left behind for the presses is more concentrated and profound. So bothwines are better. Tuna sashimi; wasabe. www.taltarni.com.au

Charles Melton Rose of Virginia2007
$21; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 89++ points
Good Time Charlie’s blended cabernet, shirazand pinot meunier with a great big glob of grenache to make this. And glob isthe word: rosy grenache reminds me of some kind of maraschino and raspberryjelly gloop you’d get in sideshow alley. But this wine’s been built and blendedso that simple sweet grenache gets a tarter texture and some spice. It’sperfect autumn schlücking with chevre and nuts or kippers on rye with rawonion. www.charlesmeltonwines.com.au

Woolybud Kangaroo Island Rosé 2008
$16; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 89+ points
Maraschino cherries and blood orange ooze about this bright glass, below asavoury, appetising edge like dried meadow grass. It’s wholesome andaccomplished, with a juicy sweet top but great acidity and a neat dry finish.Like the kid in the third row of desks who’s never, ever done anything wrong. AMormon, maybe? A Cooneyite? He’ll come round. The Devil always wins. It wasmade by Jeff and Brody Howard at Dudley Partners. 10 OCT 98

de Bortoli La Bohème Act Two Yarra Valley Pinot Noir Rosé 2011

$20; 12.5% alcohol; screw cap; 89 points

Apart from Old Mill Estate’sstunning Touriga Nacional Rosé, those made by Sutton Grange, Dandelion, SandroMosele and, if you can handle the bubbles, Louis Crystal and Krug RoséChampagnes, these new de Borts are about my favourite pinks. All Pinot,this one has a cute puppy fat flesh about it – what winemakers dumbly call atextural wine. Strawberries, raspberries, cranberry and maybe grapefruitare the juices; soft is the acid; chalky the finish. But bugger texture -it’s that lovely Nellie Melba puppy fat that sets me swooning: why they can’tcall it that is a puzzle, yes. Smoked salmon with capers and brown onion onrye. Yes.

Terra Felix Central Victoria La Vie En Rose 2007
$16; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 89 points
Aha! Somebody else grooves on the spirit of the rosé wines of Provence. Mourvèdre’s a main grape there,either in the full-bodied reds of Bandol, or the plethora of wicked rosésyou’ll find to guzzle in the funky bouillabaisse and fish grill joints of Marseilles. Which is onewicked city… (remembers…) This is mourvèdre, or mataro as we call it. What the Spaniards callmonastrell. It has a naughty little whiff of hessian above a rosy wash ofmaraschino cherries, pomegranite, raspberry and watermelon. Not one of yourpoofy Chuppa Chuppa pinks. Chèvre. Dan Murphy. www.terrafelix.com.au

Dominique Portet Yarra Valley CabernetMerlot Shiraz Rosé 2008
$??; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 88 points
Smelling a little of the marine dunes and pigface that typifies many MorningtonPeninsula rosés, but with cranberry and pale strawberry below, this littleblossom smells quite a lot more svelte and racy than it actually is. For theminute you put the sniffing business behind you, which is better done soonerwith most of the crap rosé currently being factoried in Australia, the minutethat pleasantry – in this case – is out of the way, you get a nice fat mouthfulof fluffy, ethereal insinuations of pink fruits, like salmonberries andcranberries. And then it leaves you. No it doesn’t. Yes it does. No it doesn’t.It has little tannin, but a long, gradual declension of said berries, slightlyhot alcohol, and acid. Fish’n’chips with sweet chilli sauce. JAN 09

Bay of Shoals Kangaroo Island Rosé 2008
$18; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 86points
Made from shiraz grown on the seashore at the moody, tidal flatwater of the Bayof Shoals, with all those sea birds, this is a brightraspberry/strawberry/maraschino cherry pink of medium sweetness. It has allthose juicy raspberry and fruit gum frivolities in a lush, low-acid framework.It’s clean and lively, and makes a perfect rival for the lollypop RockfordAlicante Bouchet. Which is saying something. 10 OCT 98

Cleggett Langhorne Creek Malian 2005
$14; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 85+ points
Malian is the bronze version of Mac Cleggett’s two sports of cabernetsauvignon. Made in a sort of south-of-France rosé style - think clean freshTavel – this wine’s meaty and spicy. Malian seems to have deliberately mutatedto accompany all sorts of tapas and antipasto, but especially the smokedprosciutto, and cured sausages. After a blast of dark cherry juice, thepalate’s tight and dry, with fine velvety tannins. It’s tart, but well worthcellaring. www.cleggettwines.com.au

Rookery Kangaroo Island Rosé 2008
$14; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 85 points
Based on sangiovese, and opening with an alluring bouquet like hessian andappetising, acrid phosphate, this more complex pink smelled as if it would bebone dry. It’s not quite that dry, but it’s still more interesting andfacetious than most dim pinks. It seems to have some chippy oak in theresomewhere, amongst the meaty sort of flavours sangiovese releases in rosé.Think pancetta, prosciutto and Iberian ham, with that lovely white fat. 10 OCT98

Domain Day Mt Crawford One Serious Rosé2008
$15; 12.8% alcohol; screw cap; 81 points
Cranberry. Salmonberry. Tin. Custard apple. Tamarillo. It’s a thick, complexsmell for a rosé. Fritz. (Which is Barossa white pork offal sausage to havecold on white Viennasandwich bread with lotsa salted butter and Rosella tomato sauce.) It’s allhere. The palate’s thick, too, and then there’s a gap, and then there’s a sortahot tannic aftertaste. And then there’s a layer of syrup that moves into themouth, lies down and stays there. This is no Castagna. Is that wood? Viognier?It reminds me of one of those white blues singers with tatts and a moe whosings “I gotta woman loves me all night long” on an aggro slide tinny. Everyoneknows it’s not true. But you feel for both of ’em.

Bremerton Racy Rose 2008
$16; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 80 points
This is not racy. It smells fatty and sweet and dumb. Like raw chook flesh. Andit tastes like that, too: like half raw charcuterie meats, strawberries andmaraschino cherries. And yep, whoever wrote on the back that it tastes likewatermelon was pretty much on the mark. Watermelon with alcohol and bone drytannin. FEB 09

Wicks Estate Adelaide Hills Rosé 2008
$15; 12.5% alcohol; screw cap; 77 points
Blood orange and Elvis roses, maybe some cranberry, rude pinks: this has allthe key ingredients for a slutty rosé. Even some meat on the turn. Make of thatwhat you want. But the palate’s so dumb and simply sweet that this honky brerneeds to run for it. Read away. I need other stuff. A lot of people need this,though. Boy George.

Yalumba Rogers & Rufus Grenache of Barossa Rosé2011

$18; 11% alcohol; screw cap;tasted 27 JAN 12; 70 points;

With a flesh-coloured BandAid of cotton drill for a necktag (like Cape Jaffa) and the odd Rolls Royce R&Rinsinuation (like Greenock Creek’s Roennfeldt Road, and Hardy's hopeless E&E), and the line “11.0%alcohol at sea level” (like Wirra Wirra in Greg Trott’s day), and the drawingsof the grapegrowers’ shoes on the front (like Trevor Smith) this release seemslost for original packaging and design inspiration. Which leads me to the winemaking. Considering the way the moisture-sensitive,tight-bunched Grenache surrendered to botrytis and mildew in this, thesecond-wettest vintage in Australian history, the vintage explanation in thepropaganda sheet is of interest, too. Itdoesn’t mention that Grenache thrives only in hot, dry conditions, and isparticularly susceptible to bunch rot and mildew in wet seasons, but says “Coolconditions during March meant we had to pick our grapes a little later thanusual but the grapes came off with delicate aromatic qualities and freshness.” Freshness, see. Handy in a young rosé, freshness. This PR sheet, by the way, is in the form of a comic, which is a first. (QUESTION: When Grenache is finally takingoff as a serious variety, there’s a shortage of it, and somebody like these mysteriousR&R growers have healthy old dry-grown bush vines, whose fruit should beworth at least $2000 a tonne if it were good, why would you pick it late for roséat $18?) It’s fluorescently pink wine, like smoked salmon. It smells a little like soap, or apples waxedfor the cold store. It is only modestlyviscous and very slight of flavour. Maybethe flesh pink facets of the package are there to give the illusion of the healthyfleshiness which does not appear much in the wine. Vegans and vegetarians can drink it withimpunity. I agree with the Goebbels Division which says it tastes ofpomegranate. It’s also like watermelon: “Eat,drink and wash your face all at once,” as they say of watermelons in Dixie. It has aninsinuation of chalky tannin and not much acid. It reminds me of most of the rosésof the south of France,in a difficult year.

SPARKLING WHITE

2012-01-25T15:06:00.000+10:30

Krug Vintage 1996

$500; drunk 25 APR 09; 98++ points

Any duffer must agree withthe Krug family when they call this vintage “extreme, eccentric champagne”. Onanother level, it’s that way because it’s so stubbornly, insistently Krug inits style, being a combination of the dogged determination of the Krugs tomaintain their house distinction through a unique formula honed consistentlysince 1843, and one of the most formidably confounding vintages in a century.

1996 was the last Krugvintage to which Paul Krug II contributed: it was blended by him, his sons Rémyand Henri, and his grandson Olivier, who famously reported “Throughout hislife, my grandfather shunned exaggeration of every kind. But on this occasion,he looked at us and said ‘I think this may well be the next 1928’.” Which issaying something. While the 1928 was growing ricketty when I last tasted it inthe early ’nineties, it still had the whiff of sublimity, a skerrick of itsoriginal fruit, and astonishing, living natural acidity holding its old fleshto its austere, rigid skeleton.

1996 was a freak year,weather-wise. The on-off summer alternated between sodding rain-driven humidityand extreme dry heat, which eventually surrendered to a sunny, clear autumnwith freezing nights. The Krug system of pressing each parcel of fruit in ornear its source vineyard, then fermenting and ageing the must in neutral, oldArgonne barrels and taking complexity from deliberate oxidation and extendedlees contact, whilst eschewing malo-lactic fermentation, the reserve thenstored in chilled stainless steel away down in the chalk until required, alwaysgives wine of character and finesse far beyond the sum of its components. Andby deliberate oxidation, I mean it: once the Krugs have decided on thecomposition of each cuvée, its barrels are drawn from below and tipped on theblending room floor, from whence the wine flows back down through a pipethrough the chalk to the blending tank way below. The winery smells very goodat assemblage!

The vagaries of 1996 haveobviously bowed very low to the Kruggiste method, for this wine is indeed anastonishing, perfectly polished thing of beauty: the typically Krugcounterpoint of extreme complexity with unlikely finesse. Chardonnay, pinotnoir and pinot meunier have been blended to conjure a wine of such beauty andconfidence that it seems almost matter-of-fact. Normal. The done thing. Oh how I wish! Ripe anjou and comice pearsseep calmly through the bouquet, with some sort of exquisite honey and gingerbrioche, yet to be invented. The palate is creamy and reassuringly smooth inthat strangely assertive and matter-of-fact way, and ever-so-gradually tapersoff, leaving a rapier of stern acidity and the feeling that something very veryrare and special has just happened to your gustatories. The aftertaste isincredibly fresh and enlivening; the bead and mousse ever so fine, gentle, andpersistent in its caress. I once asked Henri how much research they’d done intothe secret of Krug’s tiny bubbles. He said such information was a highlyconfidential secret of Krug but admitted he’d spent many years counting them.So. The price? Sell your car.

Krug Champagne 1998

$550; cork; drunk on various occasions, this note on12JAN10; 97+++ points
There's an apocryphal yarn about the murderer who, upon being strapped into theelectric chair, looked at his executioner and said "This'll teachme". This wine always reminds me of that. I don't really know why: thedamned thing is so profoundly confronting in its beauty and intensity that themind does go silly, in a willy nilly, electrocuted sort of way. Thoughts fallto the floor and shatter harmlessly about the drinker: they no longer count.Perhaps it's also the serene expectation that one will soon be found dead inone's chair with a really silly smile and a glass, empty, clutched in a gripthat makes Charlton Heston's rifleman speech look like something uttered by atotal softcock. The smell of an organic wheatfield, almost ripe, after thelightest rain. The smell of the most delicate brioche. Hazelnut. Wet chalk.Sliced, poached almond being fastidiously placed on a perfect marzipan icing inthe kitchen of La Crayere. Oyster mushroom, and enoki. I can smell it for anhour, happy to postpone the execution. But finally, involuntarily, the glassfinds its way to the lips, and like all Krug, just seems to evaporate into myorgans. My body. The corpuscles, the genes, the chromasomes vibrate inimmaculate harmony, and purr. This must send a transmission so powerful it canbe received by other life forms, billions of light years away. I remember RemiKrug remarking twenty years ago that he admired the way I guzzled the GrandCuvee, rather than inhaling common air through it to make that obscene gurglingnoise and spitting it like an Englishman. "But I am a Vikin, and Krugcomes properly perforated with bubbles installed by the Krug family," Iresponded. "It needs no other air buggering it up." And so it goes.No need to change the technique. Gulp it down! Have it from a bigger glass!Pour yourself a tumbler! Do it again! Sell your house!

NEW!

Dom Perignon Œnoteque 1996

$300-$500; 12.5% alcohol; cork; disgorged 2008; 96+++points

Champagne’s 1996 vintage weather was freakish: hot and cold;wet and dry. A sunny autumn with freezing nights finished it,seemingly entrapping the polarised results of those earlier weather extremesforever. So this sinister black-and-silverlabel hides a see-sawing range of flavours that covers thewheatfield/brioche/lemon pith characters of the chill, as much as the gentlychubby riper umami/glutamate insinuations of the heat and humidity. Given the elegance of touch chef de cave DrRichard Geoffroy shows in his blends, these facets here seem more overt than inthe more boisterous assemblages of some rivals and neighbours in the same year.In this wine, for the first time, I saw a fatty acid that reminded me ofavocado, which occurs at the sunny extreme; the chilly and austere lemon andchalk characters are there to balance, but so far, they remain remote andcontrasting. I won’t say straining tobalance, but suggest they are not as harmoniously supportive as they are in,say, the 1998 wines. Which is to be extremely picky. I’d gurgle away at this anytime, anywhere,and still grin foolishly. But where toget the money? Certainly not writingabout wine!

Lanson Noble Cuvee Blanc be Blanc 1989
cork; magnum well and truly drunk on 4APR10; 95++ points
As the great evening proceeds, the buttery brioche and Petticoat Tailshortbreads magnify, jumping the gastro ropes into the genteel ring with thetoasted hazelnut, the lemon and strawberry pith, through the middle mousse andthe perfect richness and that fabbo dry dry tail with all its langorous andperfect tannins into the uncontrollable future zippo. Pass the funnel, Jeeves,I feel like a bit of a lie down.

Romney Park Hahndorf Adelaide Hills Blanc de Blancs2004

$67.50; 12.5% alcohol; crownseal; 94+ points

It’s been a year since Ilast drank this scrumptious luxury, and in that time (this particular bottlewas on lees until 13th February 2009) it has become much more rare, a lot moreexpensive, and, well, better. I drank it today at The Victory, with the Domainede la Romney Parkers, half the Honeymoon Hillers, and none other than DougGovan himself. Antonio Carluccio sat unrecognised a table away, photographingevery dish he ordered while he drank Paxton’s Quangdong Farm Shiraz and Romney Park’snew pinot noir. But the star of the day was this amazing fizz: think ofBillecart-Salmon’s Blanc de Blanc without the Avize component. The damned thingdoes immediately make me think of Mesnil-sur-Oger; even Krug’s Clos de MesnilBdB nipple polish. Delicate cashew and carambola aromas have joined the drymeadow blooms that were there a year or so ago, and the apples have becomeslightly poached quince, with maybe just half a clove. I’m waiting for a betterAustralian fizz. This is now simply exquisite – easily the best SouthAustralian sparkler, ever, and maybe the best Australian. It’s gorgeous,delicate, forceful, elegant: hand disgorged upon order, and best about threemonths after disgorgement, so I’d be calling Rod Short at Romney Parkto ensure your spring and Christmas fizz will be delivered in perfect order, NOW.(International + 61 439 398 366) 25 MAR 09

Kreglinger Tasmania Vintage Brut 2001
$46.50; 12.5% alcohol; cork; 94 points
René Bezemer made this wondrous explosion of titillation and luxury for theprivate Kreglinger company (founded in Belgium in 1797 it procured Piper’sBrook, founded in 1974, in 2003). It’s a gorgeous drink: all cracker biscuits,brioche and pickled lemons in the prickly bouquet; crunchy terroir-driven gearsin the mouth. Increasingly, with wines like this, Tasmaniais showing that there’s little point in going all the way to France forfizz. Kreglinger’s Belgian, and they’ve come all the way here. I’m with them.(2.2.8)

Lilbert Fils Grand Cru Blanc de BlancsChampagne NV

$90; ??% alcohol; cork;drunk 6MAY10; 94 points
My money was immediately on this babe coming from Mesnil: it has that cutearoma of paper flowers that usually signifies that ville. But no - it's fromfurther north: 60% Cramant, 30% Chouilly and 10% Oiry, with an abolutelyminimal doseage. It has incredible finesse for a wine of this price: so crispand crunchy it seems almost brittle, like those crunchy Italian almondbiscotti. Very stylish indeed, and cheap!

Kreglinger Tasmania Vintage Brut 2002
$50; 12.5% alcohol; cork; 93+ points
Handsome brut, this! Very masculine, like a petit Krug GC, in that it has asmuch greengrocer as fruiter and haute pâtisserie in its complex, yet very fineand reserved bouquet. The palate’s creamy, full and basically plain sinful; theaftertaste lingering and teasing as much as cleansing and relaxing; and thebead very very tiny once your pour settles, which is a good thing, as we don’twant too many cavities in our drinks now, do we? Seriously, you’re a bit of aboofhead buying anything Champenoise short of $150-$300 cru prestige stuff whenthis is available, which it is. Which is also good. Very good. Tres bon. See,I’m like Randy Newman! I can speak French! JAN 09

Romney Park Blanc de Blancs 2004
$28; 12.5% alcohol; crown seal; 93+ points
Romney Park is no one trick pony. I was first nailed by the disgorged-to-ordersparkling, which I reckon’s in the Kreglinger/Arras/Clover Hill/Yarra Bankleague, and given its junior status and kindergarten price, comes scarily closeto the Gosset/Krug school. It was whole bunch pressed in a basket, fermented in6 year old hogsheads, underwent full malo in oak, and was cold-stored inbarrel. The aroma of the stuff jumps from the glass to your nose while theglass is still on the table. It’s creamy. With wheat, paperflowers, brioche,cashew and crackers. The palate’s tight and nutty, with faint marzipan, leaf,green apples and chalk. Its 10 g/l of acidity is all natural. There are 800bottles! While it’s rich and creamy, it’s still precise and tight, and afterabout twenty minutes air begins to loose delightful chèvre fats from the malo,and all the while there’s that tight swarfy acidity anchoring the foundations.“I wouldn’t use Adelaide Hills pinot for sparkling” said Rod Short. “It’s a bitsort of fat and boring”. (15.2.8)

Gratien & Meyer Cremant de Loire Brut
$25; 12.5% alcohol; cork(!); 92++ points

With recent stunning cheninsblanc from Coriole, Dowie Doole and Jardim do Bomfim, it’s a joy to push thechenin barrow all the way from its home in France’s valley of Kings, the Loire,where the natural acidity is very high in this variety – so high, that even thebotrytised ones, like Moulin-Touchais, take fifty years to approach. Thishyper-cool fizz has a little chardonnay to add cream to the lean acidity of itschenin, making a beautifully smooth, slightly plump seduction that makes medream of smoked oysters, foie gras, and nightingales in aspic with juniperberries. Or chêvre on rye with capers, if you don’t eat little birdies. Take abottle to the beach, or a case to Kangaroo Island. Vintage Cellarsand 1st Choice. DEC 08

Chandon Cuvée Riche
$37; 12.5% alcohol; cork; 91 points
Next time you plan a hangover, spill a bottle of this rich, sweet, bedside fizzover a bowl of sliced peaches. Plenty of lemon juice, and a splash of kirsch,or good tequila, which doesn’t seem to exist in Australia. (There is mucho in Mexico.) Whichis why you might need this healing morning sickness brekky. Leave your bowl inthe fridge overnight, add rich cream, and devour before the dog bites you. Orhave it neat the night before. www.greenpointwines.com.au

Pirie TasmaniaNon-Vintage

$32; 12.5%; Diam cork, 90points

Many years ago one engagedDr Brian Croser in a conversation concerning his forthcoming Petaluma fizz. Dr Croser, who wasn’t yet aDoctor, wanted nevertheless to call the wine Croser, a word which, onesuggested, was difficult to pronounce without the corners of one's mouthturning down. On the other hand, Piccadilly, being the picturesque AdelaideHills village in which said wine was grown and manufactured, was a word onecouldn't pronounce without one's mouth involuntarily finishing in a smile. And,well, with fizz being a celebratory sort of drink and all ... But Dr Croserretorted that as his wine was destined for international markets, like England, Piccadilly was an inappropriateappellation as many people imagined that part of London to be the sort of place in whichprostitutes solicited. Which led one to wonder what in the names of Bacchus andPan he imagined these people thought went down, or indeed who went down, inPetaluma, the now bankrupt Californian capitol of seedy strip clubs,arm-wrestling and chook-farming after which he had named his Piccadilly wineryin 1976. Once bitten twice shy? Anyway, Dr Croser called his wine Croser,leading that wag Harry Ayers to crack in London'sThe Spectator "at least he didn't call it Brian". As well asfizzmaking ex-partner Dr Tony Jordan (Chandon), a severe rival of Dr Croser'swas always Dr Andrew Pirie, a similarly confident, dour and trite sort of covewho quite correctly believed Tasmania was the better site for the growing andmanufacture of superior fizz. Having planted the first Pipers Brook vineyardsin 1974, Dr Pirie took twenty years to begin laying down the base wines for hissuperfizz, which of course he named Pirie, a word which is difficult to enouncewithout leaving one's kisser in a grimace. These cocky doctors never seem tothink any of this through. Meanwhile, Croser floated his Petalumaon the stock exchange, to see it consumed in 2004 by, well, a brewer, which wassoon producing Croser which tasted like it came from Petaluma, not Piccadilly, gaving him big timesulks. The only reason one relates this is that, perhaps not surprisingly, DrPirie had floated Pipers Brook, to see it swallowed up in 2003 by Kreglinger,the Belgian tanning and hide merchant which was established in 1797. While onecan only wonder whether it ever made wine skins, Kreglinger, one of the oldestcompanies on Earth, was soon releasing a very fine wine called Kreglinger, aterrible tangle of a brand name. Even if they’d named it after its maker, RenéBezemer, the brand would have felt better in the mouth. But, as one can see, inthis business people move along whether they want to or not, and Kreglinger iscloser phonetically to Krug, which is hardly a pretty word but most certainly apretty fine drink and anyway the Krugs can get away with calling their elixirthat because they're German and they’re the Krugs and Krug has 36% fewercavities. One presumes that the embittered Dr Pirie has finally levered hisPirie brand back out of the Kreglinger/Pipers Brook grasp, because the pressgumpf that accompanied this bottle claims this non-vintage blend of chardonnayand pinot noir to be a "relaunch of PIRIE". One might suspect DrPirie imagines his brand must have run aground to make a relaunch possible orindeed necessary, if one gets one’s drift, but this is quickly replaced byconfoundment when one reads that he seems to think it actually sank:"Finally," he writes, "the re-emergence of one of Australia'smost highly acclaimed sparkling wine labels and the origins of the brandPIRIE". While syntactically this non-sentence is hardly a triumph, it doessay “re-emergence”... “Emerge”, one's trusty Shorter Oxford English DictionaryOn Historical Principles states, means "to rise by virtue of buoyancy fromor out of a liquid". So unless Dr Pirie thinks his liquid is rising out ofthe Pirie liquid made by Kreglinger's Bezemer, or he was dreaming ofsubmarines, one might imagine he refers somehow to the Tamar River, which flowsthrough the valley of the same name, past the Tamar Ridge Estates vineyardsowned by Gunns, for whom Dr Pirie now works, and from whence this fruit came.Gunns is also the industrial developer which hopes to build the highlycontentious A$1.5 billion wood pulp mill there in the Tamar. Its wineries andvineyards presumably help to indicate its faith in its own capacity to keep theenvironment clean, but it hasn’t gone so far as to call a wine the Gunnslinger,or The Miller’s Tale, or anything along those lines. Or Andrew's Liver Salts,speaking of doctors. That’s mean. Anyway, in relation to Dr Pirie’s syntaxclimax, one presumes that it's not really a label he’s referring to, but adrink. And it's not a bad drink, although one can't quite see what all the fussis about. It has the right sort of small spherical cavities vertically emergent- not too big, and persistent - and it smells like wheat, almond biscotti, andthe white pith of oranges, lemons, and strawberries. Not their skin, or theirfruity juicy flesh, but their pith. One thinks one can sniff some oak, too.Nice. In the mouth, it appears almost complex, but also almost broad, as if itwere made after the Krug mould, but never quite got there, which is fairenough. Krug is a pretty big call for anybody not called Krug. It seems to havehad perhaps a little too much malo, or pinot, or perhaps Dr Pirie'sdeliberately oxidative winemaking has overwhelmed the fruit by, well, oxidisingit, at the expense of finesse. But there's no need to go into that, whether byrunning aground or submerging: it is indeed, only a drink, and not a bad drinkat that. Especially with almond biscotti. Although the finish, which Dr Pirie'sletter calls "strong", is sufficiently abrupt and citric - in a hotlemon juice sort of way - to overwhelm one's recollection of any of the"pleasant richness in the mouth" and "creamy mouth feel"that he obviously feels is there. So maybe it'd better accompany lightly batteredhumuhumunukunukuapuaa with mayonnaise and plenty of lemon juice. These mayeventually appear in the Tamar if the Gunns mill manages to warm its waterssufficiently. 29 MAR 09

Dominic Versace Wines Sparkling Bel Moscato NV
$??; 11.5% alcohol; cork; 89 points
Dominic Versace, and his feisty cousin, Armando Verdiglione, are making areputation for small-volume, high-quality Italo-Australian wines from thefanatically gardened Versace vineyard on the deep loamy plains north ofAdelaide. They bought fronti -- muscat blanc a petits grains -- from othervineyards to make this naughty sweetish fizz. It has the classic grilledpineapple bouquet of a moscato fizzed to champagne levels and maturingsensibly, and a presents a grinning mouthful of juicy sweet exploding joy.“Shit!” my teetotal driver said when I handed him a glass today, “I could drinka bottle of that in two seconds flat!” Which he narrowly avoided doing. I madeup for him. I wish somebody in the Adelaide Hills would plant a nice high coolclimate frontignac vineyard: in the hotter climes, where the stuff grows likeweeds, the wine lacks essential acidity and soon takes on a burnt rubber bouquet,rather than this model’s char-grilled pineapple. MAR 09

GEWURZTRAMINER

2012-01-25T13:50:00.001+10:30

NEW!

McWilliam’s Mount Pleasant 1946/66 Hunter Valley Sauternes

From a private collection; 10.2% alcohol; cork; consumedJanuary 2012; 96 points

In 1966, the winemakers atMcWilliams decided a batch of sweet Muscadelle, made by the mysterious geniusMaurice O’Shea in 1946, deserved a touch of freshening. So they put it in a tank with some sweetGewurztraminer to make a blend, 36% of it being the O’Shea wine. Even undercork – we were lucky - the resulting wine was striking in its freshness andvibrancy, 46 years later. Overwhelmingly heady blossoms, even the pungent elderflower, poured from the glasses and over the table in the most composed andauthoritative ooze. Honey andbutterscotch came to mind, but such simple words cannot do this alarmingtincture justice. It was sublime. Elegant, yet with the most seductive syrupy texture, the wine held itsfreshness until the bottle was spent. It’s not exactly common, but, corkwilling, THE gift from heaven if you ever see one on the auction lists. I will remember this wine forever.

Pewsey Vale Eden Valley Gewurztraminer 2008

$25; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 89++ points

Only those hardy soulswho've lived near the top of the Barossa Range through a few winters canappreciate how much more wild and wooly is the weather there: it's a freezingblustery place for most of the year, then in comes the blanching summer dry andthe air is crisp and crunchy as a chip and you hear the odd thud as the bigregums drop their mighty limbs. This gewurz has wind in her hair, and reeks ofthe bleak sandstone and schist-based soils that make up the High Eden Ridge.Winemaker Louisa Rose, who has property on said ridge beside Mountadam, knowsthis weather. She fermented this gewurz in old Frecnh barriques, and it smellslike it's all wild yeast to match. Then comes the frail yellow rose aroma ofthe variety at its best, maybe some lychee or guava. The palate's dry asground-up bone china. But the fruit is fleshy, and just manages to cover allthat stone and acid. Perfect for the pickled cabbage and smoked sausagechoucroute, plenty of hot mustard seeds in the sauce. 05 MAR 09

Pipers Brook Vineyard Tasmania Gewurztraminer 2008

$27.50; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 84 points

Musksticks, ripe raspberry fruit gels, maraschino cherries, blood orange, ly-chee,freesia – lotsa purdy party favours in this bouquet. But it’s all verywell-formed and polite – there’s no sign of misbehaviour. No seductivewickedness. The palate shows some of the errant tropicals and spice I need ingewurz, but it all feels a bit Sunday School Teacher to me. Neat dry finish,but even that’s a bit hymnbookish in its structure and papery tannin. Cucumbersandwiches: white viennabread, unsalted butter, crusts cut off.

SHIRAZ

2012-01-22T21:57:00.000+10:30

Penfolds Grange 2004

$650+; 14.3% alcohol; cork; tasted 20 Feb 09; 7 MAY09; 1 MAY 10; 96+++ points

Of all the Granges releasedin the modern era, this vintage is surely the most respectful of the wine’soriginal style. This is like the 1991 and 1983 models: it’s huge, almostimpenetrable wine set for a mighty future. Like the grand wines of MaxSchubert, this one has that extra tweak of volatility, a complexing factorwhich has quite simply become unfashionable in these days of bland, sanitaryhomogenity. Anise, fennel, and ginger topnotes grace a well of sweetly slurringancient soy and balsamico, with a cheesy little sidetrack about half way thoughthat had me thinking of ricotta and whey. Peter Gago has raided his favourite shiraz blocks in theBarossa, McLaren Vale, and Magill to forge this colossus, adding 4% cabernetfrom the 42K vineyard in the Barossa. He’s managed to give it sixteen months in100% new American oak without it picking up too much sap or coconut, and he’skept the alcohol at a drinkable level, so while it’s mighty and tight, it stillshows a balance and integrity the like of which we see very, very rarely. 2004was great year; the stalwart Penfolds crew again proves to be the best equippedto entrap such wonder in all its essential glory. Which is what we expect ofthem, but that’s never to say it’s easy. It’s confounding, for example, toconsider how a wine so densely packed with character could present it to one’ssensories with such incredible unforced delicacy of expression.

Best’s Great Western Thomson Family Shiraz 2006

$150; 14% alcohol; cork (!); TASTED jan 10 and 1 MAY10; 95+++ points

Thomsons bought Best’s in1920; Bests planted it in 1866. These vines are 1893 jobs. Five gens in,Thomsons produce a shirazthat matches, if not trounces, nearly every one I’ve had. Great Western townwas named after Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s ship of the day: the biggest everbuilt. Everything sorts itself out, see. With a pretty twist of eucalypt, thenthe black velvet cloak just danced in by Cyd Charisse, this is the most elegantnaughty thing I’ve had from a shiraz bush since the 1961 La Chappelle. Whichwill cost you US$110,000. This’ll go as long as that, cork willing. Save$109,850, US.

NEW!

Castagna Genesis Beechworth Syrah 2008

$300 for a six-pack of 500ml. bottles; 14% alcohol;Diam cork; 95+++ points

Whilst completelyhomogenized and harmonious after two years in the smaller bottle, this winealso presents contrast as dramatic as the thunderstorm that crackled around theCastagna winery as I tasted. I havelikened the aroma of previous vintages of this remarkable biodynamic Shiraz to the ozone whiffof lightning on the blackberry vines; this time it’s struck theblueberries. But the complexity andaudacious nature of the wine stretches far beyond that: it oozes about theglass at first: an incredible soulful syrup. Then it lets loose mellow seeps of Irish moss – which is in factdecaying seaweed, not moss - and thecomforting creamy umami of shiitake to support the meatiness of the blueberries. With this comes the sweet aroma of theCastagna pasture: the heady vanilla of that sweet buffalo grass in theŻubrówka. Then the edgy aromas arise:juniper, deadly nightshade, black tea leaves, aniseed … like all the newCastagnas, and many of their forebears, it works a delicious magic bysee-sawing constantly from offering smooth comfort to challenging edge, andfinally a persistent little jujube of blueberry, blackcurrant and blackberrysitting on the tongue. It’samazing. Tasted November 2011

Greenock Creek Apricot Block Shiraz 2007

$38; 15.5% alcohol; cork; tasted over a week inAugust 09; 95+++ points

With three whole per centless alcohol than the 06, this astonishing beast is more closed, remote, andunapproachable. Which, considering the intensity of its predecessor, is reallysaying something. It took three days before it dared let loose a hint of fruit.While it looks a lot less viogniated than previous years, in the sense thatthere’s less of the freaky apricot aroma and flavour – there is no viognier, ofcourse – it’s also less willing to show anything like the blackberry, cherry,and framboise liqueur of previous vintages. For about a week! Instead, theinitial fruit department is like a Ditter’s dried fruit mix, with solid blocksof dried fig, banana, prune, pear and apple. Then we get lost in thesteelworks: gunmetal and lathe swarf, even soldering flux seem to be the noteof the day, until about day four, when it begins to show signs of great redwine. It’s syrupy and lithely liqueur-like in texture, but not too fat orunctuous. If you drink it within three days of opening, treat it like vintageport, and have it with hard cheese and walnuts. After three days, it deservesperfect aged steak and big field mushrooms, or morels. Or leave the cork in,and give it twenty years’ bottle age. As I write, this bottle’s been open forweek, and it’s starting to look like wine: its grainy velvet’s graduallybeginning to take on a perfect silky sheen, and the fruits that were dry andniggardly are beginning to fill with lovely supple juice and freshness; fairdinkum. It’s easily the best Apricot Block yet, and my niggardly points onlyserve to show how slow the brute will be developing or opening up. This winewill outlive many of us. Confounding and astounding, it’s a life monument, astone solid, damn near perpetual memorial to Michael Waugh’s stonefacedstonemason stoicism!

Greenock Creek Roennfeldt’s Road Shiraz 2004

$192; 16.5% alcohol; cork; tasted over a week inAugust 09; 95+++ points

As with the RR cabernet,scores are practically meaningless with this infant monster. The two percentagepoints of alcohol it’s dropped relative to its predecessor seem only to makethe wine more confounding, impenetrable and contradictory. Plus signs, whichusually indicate cellaring potential, are useless unless you regard them likethe Xs on the tag of a tee shirt: you can’t have too many, because eventuallyyou’ll need ’em all! This is masculine wine, wild and gamy: a really awkwardyoung duffer but obviously of great breeding. Say a young Henry VIII, lost,wondering, between main course and dessert. It first exudes unlikely dandyishwhiffs of musk, butterscotch fudge, and sherbert. Dare to push the nose closerand you hit a beef wellington decked with fresh acidic blackcurrants and a lushmulberry sauce. A touch more air and you’ll see the smells associated withtannins: aniseed balls, piquant, dusty walnuts, and, from the oak, just theslightest hint of furniture polish. Tip some in, and you’ll be amazed to findit fleshy and sensual, like a wicked slippery liqueur: almost a dessert red,but not quite: memories of sabayon with blackcurrants; as borderline butenticing as the Mexican chocolate sauce Cheong occasionally pours on schnapperconfit, but here it’s poured on King Henry’s big beef pie. It’s slightly hot,sure, but that’s minor compared to other sins of the flesh going down in there.The whole shock leaves you with a royally indulgent, carnal exhalation, andlips like Marianne Faithful had in 1968.

Marius McLaren Vale Symphony Shiraz 2004

$??; 14% alcohol; screw cap; DRUNK 25JUN10; 95+++points

By Bacchus and Pan this is abeautiful, transfixing thing. It has astonishing intensity, complexity, andausterity, with fruit so authoritative and dense that to be fair it deservestwelve hours in the decanter. All the black fruits and nightshade leaf andjuniper are packed in so tight around a wall of rigid natural acidity that ourtable sat stunned in silence, staring disbelievingly into the kraters. It'ssurly and solid, with the frame of a thoroughbred, the determination of itsstaunch Roman namesake (right), and as much dry and dusty stone as the 26 milecrater of the same name in the Moon's second quadrant. It was probably a mercythat we took it the night before tonight's eclipse of the full Moon - somethingwoulda fused in the cosmos. I am not old enough to have tasted the 1961 LaChappelle at six years of age, but I have drunk it mature on various occasions,twice from magnum, and consider this wine may well be its equal, given theright cellar and the owner's infinite patience. Like that wine, this seemssomehow to have the structure of a mighty Bordeaux - it's about its shape, andthat sinister lick of nightshade - but while the Chappelle was likened as ayounger wine to the 61 Latour, this beauty seems a little more along the linesof St Emilion. I did drink the 78 Chappelle at six years, and think this couldbe better: it's more intense. Like both those wines, this is a serious thirtyyear job. I'm staggered.

Penfolds Grange 2003

$550+; 14.5% alcohol; cork; tasted FEB 08; 95+++points

Perhaps this is a releasewhich will break the market’s obsession with collecting only the even vintagesof Grange – you’d be mad not to stack this away if you can afford to. Anotherstep upward in the inexorable evolution of Australia’s greatest red, it’ssimply stunning. There’s no obvious American oak, but suffice. It’s a spicy asa Persian market. It has supple green nettle and rhubarb tannins which willsoften, but that majestic black cherry fruit, as mysterious and phenolic ascoca AND cola, is a towering monument to the genius of Schubert, Gago, and allwho came between. Royalty.

Penfolds Grange 2005

$550+; 14.5% alcohol; cork; 15APR10; 95+++ points

Pretty Polly! Musk andcivet. Wet hessian. Sap: raw sawn wood. Quercus alba! (If you must have it youmust have it like this.) Cordite. Carbide. Incredible bowl of fruits: currants,black currants, red currants, raspberries, medlar berries, strawberries,cranberries, salmonberries and watermelon. More musk. Banana lollies (ester).Paper. Chip off the old block. Shit. Cowshed. Milk. Chaos! Perfection! Fractal!Vim! Vigour! (In this church, they’re still trying to recognize thecongregation.) In other words, this is a dramatic contrast to the 2004, inwhich the vintage conditions, more than your actual winemaking, delivered ahyper-slick, silky-smooth, sensual slip of wine which, dare I say, could havebeen more along the lines of a great Black Label Wolf Blass, stylistically. Itremains a great Grange, of course, and one I suggested Max Schubert would love.But he’d love this better for its chaotic wildness. The whole barnyard’s inthis truck, barking, quacking, crowing, mooing and neighing. This will be thegreater Grange, given sufficient time for this Animal Farm uprising to subside.It’s Barossa, McLaren Vale and Coonawarra; 96% Shiraz; 4% Cabernet Sauvignon;eighteen months in brand new American oak hogsheads; a stunning challenge of adrink now; an utter blissbomb in twenty years plus.

Penfolds St Henri Shiraz 2004

$90; 14.5% alcohol; cork; tasted FEB 08; 95+++ points

This is the best new releaseSt Henri I can recall. At this price, it’s the bargain of the batch: animpossibly soft and seductive wine. It oozes the smooth, umami-like flavours ofoyster mushrooms, wood fungus and truffles. It’s supple, slender, silky andjuicy, with no component overshadowing the rest. While the Grange reallydemands a couple of decades of dungeon, this one will perform as well as that’71 St Henri in the very long term, but it’s perfectly approachable now. Athrilling, marvelous exercise in luxurious, perfectly harmonious shiraz, and a lesson toall those winemakers with wood fetishes.

Wendouree Shiraz 1998

$??; ??% alcohol; cork; drunk 6MAY10; 95+++ points

A brilliant white light ofsomething like the soul of the pepper of Jesus or Ezekiel or somebody shinesthrough this astonishing gastronomic device. The Valley of Dry Bonescomes to mind, too, in this electric hallucination. But it’s brimming with thejuice of all manners of briars and berries in a blood and gunmetal swirl, andas the heavenly breeze gets into it, it begins to smell like a cosmetic salonfor all the Muses, who were the pin-up girls of their day. And to remind you ofyour mortality, and the fact that all good things must come to an end, itdelivers you a lick of dry schisty tannin. The alarming thing is that all thishappens in a few seconds, which then taper off, as if time was stretchingelastically, and you realize that it tastes as if it was made in 2008.

NEW!

Castagna Genesis Beechworth Syrah 2009

$75; 14% alcohol; Diam cork; 95++ points

While Julian Castagnaderides the old Grange philosophy of American oak and added tannin, this couldalmost be mistaken for one of the more eucalypt-mentholated super-Penfoldswithout the coconut and sap. Which isevidence of his determination: while Grange was a compromise short of thethings Max Schubert felt essential for a superwine - Cabernet sauvignon andFrench oak for starters - Castagna has made no compromise. So this reminds me perversely of a Penfolds Ihave not seen. It reeks of blueberries,leather, fennel, meadow sward, anise, mace, cooking chocolate, dutch licorice,and dust. Then, once you’ve let it intoyour minions it leaves a delightful little lozenge of blackcurrant andblueberry in the middle of your tongue. The acidity, the tannins, the unction: all are sublime and beginning toharmonise. All the bells are ringing. And once again, the great soothe is here as powerfully as the sass. Tasted November 2011

Penfolds Grange 2002

$700+; 14.5% alcohol; cork(!); 95++ points

While Max had been makingGrange for two decades before I was old enough to drink them, I was lucky thathe lived long enough after that to share most of his favourites with me. AndI've certainly had all those made since he retired. So I can confidently saythat this is the freshest, most sanitary, finest, slender and sexy Grange ever.(Apart, perhaps, from the 1954, which was always overlooked in comparativetastings.) Juicy and cute, yet mightily concentrated and dense, this one's easyto guzzle now, but will gradually explode in the cellar.www.penfoldswines.com.au

Penfolds RWT Barossa Valley Shiraz2006

$170; 14.5% alcohol; cork; tasted 20 FEB 09; 7 MAY09; 1 MAY 10; 95++ points

The Red Wine Trial is now inits tenth release, and those who argued that amongst all Penfolds trademarkAmerican oaked reds there should reside this handsome line, made in 100%French, should be given awards. Copy: “I’m gradually going so high into thecosmos that the top of my skull is now in a state of complete weightlessness”,say the notes. “... Where’s Gerard Jaboulet when you need to show himsomething? Pancetta ... open-hearted ... Peter’s wines are more honest”. Thisis indeed stunning wine, fine and tight, velvety and seamless, with lovelygrainy tannins packed around the fruit like a redoubt. It’s long, lazy and smugin the authority of one who has absolutely nothing to prove.

Penfolds St Henri Shiraz 2005

$95; 14% alcohol; cork; tasted 20 FEB 09, 7 MAY 09, 1MAY 10; 95 points

This is gorgeous wine: madetrue to the style invented in the 1800s by Edmund Mazure and rekindled in theearly 50s by John Davouren, and a vintage which would delight and astonish bothmen. It has stunning perfume and intensity in the style of the old Guerlainperfumes, Jicky and L’heure Blue, and has that sort of impressionistic wistfulreflection about it. Nuages. It has layers of pretty essency confection, butlook deeper and you’ll see the aged shadows of leather and blood pudding. It’sa slow explosion of flavour in the mouth, with enough tannin to ensure twentygood years’ cellar. It’s not about to change suddenly!

Charles Melton Voices of Angels Eden Valley Shiraz 2005

$55; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94+++

Another of Charlie’s newsingle-vineyard creamers, this veritable choir of angels is more along theAretha Franklin singin’ black gospel in church than anything blue-eyed orpalely Lutheran. It’s from the deepest south of Eden Valley,and it’s utterly hard-core chickenskin music. Perfect new oak, black blackberries, gun oil – hot damn, it even smells like the sands of Africa.Velvety and bone dry, sinuous, it walks, it talks, it crawls on its belly likea reptile at a revival. And it’ll cellar brilliantly: this blessin’ll just keepon ringing your heavenly bells for twenty years min. Cracklin’ hog.www.charlesmeltonwines.com.au

Greenock Creek Seven Acre Shiraz 2007

$48; 14% alcohol; cork; tasted over a week in August09; 94+++ points

OK, here’s therecord-holder: this dour Easter Islandstone-hewn rockface of a wine is four whole percent lower in alcohol than itspredecessor. Four. Count ’em. Four. So what’s the difference? It smells morelike stone, for a start. It smells like the Flinders Rangesin summer. In fact, it smells like the smithy out the back of a shearing shedin the Flinders ranges in summer. In the first couple of days, I could smellall that, easily. Hot iron, forge coke, old harness: you get the drift. In daythree, the blacksmith, or the farrier, or whomsoever they have these days,magically opened up a lunchpail with a huge wobbling jelly of blackcurrantdecked with wild cherries preserved by his Missus in her Fowlers’ Vacola, anddoshed it up to the dusty lads with fresh whipped cream. But it’s the dust thatprevails, even after a week of oxygen: burlap, almond shells, the smell of afreshly-blasted quarry, these hard things predominate. Over the days, there’s afascinating counterplay between hardrock mining, blacksmiths and Flindersfarriers, maybe even the sweet smell of horse, and then the fruits: juniper,then bitter wild black cherry, then prune compote, then warmed black olives,fresh purple figs, quinces poached in burgundy with cloves, and so on. They allgradually emerge, blinking, into the light. Then comes the finish, barging inwith stone and steel and acid and black tea tannin from a tin pannier. If I hadanother week with it, which is impossible because this yarn must finally bewritten, I reckon it might wring more points outa me than that damn ApricotBlock did. Jeez. Impossible.

Karra Yerta Flaxman’s Gully Barossa Shiraz 2006

pre-release unlabelled sample; ??% alcohol; screwcap; 94+++ points

The stony, barren ridge atthe top of Flaxman’s, where the ancient rocks poke through high above theBarossa, is the home of some of the world’s most expensive and elusive shiraz wines. (ThinkRingland, next door. McLean’s Farm at thenorthern end; Mountadam at the southern.) This vineyard is windswept and wild,freezing in the winter, and even cool at night in the midst of the most viciousheatwaves. So this rare tincture has quite a lot to live up to. It has the mostintense and complex bouquet, riddled with twists of beauty that seem soblacksmithed into compression they unwind in a dreadfully gradual and teasingmanner. Musk, lavendar, violets, licorice, mint, cedar, sandalwood, vetiver,blackcurrant, blackberry, beetroot, morel, porcini, ancient soy, salt, schist,podsol, guano, gunpowder, swarf, burlap ... I dunno. I could go on, and I’veonly had my hooter in the glass for thirty minutes. I know now that this wineis gonna be a king hell striptease viper with a voice like Barry White andGrace Jones for a Mum. The palate’s disarming and confronting from the firstsip: just mildly viscous, especially compared to the intensity of its flavours,with, yep, the lithe form of the black whipsnake slithering around your mouthlike some professional girls apparently dance on poles. It’s strangely compactand intense, as I’ve said too many times, but still seems ethereal in its saucyhabit of letting little shots of its myriad components just go: they’re therefor a flash as they evaporate, and suddenly they’re replaced by something else.And on and on it goes. The dance of the hundred and summit veils. Sometime along way off all these bits and pieces will assimilate and homogenise and thedamned thing will be mature and formal and very, very famous, and thoseastonishing components will let go at the same time in equal proportions andreally, really gradually, but shit, that’ll kill people, and by Bacchus I loveit now. I doubt that I can stay alive long enough to drink it at its peak, andif I did, it’d kill me anyway. Karra Yerta has never hit the top ten in theglambam gobstopper any price you like stakes, but it will, and it will outshinemost of those wannabeez and cooderbeenz. This is a stunning, secret wine.Gimme! JAN 09 ps: Next day: I've justdiscovered this wine includes some tempranillo and cabernet. Perfect blending.

Marius Symphony Single Vineyard McLaren Vale Shiraz2007

$35; 14.2% alcohol; screw cap; APR 10; 94+++ points

Symphony makes Simpaticolook like a callow rake with only one sly eye on the throne. This is bigroyalty: amongst the very best shiraz from oneof Australia’s most revered shiraz regions. It isglowering yet mellow; stony-dry yet packed with simmering regal fruitconcentrate; thick and blacksmithed on one hand; elegant and sword-slick on theother. And there’s a naughty sprinkle of something a bit like Guerlain’sImperiale, which you can still buy but was first made for Napoleon, who tippedbuckets of it over himself in battle. He hated the bouquet of ordure. Hisbeautiful bottle has gold honeybees all over it. But Bony flunked, and this isstill king. The king’s perfume in Symphony has a little more musk, and hasnever been available for commoners. So who are you?

Penfolds Magill Estate Shiraz 2006

$100; 13.5% alcohol; cork; tasted 20 FEB 09, 7 MAY09, 1 MAY 10; 94+++ points

Veteran Penfolds winemaker(50 vintages) John Bird says the 91 vintage is the best Magill Estate, but inthose years the damn thing was so buried in American oak it will never comeinto fair balance. This one spent fourteen months in new hogsheads, 71% French,and 29% American, and I reckon it’s the best Magill Estate I can recall. It’ssweet and audacious to smell, part charcuterie, part confectionery, and thatdwindling percentage of American oak gives it just the cheekiest sappy edge.That aside, its fruit is the most open-faced and honest expression of shiraz, much the moreelegant and disarming for that lower alcohol, and its open-fermenter,basket-pressed style.

Penfolds Bin 28 Kalimna Shiraz 2006

$31.90; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; FEB 09, 1 MAY 10; 94+++points

I reckon this is the bestBin 28 in years. It’s not all Kalimna, though – there’s fruit from McLarenVale, Langhorne Creek and Clare in the blend. It tastes like Kalimna, however:its tannins are as dry and sparse as the wind-blown sand of that mightyvineyard. It has a deep sense of foreboding in its mood, as if there were athunderstorm over Kalimna, maybe because of the faint ozone-like whiff in thereamongst the sprinkling of white pepper. The fruit’s tight, chewy and austere,and as black and intense in its depth as pure tourmaline. It’s a thirty yearwine: amazing.

d’Arenberg The Dead Arm Shiraz 2006

$65; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94++ points

Dead Arm? What happened tohis arm? Trapped beneath a stillborn twin in the womb? If the writing on hisback was five or six points bigger we might find out, but I actually believe,and I’ve got this on really good sniff, that the arm was never there. This isthe One Armed Man.He’s an ironmonger who swings his hammer with that one mighty right arm. Underneaththe chestnut tree the village smithy stands. The muscles on his mighty arm aretight as iron bands. If you boiled down all the reviews in the SHIRAZ sectionof this blog, and half of the GRENACHE, fed ’em to your local Bubba – ’Lo,m’name’s Bubba, what’s y’all – got the local deaf reporter to intervieweverybody in a real deep investigative sense, then got Bubba to eat theshorthand notes, and THEN cut off his arm, you might get this. And they reckonthey can teach winemaking in universities. I coulda talked about berries andtannin, acid, for heaven’s sake, and juicy strapping fruit, and Chester finallyturning his back on the petrochem sprays and recreational cultivation and thenear impossibly ideal conditions of 2006, but you’d still be wondering aboutwhether the guy who never had the arm was an improvement on Bubba after you cutone of his off. And what’d you do with one you cut off? Is that the one thatkeeps reaching out for more cabernet? Eh? Chestermighta put it in the GSM, but it’s certainly not in the cabernet. So what's allthis microscopic rubbish on the back label?

Greenock Creek Seven Acre Shiraz 2006

($48; 18% alcohol; cork; 94+++ points)

Aroma: sweet, alluring, darkchocolate, blanched almonds, dried apricot, dried prune, coke, swarf, railwaysleepers. Flavour: licorice, aniseed, beetroot, juniper berries, gin, hotalcohol, red dust. Texture: thick, syrupy, irony, extremely dry tannins.Aftertaste: hot, sweet/dry, juniper tannins, challenging. Summary: Back whenthe Seven Acre roots were just beginning their extremely difficult journey intothe fractured siltstones and quartzites of the Tapleys Hill Formation, itswines were pretty confections to sniff, and neat, if intense, cordials todrink. Tapleys Hill Formation is made up of deposits that settled at the bottomof very deep, still lakes after the retreat of the ocean that left us theYudnamutana sediments. As these tough roots delve further, the wines becomemuch more complex and challenging. This is the most intense and powerful SevenAcre yet. Incredibly, it seems destined to settle in a balanced, ifoverwhelming state of grace. Its acidity and depth of flavour are as tight asiron, yet those pretty, teasing confectionery bits of its bouquet remain asfelicitious and salacious as the first Seven Acre bouquets. This isbreathtaking, astonishing wine. I know it’s hot, but so is gin. Anyway thisserves a different purpose. You can drink it with steak.

La Curio Reserve McLaren Vale Shiraz 2007

$31 ret $28 dir; 15% alcohol; cork; 94+++

We may have a new shiraz king. Adam Hooper,King of the defunkting Redheads Studio gutter rats McLiavalleyan red explosion,has this blood all over his hands. Best you can get: maybe his mostconventional current wine to sniff, but more in the line of the old doctrines,in that it has the sort of balance and thickness of effective platelets to makethe lips go wobbly in slow motion to suck blood back into the head, so itdoesn’t all fall out through the stabhole in your gizzards, which you suddenlyrealise is the source of that wicked life-and-death Scarlatti crimson rosejuicesmell! Then, and this probly happens only to me, the top left corner of myupper labia twitches into a an upwards Elvis sneer, and I think I must becoming. To church, of course. But that passes, and the Devil takes control. Abird never flew on the one wing. MAR 09

Langmeil The Freedom 1843 Barossa ValleyShiraz 2005

$100; 15.5% alcohol; cork; 94+++ points

Christian Auricht plantedthese vines 164 years ago. They looked a bit tired by 1996, when Karl Lindnerwaved the axe at ’em. But, being an Old Vine Tragic, he gave them a nice newquiff, and his rellies and the Bitters began the rebirth of Langmeil. Muchbetter formed than the modern syrupy Barossans, its svelte and supple stylegives no hint of all that alcohol. Yes, it’s intense, but much more like aserious Hermitage from the source of shiraz onthe Rhone. It’s astonishing: subtly oaked,gently chocolaty, softly mossy and mushroomy … and determined to live anothertwenty years, cork willing. Eternal life, anybody? www.langmeilwinery.com.au

Lazy Ballerina McLaren Vale Shiraz Viognier 2007

$20; 14.5% alcohol; Procork; 94+++ points

James Hook, Vales viti guru,sure knows how to viogniate a red. He grows shiraz so sinister it’ll suck allthe light out of a room, and adds “a few buckets” of tannic, cool-climateviognier, so we get this black dancer that smells like it’s just been kissed byNicole Kidman. Stack up your hamper at Smelly Cheese and a good baguettier, buythis at the new Lazy-B tasting room on the big bend opposite Kuitpo forest,take your beloved to the picnic ground, and let this willowy wickedness pranceacross your palate in the trees. Best shiraz-vio of the year.www.lazyballerina.com - DEC 08

Port Phillip Estate Tete de Cuvee Mornington Peninsula Shiraz 2007

$40; 13.5% alcohol; Diam cork; tasted 20-24 OCT 09;94+++ points

At the time of writing, thiswas a more elegant and refined wine than all those above, apart, perhaps fromthe Penfold's St Henri 2004, which is a different kettle of fish, anyway. Notto mention all those below, down to, I dunno, I get tired at around 92 points.It reminds me of the 1978 Domaine de la Thalabert from Jaboulet. It has oldchestnutty oak like that wine, and brilliantly slender, sinuous fruit, in spiteof it coming from the earliest picking yet at Port Phillip Estate's slurpy RedHill vineyard. It also brings to mind some of those rusty tin shed Italianwines Roberto loves to stock in Wine Expo in Santa Monica. It has an acrid spicy edge thatalmost irritates the nostrils, and then quincey fruit, like my favouritequincey dish: grano quinces poached in a mixture of 1/3 sauternes, 2/3 nuttypinot, with cloves, served with the slightest sprinkle of long pepper, Piperlongum, and freshly whipped Paris Creek cream. You got me? This is the sort ofwild, freckled country wine that the Barossa and McLaren Vale are still yearsaway from understanding. She's riding bareback, raising hell and the summer'sfirst red dust down amongst the birches. Brilliant! Sexy! If Beethoven'sPastorale had a banjo in it, that's what I'd be playing. Copland doesn't quiteget there in Appalachian Spring....

S. C. Pannell McLaren Vale Shiraz 2006

$??; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94+++ points

I've not talked to him sincetasting this from bottle - I loved it in barrel - but I reckon this is the bestred I can recall Steve Pannell making. Which is saying something. It's almosttoo young to properly evaluate, but shit it's a beauty. The shiraz from the best Vales vineyards in 06seems particularly chocolaty - almost like one of those orange-flavouredchocolates that's wrapped so it looks like an orange and when you whack it onyour wooden leg it breaks into a whole lot of delicious orange chocolate slicesthat go perfectly with Kahlua. But forget all that: buy Lindt orange chocolate,or something even more extravagant, and have it with this, three or four daysafter you've opened it, had an exploratory glass, just so's you know, and thenscrewed the lid back on. This wine will live for twenty five years, minimum, inthe cellar. It's gorgeous. Perfect black Pannell midnight glitter: anthracite;or a schorl six-membered rings cyclosilicate. The hitman's ring. Too dark tophotograph. Like the black in the background of the blackest Mapplethorpe.Stuff a platypus with truffles ... FEB 09

Yangarra McLaren Vale Ironheart Shiraz 2007

$??; $% alcohol; cork; JAN10; 94+++ points

Cowboy movie; David Crosby[If I Could Only Remember My Name] with David Crosby – guitar, vocals; Jerry Garcia– guitar; Phil Lesh – bass; Mickey Hart – drums, and Bill Kreutzmann –tambourine. These dudes saunter up the street during Eliot’s shoot of TheEagles Desperado cover snaps and blow ‘em clean outa the fake Hollywoodtumbleweed with pure music syrup.

Cascabel Fleurieu Shiraz 2005

$30; 15% alcohol; screw cap; 94++ points

Immediately alluring andseductive, this is the best Cascabel shirazyet, and probably the best one I’ve had from the Fleurieu. It’s from a vineyardat Middleton, which is much, much cooler than McLaren Vale. It’s big, butperfectly harmonious and smooth, with mellow moss, fern, and moist, mushroomyearth hints, like a great Hermitage. The French oak is spicy and supportivewithout being intrusive. It’s seamless, streamlined wine of huge intensity anddepth, and a mighty advertisement, par excellence, for the southern Fleurieu asa shiraz sitedeserving more attention. Call 8557 4434 for supplies. 19.1.8

Charles Melton Grains of Paradise Barossa Shiraz 2005

$55; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94++

Charlie usually blends.Grains of Paradise, a new idea, will come from the best single Valley floorblock he harvests each year. This one’s from Lyndoch. It has moody licoriceovertones adding edge to its ultra slick blackberry and blackcurrant essence,and the palate is just such a smooch that it transports you. I know grains isthe French term for berries, but the grainy paradise this takes me to is morealong the lines of an old French movie, like Lacombe Lucien, where the filmstock dots seem to convert to hazy spring pollens on screen. Lamb cutlets.www.charlesmeltonwines.com.au

Gemtree Obsidian McLaren Vale Shiraz 2004

$45; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94++ points

This edgy brute leapt at mefrom a long row of masked McLaren Vale glasses three months back. Its maker wasobvious: Mike Brown has a certain touch, fortified by his wife, Melissa, whodrives the increasingly organic and biodynamic Gemtree vineyards. It wasn’tbottled then, but sure is now, already twitching to get out of there and intoone. It has more vibrant balancing vegetal tone than your average moody Valessmoothy, meaning it’ll grow more interesting the longer it’s imprisoned. It’s aglorious opulent wonderchild, eager for its crown, or veal liver and morels.www.gemtreevineyards.com.au

Greenock Creek Roennfeldt Road Shiraz 2003

($192; 18.5% alcohol; cork; 94++ points)

Barons of Barossa Shiraz 2005

$25; 14.5% alcohol; cork; 94+ points

Oooh. We’re in trouble here.Smelling this is like sliding into the jelly pit at the local mud wrestlingtemple. Classic Barossa chocolate and leather shiraz be here, maturing at thatsicko sensuo rate that only a miraculous cork permits the swooniest jell-oshiraz from somewhere as stoic and slow and determined to eventually fall intothe jelly pit at the local mud wrestling temple as the Barossa. There’s edgyforge oak and coke, then that lascivious wallow of first class Barossa shiraz,just on the turn between puppy fat and pulchritude, then an oozy slimulation ofacid and very, very fine tannin: almost finer than particulate. It’s exquisiteBarossa shirazat a dangerously suggestive time of its life, here in the mud wrestling temple.Which is something that’s yet to arrive in the Barossa. Although you can get ared wine bath there at the Novotel. But that wouldn’t be like this. This is awine that bathes in YOU. FEB 09

Good Catholic Girl The James Brazill Clare Shiraz2005

$30; 16.2% alcohol; screw cap; 94+ points

Julie Ann Barry, daughter ofJames Brazill Barry, winemaker, (dec.), grew these grapes on land her dadselected for her at Limerick, across the road from his Armagh vineyard in Clare, South Australia. Jules used cuttings from Armaghto plant 1ha at the front of her big comfy house. Rather than worry about pipripeness, tannin ripeness, fruit ripeness, stalk ripeness, pH, acid or sugar,she picked these grapes on the day Pope John Paul II went up to see whetherJesus is real. Four weeks on skins; eighteen munce in dad’s old port barrels;couple years in bottle ... all very Irish. The friggin thing’s like a movie.What was the one with Richard Harris and all the cows running over the cliff?The Field? Remember the smell of that movie? The field full of cowshit androtting seaweed? What I mean is earthy here, with the distinctive lignin/peat/moss/swampydecay that typifies Armagh here by thedrayload. Then comes a whole retaining wall of fruit, and spice which cannotpossibly have come from port barrels, unless our sweet GCG had em shaved. Thedamn thing’s all over your palate the minute you let her in, lollingdangerously tward the black leather chaise, cigarette holder bent at rightangles where she hit the wall. Slick, and sensuous, like the black panther thatNatassa Kinsky turns into in Cat People, but not yet quite sure of her cat slink,she eventually straightens up, gets real cat stuff going, leads you out intothe bayou then rips your bloody arm off. But oooh Jesus, don’t you just lovethat? Beautiful, slick, highly entertaining wine which has true balance andelegance in spite of all those numbers up at the top. Sorry about mexing mymitaphors, but a bayou IS a swamp. Impossible? A catholic swamp? Naaah! It's acatholic cat! Rip away, puddy tat! JAN 09

Woodstock The StocksMcLaren Vale Shiraz 2004

($50; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94+ points)

Lush and complex, withmulberry and prune, seasoned by lovely spicy oak, this fresh, lively black winecomes from old vines grown in the southern edge of the awesome Blewett SpringsSands, which have given it their distinctive peaty vegetal decay flavours.Woodstock's best red yet, it's a huge, complex wine for the cellar, but it'sscrumptious now with mutton shanks with shiitake, porcini, oyster and ordinaryfield mushrooms. www.woodstockwine.com.au

Yangarra McLaren Vale Shiraz 2008

$28; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 25FEB10;24-25MAY10; 94+ points

Fig, dried apple, blueberry,black currant, cassis, framboise, anthracite, steam engine, cordite, carbide,gun oil, burnt matches … here in May 2010, this is Yangarra’s triumph. TheFrench must simply spew with rage when they see wine like this. It has feydelight and deep mystery all at once. It’s ripe and sweet, but with thatironstone chassis and dressed leather upholstery and all that waxed paintworkand pinstriping and a driver in Bay Rum, with the whiff of Soir de Paris on himfrom whatever the Madelaine hookers did to him last night while we at the opera… frisson; frou frou; the cascade applause of the opera … and the length. Andthe miasma. Bugatti Royale territory. Patent leather. The gros-grain lapel ofthe tuxedo. Bal a’Versailles.

Lazy Ballerina McLaren Vale Shiraz Viognier 2005

($16.60; 14.9% alcohol; cork; 94 points)

I don’t know a betterversion of this blend. With viognier for “extra kick”, instead of the gooeycanned peach too many makers go for, it turns its rivals to silly lollies.Lovely fruit aside, it smells of mushrooms and damp, healthy earth – it’sdense, luscious, and smooth, and chockers with savoury dry tannins and livegrapes. I panned mushrooms in butter and olive oil with black olives, chilli,onions and garlic and had ’em on toast with my bottle. All of it. Do it.Heavenly. And don't miss a chance to visit James Hook, the maker, at hisfamily's stunning new cellar sales outlet on the big bend in Kuitpo Forestin the Adelaide Hills. I've tasted all the new releases (and a few yet toappear), and they're equally good. James has the touch. (6.1.7)

Barons of Barossa Shiraz 2007

$25; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points

I’m pushing my own Baronhere, but this one’s VERY special. The great Colin Glaetzer did the assemblage,selecting barrels from the cellars of Lehmann, Elderton, St Hallett, Bethany, Burge, Melton, Glaetzer, Haan, and Irvine. Et cetera. Ichair the Barons’ Foundation committee which chooses the beneficiaries of theprofits – we make tax-free grants to projects which preserve and maintain theBarossa’s heritage, lifestyle, tradition, winemaking and viticulture. It’s likethe Flood Relief Red, still drinking beautifully, cork willing, that Schubert,Blass and Lehmann made after the floods that followed the blitzkreig bushfiresof 1983. It’s priceless, slippery, blacksmithed Barossa magnificence fordrinking or dungeon, at a silly price. It has vivid fruit, as lithe and livelyas the fruits rouge counter at the old Fouchon. There’s just a little spice,from exemplary oak, and a little mint, which probably comes from eucalyptintrusion, and a little lavendar, which comes from Bacchus knows where, andthen a sinuous willow of a palate that’s intense yet sublimely lithe andelegant. There is nothing else like it. In another year, I’d probably bepointing it 94+++: thus far, it only really begins to sing after two or threedays of air. Exclusively from The Wine Society: www.winesociety.com.au FEB 09

NEW!

BlackJack BendigoBlock 6 Shiraz 2009

$35; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted November 2011,93+++ points

Rhone aficionados may like immediately to hear that thisreminds me of the Cornas of August Clape in a moderate to hot year. It has that singed whiff of Africa blowingacross it, just as the Ghibli blows from the Sahara across the Mediterraneanand the Rhone delta and into the funnel of thegorge at Tain l’Hermitage. Of course it has fruits, too: intense but alive;blackberry, mulberry, prune and fig. Maybe some dried apple. It hasmore than $20 extra life than the sullen Nine Lives, if you get my drift. I’ve been nudging it all morning, and aftersix hours, it’s only now beginning to relax and chill and let a little of itsblack petticoat show. Its oak is mercifulbut spicy, like the dry cedar veneer you find in a cigar tube, but this pepperyfruit is all over that. It’d be veryimpressive now with osso bucco and some kalamata in the tomato sauce, butthat’s nothing on what it’ll be like in six or seven years, when I’d have itwith pink steak, raw Spanish onion, horseradish and capers. It’s very veryimpressive.

NEW!

Chapel Hill The ChosenHouse Block Scarce Earths McLaren Vale Shiraz 2009

$55; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; planted 1977; 100doz., tasted December 2011; 93+++ points

At first pour, this seemedall pure carbon and lignite and the fruit of vines tortured by drought. It’swoody, but it somehow suits. It showed some raspberry, prune and fig, but thepalate was hard going and tannic. Six hours later, we have flesh: the palechocolate crême caramel. The wine has lost some of brittle piety, and letitself show some sinuous flex. Its tannin is pure drought vintage stuff:persistent and ungiving to the point that at first it looks like it may havebeen added, which I’m sure is not the case in the powdered tannin sense. A fairdeal it of looks like it comes from oak. But it’s delicious wine now, afternine hours. Forget it for five years. It may be even better in fifteen. It isthe most Australian of wines.

Coates Consonance Syrah Cabernet Sauvignon 2006

$??; 14.5% alcohol; diam cork; 93+++ points

There’s really dark walnutshell oak lurking about the backdrops of this heavy velvet curtain. It’s ahighly evocative, moody performance from the Dark Ages. Aged soy sauce anddisarmingly fresh and lively black, mull, straw and blue berries are only justcoming to the boil in the conserve cauldron. It’s not hot or jammy, though. Itssyrupy texture is in balance with that dry oak and much slender acid, leavingyou feeling like your mouth is the b-and-b in which Langhorne Creek once againmarried McLaren Vale, the shirazusing her French name, perhaps for reasons of discretion. www.coates-wines.com

Giaconda Warner Vineyard Beechworth Shiraz 2006

$???; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points

Rick Kinzibrunner was arather awkward intense fellow fucking around with the Brown Brothers’ shiny newkindergarten winery when I first met him in the early ’eighties. Now he’s agreat steaming genius: Victoria’sanswer to Chris Ringland. This is highly intense wine, full of milk chocolateand moss, as thick and velvety as a carpet. The palate intensity falls awayfaster than that bouquet would have you expect, but then, it’s what they callelegant, and it’s nothing a decade of dungeon won’t fix. Tasting it again afterfour days open, that finish has filled out nicely. Hearty, moody, evocative,provocative wine.

Giant Steps Miller Vineyard Yarra Valley Shiraz2006

$30; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++

Phil Sexton’s Giant Stepsare quickly taking his Yarra vineyards into full biodynamic management, and ifthis wine’s any indicator of how well he’ll do, we should all start saving upand ensuring our place on the mailing list. Shiraz of this pious philosophy has mainlybeen Castagna country til now. While there’s a peppercorn or two in the nose,it’s mainly swimmingly alive with fresh red fruits and juicy black olives, andthe flavours are incredibly intense, as if these cells had walls twice as thickas normal fruits. Confit of duck, please, or goose. www.giant-steps.com.au(2.2.8)

Greenock Creek Alice’sShiraz 2006

($38;17% alcohol; cork; 93+++ points)

Aroma: aniseed, licorice,cocoa, milk chocolate, tea tin, stewed prunes, blanched almonds, stewed quince,cloves, mulberries, dried apple, blackberry leaf. Flavour: mint, nettle tea,prune syrup, chocolate bullets, marshmallow, framboise, tea tin tannins,borscht. Texture: supple, nicely viscous, syrupy, fluffy, very dry dolomitetannins. Aftertaste: rich, syrupy, drying, thick, split schist/mudstone/dolomitetannin. Summary: And I can remember when Alice’s was destined to be the“commercial” block, with slightly higher yields than the others, to present amore “drink now” wine which wouldn’t require quite so much cellar! Pull theother one. This monster is a magnificent blacksmithed essence of shiraz from the ancientYudnamuntana, which contains deposits dropped from floating glacial ice floeswhich were carried inland, far beyond the edge of deep ocean and our currentshorelines. A rock fruit salad, in other words. Which may explain theconfounding depth of this wine, which can be “drunk now”, but not without risk.Its aromas, depending when you look, will contain all the above, and Bacchusonly knows what else. The flavours are similarly astonishing and complex. Thefinish is as tannic as Yudnamutana dolomite, which is generally used for roadmetal, so should not wear out with undue haste. Ideally, I’d wait at least tenyears

Jardim do Bomfim McLaren Vale Langhorne Creek Shiraz2007

$30; 14.8% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points

While it’s unfair toappraise this wine at such an infant state, it’s already showing its noblebreeding and intelligent, sensitive choice of vineyards. The alcohol’sintrusive – it’s obviously very recently bottled – but there’s plenty of stuffgoing on in here to ensure the fruit will eventually climb outa its sulks towrap its gooey glory around that beautiful steely acidity and long, drawing,extremely fine tannin. It has lovely syrupy – yet slender and athletic – textureat this early stage, and a gradually tapering finish that will ring all yourbells in a year or two; maybe a month or two. The wine would benefit greatlyfrom a decade of deep, cool dungeon, but can be drunk now, if you’re braveenough, or leave it in a decanter for a few hours. Or a day. Its grand promiselies in that beautiful cool climate acidity. Try and wait for it. Or savour itnow with classic pepper steak, spud wedges with rock salt, and roast capsicum.

Lazy Ballerina Single Vineyard Tatachilla McLarenVale Shiraz 2007

$??; 15% alcohol; cork; tasted 24-27 APR 09; 93+++points

This mindblowing fruit camefrom the California Roadvineyard of Dudley Brown and Karen Wotherspoon, near Tatachilla. It isseamless, luxurious, smugly sensuous McLaren Vale shiraz at its thickly-perfumed,slick-and-silky best. Fresh blackberry and mulberry tart, mint, musk,confectioner's sugar and old cedar spice box all twist teasingly through itsbouquet. Maybe a rememberance of white pepper. The palate's fudgy at first,then syrupy, then slides out into a long acidulous taper. Its tannins arevelvety and persistent. It teases without moving. But it WILL move. I want todrink this immediately, but that's frustrating because I keep thinking of howmuch more fun it will become. Slow, dimly lit fun. Friggin gorgeous wine: thework of the emergent James Hook. Each wine he releases has this amazing quietconfidence about it. Get on his list! If he'd held this back another year itwould have emerged a full point higher.

Lazy Ballerina McLaren Vale Shiraz 2007

$26; 15.5% alcohol; cork(!); 93+++ points

I can feel a theory brewingabout the best new McLaren Vale shirazwines bearing strange resemblances to our dear friends in the serpent world.Read on. Captain James Hook, viti king, threw everything sensible at thesevines: they were pampered beyond belief. Fair dinkum kissed and cuddled. Butinstead of giving him a fat little puppy -- it’s not fat, and never jammy --the result is a stunning hyper intense McLaren Vale shiraz: the sort of thingthat makes everybody round the table go very quiet and thoughtful while theyrealise they’ve just drunk a snake: it’s slinky and serpentine in its lithemuscly blackness, with a neat little tease of chicory-like tannin in its tail,maybe fennel or licorice, where the rattle should be. It’s very good wine, andlike the Marius 2006 I review nearby, it kept bringing snakes to mind, such wasits lithe slither. After all the blackberry and whatever -- think alien fruitsand flowers so black they’ve just gotta be poisonous -- that finish is nearperfection in its focus and silent, smug sass. I’d be turning a big fieldmushroom on its back, filling its gills with amontillado sherry and choppedherbs and garlic, frying it like that, on its back, in butter and Coriole’sbest new olive oil, finishing it off beneath the grill, and setting back todevour it with this bottle and a slice of very simple buttered toast. And Iwouldn’t want anybody else there. I wouldn’t want to listen to anybody talkabout it. Then I’d put a case away for ten years and over that decade plantwelve more nights of perfectly silent aloneness. With the snake. Aw, maybesome Little Feat ... it might need some of that socket wrench slide of Lowell’s. That’s snakytoo, know what I mean? Rocket In My Pocket ... finger in the socket ... JAN 09

Marius Simpatico Single Vineyard McLaren Vale Shiraz2006

$25; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points

Like the vineyards halfwayup the Hermitage hill in the south Rhone, thisone has round river stones, but it’s halfway up the piedmont of the Willungaescarpment near McLaren Vale. It smells just plain friggin gorgeous. It’s rudeand sassy with whole messes of fresh, vibrant, black and blue fruits; reallyneat fired oak, and an acrid, nose-itching edge that can only come from thecountry in which it grew, and the plethora of yeasts and microbial troops thatlive there. It has a British Racing Green aroma: crows in the pines; a worn-outE-type decaying in the tractor shed, wondering whether it’ll go to the chooksor a restaurateur. It’s slender and tight at first sip, with a sharp carbonbase. But given the chance to properly slither in and unwind, it teases likethat serpent that suckered Eve. And as my aboriginal friends say, bugger theapple -- they woulda eaten the snake every time. The finish is all the Bibleblack things mentioned above and more, with wicked juice and deadly nightshadetannins and really stony, slithery acidity. Twenty years, please. Or grainypecorino. With a snake. JAN 09

Marius Symposium McLaren Vale Shiraz Mourvèdre 2006

$30; 14.7% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points

This wine was impenetrableon its release. A few extra months have made a small crack in that iron visage,and now we can see some of the fragrant, sweet, healthy prune and mulberry ofthe shiraz peering through the cast armour ofthe mourvèdre, which has traditionally been called mataroin Australia.Because of its capacity to handle heat and drought, this latter grape should bemuch more widely planted, but its tough, dense nature makes it easy forsceptics to miss the wondrous florals and spices it has to offer if properlymatured and aired. This one’s delicious. www.mariuswines.com.au

Marius Symposium McLaren Vale Shiraz Mourvedre 2007

$30; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points

The Spanish Queen arrives,reeking of olives, prunes, and Iberian ham with a little black and white furstill round its ankle. They built this whole damn railroad for her to come downhere and stomp through the joint like this in her stumpy flamenco heels. Twentyor thirty years ago we all thought she’d be a once off, and prefer to withdrawto the Mediterranean forever, but she’s hereevery year now. The metal of her Mourv makes her normally butch Shiraz look slinky andfeminine. Once departed, it smells like her train’s got real fresh damp coal.And we follow the pack through to the tiny press room, with all that dipstickOdorono and Bay Rum, and suddenly there’s only the two of you in a tinyMarveered booth. While her black tobacco breath is fulsome with the sweet redberries of the hedgerow and her scented décolletage, I can’t get my eyes offher toe cleavage.

Mountadam Patriarch High Eden Shiraz 2006

$??; 14% alcohol; cork(!); 93+++ points

Since the eminently sensibleDavid Brown bought Mountadam from the ham-fisted LVMH, he and winemaker ConMoschos have worked hard to get the jewel of the high Barossa back on the trackthe late great David Wynn envisaged. And here we have a stunning shiraz that would makedear David chuckle that inimitable half-suppressed chuckle of his. It’sopulent, rich and immediately engaging, whilst calming in its powerful andconfident presence: take one sniff and you know you’re in for the full bodymassage. Perfectly formed and harmonious, the bouquet reminds me of some of thebest of David’s beloved Ovens Valley “Burgundies” fromthe late ’sixties. (These were made to compete with Penfolds’ St Henri,a brandand recipe which John Davouren pinched from Edmund Mazure, the ingenius Frenchtrainer of Wynn’s original winemaker Hurtle Walker at Romalo, oppositePenfolds’ Magill Estate.) This wine has more oak than those wines, but it’sutterly appropriate to the fruit, adding very sultry spices and cedar withoutintruding upon the bouquet. It’s more evident in the palate, however, where itsfirm sap tweaks the finish upward, a direction opposite the calm patting-downreassurance the bouquet offers. So there’s a tease of finer, sauciertitillations to come. It’ll bloom for twenty years, cork willing. It’s preciselythe style Adam Wynn and me dreamed of when he naughtily planted these vines onthe toughest schist outcrop on the property, facing the rising sun at 500metres, fourteen short years ago. An Australian hermitage, rather than aburgundy! Gerard Jaboulet would love it! The wine is smooth, velvety andluxurious, and makes me dream of the steak-sized field mushrooms that willemerge in the horse paddock when the first rains of autumn fall. Welcome back,Mountadam! JAN 09

Ngeringa Adelaide Hills Syrah 2006

$50; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points

Lightning on the blackberrybushes. Ozone. Fig, prune, quince. The same nostril-frotting, snufflike edge -from the country round this vineyard - that the 07 viognier reeks of. It’s inthe incredible Ngeringa olive oil, too. It’s like putting down the window ofthe car there in the spring. Absolutely leaping with life. Gentle, refined,slenderly syrupy, the same sort of stuff you just inhaled slithers round thepalate like a snake. It’s a bit tetchy so early in its confinement, but it’lleventually chill out and drape itself across you real Breathless Mahoney-ish.And I mean the one in the comic, not the one Madonna made up. Nope; wrong bothways: it's Carmen Miranda. But that wouldn’t be a drape. Mmm. The tannins are teasingand velvety, and persistent. The exhalation is wicked. Makes me want to smoke aSobranie Black Russian and rub blue cheese on my chest. But there’s a goodargument to wait fifteen years and have it before you go to the Twilight Farm.Biodynamic. www.ngeringa.com

Paxton Jones Block McLaren Vale Shiraz 2004

$37; 14.5% alcohol; cork; 93+++ points

Lush, luxurious, voluptuousand oozing good health, this cream of McLaren Vale comes from a rejuvenatedvineyard which has been deservedly famous for a long time. I first encounteredits wonder in cleanskins in the ’seventies when it was owned by Doug and DeeJones. The Paxtons wisely bought it, and eventually began pointing somebiodynamics at it – Julian Castagna, the leading biodynamicist, took some ofhis original shirazcuttings from here over a dozen years back. This plump baby smells of doughymudcake and blackberry conserve, dusted with confectioner’s sugar, and I swearthere’s a cup of Arabic coffee complete with a caraway seed somewhere in thebackground. Pleasing dusty soil topnotes, too. After all that, the palate’s alot more slender and supple than you’d expect, with beautiful sinuous acidityand the sort of drawn-out, tapering finish that becomes an insufferable tease.You just can’t get enough. The longer it gets air, the more the palate plumps,but its lovely furry tannins keep the balance humming, and the acidity keepsthe whole thing dancing despite the gradual increase in weight. Very good winefor five years’ cellar. JAN 09

Penfolds St Henri Shiraz 2006

$90; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 15APR10; 93+++ points

Fifteen months in bigold-fashioned oak vats is the St Henri trademark, more or less as devised bythe great Edmund Mazure in the late 1800s at Kanmantoo and Romalo. Mainly as aresult of malolactic fermentation in such fifty-plus year old oak, the wine ischockers with the comforting umami glutamates: it’s almost too humanly sensualand plush, with more than a whiff of the suckling mother about it. In the moreconventional spectrum, it has intense Ribena/blackcurrant fruits with neat,seductive twists of coffee and chicory, a little stewed, but still fresh,clean, and almost angular, meaning it’s just a bit too young. It’s gorgeouswine now, but it’ll be a lot more gorgeous in, say fifteen or twenty years.

Penfolds St Henri Shiraz 2003

$180?; 14.5% alcohol; cork(!); 93+++ points

In the classic style setdown by Edmund Mazure in the 1800s, and rekindled by John Davouren in the1950s, this absolutely hellishly cute Henri shows the best results of itsage-old recipe. Big old oak lets the wine mellow with minimal oxidation -Mazure used to let them sit on oak for five years - so it projects this unusualaged-yet-fresh countenance, showing only the earliest signs of mellowing, aprocess which will continue to progress for many more autumns, withoutappearing to progress much at all. What a delicious conundrum!www.penfoldswines.com.au

Penfolds St Henri Shiraz 2006

$90; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 15APR10; 93+++ points

NEW!

Phi Single Vineyard Heathcote Shiraz Grenache 2010

($36; 14.2% alcohol; screw cap; 3,420 bottles; TASTED25-27JAN12; 93+++ points)

Another slender, granularappetizer of wily, seductive perfume, very much after the style of the Phi Pinot2010, but with the expected darker side. It reinforces my theory that proper Grenacheseems to be a warmer-area precursor to the more acid Pinot. With the Chardonnay2010, I see these three 2010 Phis as a quick, intense tour from Chablis, down souththrough Burgundy, to the heady scents of the Rhone gorge. Allwithout leaving dry old Oz. The Grenachehere gives the Shiraz some gentle soul; the wine has more elegant, yet earthy stylethan most of Heathcote’s straight Shiraz wines, which seem to be grown and madeto give hotter regions like the Barossa a run for their money. I don’t know why. But these Phi Wines are a very exciting andpromising trio. Not quite the trinity,but close enough to rattle the bells of continental France, it’s the ideal ménage à trios for that lazy Sundaylunch beneath the vines.

S. C. Pannell McLaren Vale Shiraz Grenache 2006

$50; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points

There's a lot more darkcooking chocolate in this wine than the 05 ever dreamed of. It reliably has thesame fruits: blackberry, mulberry, even cassis, and it also has a little whiffof tomato leaf or hemp about it after a couple of days' air, and while itshares the intense density of the 05, I think this is more so. There is no roomfor turkish delight or raspberry in here. I know Steve worked for Hardy'sTintara, where as chief redman he set a cracking style in wines like this, butI think this is more of a Penfolds sort of a drink in way: a bit bigger allround than anything previously seen in Pannell's Hardy's suite. Replace theraspberry of the 05 with carbon and you'll get this black hole. The wine hasamazing potential for life in the cellar: in another ten years, it might get94+++, and so on, until the number sticks and wine's unavoidable decaygradually eats up the pluses, and then the numbers begin, tragically, to fall.In twenty years maybe? Forty? Sckrumzhell! FEB 09

S. C. Pannell McLaren Vale Shiraz Grenache 2005

$50; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points

Having tasted the componentsof this wine from both tank and barrel, I feel a bit like its grandfather,seeing it now borne in bottle. All the embryonic bits and pieces were intense,deep and mysterious; just how they've conjoined and mingled is a miracle of theblender's art. The shirazgives dense blackberry and blackcurrant, even mulberry tones; the grenache alovely rosy sheen, somewhere between very fine turkish delight and riperaspberry jujubes. The palate's slippery to begin, then builds gradually to amighty tannic crescendo noir that hollers for the current crop of deliciousfield mushrooms. sc@pannell.com.au

NEW!

Yangarra Vineyard Estate Ironheart McLaren ValeShiraz 2008

15.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 30 October to 2November 2011; 93+++ points; more soon

I suspect this wine is kindof stalled at the moment: while it’s very beautiful on opening, and betterafter a day or two of air, I think it will breath even better than this awkwardminute of its long life. Properlydecanted, and in the right glass, however, it will ring bells in very highnoses anytime. It reminds me ofAdsteam’s Penfolds. Its sinuous,seamless frame is clad in the muscly flesh of a sprinter, but one who’s pauseda little in just a few too many brasseries. It certainly won’t be falling over suddenly, but it will want to sit inyour life for a long time, which is precisely what great quilted leather Shiraz is usually about.After three days, the damn thing still leaves a little puddle of primary juicyfruit sitting in the middle of your tongue, long, long after swallowing. Put itaway.

God’s Hill Menzel Barossa Valley Shiraz 2005

$38; 15.5% alcohol; cork; 93++ points

“Where did I study winemaking?You’ve gotta be joking! I learned it from my DAD!” says Charlie Scalzi. Whichis not the sort of name you get too much of in the Barossa. Quiteappropriately, this has all the character of a grand family wine, with the sortof musk and marshmallow mixed with marshy, swampy notes you’ll find in someGreenock Creeks. But that’s my mad hooter; yours will more likely spotcoconutty oak over a chocolatey wallow of red and black berries, with allspiceand cream. Grown in the tasty clay on the hill the Menzel’s called God’s whenthey settled in 1847, it’s sinuous, lithe, lovely intense dry red. Dark game.www.godshillwines.com

Cape Jaffa La Lune Mount Benson Shiraz 2006

$45; 14% alcohol; Diam cork; 93++ points

From the Hooper family’srecently-certified bioD vineyard on the Limestone Coast – where there are NOMOUNTAINS – we get this spicy, hearty, lively Hermitage-style shiraz with itsvolume jigger on full blast. It’s almost intolerably wholesome and fruity inthe old xmess pud manner: I can see Mum with it all up to her elbows in themixing dish in late November when I get off the school bus. The unbleachedcotton twill labels are too small to wrap puddings, but you can iron ’em ontoyour shirts if the rats get ’em. Luny? Nope. Eminently sensible; utterlydelicious. www.capejaffawines.com.au

Lindemans Limestone Ridge Coonawarra Shiraz Cabernet2006

$55; 14% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 21-23FEB10; 93++points

It may not be quite sointense, with the incredible longevity of those highly extracted dry-grownwines, but this is the sort of red David Wynn, Ian Hickinbotham and Norm Walkerwere making at Wynn’s Coonawarra in the heady explorative early ’fifties, whenthey were running the first deliberately induced and managed malolacticferments in history. The Shirazhas sweetened the more angular Cabernet, making a juicy, moderately tannic,quite svelte wine which will age nicely for at least a decade. Its perfume ismodest, but honest, without overt oak; its form is strapping, velvety andsavoury; its aftertaste dry and puckery in a lovely, almost comforting manner:it’s classic Australian claret of the good old school. It'll sing like Pav inten years. Welcome back, Lindemans!

Margan Limited Release Shiraz Mourvedre 2007

$30; 14% alcohol; screw cap; drunk 22-24 OCT 09; 93++points

Slumbering, this baby. Thepungent meatiness of mourvedre, somewhere between blood pudding, blood'n'bone,and Iberian ham, add their primitive carnal sin to the mushroomy, fungal earthof the best Hunter shiraz.If there's fruit, it's baked apple as much as red berries. There's the politestinsinuation of gently spicy wood adding to the gustatory mood. And mood is theword: this is a moody bastard, almost forlorn in its deep sulk. It's been openfor two days, and hasn't bothered to look at me. It'll probably live for twentyyears and stalk in here, demanding to know why I slighted it in such a weakmoment, but I'm not sweating over that.

Margan Aged Release Hunter Valley Shiraz2005

$30; 14% alcohol; screw cap; drunk 4-7MAY10; 93++points

Aniseed balls, fennel,blackstrap licorice, Chamberlain tractor oil, the grease of old dead sailors:all these be here. Swarf and coke and smithies’ kitchens. Delivered to thelaughing section of the head, the drink is oily to the perfect degree, withjust the right little whiprod of steely acidity. The tannins are curt andfurry. Tuxedo.

Marius Symphony McLaren Vale Shiraz 2005

$34; 15% alcohol; screw cap; 93++ points

Bits of the windy FrontHills, from Willunga to Sellick’s, produce more intense complexity than thelower Vales. Winemaker Mark Day selects the best slice of Roger Pike’s fouracre Willunga patch for this awesome flavour bomb; the balance goes into thecheaper Simpatico. It’s a veritable compression of sootblack, moody shiraz, made the old way,but with 21 months in very fine French oak. The result is a velvety gastronomicdelight that silences drinkers with its depth and might. Big field mushrooms.www.mariuswines.com.au

Marius Simpatico Single Vineyard McLaren Vale Shiraz2007

$25; 14% alcohol; screw cap; APR 10; 93++ points

Initially so moody andsullen one can’t imagine its dark provenance, this soon has the nostrilstwitching with the slightly acrid reek of old royalty and stones. It grows thearoma of a bejeweled robe, too complex to wash, but well-aired, so the myriadperfumes worn in it over the decades are fragile, but present. Sympathetically.And then the fruits ooze: dense and tense at first; ever so gradually growingflesh; and then a new perfume arises and you need to drink it. It’s austere andwithdrawing and in a tight royal sort of way its tannins are ermine and velvet.The acrid reek first sniffed finally makes sense. It’s the whiff of the coarsestony sediment the vineyard grows in: a red salad of stones from many epochs.And down the middle flows that black creek of fruits that seem far too dark andbeautiful to grow in this Earth. Oh? It’s blood? He’s been stabbed?Misbehaving? Of course. Ten years in the Tower will teach him some manners.Tell him “Simpatico”.

Maximus Premium McLaren Vale Shiraz 2007

$??; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93++ points

Pretty. That's how thissmells. Like a rude red dessert. Beetroot, blood orange, maraschino cherries... lemon juice and kirsch over the top, then rich fresh cream and confectioners'sugar. Fairy floss. Jailbait. Then the adult stuff, the macho swarf and thejarrah elders start to stand up at the back of the church and you pull yourhead in. Very clean, very fresh, iron spine, pulpit valence crushed velvettannins, whiprod acidity. Needs time. But Jesus, I need time. Good wine! Hock.

Mountain X Hunter Shiraz 2007

$??; 13.2% alcohol; cork; tasted 24-27 APR 09; 93++points

Murray Tyrrell used to sayHunter wines smelled like sweaty saddles and the coal beneath: TAKE NOTE PETERGOERS. I always thought the sweaty saddle was almost entirely due to the hugeamounts of McLaren Vale wine the Hunter traditionally absorbed in bulk tankers.And McLaren Vale specialised in hydrogen sulphide for decades. Sweaty saddlewas as polite as replacing cowshit with barnyard. Same thing, given the thicksmudges of the spindoctors. I reckon McLaren Vale exported up to 80% of thewine it made in some years, all of which was sold beneath brands from otherparts of Australia.Like mostly Hunter. I believed Murrayabout the coal: lignite is highly volatile, and should easily penetrate thelayers of clay above. As it does in parts of McLaren Vale, deep beneath bits ofwhich lies a thin layer of something bituminous. Think of the flavour of peatthat survives distillation in the heavens of Scotland and Orkney. I'd sayShetland, too, but we all know there's never been a licensed distillery there,so nobody could possibly know, could they. Of course not. Anyway, twenty moreyears of experience has me thinking some of that Hunter coal was brettanomycaesyeast. There was plenty of rotten oak around, well into the seventies andeighties. This lovely wine has tiny reflections of many of these emotivefactors, but I wouldna be saying it has a fault. Let's just say it seems tovery respectfully doff it cap to the best of the old Hunter, which has made inits short antipodean history, some of the world's most revered wines. Thisone's a juicily fruitish, very gentle syrup to inhale. It smells of aubergineand plum jelly. It has the iciest insinuation of mint, and slops of Marellocherries. It tastes precise, while modest but confident. But very steely in itsambition: it will last a long time on that velvet cushion. Like many greatHunters, it's mystifying in this its youth, but still much fun. It even has theslightest volatile acidity after four days, which is highly encouraging. Jam acase or two away, there's a clever tiger.

Nashwauk McLaren Vale Shiraz 2006

$25; 15.5% alcohol; cork; 93++ points

I’m smitten by two of thefirst releases Reid Bosward has produced from this Vales vineyard his Barossaemployer, Kaesler, bought in 2005. Structurally, this is neat, lean, andRhonely - think Cornas by August Clape - not syrupy Barossa. Which is not tosay mean. Quite the opposite. Perfumed and tight, with a shot of pencil box, ithas a swampy/peaty nature like the nearby Blewett Springs sands produce. It’sslender, with no Barossa syrup, in spite of all that alcohol. So. The BushingCrown goes to Barossa? Quite possible! Goat or venison, on the spit.

Oliver's Taranga Vineyards HJ Reserve McLaren ValeShiraz 2006

$48; 15% alcohol; cork(!); tasted 4-6JUNE10; 93++points

One sniff of this explainswhy Penfolds are such enthusiastic buyers of Oliver fruit: this could be primeBarossa. In fact, it's difficult to explain how it could be seen to be trulydifferent from a Shirazgrown in the north of the Barossa, in The Moppa. It has the same intensechocolatey sweetness, perhaps contributed to by some smoky caramelised oak. Ifanything, the wine might be smoother and softer than most Barossans, a factor Itend to relate to the higher marine humidity of McLaren Vale. Perhaps if thewines from both places were picked a degree or two lower in alcohol/sugar theywould show greater refection of both terroirs. In the meantime, slippers on,slump back, and surrender to this silk-then-velvet syrup. A block of chillichocolate would do it perfectly. Or orange peel chocolate.

Pieri Azzardo 2005

$25; 15.5% alcohol; cork; 93++

Another of the sly, cannywildcats slinking from Redheads Studio down on McLaren Flat, this shiraz is more CoalblackKing Panther than your standard guilty alley puss. Made by Andrew Pieri, who'scalled it "Azzardo" - the game of chance - it could have come fromGuiseppe Rizzardi, who makes exemplary dried grape wines like this at Verona. Intense,ultra-slick, polished, and purring like something that's about to devour youwith impunity, it never quite looks like fifteen plus on the scales. Untilyou're in its dark gizzard. Call 8323 7799.

Romney Park Adelaide Hills Shiraz 2006

$35; 14.5% alcohol; Diam cork; 93++ points

Like all the wines of Rodand Rachel Short, this is precise, elegant, perfectly poised drinking of thehighest order. Grown on a bony ironstone, podsol and clay ridge betweenHahndorf and Balhannah, it has amazing intensity and depth, despite its sveltenature. More Côte-Rôtie than Cornas, for you Rhonely types. More deadlynightshade than blackberry. A sheeny veneer like Chanel # 5, but no jam in sight.Crême de cassis, but no fruit gums. It’s slender but dense, with strappingblack Parade Gloss tannins to guarantee great cellaring. Perfect for kalamata;chêvre; Iberian ham; grilled cacciatore. 0439 398 366.

Torzi Matthews Frost Dodger Eden Valley Shiraz2006

$30; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93++ points

This killer smells like abloke I once stood beside on a train. His spears and leopard skin added to thewhole sweet affect. Raisins, tobacco, leather, washed rind: all here inalluring balance. One imagines from his regally arrogant poise that the entirepackage is ALL in proportion. It’s certainly NOT an English King. Sweet andjuicy, but not porty, the flavours reflect the appassimento winemaking methodof drying the grapes on racks before they’re crushed. So Dominic Torzi’scombined all the fullness and rich sweetness the Barossa has to offer withoutovert syrup or simple port character. www.torzimatthews.com.au

NEW!

Hugh Hamilton Single Vineyard Scarce Earths McLarenVale Shiraz 2009

$50; 15% alcohol; screw cap; planted ????; ??? doz.;sold out; tasted December 2011; 93+ points

Gigondas in style – a hotteryear – this was a mellow, smooth confection at the start, not greatlysophisticated, mercifully, but rich with earthy and rural aromas, and smooth, clean,appetizing berries. There’s the faintest hint of the old white pepper canister,and maybe a whisper of eucalypty methol. It has perfectly appropriate tanninsthat are better balanced than many of these goddam expensive Scarce Earthswines. They’re still demanding, but moresmoothly assimilated and serve mainly to titillate, not overwhelm. In otherwords, it’s the most McLaren Vale style in the line-up. It's a bit hot in thetail, but a wine I’d like to drink a lot more of. Damn!

Hugo McLaren Vale Reserve Shiraz 2004

$38; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+ points

Perhaps because of itsmaritime humidity, McLaren Vale produces intense, unctuous wines with a moodysoulfulness that’s the opposite, say, of the tight, kalamata-like flavours ofClare, where there the air is bone dry during ripening and harvest. This fineexample oozes the aromas and flavours of Maranello cherries, prunes and stewedsatsuma, super-fine oak adding the sort of spice cloves would contribute tosuch a compote. Osso bucco.

Mt. Billy Barossa Valley AntiquityShiraz 2004

$??; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+ points

Smoked meats, leather,bitumen, beetroot, and all manner of astonishing black fruits not yet evolvedor invented slumber away in this deep delicious mystery. It’s lush and stewed,but like any great conserve, it still has living whole bits of those fruits andbeets in its suspension, unlike a jam, where they’re all cooked intocomparative sticky oblivion. Maker John Edwards has vineyards at home at Victor Harbor,but he quite sensibly takes prime fruit from other vignobles, and does hisappropriate magic on them, as he has done, magnificently, here. Dark mushroomson toast. www.mtbillywines.com.au

O'Leary Walker Clare Valley/McLaren Vale Shiraz 2005

$22.50; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+ points

It makes perfect sense toblend Clare shiraz,which is tight and more kalamata than plum, with the softer, fruitier, plummierstuff from McLaren Vale, where the constant maritime humidity makes the winemore accessible and sensual. O'Leary Walkerhave been doing this happy transfusion for some years now, but this is theirbest version yet. It's slick and wholesome, very slippery, and utterly, scarilydisarming. Perfect steak and mushroom stuff. www.olearywalkerwines.com

Paradigm Hill Col’s Block Mornington PeninsulaShiraz 2004

($35; 13% alcohol; diam stopper; 93+ points)

Winemaker George Mihalywisely accompanied this wine with a letter written with his own stylishfountain pen, which always wins points. It’s gorgeous, though reserved; bonedry, though with perfectly juicy, living fruit; intense, though elegant; lovelynow, but yearning for cellar. Sultry, with raspberry and cherry, maybe ripepersimmon, it’s perfectly balanced, poised, and seductive. Juicy lambbackstrap, garlic, sage, rosemary, spinach, and wee roast spuds.www.paradigmhill.com.au

Penfolds RWT Barossa Valley Shiraz2007

$175; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 15APR10; 93+ points

Panforte is a character Ioften associate with the best wines of Greenock:it’s a fruit mince and nuts thing, with the inherent pastry fats – suet? –playing a big role. This wine reminds me of them. And like many of the 07s,there are charcuterie fats in here, too. Think pancetta. Its form and tanninsare very slick, sidetracking to a recollection of the 1979 Petaluma CoonawarraShiraz. Now quickly forget that: we’re in the blackest gizzards of the Barossa,and while this year was a shit, the Penfolds crew has picked the eyes fromtheir Barossa fruit to isolate parcels that have more refined aromatics and flesh,as opposed to the blacksmith muscle and sinew required for Grange. Then theygave it thirteen months in French hogsheads, 71% of which were new. So you getthis beautifully balanced streamliner of wine. It slides along withoutshouting. In five years it’ll be a silky seductress indeed.

Raw Power Adelaide Plains Shiraz 2006

$14; 14.9% alcohol; screw cap; 93+ points

The label textulates aboutsome old geezer punk screamer name of Rawley Power, but this wine’s a sheilamate and a lived-in one at that. Still takes care of herself, mindja. Lives ina ricketty wood gypsy caravan that hasn’t moved from the wild oats since herdude fell in love with Bearded Lady, took the old Buick and vamoosed years agowhen the circus come through. Sweet and homely, like, but sweetly mysterious.She musta loved him. All those old woody plum jam tweaks, a goat stew simmeringon the Kookaburra. Pipe tobacco - she has a quiet puff while she listens toPhillip (sic) Adams on the bakelite wireless.(Why doesn’t he put an extra d in Adams?)Perfectly aged in big ol puncheons (think St. Henri, Campbell’s Bobbie Burns,Wynn’s Oven’s Valley Burgundy, Kanmantoo St George’s Claret ca 1890, anythingmade by Edmund Mazure) this wine shows that screw caps can protect aged wine aswell as they keep baby ones juicy and fresh. Incredible value. Tim Freeland andDominic Torzi did it. Well. Buy cases of it. oldplains@twpo.com.aU

E. Guigal Chateau d'Ampuis Côte Rôtie 1998

tasted and drunk 4APR10; 93 points

It seemed the black leaftea, and unfortunately the ordinary English breakfast black leaf tea, wassorting the wild hedgerow berries from the granite and the schist and thegravestones, then up came the blackberry, mulberry and dried prune and the damnnear perfect tannins. There was no sign of Viognier.

Vidal-Fleury Ventou 2007

$15; 14% alcohol; cork; tasted 14 OCT 09; 93 points

Since Guigal purchased this1781 mob, and built a shiny new winery, the quality of the wine is now lurchingupward. This is remarkable for its price: cheeky yet authoritative, intense yetfrivolous, beautfully balanced and poised, and yet threatening to fall from itspoints at any stage, it's a cracker. (It won't fall for any lack of skill orelegance, but from sheer abandon - it dances on your table in a wicked blacktutu). Shiraz,grenache and mourvedre are in the mix, and if this is the French following usinto GSM, we should quit immediately. But they're not, of course, we followedthem, and when the lazy Rosemount lab attendant's abbreviation became thestandard acronym, setting the unwritten rule that all Ocker blends of thistrinity should be in that order, with that proportion, Australia lostthe plot. We should learn from this wine: its finesse and merry grace, even at14% alcohol, is something that continues to elude Australian redsmiths. Blackfruits, spice and cream abound, and the flavours entertain and titillate morethan stonker and smite. A light cassoulet is the go in winter; any cool porkdish in the sunny months, and the vegos will love it with field mushrooms. Veryclever; impossibly cheap.

Barons of Barossa Shiraz 2006

$25; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92+++ points

The second release of theBarons of Barossa fundraiser blend is a more hearty and boisterous shiraz, witha little more of the kitchen fireplace soot you’d find in the homes of theyoung Schuberts, Lehmanns, and Glaetzers back when there were as manyblacksmiths as petrol stations. It’s deep and moody, with the guts of a goodBarossadeutscher blood pudding, spiced by many layers of smoked cedary oak. Thefruit is ripe blackberry and mulberry, with some fig, and just a tease offrivolous musk in the top note. The palate is more lithe and fine that thebouquet would suggest, with dancing black eyes, modest decolletage and lots ofred grosgrain before you look all the way down to the flamenco shoes. And whatthe hell’s a flamenco dancer doing in the Barossa? Entertaining the people,that’s what. Be entertained! Bless Bacchus for sending a Spaniard! You everseen a traditional Barossa dance? The vintage festival maypole’s about assensual as it gets, and they only manage that every second year. FEB 09

Inkwell Rebel Rebel McLaren Vale Shiraz 2006

$25; 15% alcohol; screw cap; 92+++ points

Dudley Brown weeds hisvineyard by hand. On a windswept rise near the Gulf, beside the clear moors ofBowering Hill, (which the government seems intent on packing with Tupperware Tuscany), it’s atestament to human pig-headedness. Fanatical vineyard husbandry - James Hookhelps - leads to obsessive hands-on winemaking, and we get this inkster: dense andcompacted, yet still slender, with slinky elegant tendencies. It smells of hardsoil, clean living, and a certain gastronomic intelligence. Licorice and fennellie amongst the lean black fruits, furry tannins dry the finish. It needs a fewyears, and/or a haunch of bison. inkwell@internode.on.net

Jeanneret Clare Valley DenisShiraz 2004

$60; 15% alcohol; screw cap; 92+++ points

Think cold blackberry jam inthe iron pot in a dead morning fireplace. Or the creekful of blackberry vinesthe day after the bushfire went through and you’ve got six hours to eat whatsurvived before the birds get ’em. No rush here though – this is 04. You’ve gotten years. It has plenty of that rich creamy health that Ben somehow gets inhis reds, and it’s alcoholic, and thick, and maybe just a tad old-fashioned ina way, but there’s nothing wrong with that. If you serve it in about five yearswith roast boar in chocolate and chilli sauce everyone’s pants will fall off.

Langmeil Orphan Bank Barossa Valley Shiraz2005

$??; 15.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92+++ points

Karl Lindner’s developer’shat miraculously sits, comfortable, on his old-vine tragic’s head after hepulled this 140 year old vineyard to make way for villa rash, and replantedevery single vine on the banks of the Para,beside the Langmeil Freedom vineyard, which is 24 years older. Chocolate crêmecaramel - classic Barossa fruit - and desiccated coconut, from the Americanoak, offer both harmony and counterpoint, in a slender, lithe, willowy drinkthat has just the right amount of viscosity. It tastes a lot better than thebleeding houses. Porchetta alla perugina.

Penfolds Magill Estate Shiraz 2007

$115; 14.5% alcohol; cork; 15APR10; 92+++ points

The viticulturers workedhard in this difficult vintage to ensure the soul of this precious, tinyvineyard was delivered to the crusher in top nick. Sacrificial canes wereencouraged to concentrate the remaining fruit’s intensity; the vineyard waspicked over several days; the open-fermenter batches kept separate and thenculled to permit only the very best expression of the vineyard to reach theblending tank. The result is a brave, clean, almost cute wine of particulararrogance and poise: a Lolita. It has an entertaining balance of very modern,racy aspects – estery banana/musk lollyshop aromas – and the instillations ofthe ancient open fermenter regime in its deep brooding carbon and prosciutto.Its range of tannins and firm natural-looking acidity balance the finishbeautifully. Fifteen years will see it meld and mellow.

The Willows Vineyard Barossa Valley Shiraz 2005

$26; 15% alcohol; screw cap; 92+++ points

Immediately mellow, yetcalmly, confidently assertive, this is straight away a top Barossa. It haspeaches and cream without needing to be viogniated; it has sweet mellow spicewithout needing to take it from cheap chips from Missouri. Tip it in, and you knowimmediately there’s no bullshit going down. It has really whizzer acid. Roll itaround the laughing gap, and you’ll quickly realise there’s nothing better todo than to keep that cavity stacked as long as you can. It’s really comforting,sweet, plush shirazwhich deserves your most lazy fascinated disinterest. Just lie about andguzzle. Or wait ten years and lie about and guzzle. Argue about the acid withyour visitors from California.They’ll tell you JAN 09

NEW!

Yangarra Vineyard Estate McLaren Vale Shiraz 2009

$25; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 30 October to 2November 2011; 92+++ points

The texture of this wine issublime. It has the right amount ofsliminess, which is not an ideal word to use when selling wine, but that’s whatit is. It has a perfect heady illusionof sweetness and confection, and after that lovely slender syrup establishesitself, the oozes of prune and blackberry emerge, and entwine with the darkchicory and juniper tannins and the faintest whiff of harness leather … whichis reviewing it backwards, because its aroma is utterly seductive, it a wee bitthreatening. All over the primary fruitand vegetation, it begins to prickle like summer, with smells of rain on hotsunbaked sandstone and rusty galvo, gun oil, and explosives in the quarry. But that texture is what arrests thesensories over and over: this wine is strapping and lashing and highly appetizing,and the way it slinks darkly around the palate so long after swallowing istantalizing and addictive. That’s notPussy, that’s a black panther.

Cape Mentelle Margaret River Shiraz2006

$39; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 92++ points

Very sweet and clean, withmucho intensity and a polished silken sheen, this wine seems almost too bloodypolite, which was an advice I once heard David Wynn hiss at his winemaking son,Adam. The oak has contributed a pleasant layer of acrid spice, very fine andslender, which sits neatly atop a basement that reminds me of pure 6B pencilcarbon. The palate follows suit, but soon builds up a tidy acid and spicefinish that’s more velvet than silk. What I mean to say is that this isexemplary sophistry in winemaking: very, very neat and tidy, a little like the shiraz Martin Shaw makesat Shaw & Smith. Not big, but nerdily intense.JAN 09

Coates Consonance Syrah 2006

$??; 14.5% alcohol; diam cork; 92++ points

Like her twin with thecabernet in her, this saucy (Worcestershire, almost) shiraz from McLaren Valeand Langhorne Creek takes some time to let the fruitier parts of her breathexude, but on they come, gradually, determinedly rising above that dark, spicy,walnut-shell oak. As far as syrups go, this is a divine syrup. Just stunningly,perfectly viscous, with warm alcohol blowing in like someone’s just tipped thekirsch over the iced berry salad. It’s so juicily, wholesomely fruity that itcould be served at dessert, like with mudcake and mulberries poached in pinotand sauternes. www.coates-wines.com

Greenock Creek Alice’sShiraz 2007

$30; 16% alcohol; cork; tasted over a week in August09; 92++ points

Down one per cent on the2006 alcohol, the Aliceis slightly less complex this year, if quite a lot more approachable in itsinfancy. It has the mint and the quince paste aromas the 06 showed, but theovert aniseed and fennel of the previous wine seem to have been partly replacedby lovely fresh lemon, which is less acrid, less sinister, and simpler. Theframboise and cassis of the 06 are still here, too, as is the dark chocolate:it’s like a creamy chocolate nougat, and then, with air, it smells convincinglyof pistachio pie. So while there are quite obvious similarities with the 06,and this alcohol is lower, I suspect the sparse mudstones and slates of theTapley’s Hill formation and the Yudnamutana basement make the drought toughgoing for these fairly young vines. These ancient silty stone formations have afair propensity for moisture retention, so maybe the roots simply haven’t gotdeeply into them yet. Only time will tell. The wine has a doughy aroma andflavour, like fresh white bread, which I have also seen in 07 McLaren Vale redsfrom vines of similar youth in similar silt and mudstone basements. It’s asweet, syrupy, viscous thing, with an ethereal afterbreath which reminds me ofEartha Kitt singing “I want to wake up in the morning with that dark browntaste.” It’s really sumptuous drinking now, and it’ll bloom for at least adecade.

Hollick Limestone CoastShiraz CabernetSauvignon 2005

$21; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 92++ points

There's slightly moreWrattonbully fruit than Coonawarra in here. The wine's quite cheap for itsclass, as it's one which would like a nice lie down for five or eight years,and for some reason we have come to expect that good cellaring options shouldcost more money, which is stupid, really. Probly my fault. The shiraz, which is all black cherry andblackcurrant, with great acidity, has not yet quite got into bed with thecabernet, which is much more austere and pious, sitting over there in thecorner. Like its cabernet brother, this wine seems out of sorts: inexpensive,tight, terribly well preserved, and promising quite lovely wickednessof anelegant sort after some years' dungeon, I can't help thinking that it wouldhave liked a little more oxygen before bottling, or in the bottle. I reckonit'll stay as austere as this for years under that screw, sans oxygen. I'llkeep it on m,y bench for a few more days, and may well return with a differentopinion. FEB 09

Mountain X Hunter Shiraz 2006

$??; 13.5% alcohol; cork; tasted 24-27 APR 09; 92++points

The Hunter be a moody sortof place, and at its best makes wondrously moody, soulful, almost forlorn sortof wine at lower alcohols than the rest of Australia. But the wines are neversimple or weak, which is what many imagine to be the nature of wines with lessthan far too much alcohol. This gentle, beautifully balanced lovely has coffeeand mocha adorning its mellow fruits: beetroot, cherry and mulberry. Its palateis fine and mild, sinuous and lingering, with a minor tone of chocolate amongstits fig and prune. It is earthy, and very good, and may well eventuallyoutshine many of the bigger wines on the list above. It is made by Rhys Eatherfor a pair of deeply committed and obviously emotional benefactors. I'm ontheir side. I shall soon discover for you whether they want to be revealed. Theblend is the traditional shiraz with pinot noirmix which our earliest settlers pinched from Hermitage and Burgundy. In those days, a wine of thisquality would have been highly unlikely.

Penfolds Bin 28 Kalimna Shiraz 2007

$40; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 15APR10; 92++ points

It’s a bit of a punt toclaim the proximity of Kalimna to Greenock might explain some of the marshy,swampy aroma of this wine; swamp is an aroma common to the wines of theclayey/salty Greenock creeklines, rather thanthe Kalimna sands. This petite beauty has plenty of those mossy, mushroomyvegetals and soils, wrapped around its red berries. Think swamp myrtle, andmaybe medlar berries as much as the usual blackberry and mulberry in the sweetfruits department: it’s more along the lines of fruit mince in the secondarydivision; maybe even Irish moss, which is in fact a seaweed, which leads usback to swamps and the Greenock creeks. All that aside, this is a smooth,intense wine, of a shape and size much smaller than all the above discussionproperly justifies. It has some of the old Linke’s smallgoods in its nature,and some juicy, sweet fruit in an elegant, almost cute framework.

Penfolds Bin 138 Shiraz Mourvedre Grenache 2008

$30; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 15APR10; 92++ points

Marello cherries, kalamataolive, Chinese olive and mustard paste, carbon and coke, chocolate and polishedleather … all the right stuff in the right proportion … and then a long, dustytail … this is a neat, cheeky, almost brazen hussy from the Vacqueyras tabac:formed in the slightly rustic manner, with characters of older, more oxidizedwine styles mixed well with the more modern, fresher styles like Tim Smith iscurrently king of in the Barossa. Which is not to say this isn't Barossa instyle: it's as Penfolds' Barossa as you can get: much more a harmonious blendthan a sum of its components.

Petaluma Adelaide Hills Shiraz 2005

$??; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92++ points

Seven per cent viognierseems a lot; one wonders what this poor old Nairne shiraz did to deserve so much of it. But it’slovely, quirky wine, opulent, rich, and perfumed as headily as all get out. Ithas a disarming licorice/star anise/pastis topnote. Then there’s a shallowspread of juicy red liqueur, lean and dry with vio tannins spread over it likethe gravel on which you park the Bimmer. The viognier makes it savoury, as insavory, the herb, and it needs food like goat cheese seasoned with savory. Thisis a promising example of the potential of the tapanappa group schist soils togrow splendid Rhone flavours. I’d like moreferal billygoat in it, but I’m Pan. Petal’s best red? Maybe. Quirky, but cute.www.petaluma.com.au

Poonawatta Estate Montie’s Block Eden Valley Shiraz 2004

$29; 15% alcohol; cork; 92++

As its riesling oftenproves, the wind-dried schist, clay and quartz of High Eden Ridge - fromMountadam to Mengler’s - gives more grainy and austere wine than anything Clarehas to offer. While this bush vine shiraz comes from the deeper, damper loam atthe bottom of the tiny, lofty 1880 Poonawatta block, it’s still puckery andgravelly with tannin, as much as right royal and mighty. Mastadon, stewed incast iron with crows and nettles. www.poonawatta.com

The Gimp McLaren Vale/Langhorne Creek Shiraz 2005

$25; 14.5% alcohol; Diam compound cork; 92++ points

When The Gimp slid into PulpFiction, S&M aficionados immediately smelt him: slightly sweaty, in apolished black leather sort of way, with a fruitiness foreign to your actualfruit, would be a fair crack of his whip. Like this wicked black wine, which ispackaged for San Francisco, but will never getthere, its coy USagent having refused its perfectly fitting costume. Home of the brave?Codswallop! Forget food; drink its carrion sinfulness while listening to JohnCale's new live Circus version of Venus in Furs. www.coates-wines.com/gimp

d’Arenberg Laughing Magpie Shiraz Viognier 2006

$30; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92+ points

While this blend has apleasantly spicy edge, from seasoned oak and yeast as much as vineyard, itsfruit smells like it’s going to be syrupy, thick and dull, like most of itsrivals. Not so. That spicy top note builds in the wine’s firm acidity, sappyastringency, and persistent mealy tannins. It could come from the south of France, soneatly is it balanced. Then it would cost you twice this much. Old-fashionedtechniques - apart from the waders on the grape-treaders - have made it soulfuland wholesome. It’d complement mild pork curry, and offer contrast to venisoncassoulet. www.darenberg.com.au

NEW!

d’Arenberg The Fruit Bat Single Vineyard ScarceEarths McLaren Vale Shiraz 2009

$99; 15% alcohol; screw cap; planted 1920; 330 dozen;92++ points

Wet old barn straw d’Arry inthe classic mould, with oyster mushrooms and batshit seemed to be the go onopening: a slender thing, with mushy old tannins like waterlogged rowboats. Itgrew slightly prettier in the six hours, picking up some musk andconfectioner’s sugar. And some leather. And then some aniseed. The tanninsseemed a little sweeter, too. It’s a perfect example of traditional familywinemaking determination dominating terroir. And very much like what d’Arry usedto call his Burgundy.Although I reckon d’Arry woulda stuck the hose in this, I really like it. Moreair the better. But then, the d'Arry's Original, which is what that "Burgundy" became is$18! Must be very expensive ink on the label. But then, thereIS a lot of it.

Domaine Belle Crozes-Hermitage Les Pierrelles 2007

$38; 13% alcohol; cork; drunk 6MAY10; 92+ points

Dumb and clean; bright andshort. Simple bright black and purple berries. This drink does in fact make aman put his shorts on and then take them off again. And then tannin. And thenrooting.

Florance Kangaroo Island Shiraz2005

$15.50; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 92+ points

This moody black cutenessreminds me of the estimable Domaine de Martinelles Crozes Hermitage of the Rhone ... it smells like the hard dirt in which it grew,in this case damp podsol peppered with ironstone. But there’s plenty of plushin there, too: creamy and mushroomy and smugly accomplished. Dark spice fromappropriate oak adds distinction. It’s lovely medium-weight wine, with a littlealcoholic heat in its tail. 10 OCT 98

Hahndorf Hill Winery Adelaide Hills Shiraz 2005

$29; 14.5% alcohol; cork; tasted MAR 09; 92+ points

I doubt that slick,polished, silky shirazlike this would ever have ripened in the freezing weather I recall of Hahndorfwhen I was a kid. Not only the main street has changed. But this sure hasripened, and it’s packed with smooth, harmonious mulberries, prunes and plumsflavours; even maybe a little black fig. It has no more tannin than the furry skinof a ripe fig would impart. It’s luxurious, opulent, self-satisfied wine. Ican’t help suspecting it would be more entertaining if it hadn’t got quite soripe. S&S will do a better job. In the meantime, have this with one ofMax’s incredible fillets, blue, with blue cheese sauce and capers. Practicecooking them on your own for a few months, and once you’ve got it nailed, askthat one around that you’ve never been game to ask. Clean sheets please.

Green Point Yarra Valley ReserveShiraz 2004

$47; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 92 points

Here’s the sort of shiraz I was weaned on:intensely flavoured, and smooth, but with a drinkable level of alcohol. Hotroad bitumen; hot tractor in the rain; trailer full of mulberry, blackberry,blueberry and prune: all the stuff usually reserved for shiraz over 14.5% ishere in perfect balance and harmony, and yet the palate is elegant, refined andluxurious, and not at all like King Kong teetering around in Manolo Blahnikstilletoes, which is still the predominant local trend. Go pigeons and beetsstewed in red.

Mitolo Savitar McLaren Vale Shiraz 2005

$??; 14.5% alcohol; cork; 92 points

While I whinge about gettinga free iPod with this bottle, its maker, Ben Glaetzer, was given a new M3 BMWfor his efforts. How many points would I have given it had I got the car? Leavethat to you. It's classic McLaren shiraz,full of simmering, soulful satsuma and sweet, dark Maranello cherry, withpiquant, dried ginger oak. It's a lot more approachable than Miltolo's 05Serpico Vales Cab, and would sing a perfect Noo Joizy contralto duet withshanks and tart black olives in a rich tomato sauce. www.mitolowines.com.au

K1 by Geoff Hardy Adelaide Hills Shiraz 2005

$28; 14.5% alcohol; cork(!); 92+ points

Saucy (a microgram ofWorcestershire) and audacious, this Bright Young Thing comes from Geoff Hardy’sKuitpo vineyard, which the label says “was planted more than two decades ago”.Centuries more? It goes on to say Geoff has centuries of vinous heritage. Ripeand plummy, with whiffs of dried figs and dates, and thickly viscous, likesomething from a Fowler’s preserving jar, it’s weeping for a fine dry pecorinopepato, to match the trendy pepper it got from somewhere. Velvet finish: soft,reassuring. www.k1.com.au

Karra Yerta Barossa Shiraz 2004

$30; 14.3% alcohol; screw cap; 92+ points)

Rudely, unabashedly fruityand provocative, this is fresher and redder than the lass who played theaccordion when we preached in the street. It reminds me of David Wynn’slightly-oaked shirazwines, still alive on my palate after thirty years. Full of coffee, cocoa,blackberry and mulberry, it finishes with the most polite little dash of dryingtannin. Nuts. Elegant. Juicy. Vibrant. Not bad with cold roast pig’s cheek andhorseradish, either. www.karrayertawine.com.au

Paxton MV McLaren Vale Shiraz 2008

$20; 14% alcohol; screw cap; drunk 7-9MAY10; 92+points

This vibrant healthy winereminds me of some four times this price made biodynamically with the help ofEdouard Labeye in Minerva, near Sete on the French Mediterranean. The fruit iselectrically charged with bright life. It's excited. Prunes, blueberries,Marello cherries, kalamata: all the right stuff's there, simmering away.Licorice, too. It snakes about the tongue, and then departs, leaving a littlestack of tannin. In other words, it seems a bit short. But it IS savoury,clean, and safe.

Campbells BobbieBurns Rutherglen Shiraz 2006

$22.50; 14.5% alcohol; cork(!); 92 points

This must surely be the weeterrups wee Rab, whose name it bears, gulleted before he wrote The JollyGauger. Which involves a touch of houghmagandie and a joint a beef. It’s notlike Barossa or McLiavelli. Clean, svelte, slimy like pinot grigio, wholesomelycomforting and satisfying, with no overt oak or tirliewirlies, it’s a friggin’relief! It’s the 37th release of the Bonnie Burns, and while Rutherglen’s onlymarginally cooler than the Barossa, this is the 37th time that the Scots ladsfrom Kelly country have shewn those few tiny degrees make all the diff betweendrink and drunk. Pink beef.

Cape Mentelle Marmaduke WA ShirazGrenache 2005

$17; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92 points

The cool south-west cornerof Western Australia makes lighter shiraz grenache blends than the big, muscly, heartierbrutes we tend to produce around Adelaide.The Wozzie versions are in fact closer to the more refined offerings from thesouth of France,from where we pinched the idea. This is a cute, simple wine in a way, but thatvery lightness of being makes it delectable. More Cotes Rotie than Cornas ofClape, if you're Rhonesome tonight. Pigeon and beetroot.www.capementelle.com.au

Giant Steps Yarra Valley Shiraz2005

($30; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 92 points)

Polished, intense, coolclimate shiraz here, of a style high California and Australiaare smoothly, deftly stealing from poor warm old France,which almost forgot shirazas a premium red thirty years back. There’s a touch of the Yallourn coal trainhere: “Brett! Brett!” scream the yeasty brats of the judging circuit, hopingfor a brettanomycaes taint, but I don’t give a shit. It’s lovely shiraz, with the sort offinish that screams for great cheese, like Blue Wensleydale.

Frankland Estate Isolation Ridge Shiraz 2003

($27; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92 points)

This is a great wine from afairly dim vintage in the vineyard which was first to use the name of what hasnow become an appellation: the Frankland River Region, in the vast wilds ofsouth-western Western Australia, between Albany and the Pointd’Entrecasteaux. Stacked with dried prune, date, fig, and blackberry, it’s asyrupy unction, opulent and fluffy, with perfectly apt lingering tannins and nosophistication at all. Steak with cream and cracked black peppers, please.www.franklandestate.com.au (23.12.6))

Gomersal Barossa Valley Shiraz2005

($22; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92 points)

Intense and juicy, with abouquet that jumps across the table, this underpriced juvenile is wholesome,perky and disarming. Over a faint morning hearth of slightly sooty oak there’sa heap of rich, fat fruit, supported by lovely dry medium-grained tannins. Asthe wine ever-so-gradually recedes, its firm acidity and tannin sets thesalivatories gushing, driving the drinker to tucker. And another glass. It’lllast fifteen years, growing smoother for the first ten. (4.11.6)

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Raw Power Adelaide Plains Shiraz 2010

$12; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted October 2011;92 points

Steeped in the addledmystique of Rawley Power, gravel-voiced punskter in the middle at the front ofthe too-forgotten Anti-Power thrashers all those headaches back – was it real,Ma? - this lush Plains Shiraz should have the old geezer crooning likeCaruso. It has all the creamy plushnessthat 90% of the high-alc gloop-gloop mob desire, but at a charming 13.5%alcohol. Which just goes to show. Generous to a fault, silky and intense, it isliving proof that the Barossa region and the Plains can make gloriously rich,healthy, honest Shirazwines without the dreaded deadheadbanging that Robert Parker Jr. induced withhis perfect 100 points regime and psychopathic obsession with other sorts ofpower. Rawley made this with the dreadedduo of Tim Freeland and Dominic Torzi. They took five tonnes per acre off the single-wire 45 year old Shiraz ofVaracalli at Angle Vale, where the red clay and limestone do the same thingevery year. They let nature have her wayin 10 tonne open-top steel vats, with whole berries and 20% intact bunches inthe fizz. The pumpovers were soft,followed by gentle basket pressing, the wild yeast ferment finished half in oldAmerican barrels and half in tank, and the full explosive glory was bottledwithout filtering. Then they charge you$12. Holy shit. Glug sans gloop.

Sevenhill Clare Valley Br. John MaySJ Reserve Release Shiraz 2004

$60 at the cellar; 14% alcohol; cork; drunk APR 09;92 points

Clare is somehow overlookedin red, which many will immediately disagree with. Its wines are fortunatelyfiner than the gobstoppers which have become popular; so much so that someClare winemakers have attempted Parkerillas and come out looking a littlesilly. If you want fine check any of the new Sevenhill reds. If you want finerin the brooding brute mode, check this older model. Two days ago it was allblack velvet. Then it went a sort of crimson. In flavour, I mean. Now thefruit’s put back its muscly neck and it’s singing a deep crimson aria in thekey of silk. It’s got a tad porty – I preferred it yesterday – but it’s still abreathtaker. In a sense, the Jesuits have made a more sacramental Sevenillathan a Parkerilla, and succeeded. So while it’s not quite as lithe as LizHeidenreich’s new baby angels, this old cheese is best had with red. No. I meanthis old fatso priest smells of port, which is an allegation I could neverlevel at Brother John, because he’s not fat. This wine was made by Tim Gneilfrom thirsty forty year old vines, and selected by Brother John as the cream ofthe cellar. Open slate fermenters, basket press, old oak for two years, tworack’n’returns, no humans buggering around with it. Liz bottled it, but shedoesn’t bugger around. So now. Open it, decant it, have it with pecorino granoand figs. Ooooh Jesus. “Power and grace”, Brother John calls it. More gracethan finesse, I say. Amen. Hallelujah! LESSON: So what I mean about Clare redsis not that they’re finer. It’s that they have more power and grace.

Torzi Matthews Schist Rock Eden Valley Shiraz2006

$??; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 92

The intense, maybeobsessive, TM outfit has wrung itself out with this year’s releases, withnearly all their Barossa and Adelaide Plains wines squeezing recommendationsfrom me. Not to mention their stunning, beautifully acidic, olive oil. Thiswine smells like a cream and chocolate sauce, with an ooze of blackberryliqueur. It’s syrupy, but not gooey, and it slides seductively about the palatebefore leaving a meniscus of sheer, unadulterated satisfaction. There’s notmuch tannin, but lotsa liqueur. It’s almost dessert wine. You could drink itwith Mississippimud cake. dominic.torzi@bigpond.com.au

Wynn’s Coonawarra Estate Claret 1953

$n/a; no alcohol listed; good cork; drunk 25 APR 09;92 points

Prior to 1952, it seems thatnobody on Earth had deliberately induced, managed, monitored and understood amalo-lactic fermentation. This was a secondary ferment which occurred whenbacteria, not yeast, converted the harsh metallic natural acid of the grapes,malic acid, to the sweeter, softer, fattier acid of milk, lactic acid. This wasleast likely to occur in Australia,where a winemaker would be sacked if, immediately after the primary ferment, hehadn’t whacked every wine with sufficient sulphur dioxide to preserve the wholeof Gaul. Whatever it was, malo was verboten.But the brilliant young oenologist, Ian Hickinbotham, convinced his brilliantemployer, David Wynn, to let him do it with Wynn’s new prize: Coonawarra, in1952. Hick repeated it with greater finesse in 1953, and this is that wine. Itwon huge acclaim, invariably from people who knew nothing of malo-lacticfermentation. Which included her spunky, fresh new Majesty Queen Elizabeth II,who took most of the wine home to BuckinghamPalace in the Royal Yacht Britanniaafter her 1954 visit to Mount Gambier, just south ofCoonawarra. One presumes she liked it: I remember a much more recent Wynnfridge collage, which, amongst all the grandchildren snaps, modestly included ashot of Her Majesty and Phil le Duc having Thermos tea and sandwiches in muddywellies and tweeds, surrounded in said mud by calm domestic fowls. With theWynns, David and Patricia. The wine is genteel, but still quite bright andlively. It has a whiff of fresh-tanned hide, but is predominantly stacked withclassic Australian mint over a bowl of chocolate custard. Maybe chocolate crêmecaramel is more accurate. But at this great age, it has as much mint asMildara’s 1963 Peppermint Patty had twenty years ago. The flavours arestunning. The wine looks like a fifteen year old Coonawarra of the modernstyle. Incredible life, tannin, balance and force – for about forty minutes.Then it began quickly to dissemble, sucking in oxygen betrayed it for 56 years.By Bacchus this is good wine. Oh, yes, I forgot ... The variety? Shiraz.

Torzi Matthews Schist Rock Eden Valley Shiraz2007

$17; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 91+++ points

This drought red’s a deadhonest expression of the High Barossa in the driest vintage Dominic Torzi canremember. Make that could remember – he wrote these notes before vintage 2008.There’s as much old black pepper and austere micaceous stone in it as red andblack berries. The middle’s all plush and caramelly before those dustyfinishing tannins move in. It’ll live for a very long time, but sang a heartyduet with pepper and game sausages, pasted with Krondorf Road Trading CompanyFig and Chilli Chutney and a little Matchett’s Chilli Fire from Currency Creek.It’s a bargain! dominic.torzi@bigpond.com.au

Bay of Shoals Kangaroo IslandShiraz 2006

$20; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 91++ points

August Clape makes shiraz like this at Cornas on the Rhone.Rich, juicy, plump and smooth, like a syrupy compote of prune, fig, andblackberries – even the elusive blueberry – and then an ozone-like lift, as ifthe blackberries have just been hit by lightning. It finishes slender, grippyand clean, with lovely balance and elegance. Very pleasing; obviously made withuncommon sensitivity and gastronomic intelligence. 10 OCT 98

Penfolds Bin 128 Coonawarra Shiraz 2008

$34; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 15APR10; 91++ points

2008 was weird inCoonawarra: wet spring, little frost, then a dry summer with strange, shortbursts of heat. It’s given a Shirazwith a good deal of the steam engine in its aroma: swarf, soot, charcoal, hotiron: it’s all there tickin’ and hissin’. Given that, it’s not a huge wine.Let’s say that the fruits are not foremost: rather, there’s coppocollocharcuterie fats and dark meats, Choo Choo Bar aniseed; hardly fresh primaries.But then, when the Grey Shrike Thrush warbled its sweet honeyed trill rightoutside the window, I thought maybe the wine had a little more sweetness andlight in its heart than my first contemplations permitted. Give it time.

The Hedonist McLaren Vale Shiraz 2005

($17; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 91+ points)

Walter Clappis conductedthis lush naughtiness in his own biodynamically-run vineyard. Typical of thefresh new styles the more rad Vales makers are tending towards, it’s mellow,spicy wine, with vibrant plummy fruit and hints of dark cherry conserve,mulberry, musk sticks and pickled walnut. It’s juicy and alive, with quite someviscosity, and very fine velvet tannin. It blooms with thirty minutes in thedecanter, indicating good cellaring. Steak and mushrooms. (13.1.7)

Saint Cosme Cotes-du-Rhone 2007

$18; 14% alcohol; cork; 91 points

Unusual for a Cotes, in thatit's 100% shiraz,this is a little honey of a drink, especially at this little honey of a price.It has the dark aroma of Iberian ham, with briary hedgerow berries and reducedspinach whiffs, hinting at tannins to come in the palate. It's also juicy andalmost sweet to sniff, like fat Greek olives with sage. The palate's just whatyou'd expect after all that, elegant and easy, ,juicy and slick, but instead ofthe tannins the bouquet signalled, it just slides out into a long easy taper,leaving the palate refreshed and smacking. I could happily chug-a-lug away atthis all afternoon, just as she stands, but it also cries out for honestProvence-style tucker, like baby rabbit cooked in viognier lees with littleonions and fresh herbs. Vintage celllars and 1st Choice exclusively. 08 MAR 09

Ben Glaetzer Wallace Barossa Shiraz Grenache 20

$20; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 90+++ points

About as dour and surly asits namesake – the Scotsman, I mean, not the Glaetzer – this wine has all thesense of humour of a swordsmith’s anvil. Blackberry, aniseed, licorice andforge aromas fill its dense, gloomy mass. It’s alive, but tight and ungiving,unlike the much more expensive Glaetzers with corks for the dumb Americans. Adusting of floral bathpowder and marshmallow sugar emerges eventually, but thepalate remains dense and black, with impenetrable low-yield grenache puttingits unctuous gun oil where tannin would normally be. This is mighty wine. Waita decade and have it with blood pudding. www.glaetzer.com

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Mount Langi Ghiran Grampians Cliff Edge Shiraz 2008

$30; 14.5% alcohol; screwcap; tasted 25 JAN 12; 90+++ points

Here’s proof you can make Shiraz at higher alcoholswithout it becoming jammy and gloopy. Itindicates a return to some sort of regional reality for this mob: all thisfruit is from the estate, rather than being a homogenous and amorphous blend ofwhatever. It’s tight dark stuff,prettily perfumed for struggling drought vines in granitic ground, but with thesurly hints of sweet fresh licorice and tannic juniper below that happy andjolly blueberry front. All worked byfoot and hand through to barrel, it has an open-faced honesty which I findattractive, in spite of the darker curtains in the rear. While the Phi Shiraz blend I tasted earliertoday is pure Rhone gorge, this wine is muchmore like the stuff from out on that big river’s sunny delta. It’s tannic, but slender and slightly snaky. Smokesome pork belly, or take it a restaurant with proper tea-smoked duck. At which point I must mention Wah Hing. Again. I’m over the Chows. Swing with the Hing.

Bremerton Selkirk Langhorne Creek Shiraz 2007

$24; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; drunk 24-29DEC9; 90++points

Rich and stewy, like areally good prune and apple tart, here's a wine that has outstayed its pricerange as far as improving since opening goes. It's falling now, but it shoulddo well with four or five years in the cellar. It's more blackberry and prunein the mouth: deep, glowering and slightly thick of skull, velvety of tannin,and rather drowsy in the fruit department, right from the start. By which Imean it never quite wakes up, but never really falls to sleep on you, either.

Cape Mentelle Margaret River Shiraz2007

$32; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 7-8MAY10; 90++ points

Aniseed and musk deck thesepruny halls. The wine's intense and a wee bit taut, with acrid coffee rock andgingery oak, and it has what they seem to call savoury tones, and it's slenderand snaky and finishes with dusty-dry tannin. So. What's its point ofdifference?

Gundog Estate Gundaroo Shiraz 2008

$25; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; TASTED 07JUN10; 90++points

Like many of the newmodern-style Shirazwines to come from the South of France, this is a cute, fruitsweet, hyper-cleanred of modest alcohol and heaps of sass. Fortunately, it has a layer of sharpred summer earth dust that gets up your nose, irritating the tubes nicely,saving the wine from becoming a simpleton jujube or Fruitgum. It is delightfuldrinking, given all this, but still a touch on the simple side. I imaginethere's nothing better than sitting on the veranda at Geoff's joint atGunderoo, glass of this on the table, while you wrestle birdies from the teethof the gun dog.

Louis Barruol Saint Cosme Cotes-du-Rhone2008

$20; 14% alcohol; cork; tasted 2-6JUN10; 90++ points

This has very pretty pruneand ripe raspberry aromas, with sooty oak that tickles the nostrils. It fliesat you from the glass: keen and eager to be sniffed and noticed. It delivers alovely little lozenge of black cherry and blackcurrant to the middle of thetongue, and then leaves you with its tannin. And not much else happens. It's afairly simple little Shirazfor afternoon quaffing. Entertaining and stroppy, but not Mensa material.tasted 14 OCT 09; 90++ points Tight and dark as the dregs of the black tea in arusty old tea tin, with marello cherries, baby beetroot, and prune flavours,this juicy little wickedness reminds me of the shiraz of the Canberra district,from a warmer year. Which tends to be two or three times this price. It'sslender and racy, with a touch of the old railway station - polished wood;mopped floors; coal dust; hot iron; women emerging freshly lipsticked andperfumed from the tall tiled toilets to settle for a hurried scone, withblackberry jam and cream - but beaneath there's a dark slick of the sort ofgrease that made the iron horse run so swift across the country. Pity about thecork.

Penfolds Seventy Six Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon 2008

$18; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 15APR10; 90++ points

This is the retro-lookKoonunga that Peter Gago and his crew make for restaurants and duty-freestores. You can buy it at the Penfolds Magill cellars too. It has much morecomposure and authority than the $9 Koonunga jobby, with more serious Penfoldsstyle. Its cheeky fruit (Barossa/Coonawarra/Adelaide Hills) has been givenproper grown-up oak (33% new), giving it that sweet-but-savoury fruity polish:just the right balance and a bargain.

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Bellevue EstateMcLaren Vale Shiraz 2010

$18; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted December 2011; 90++ points

Corey Vandeleur grows andmakes this in the main street of McLaren Vale, in the Maslin Sand at the Bellevue (western) end,opposite the Visitors’ Centre. It’s muchbetter value than any of the posh Scarce Earths wines I reviewed on DRINKSTERon Tuesday, and probably a more honest reflection of its site than most ofthem. It has some sweet dark oak, sure,but it’s been done with more sensitivity. In this moody, glowering fruit, with all its juniper and blueberry,there’s room for the odd black barrel. Atop all that gothic stuff, there’s a pretty fringe of musk and mint,maybe some fennel. Aniseed balls. The palate’s more slender and lithe than thatbouquet set me up for; the illusion of sweetness intensifies, so pure andintense is its fruit. And then its lovely infant tannin, jumping around thecot. This honest vigor brought a complexBeaujolais to mind, maybe Moulin-à-vent, but that’s way north of Belleville, on the Macontrack, in Eastern France where they growGamay. And this is obviously ripeAustralian Shiraz. Its afterbreath ishotter than I’d expected, but she all stacks up. Really lively, lovely, strapping Vales Shirazat a deadly price. Reduced spinach andsalt fish rice with 1. Duck. 2. Goose.3. Pork.

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Joseph Angel Gully Scarce Earths McLaren ValeClarendon Shiraz 2009

$75; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; planted 1998; 345 doz.,tasted December 2011; 90++ points

It seems to me the makerhere is longing for the Italian Piedmont: I remember baby Nebbiolos withsimilar form to this. It’s a woody ultra-modern north Italy style inits shape, but with soot, Irish Moss cough gels, and prune aromas. High countryvery old rocks dry grown McLaren Vale Shiraz. Bigger than Nebbi, of course, butyou get my drift. Although the wood becomes a little sharper in the same time,a beautiful comforting fruit fleshiness develops with 6 hours air, a sort ofgentle milk chocolate creme. The soot remains. The wine has a slightly syrupyyet strapping palate with tannins that remind me of dried apple (common in manylow-yield vineyards in the drought) and dried oatmeal. It needs at least sixyears.

Henschke Hill Of Grace 2005

$585?; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 15APR10; 90+ points

Tasted against the 05Grange, this poor dear looked very south of France in an ordinary year. Itshared the wet hessian aroma that was one of the few detractors in the Grange,but otherwise appeared like a shy, blushing, simple but cute country girl.Which only goes to show that a single vineyard wine will always find it hard tocompete with such a massively-composed cross-regional monolith as Grange. I amastonished, I must say, at the extreme points my colleagues in the wine presshave afforded this wine. These are the same people, perhaps, who failed tonotice that for many consecutive years the HoG was gutted by brettanomycaes.Having ignorantly afforded those vintages very high points, they must thenafford this one extreme points, if only because it appears to be brett-free.No?

Inkwell McLaren Vale Shiraz 2005

$30; 16% alcohol; screw cap; 90+ points

Inkwell? Well-inked! Dudleyand Karen Brown fled Tech Valley, California, to grow this with thedeft aid of intense vintillectual James Hook, on California Road in the Vales. When thecontracting refinery needed a mighty essence to boost its watery tanks, Brownsreluctantly let these grapes hang. So power replaced elegance, but ancient,sweaty, hands-on recipes saved enough fruit for this teetering King Kong: ahot, demanding tincture that sears the exhalations but renders a great drink,decanted, well-aired, and schlucked with stuff like ox tindaloo, plenty ofyoghurt and cucumber on the side.

Lodestar Heathcote Shiraz 2006

$20; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 90+ points

People who live in South Australia, with all its ancient shiraz vignoble, are regarded as suspiciousboxheads by the vignerons of Heathcote, and much of the Victorian Alps. So Ideclare my residency of the boxhead state, and cross the border to enter thisglass hoping to see my worst suspicions allayed. And they are. This could havecome from the high Barossa, from, say, a veteran winemaker of the calibre ofColin Forbes, or men fresh to the press like Bob McLean, who now makes his ownlovely wine at McLean’s Farm on Mengler Hill, after decades with his nose tothe PR winestone at Orlando, Petaluma, and St Hallett. But they’re rare. Backto the Alps. This has a slightly stewed,sunburnt edge, but it smells more elegant, much more alive, and less forcedthan most boxhead shiraz.It’s strapping, in fact, and zippy, and entertains rather than preaches like awarty old Lutheran. It has lovely lithe brightness and appetising tannins, andit’s a sublime wine when compared to Barossa-envy Parkerilla Heathcotes likethe dreaded, but perfectly named, Duck Muck. This was made by Sandro Mosele,the sensitive hero of Mornington, exclusively for Vintage Cellars and 1stChoice. It’s really lovely appetising wine.

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Penny’s Hill Footprint McLaren Vale Scarce EarthsShiraz 2009

$65; 15% alcohol; screw cap; planted 1991-96; ???doz.; tased December 2011; 90+ points

Very complex, but harmoniousand assimilated, with moody moss and sod below, and musky confectionerytopnotes, this wine looked very impressive from the start. Acrid vetiver-likemeadow pasture wafted across the glass at first. For a moment, I thought ofCastagna. After six hours, the palate is elegant and slender, willowy andappetizing, more authoritative without being forceful or blustery, and verydifferent in style to all the preceding wines. Thirteen hours in, it’s themossy sod with some nose-twitchy oak and fresh-split slate. The oak finallytastes like nutmeg. The fruit is better than the winemaking. This was one of the few Scarce Earths winesto win recognition at the 2011 McLaren Vale Wine Show. Like them, it climbed all the way up to bronze!

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Yalumba Organic South Australia Shiraz 2011

($19; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 90+ points)

It’s fascinating that in thedisgusting moulds and rots of the second-wettest vintage in Australianwinemaking history, it was often the organic and bio-dynamic vineyards whichcame off best. Which is not to deny thata lot of it needed pasteurizing to keep the browning botrytis-triggered laccaseat bay. The fruit in this comforting,chubby wine came from vineyards in the irrigated Mallee, McLaren Vale, and thenorth Adelaide Plains. Like many of therecent Yalumba cheapies, it seems to have been made to a French recipe, bywhich I mean a lot more than simple rote pasteurisation andchaptalisation. The wine could have comefrom Borie de Maurel in Minervois, for example … a source of stunning organicand bio-d south of Francedeliciosities. It has no apparent timber– maybe vegans can’t drink wood – and has no edges or sharpness like Yalumba’smuch more expensive offerings usually show, even if they’re cork-derived. Rather, it’s plum juicy like a Melba, but asdark as Mahler on the other hand. Stewed, yes, but still fresh, like conserve. It has a neat dash of tannin in its tail,just to make a wine of it, and some peachy Viognier, which I don’t think was atall necessary. But I really do likeit. There’s a Viognier and Chardonnay inthe same inexpensive set, but neither are as wholesomely slurpy as this. Jump. Tasted January 2012

Yalumba Barossa ShirazViognier 2005

$18; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; cork; 90+ points

Australia’s shiraz viognierblends are tending towards this intensely syrupy style more than the paler,more austere north Rhone blends that are theorigins of the idea. Rich with typical Barossa cooking chocolate and blackberryand mulberry reductions, with the vio’s peachy syrup filling all the gaps, it’sslick, thick, and warming stuff indeed. The tannins of the viognier don’t takelong to poke their grainy heads through the wine’s texture: the finish is verydry and adult, working the mouth and setting the juices a-flow. It likes thedecanter; pity about the cork. It needs really hearty dark meat, like muttonshanks or venison. And it’s CHEAP! www.yalumba.com

Gemtree Tadpole McLaren Vale Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon 2006

$15; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 90 points

Apart from making the winewhich should have won the Bushing King (The Obsidian), Big Mike Brown’sbeginning to kick very serious arse at Gemtree, where his tiny wife, Melissa,runs the family vineyards. This one’s named after the taddies that are breedinglike, well, frogs, in the extravagant frog resort she’s built along theirrejuvenated Terraces creek on the Willunga scarp. One of the Vales’ beastcheapies, this is all licorice, anise, black tea, and chocolate in the nose,and lipsmacking berries and tannins slurping in the swallowing division.Cheese, meat, lovers – have it with anything. Anyone.www.gemtreevineyards.com.au

Penley Estate Hyland Coonawarra Shiraz 2008

$20; 15% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 9-12MAY10; 90points

Cool Coonawarra managed tosurvive the record heatwave of 2008 better than some of the more sunbakedvignobles, and obviously had no trouble ripening this bonnie bowl of sunshineand life. Mulberries and fresh marshmallows overlie the darker, toasty oakaromas, and the swallowing is a pleasant moment indeed. The tannins areappropriately velvety and the acid still sinuous. It’s a neat and tidy littlepackage at a great price, and evidence that Coonawarra sometimes does Shiraz much better thanit does Cabernet.

Lloyd Brothers Mclaren Vale Shiraz 2006

$22; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 89+++ points

Aniseed balls and licoricerings ding the big gong in this piquant glass: all that and then the acridwhoof of the Willunga slate quarry after a blast ... only after all that’smoved into your hooter and settled there does the red and black fruit begin toemerge. This is edgy, lean, hand-hammered, Samurai sword sorta wine, with theforge and the carbon gradually becoming more and more predominant. After thatmacho intro, the palate’s a bit fluffy for a moment. And then the edge returnsto shave the tongue of its ancient sins, and the finish is alternating waves ofblackfruit syrup, quarry dust, and the swordsmith’s soot. Pretty good wine:needs eight years. It’s good to see the old syrup and jam of the humaninterventionist aspects of Mclaren Vale gradually falling away while the Earthtakes over.JAN 09

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d’Arenberg The Eight Iron Single Vineyard ScarceEarths McLaren Vale Shiraz 2009

$99; 15% alcohol; screw cap; planted 1960; 330 doz.;tasted December 2011; 89+ points

I refuse to mention thatutterly stupid name. Imagine trying to understand if it were accuratelytranslated into Mandarin. Just the Eight would have been enough. The alcoholsand the drought tannins seemed a bit big for the fruit on pouring. It was notexceptional, but had pleasing tweaks of raspberry and musk in a jammy nose, andthe hot, tannic palate of the wine reminded me of most of the south of France. Most ofit. Six hours’ air has seen some acrid acetone bootpolish crawl out, andaniseed, juniper and soot. It tickles the nose hairs. The palate has moresupple, sinuous flesh, and just as the whole thing seems less of a rip-off iteventually gets jammy. The finish seems a little doughy, and that serioustea-tin tannin made me yearn for a cuppa, and a hot scone with blackberry jam andwhipped cream. Not many wines have done that to me. It could be a beauty infour years. Or it could still be just like this.

Fox Gordon Eight Uncles Barossa Valley Shiraz2005

$28; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 89+ points

Rich soupy Barossa, withbeetroot, turnip, figs and dates in the old cast iron pot, hanging over thewoodfire in a mud-floored cottage like Esther’s, which I rented from NortySchluter in the late ’eighties. Roses climbing through the six-pane windows; anold leather armchair by the stove, horsehair stuffing busting out. Butts in theashtray. Mettwurst on the table. The palate’s more elegant and slender thanmost Barossa gobstoppers, with lovely turnip greens, almost tending toward themethoxypyrazine tomato leaf of high-yield cabernet. That adds some balancingedge. But you can’t convince me that this wine was made to their recipe forVintage Cellars in 2005 by Tash Mooney. This is unsold wine blended andfreshened for a purpose. There’s even some indecision about the number ofuncles, with the back label suggesting that in fact the real number’s sixteen.This is not unusual in the Barossa, where schisms occur nearly every time aPastor dies and a new one draws up. But Fox? Gordon? These are notBarossadeutscher names. These are Inglitsch. Or Scottish already. Which is notto say there’s anything doubtful about the wine’s quality. Unique to VintageCellars. NOTE: Having just had a quiet one with Tash Mooney, the maker,eighteen months later, I am assured this was made explicitly for the Coles/VintageCellars chain, and is not a mixture made for expedient cash.

Peter Lehmann Barossa Shiraz 2005

$18; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 89 points

Everybody thought DougLehmann’s palate would fall to bits when he gave up smoking his belovedEscorts, but if this wine’s any indicator, it’s still on fire. Doug, AndrewWigan and the regular team have churned out another Barossa bargain, and onethat’s settling down nicely after a rather brash start. We forget how timeimproves Barossa reds. The usual Barossa chocolate’s here, with prunes andpoached cashew and rich stewed plum. It’s neat and tidy, and will grow more sowith a year or two more cellar. In the meantime, pepper steak.www.peterlehmannwines.com (19.1.8)

Zema Estate Coonawarra Shiraz 2006

$26; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 13 NOV 09; 89points

Bickfords' Essence of Coffeeand Chicory comes to mind; anise and licorice way below. Clever mellow oak;some soot. That's enough schnozz. Strapping cool shiraz fruit runs this train: it approachessinuous athleticism, like a pole vaulter, but it's really a train. Acid likerailway lines.

Bay of ShoalsIsland BlendKangaroo IslandShiraz CabernetSauvignon Merlot 2007

$20; 15.5% alcohol; screw cap; 88++ points

Slurpy, cheeky and deliciousin a brash and bibulant sort of a way, this has those bootpolish and licoricecharacters I keep talking about, but a bucket of oak which reminds me of A. P.John, the Barossan cooper. So somewhere in all that oaky spice and sap andalcohol you do find fruit but it tastes kinda Spanish. Weird. This is goodvalue. 10 OCT 98

Margan Limited ReleaseHunter ValleyShirazMourvèdre 2008

$30; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 4-7MAY10; 88++points

Peat, coal dust, hot oldlocos: these aromas reek through the fruit of many Hunter reds, and theincidence of Mourvèdre here serves simply to intensify this. There is muchfruit to be reeked through, mind you: crème de cassis, Ribena and prune tobegin. The tannin is like the gentle velvety pith of the dried apple. But ithangs about and intensifies, that tannin. So While it has soul and life, thisis a very staunch, very dry wine, needing quite some sizzling fat in whateveryou eat with it. Hot olives, chorizos, duck.

Penfolds Bin 128 Coonawarra Shiraz 2007

$32.90; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted FEB 09 and 1MAY 10; 88++ points

Stupidly, I tasted thisafter the Bin 28 Kalimna, whose intensity and weight overshadowed this lighter,simpler, more twee shirazwhich is typical of Coonawarra. After swallowing this one, I could still tastethe Bin 28! Which is not to say this is any fledgeling. It has the classiclighter berry style of the much cooler Coonawarra vignoble, with sweeter, muchmore accessible fruits before its dry tannins march in, with perhaps a littletoo much authority for that fruit. Still it’ll cellar beautifully for five orsix years, and probably many more. FEB 09

Tulloch Pokolbin Dry Red Shiraz 2006

$25; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 88++ points

In 1982 I spent a perfectday with Jay Tulloch, tasting fifty vintages of his mob’s precious Hunter shiraz. It was arevelation, learning the sub-tropical wonder of the valley where it rains atvintage, so people pick early – sometimes before new year, meaning the vintagebefore - and get sensible, approachable alcohol levels like 13.5%. This isexquisitely shaped wine: lean, genteel, and nicely tannic. It’d be great nowwith smoked rabbit or hung hare, but will be much better in six or ten years,with a big ol’ juicy sheep on a spit. Shanks, thanks. Then cheeks.www.tulloch.com.au

False Cape Ship’s Graveyard Kangaroo IslandShiraz 2005

$18; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 88+ points

Trademark Greg Follett oakwraps this baby up: with more of the bootpolish/tempranillo characters a lot ofthe Island’s shirazdisplays. The palate shows a lot more pure fruit than the bouquet wouldsuggest, with mulberry and blackberry in abundance. Then comes that dark, acridtea tin tannin that a lot of the Dudley Peninsula wines have.Another one that would benefit from a few years in the dungeon. 10 OCT 98

Kirrihill Clare Valley Shiraz2008

$15; 15% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 07JUN10; 88+points

It this really were fifteenand fifteen, it'd a be a dollar per dollop. But I reckon it's more like sixteenin the dollop department, which puts it in a new rank of Australian dry red, asfar as bonk per buck goes: there's a whole new crop of wines like this at thisprice, or lower, just in time for the rest of the world to begin complainingabout them. I reckon it tastes mildly salty, too. If it came from MediterraneanSpain or just over the French border, even at this alcohol, and with a littledrying brett to cut the syrup, it would be regarded much more kindly than I'mbeing. For its high alcohol, this wine lacks complexity. And because thealcohol's so high, it can't be cute and simple, like the best of itsMediterranean rivals.

Penfolds Koonunga Hill Seventy Six Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon 2007

$17.90; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; FEB 09; 1 MAY 10;88++ points

70% shiraz,with fruit from McLaren Vale, Barossa, Langhorne Creek and Limestone Coast,this has much more Max in it than the standard Koonunga. It has much morecomplexity, more overt marello cherry than its little brother, and after elevenmonths in American oak hogsheads, 5% of which were new, has more believablesappy oak in neat balance, after Max’s style. While we Adelaideans can buy itat the Magill cellar, it’d worth the rest of you catching a plane to get someat duty-free! Like its white sibling, it’s beginning to appear on restaurantlists at prices below $30. The Seventy Six name comes from the year Don Ditterfirst launched the Koonunga Hill brand, which was named after the aboriginalword for the country immediately north of the Barossa, where the vineyard ofthe same name lies. There’s some contention over the meaning of the word. Iunderstand some believe it means “place of good shelter”, but I’ve also heardit means “mound of excrement”, which is not mutually exclusive, but would makethe Hill bit redundant. FEB 09

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Chapel Hill The Chosen Road Block Scarce Earths McLarenVale Shiraz 2009

$55; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; planted 1993; 167doz.; tasted December 2011; 88+ points

On opening, this winesmelled like that village in Bandol where the florist is between thecharcuterie and the coffee shop. It snapped at me: dark meats, mocha, andflorals, over old tea tin, deadly nightshade, juniper berries, somebody burningcoal … with some cassis. Six hours on, it’s velvety, and the palate is slender,with a little learned suppleness, but it’s still quite severely dry, withstaunch coaldust tannins. The gap between these two Chapel Hill Scarce Earthswines diminished over that time: they became more similar. Now they’re chalkand cheese again. I’m convinced the House Block will be the greater wine in time.Expensive!

Rookery Kangaroo Island Shiraz2004

$30.75; 14.8% alcohol; screw cap; 88+ points

A bit rude and stewed, thisshiraz is of the Chamberlain tractor sump school, stacked with dark iron asmuch as the dark green hints of deadly nightshade and blackberry vines in thesummer ... it has doughy/malty characters, too, as if the ferment didn’t go allthat swimmingly. Still, it’s a hearty country drink, and would go very nicelywith the American plains turkeys that abound on the Island,or a wild boar from Porky Flat. 10 OCT 98

Commissioner’s Block Shiraz 2005

$14; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 88 points;

Roberts Estate is a big dealrefinery amongst the vast grapeyards of Merbein, in the Victorian side of the Murray Valley.They divert some of the best of their 10,000 plus tonnes to the Commish, whichis usually a step above most of the dry old River’s red. Like this: saucy andalive, with outright honest goodness in place of sawdust and cordial. It’sbarely oaked, but nicely, with just a little edgy sap adding sharps to itsalmost natural-looking acidity. Since we taught them, there are now wines likethis in France’shot south, but not this cheap. Roast pork, mit crackling.

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Brash Higgins SHZ McLaren Vale Scarce Earths Shiraz2009

$37; 14.7% alcohol; screw cap; planted ????; 305doz.; tasted December 2011; 87++ points

This one smelled hot andacrid at first, with hints of samphire flats, cordite, and hot rusty iron. Butquickly the tweaks of mint and menthol and caster sugar began to appear. Sixhours later it’s a more wholesome and comforting thing, with a well ofblackberries and mulberries simmering below those cute topnotes, andreflections of them in the lingering, warmish afterbreath. The tannins arepersistent in sucking one’s precious bodily fluids through the delicateinterior skin of the lips, like some of the other Scarce Earths brutes. Machocross-dresser. It gets sweeter and jammy after thirteen hours.

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Cat Amongst The Pigeons Nine Lives Barossa Valley Shiraz 2009

$16; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 87++ points

Alarmingly cheap, thisglowering brute comes from the vast vineyards on the loamy dirt of theBarossa’s western ridges. If I MUSTmention fruit, this smells vaguely like somebody’s mixed prune juice withRibena and electrified it. But to bemore truthful, it also has that sinister gun oil glimmer in its bouquet: if youwere to put some scratch and sniff into Wolf Creek,this would be the dust and oil whiff of John Jarrett’s car shed atmidnight. The palate’s as dense asgunmetal, too: ungiving and devoid of emotion. It should bloom with ten years under the bed, but I reckon you’d bebetter whacking it into you with some barbecued chops, some blitzkrieg chillisauce, and a cold potato salad, quick, before he gets you. And he will. Tasted October 2011

Sunset Kangaroo Island Shiraz2006

$18; 14.3% alcohol; screw cap; 87++ points

My Melbourne granny used to rub a restorativecream into her kid church gloves that made the car smell like this wine. Likethe leather in a new Bentley Continental, it’s a most unholy and carnal luxury,but it used to brighten up the smell of the old Buffalo’s Lodge hall where her husband ranthe Calvary Gospel Mission. Smooth, slurpy, slippery and slick; clean andpolished and, well, it’s like Coonawarra shiraz.And then there’s a spoonful of black tea tannin. Neat. 10 OCT 98

Dudley Porky Flat Kangaroo Island Shiraz2005

$18; 14.9% alcohol; screw cap; 87+ points

This one reminds me oftempranillo: it has that slightly threatening acetone/black bootpolish whiffabout it, like the officer’s mess. Dark Iberian ham, pancetta, tea tin tannins– and a touch thin and hard in the finish. Maybe it simply needs a lot of time.10 OCT 98

Kalleske Pirathon Barossa Shiraz 2008

$24; 15% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 8DEC9; 85+ points

"The wine was bottledwithout fining or filtration, ensuring the true expression of the vineyards inthe bottle". And the vineyards? Greenock,Moppa, Belvedere, Stonewell, Seppeltsfield, Koonunga and Ebenezer. We'll haveto take it for granted these disparate sites are expressing themselvestruthfully in this rather thick, drought-roasted, hand-mixed syrup. It's silkysmooth, voluptuous syrup, mind you, with its viscosity alone managing to hidesome of that fairly hot alcohol. Amongst the blackberry conserve there's aVegemite-on-white-Vienna Slice of yeasty stuff. The new proprietary bottle, andthe livery overall, leave a very pleasant memory: the design and presentationare both good. This was made for the uber-kuhl. But it could have done with alittle fining or filtration.

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Halifax Per SeBlock McLaren Vale Scarce Earths Shiraz 2009

$50; 14% alcohol; screw cap; planted 1998; 40 doz.;tasted December 2011; 85+ points

Tense, impenetrable carbonand blackness seemed this baby’s hallmarks on opening: the palate was tight andbrittle like the fruit of many drought vineyards’, but not terribly: the winereminded me of the style common around Vacqueyras. After six hours we gotaniseed and licorice; maybe fennel aromas; and to make it Australian, maybeeucalypts. It’s cute and sassy. The palate has neat fruit and some juniper/bayleaf tannin which makes it all quite pleasing and chirpy.

Heartland Directors' Cut Langhorne Creek Limestone Coast Shiraz 2006

$30; 14.5% alcohol; cork (!); 85+ points

A wee wisp of blackberryconserve's trying to seep out of my glass, but it just doesn't seem able todrag itself away from the wine's deep anvil iron and blacksmith's coke, and Idon't mean the friggin drink, although there's a whiff of those Coke sort ofphenolics here anyway, even if the Coke in Coca Cola was named after cocaineand not the blast furnace fuel made by cooking all the volatiles off bituminouscoal in an airless oven to make coke. Both things depend on lignins, in a way:the phenols in Coke and the phenols cooked out of coke. Funny. The wine doesincrease in fruit volume after an hour or so, but it seems to have little souland no warmth and lots and lots of harsh phenolics and burnt and decayinglignins. Many of the macho men will love this tough drink, but I want morelife. 10 MAR 09

J. Vidal-Fleury Cotes-du-Ventoux 2006

$14; 13% alcohol; cork; 85 points

Since Marcel Guigal boughtthis old negociant and parked it in a brand new winery the quality hasn'timmediately taken the dramatic leap some expected, but this is a fairly goodexample of how it's headed. It's a simple, earthy shiraz grenache, with a hint of the harnesspolish, and a nice breeze of meadow flowers coming through the stable door.There's buckets of raspberry and mulberry, too. The palate's slender and furry,without much intensity, but plenty of full-bore slurp. Bangers and mash,Marcel. Jack Hibberd would love this friendly guzzle. 08 MAR 09

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Shingleback Unedited Single Vineyard Mclaren ValeScarce Earths Shiraz 2009

$70; 15.5% alcohol; Diam cork; planted 1995;>30 doz.; tasted December 2011; 85 points

On opening, this seemed aslender, racy, neat and elegant wine with fruity blackcurrant gels and not muchhint of its alcoholic force. It seemed to have a whiff of the seaside about it:dunal grasses or something. After six hours, it had become a fairly boisteroushulk to sniff: full of alcohol and darkness with glowering mulberry concentrateand some anise. The palate, however stays reasonably strappy and slurpy, whileit leaves fairly hot, sharp afterbreath, it’s not too jammy; the tannins aremuch more approachable than in many of the more intense Scarcities. With, say,pigeons or mutton shanks with black olives in the sauce, not a bad drink now to2015. The judges at the 2011 McLaren Vale Wine Show gave it a bronze! Maybethey noticed the gold medal price.

Alkoomi Frankland RiverShiraz Viognier2007

$20 at the winery; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 84++points

Almost alive, with the sortof furry sooty aniseed and licorice whoof you’ll find increasingly in theLanguedoc, without too much of the syrupy peach most boofhead Ockers thinkviogniated shiraz should display, this wine smells attractive in the way somepeople smell on a train: not quite seductive, but good enough for a secondsniff. If this person happens to pash you sappy when all the others have leftthe carriage, or in that shocking moment when everyone’s got their earbudsbuzzing and their heads in the papers, there’s a good chance you’ll neverforget it, and occasionally remember it fondly when you feel like wielding aflick of revenge upon your regular squeeze, but you’ll never quite want to dothe train thing again. So you do the pash thing, just this once, and put it inthe mouth, and yep! That’s pretty much how it feels. Good enough for that riskyfling, but not yet sufficiently alluring or reliable to commit to. And the mostchallenging thing for this writer is I can’t clearly discern the gender. But Ireckon, with about six years dungeon, it’ll be a sort of a boy. And I’ll begone. JAN 09

Penfolds Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon 2007

$16; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; FEB 09; 1 MAY 10; 84++points

Considering this gets downbelow $9 at Dan Murphy’s, it’s amazing over-delivery for price. While PeterGago says it’s gradually becoming more and more Barossa-sourced, this vintageis from Limestone Coast, McLaren Vale,Barossa and Langhorne Creek, in descending order of proportion. It’s 78% shiraz, and disarminglyhonest in its open-hearted simplicity. I’ve had pretentious $40+ Australianpinots that taste like it, although they would have been much better if theyhad modest and sensible alcohol like this wine. It’s neat, with marellocherries and cassis, and slightly lemony oak after twelve months in oldbarrels, probably indicating that some were shaved, or a few teabags, shavingsor planks found their way in. I can see Peter gradually pulling this back to apure Barossa red, following its retro-labelled big brother, the Seventy Six.

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Coriole The Soloist Single Vineyard Scarce EarthsMcLaren Vale Shiraz 2009

$45; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; planted 1969; 500doz.; tasted December 2011; 83+ points

Like many of the other winesin this Scare Earths comparison, this one seemed to show more characteristicstypical of the drought year and its winemaker than your actual terroir orgeology. It was modest, almost shy in this company, perhaps because it has moresympathetic oak. It had twists of reduced spinach, and its dusty tannins suckedthe blood clean through one’s gums. It also seemed just slightly doughy. Sixhours on, it’s more tomato leaf and the nightshade family, with a slightlysultry blackberries-in-kirsch fruitiness. There’s aniseed, too. The fruit islean but constant beneath some quite dry mealy tannins.

Neagle’s Rock Clare ValleyShiraz 2006

$25; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 83 points

14.5% alcohol? All Australia’s redcannot possibly be 14.5% alcohol. This has good thick fruit: a bit felty in itsthickness: too hammered, not sufficient elegance. Still, there’s a lot ofHarley men who’d love a smell like this. It does grow on one. Leather andgrease sort of stuff, with jam and Vegemite all over the lingeried lass on theback. Pierced everything. The palate’s more of the same: lacking elegance, butplenty of Harley. I’d like a squeak more Noel Coward in my Harley. Sorry. On myHarley. I’m scared of that kinda girl. At least you know where Noel’s comingfrom. The back. And he uses his table napkin. JAN 09

Zilzie Bulloak Murray Valley CarbonNeutral Shiraz 2007

$10; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 83 points

Smells a bit like carbon,too, come to fink of it: sorta swarfy. Rude cowshed whoofs and somebody usingan angle grinder to cut cousin Clarence outa the milking machine. Don’t askwhat he’s doing in there. After all that in yo face jammy ripeness – I can alsosmell the old fuel oil engine next door now – the drink’s sweet and chubby,like Ribena, maybe a bit raw, but sweet and chubby and as open-hearted as theboy next door. Bubba be his name. Puts his oily rag in his hip pocket, takesyour hand, Spams it, then gets the rag out and wipes his hand sorta guy. We methim last year in a coupla them Chester Osborne bottles of d’Arenberg. Carbonaftertaste, too. Australian outback drought wine dressed up as a dairy farm?Can’t be right? Carbon neutral? At Karadoc? Do they count the friction all theriver water makes as it rubs along inside the irrigation pipes? JAN 09

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Sabella McLaren Vale Scarce Earths Shiraz 2009

$25; 15% alcohol; screw cap; planted 1910; 7000litres; tasted December 2011; 82+ points

Ancient subterranean saltbegan to move during the drought, which may begin to explain why this wine,from creekline vineyards, reminded me of the Robe fruit that now goes into StHenri, or many of the reds of Mornington Peninsula: even the aromaseems reminiscent of seaside dunes. This had subsided after six hours: likeLanghorne Creek the muddy berry fruit seems to rise up, with its cute florals,faint chocolate and gently lemony oak. The palate became more stroppy andcheeky; the wine brighter and fresher at six hours. Another few hours and it’sgoing fluffy and jammy. Simple: don’t wait! A good honest effort by the TrottFamily Trophy winners 2011, this is obviously the bargain of the bunch, or atleast the most honestly-priced of all the Scarce Earths wines.

Kalleske Moppa Barossa Valley Shiraz2007

$29; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 82 points

14.5% alcohol? All Australia’s redcannot possibly be 14.5% alcohol. These Kalleskes are heavily intobio-dynamics, which is very, very good. They were the first big Barossa growersto go Steiner. “Sourced entirely from our Kalleske Moppa vineyard, a trace ofviognier and petit verdot has been added to this shiraz, giving it a contemporary edge”. Aw magoodness. I can’t help thinking that all those ancient Barossa grapeyards needfor a contemporary edge is to be picked one or two degrees Beaumé earlier, andthen they’d be more like a drink, and less like a feed, no? The acid would bemore natural; the tannins a little greener. Maybe then you wouldn’t need thevio and the PV, which have tweaked the finishing tannins a little, making thewine more savoury. But it still smells thick and waxy, like that black candle Igot from the high Barossa lass who left my heart hanging on a No Parking signin the Nuri co-op car-park out the back of The Bank wine bar last time Igathered the pluck to go Barossa. Jeez. Wines with character breed characterfulmemories. Nice sweet little wine, but; with the added focus of those tannins.JAN 09

Gipsie Jack Langhorne Creek Shiraz 2006

$??; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 81 points

Smells tarry, a bit likereal merlot. Like all those lignin smells that come from the stiffening inplant cell walls, whether they come from grapes or oak. Lignin has a verystrong bouquet. When it’s really old and rotten and squashed it becomeslignite, or brown coal. This shirazgives us some lignin, the oak gives us the rest. Then the grape sugars andglycerols swoop in over your tongue and the smell suddenly doesn’t matternearly so much. Not that there was anything wrong with it in the first place.This is slick, simple, easy-tipping plonko lango that makes me twitch for juicypink lamb cutlets.

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Five Geese Wines Scarce Earths McLaren Vale ReserveShiraz 2009

$48; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; planted 1990; 300doz.; tasted December 2011; 80++ points

Deliciously fat and juicy tosniff, this high Blewett Springs wine looks to me like it got one new barreltoo many. The sophistry of the coffee and mocha oak, and its lemony flavoursare a little too intrusive. They may recede, but I doubt it – they stillscratch my nostrils after it’s had six hours’ air. The fruit is obviously veryintense and slick, but much other than its juvenile prune and mulberry can’tshine through that wood. It’s in the old school Penfolds style, without the VA.It was one of the few Scarce Earths - shit I hate that term - that won anythingin the 2011 McLaren Vale Wine Show: a lowly bronze.

Penfolds Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon 2008

$9; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 15APR10; 80+ points

I simply cannot imagine whyyou’d risk fewer dollars on cleanskins of dubious provenance when you can buythis for the price of two schooners of beer. It’s an audacious, cheeky, sassywine: a brash brat from the Bash Street Kids. The fruit cannot be contained.The saucy oak tries to wrap that fruit up, but it leaps off again and there yougo after it, glass after glass. I thought at first the wine had been made likea Beaujolais, with carbonic maceration, but no,Peter assures me, it’s straight down the line conventional winemaking in thePenfolds style.

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Serafino Terremoto McLaren Vale Single VineyardScarce Earths Syrah 2009

$110; 14.5% alcohol; Diam cork; planted ????; 600doz.; tasted December 2011; 80+ points

First up, this reminded meof the style of red Wolf Blass and Johnny Glaetzer made in the late ’seventies.It is stacked with the smooth sophistry of an expensive cooper. Sweet, modern,sophisticated wine. In the truest sense of the word. Artificed. Silky, velvetycordial with modest acidity. After six hours, it looked pretty much the same.Aniseed, soot, and then the fruit: prune and mulberry, with a dusting of muskyconfectioner’s sugar. Some bootpolish. Wood-derived smells. Not sensual. Most certainlyShiraz, notSyrah. And ridiculously expensive.

Fox Creek Shadow's Run South Australia ShirazCabernet Sauvignon 2008

$12; 14% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 01-07JUN10; 80points

I think, officially, theback label here is hoped, legally, to be regarded as the front label, as itstates the source of the grapes - South Australia, not McLaren Vale - and includes theBraille dots. What we all think is the real front label carries a photograph ofa dog. And what you consumers will probably never get to read is the pressrelease that Fox Creek sent me to assist me in my understanding of this wine.

"Some of you", itreads, "will remember when Helen and Jim Watts' dog Shadow was nothing buta farm dog, a Border Collie that with a stroke of luck was saved from a messyfate and given a home and his own wine label. From there he was propelled intocanine fame and fortune. Unfortunately Shadow died over a year ago but he liveson as an Australian wine icon and people still ask after him.

"We hope you enjoy the nextvintage of his red wine which we believe is better than its price, as confirmedby Winestate who selected it in their Top 40 best Buys in the May/June 2010issue. The wine is a deep rich red colour with a dark cherry rim. The nosedisplays spicy cinnamon and cloves with a hint of tobacco leaf, red cherry,milk chocolate and smoky toast.

"A soft rich balancedblend of strawberry, red cherry and blood plum fruit flavours, complemeneted bya dark cherry and vanilla mid palate, and the end palate lingers with lusciousdark chocolate. This ripe, juicy and elegant blend of Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon finishes withcrisp acid and soft tannins, leaving the palate clean, refreshed, and lookingfor the next sip.

"The wine has beencrafted for enjoying right now but will keep improving over the next 24 monthsunder good cellaring conditions. Suitable for a barbecue, roast dinner or anyoccasion with good friends and of course, a great dog!"

The part of the label withthe Braille on it gilds the dog further. I shall not copy it out. But if the2007 version of Shadow's Run is anything to go by, don't dare cellar this for24 months. The 07 exudes an overwhelming aroma of cowshed.

Fairbank Sutton Grange Victoria Syrah 2004

$25; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 80 points

Gilles Lapalus has kept myattention over the years, making wine closer in spirit to the sweatyMediterranean than, say, perfumed Paris,but with better insinuations of science than your average Tournon pastisserie.Not too much science evident in this hearty country brewage however, with itsbarny wood, buttery – diacetyl? Butyric? – leathery bouquet, and worn-out,harness-and-mule south-of-France muckiness. “Classical dishes such as lamb orduck” suggests the spinsheet. I say chuck ’em both in the iron pot with abottle of this, the haunch of the mule, and the guts of a cassoulet and wallowin your classical merde. www.suttongrangewinery.com (16.2.8)

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d’Arenberg The Little Venice Single Vineyard Scarce Earths McLarenVale Shiraz 2009

$99; 15% alcohol; screw cap; planted 1997; 330 dozen;tasted December 2011; 79+ points

Another twisted pixie: firstpour: tar; peat; black old bretty oak; fig; prune; strange fresh oyster aroma.Six hours on: all the above, with a gentle rise of whitepepper fruit, lemon pithand blackberry. Whole thing looks much healthier. The palate has acidicastringency and a certain appetizing tease about it. And then that hot alcoholin the afterbreath. And then the pucker of all that tannin. And now, thirteenhours after opening, it’s beginning to settle. Just. Who knows? Chester's bank manager?

Longview Red Bucket Adelaide Hills Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon 2008

$16; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 08JUN10; 79+points

The post-modernists have puta dot point list of 28 key trigger words on the back label of this wine. I havecrossed half of them off. This not an opulent or rich. It is structured, as allwine must have structure, and it is pure, in the sense of perhaps being a pureexample of what the vineyard offers at this price, which is ridiculous for aprime Adelaide Hills site, but we have to believe some of what they say. I'mnot going much further. In my uninfluenced opinion, I suggest this is a thin,tannic wine for one of such alcohol. I find it hard to believe it is so high.If this is one our industry's new wave of attempts at lower alcohol, moreelegant, savoury, balanced wines, as in NOT Parkerillas, then Bacchus help us.It's a raw, braw, hard little bastard.

Thorne Clarke Sandpiper Barossa Shiraz 2007

$??; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 79 points

Sophisticated and juicy,with plenty of fruitgums, jujubes and sugared blackcurrant and blackberry fruitgels, this wine tastes nothing like the poor, awkward, skinny, long-leggedstint on the label. (What’s that doing there? It lands in the vineyard? Oh.It’s not appetising.) There’s some sappy, dusty oak, too: just enough to takethe sugary gum off that bouquet, and enough to take most of the fruit outa thepalate. Damn. The stunning suite of vineyards these dudes own deserve betterthan this. JAN 09

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Kangarilla Road Scarce Earth Project McLaren ValeShiraz 2009

$50; 14% alcohol; screw cap; planted ????; ??? doz.;78++ points

Iron, mint, cassis,lemonwater and tannin? Okay. Bring it on. It was like that to begin. Droughtyear. But after that six hours’ air, we have a more presentable, wholesomewine: elegant and poised. It has saucy menthol and anise, and has grown somedark charcuterie meats. It’s more glowering and pacing. The palate is notforced; the aroma of the oak is sympathic to the fruit, supporting it withouttoo much competition. But its tannins and sap are still a little intrusive andraw, and the wine seems unfairly treated, being on the market at such a pricein such a juvenile state. Which can be said of most of the 2009 Scarce Earths.You should think a $50 wine could have done better than the bronze medal it wonat the 2011 McLaren Vale Wine Show, eh?.

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Vinrock McLaren Vale Scarce Earths Shiraz 2009

$40; 14.7% alcohol; screw cap; planted 1998; 60 doz.;tasted December 2011; 76++ points

bronze medal 2011 McLarenVale Wine Show

Very basically, this seemedshut and snarly when provoked at the beginning. It’s picked up in six hours,and seems to want to be in the Halifax/Brash Higgins/Sabella school. It seems likeit’s been hammered out of water and black granite. Humourless and taut, andreflective of the drought. Good name. Probably worth the bronze they gave it atthe 2011 McLaren Vale Wine Show.

Fox Creek Red Baron McLaren Vale Shiraz 2007

$14; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 76 points

As my deeply respectfulgrandfather A. J. solemnly fired his .303 rifle over the lowering coffin ofBaron Manfred von Richthoven, being in the official guard of honour, havingwatched the dismemberment of his Fokker by souvenir hunters, and knowing thedigger who brought him down with one neat squeeze of the trigger, I feel ratherprickly about this wine failing completely to reflect the Red Baron’saristocratic breeding and incredible steely discipline as a combat pilot. Thisis fat, dull, jammy glug. It could have been grown at Mildura, or Berri. VonRichthoven’s Fokker had better wood. And its pilot certainly had better blood.This is ordinary plonk for ordinary plonksters, and it does the reputation ofFox Creek no good at all. Who do they think they’re competing with? Woolworths?JAN 09

Possums Willunga McLaren Vale Shiraz 2007

$??; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 74+ points

Acrid and coarse, like themiddle-range products of d’Arenberg have sometimes been, perhaps to please thebrett-sympathisers of Britain,this is not the best red Possums has made, but it is certainly wine of a style.It’s just that it looks half out of date, like a dude with Brylcreem in hishair and too much Gaultier after-shave. The wood’s abrasive. JAN 09

Yalumba South AustraliaShiraz Viognier2007

$13; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 73 points

The lower alcoholimmediately drew to me to open this before other bottles. But as if shy aboutmaking something obviously way below the Parkerilla attention span in strength,it’s as if the makers, like Taylors of Clare occasionally do, deliberatelyinduce a few bretty coaldust barrels to make it more interesting for theEnglish, who are tiring of what they call “Aussie fruit bombs”. For this ismore like many average south-of-France average wines: the whiff of the averageold steamtrain whoofing through the average railway stations of my very averageyouth makes it seem like many wines from that stony Rhonedelta and its cellars filled with musty old wood. Average. The wine is shorterbecause of this: drier, with less of said fruitbomb. The finish is almostbitter. Nice drink for a wild boar on the spit, but no finesse in sight. You’dthink a mob like Yalumba could have saved a little more live fruit for us.Still, they obviously know what they’re doing, and this is what they’ve done.Send it all to England.But hang on - maybe that tight bitter bit is the viognier? JAN 09

McWilliams Mount Pleasant Philip Hunter Valley Shiraz2003

($17; 14%alcohol; cork; 75 points)

Pity about the cork. Thiswine tickles the ego of traditional heritage Caucasian artefact republicanslike me. It’s good wine, given the reactionary poddy-dodging sycophancy of theHunter wine kings, who named it after our beloved German Queen’s devoted Greekhusband, Phil le Duc. It’s lovely slender light-bodied “burgundy” style Hunter,which was forgotten here after we logicians moved wisely to the screw cap. Haveit with a broiled map of New South Wales. (9.12.06)

Hickinbotham Winemakers Mt Anakie Vineyard Shiraz 80/81

$n/a; no alcohol listed; cork; drunk 25 APR 09; 70points

Like its cabernet brother,this child of necessity is tired and collapsing, but as I said in the otherreview, the wine was never meant to live this long. It had whiffs of mint andbitumen, but its palate, whilst thick, caramelised and syrupy in texture, waswatery and unco-ordinated in flavour. In different company, the wine would mostlikely have looked much more acceptable.

Commissioner’s Block Shiraz 2006

$12; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 68 points

Gaze at this label longenough, and you’ll see somebody enter stage right with a cement mixer and aDrizabone, take up the shovel and build the Coonawarra railway station. Butwe’re at the other end of the irrigated Murraylands, at Irymple, near Mildura.This is a sweet, plummy red, with noticeable residual sugar and bugger allacidity. They’ve bunged in a dash of viognier, which adds to the syrupy natureof the whole adventure, and some carpentry, but neither delivers length orfinesse. I might imagine having it with a ham and pineapple pizza after I’dadded the chilli. www.neqtarwines.com.au

Rymill The Yearling Coonawarra Shiraz 2008

$15; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 13 NOV 09; 68points

You know, I want this wineto please me. I dream about its tannin being like the tannin I had in asangiovese I had once somewhere, and its charm reminding me of something, butno.

Were Estate Margaret RiverShiraz Cabernet2006

$??; 13.8% alcohol; screw cap; 67 points

Mmmm. I reckon this smallslike coal dust and Band-aids. Zar Brooks knows what that means. Then, I reckonit also smells like quite a lot of the better Chateau-neuf-du-papes I havedrunked over the last firty yiz. It has a whiff of eau-de-cologne mint, too,which is not to say anyone from Köln would agree. It’s quite pleasant to sniff,really. Up comes some grapes. And the flavour’s grapey in a thin, what somewould call savoury sort of way. Some would call it a food wine. For me, it’snot a drinking wine. Maybe an old hard cheese full of caraway seeds would helpmake it a drinking wine

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Kalleske Johann Georg Old Vine Barossa Shiraz 2009

($100; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 65 points)

Fully certified organic andbiodynamic, very expensive and black, this wine comes from a sun-blazed northBarossa 1875 planting out Kapunda way. It’s in the new Kalleske Mills Bomb Proprietory Bottle, which seems toweigh a great deal for a green and bearded bio-d business, but it certainly hasauthority on the shelf. No doubt to addsome earnest aw-schucks Barossadeutscher to the deal, the tasting notes say“silky, but solid, this discerning [sic] wine is completed by an amazinglylengthy finish.” The notes also claimsophistication, which means “the process of investing with specious fallaciesor of misleading by means of these; falsification”. That’s the Oxford. Nevertheless, as a fellow capable of surprising discernment when themoment’s right, I really felt quite a lot like getting completed by thatamazing lengthy finish. Smelt okay. Tasted okay. Then nuffink. Zilch. Likefinish. Stop. The only thing amazingly long about thatfinish, really, was the disappointment that slotted in nicely where the finishshould have been. I carried the bottlearound in my posh Neil Empson Milan Selections steady-temp shoulder bag fordays, waiting for that finish to arrive. I thought about it. I even sangLili Marlene to myself - under my breath, of course, lest I collect one in thetrench – but like Lili, she might have been waiting for me too, but shecertainly never came. So I tried thenext one down the Kalleske ladder, the Eduard Old Vine Barossa Shiraz 2009($85; 14.5% alcohol; 60 points), from three nearby vineyards, and that tastedlike the first one with some lovely fresh water in it. Over the week I kept these bottles, I sharedtastes with various mates, thinking I may have gone mad on a root day, and theyall shook their heads too. In fact, Ican’t ever recall carrying around $185 worth of Old Vine Barossa Shiraz in only twobottles and coming home after a week to discover that both of them were still2/3 full. If you want a drink, slidedown to the Single Vineyard Greenock Shiraz 2010 ($38; 14.5% alcohol; 83points). That one has something likesome finish. And it’s much less sophisticated.Tasted 7-12 January 2012

Seppelt Great Western St George Vineyard HermitageP.58 1959

$n/a; no alcohol listed; cork; drunk 25 APR 09; 59points

This Colin Preece treasurewas buggered by a mushroomy, sodden cork. It smelled and tasted like slimy wetwood fungus. I could suck traces of coffee, mint, and mustard leaf, but thatcork had done its nasty job. The wine was made from “hermitage, malbec andmiller burgundy”. Certainly not poisonous, but not fun, either.

FIANO

2012-01-22T12:44:00.001+10:30

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Beach Road Langhorne Creek Fiano 2011

($25; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted September and December 2011; 91 points)

From the same brave Elliot Family Langhorne Creek vineyard that produced the Beach Road Fiano, this variety, too, comes from Campania, which amuses me enormously when I consider the French never complain about a whole slab of Italy having the same name as Champagne. “This was our fourth harvest,” winemaker Briony Hoare explained across her glass, discussing the notoriopusly wet and mouldy year. “It had hardly any disease at all. We’d let it have a big shady canopy, which could have been trouble, keeping the breeze from drying the bunches, but they’re naturally big and open and took that shocking weather really well.” The wine smells like iceberg roses, and ripe juicy pears; the Bosc or Conference varieties. It smells like it’s gonna be viscous: all heady and syrupy ... I suspected it must be naturally high in glycerols. And it is syrupy, in the coolest, most comforting manner. Briony trapped it in a sealed container on fine lees and it has that full creamy fluffiness about it. As it has not much in the way of sharp acidity, I’d drink it with contrasting, high acid food, like tomato sauces with plenty of garlic (with spirali pasta) or green olives (with tomato and veal, or osso bucco). This is the wine you have when you need a pat.

GRECO di TUFO

2012-01-22T12:29:00.000+10:30

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Beach Road Langhorne Creek Greco 2011

($25; 13% alcohol; screw cap; tasted September and December 2011; 93+ points)

Jeez it’s good. Imagine a big ripe year Chablis with all that wet chalk in the part of its bouquet where lesser gourmands would impose spicy timber. Add the smell of honeydew melon, and watermelon, but with that edgy, hessiany smell of cantaloupe peel wrapping their soppy cool flesh. Then the even more prickly green smell of broad bean shells. I think this adds up to the presence of methoxypyrazine, which gives the Sauvignons red and white their leafy bits. Slurp. It’s really steely, with swarfy natural acidity (9 g/l!), and then lemon and water and I know I’ll get killed for this but in the guzzler that chalky character seems more like wet cement, like exceptionally good tequila, which mixed with that austere lemon reminded me of a friggin margarita! But it’s only 13% alcohol, so go figure. Then the afterbreath came out, and that was all the above, but decked with confectioner’s sugar, musk sticks, and those freaky estery banana lollies. Few wines are so entertaining as they refresh. It’s acid’s big enough to demand the greasier weed-munching bottom-feeders of the wet world: redfin, carp and scallops with beurre blanc. Brrrr. 2011 was blue murder at Larncrk – hardly anybody picked anything, and most of what they did was puce with various moulds and rots. Somehow this lot saved half the Greco di Tufo from the plagues, in spite of its thin skins and hyper-tight bunches – a terrible combo when the moulds are on the march. No sign of any of that in here. Briony gave it the ancient treatments: basket press, wild yeast, plenty of lees. Nuts at $25!

BIANCO d'ALESSANO

2012-01-21T22:50:00.002+10:30

NEW!

Salena Estate Ink Series Bianco d’Alessano 2010
$20; 12.2% alcohol; screw cap; tasted December 2011; 92 points
Last year, this fabulous rarity won three trophies at the Alternative Varieties Wine Show: Best Italian Variety, Best White and Wine of the Show. The feverish accolades which followed reminded me of the critic/producer Jon Landau announcing in 1974 “I saw the future of rock’n’roll. Its name is Bruce Springsteen.” The Boss hired him; together they recorded Born To Run and off it quite literally ran, despite my dogged preference for the perfectly lyrical The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle. What made the wine’s run even more spectacular was the thought that this variety from sunny Puglia, formerly unknown in Australia, could thrive so impressively in the Riverland, beating hands-down very much posher wines from cooler, higher, more revered vignobles. It appears that Bianco d’Alessano could be very much better suited to the hot irrigated desert of the Mallee than, er, the omnipresent Chardonnay, which came from Champagne and Burgundy, where it snows. The wine brings to mind the odd spectacular Trebbiano/Garganega blend from Verona, where it also snows: it has a creaminess which is not like berries or peach, but more along the lines of a ripe Rocha pear, with the firm acid of loquat. Many writers have frothed on about its “minerality” which means nothing: I suspect that in this case, it’s polyphenols they’re talking of: simple, dry, fine-grained tannin, and maybe a dash of methoxypyrazine, the grassy natural grape ingredient most evident in the Sauvignons, blanc and Cabernet. It’s like the dry dusty smell of tomato leaf in the summer – a contrast to that Rocha butter and cream. The wine is a delight to sit and schlück in the shade, unfettered by food, or with cool fresh sliced pear and Woodside Cheesewrights stunning new vine-leaf-wrapped Manon (above), a piquant goat cheese flavoured with organic garlic and pepper. Get some. On the other hand, Salena’s Bob and Sylvia Franchetto, and winemaker Melanie Kargas recommend yabbies, prawns, calamari and scallops. Salena has recently opened a tasting and cellar sales outlet on the corner of Lower North East Road and Darley Road at Paradise. Shake your little arse, and go buy a box for Jesus birthday. It’s a bargain. Rocha AND roll!

GAMAY

2012-01-21T22:01:00.000+10:30

NEW!

Eldridge Estate PTG Mornington Peninsula Gamay Pinot Noir II
$25; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 90 points
This scribe’s been nuts with frustration lately, waiting for the new ideal, retasting and rethinking, scouring the empties, wondering if it’ll ever happen again, or worrying that his sensories are too blistered to tell. So it was a comforting and exciting relief to open David and Wendy Lloyd’s 2011 50-50 blend of Gamay, the grape of Beaujolais, with Pinot noir, the peak of Burgundy. In fact Philippe The Bold, Duke of Burgundy (pictured), banished Gamay – “a very bad and disloyal plant” - from his kingdom away back in 1395, preferring the finer, more sinuous and less visceral Pinot noir. So Gamay was exiled way off south to Beaujolais, where it better enjoyed the warmer weather and older geology. Centuries later, these brave new world winemakers have drawn the two back together, and proven the blend works very well on Mornington: the damn thing jumped straight into my face. While it was made more conventionally in the passe-tout-grains south-of-France style , it reminded me immediately of the revolutionary Cab Mac drink-soon reds Stephen Hickinbotham made by full-bore carbonic maceration in the ’eighties. Determined to beat the Beajolais at their dodgy Nouveau game, he conjured lighter, easier-drinking reds that never made a fool of the drinker, but were both joyously frivolous and yet deadly serious in quality. He’d love this wild yeast effort: marello cherries and old white pepper tins deck its bonnie bouquet halls; perfectly natural acidulous and savoury flavours pack into the laughing gear sector. (If you’re not cackling with glee half way down the first glass you should go back on the tablets.) It’s slender, bone dry and appetizing, and yet it has just the right level of viscosity to comfort the palate; its tannins are so fine and scarce that it’ll take ten minutes of ice bucket in its stride, but it is by no means a rosé. While Burgundy has much to thank their old king for, methinks Australia should be offering much thanks to the Lloyds for finally setting things right so long after Hickie’s death and a lot bloody longer after my namesake’s demise. Offer your thanks by getting on the Eldridge website and placing your summer slurping order – this wine’s not on there yet, but you can make contact. While you’re there, check out their straight Gamay 2010, which is similarly lush and juicy, but not so disarmingly vivacious (13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 84 points).

SPARKLING RED

2012-01-21T20:07:00.001+10:30

ONE OF THE NEWEST AND TRUEST FIRST FAMILIES OF AUSTRALIAN WINE, AS IN FRONTRUNNERS, AND PERHAPS THE MOST INNOVATIVE IN MANY DECADES ... CAROLANN, ALEXI, ADAM AND JULIAN CASTAGNA ON THEIR VERANDA AT BEECHWORTH photo PHILIP WHITE

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Castagna SparklingGenesis Beechworth Syrah 2008

$75; 13.5% alcohol;Diam cork; 95+++ points

The tiny bubbles and absolutely minimal liqueuring havesoftened some of the 08’s angular bits, but put a little more sharp intoothers. The aniseed, blueberry andjuniper are all here chugging, the jujubes have taken on a St Elmo’s Fire halo,and the nightshade and tea leaves seem to have been replaced by a thin layer ofcoal dust, but overall, the similarity with the wine with 100% fewer cavitiesis reassuring. This is very dry for redfizz. It works that same old teeteringsee-saw of soothing and excitement, and keeps the sensories alert and entertained. As the thunderstorm breeze whizzed across thetable, each sniff or sip drew out another contrast or complement, just as thevineyard changes aroma constantly with wind direction and airborne water. Blueberries at the bottom. Tasted November 2011

CORVINA

2010-05-08T15:08:00.002+09:30

Tommaso Bussola BG Amarone della Valpolicella Classico 2007
$150; cork; 28APR10; 90++ points
“Amarone” is a winemaking technique named with the Italian word for bitter or sharp. More precisely, the technique is called appassimento, and the wines are called passito, from appisire, “to dry” - the grapes are dried carefully on racks before ferment. Made mainly from the thick-skinned Corvina variety, the smaller-berried Rondinella, and perhaps some Molinara grapes, this wine was simple and honest and soft, with caramel chocolate comfort tones, and feathers and guts to remind you that you didn’t fight your way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian. Its finish involves a little turpene, like Tempranillo, and old harness leather, but there was very little tannin. This seemed a slightly shy, pink-cheeked, wallflower of a wine. I’m going straight across there to dance with her.

NEBBIOLO

2010-05-08T13:34:00.003+09:30

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Castagna Adam’s RibThe Red 2008

$35; 14% alcohol; Diamcork; 94+++

Nebbiolo and Syrah. Moody, glowering, simmering and surly down below, acrid and almostirritating up top. As it settles, itsuddenly seems perfectly assimilated and cool, and all that marello cherry andblueberry seems rich and opulent, and suits perfectly the velvet tannins thatfur up its tail. Then the acid announcesitself, and sets the whole thing flowing with sinuous, silky syrup that makesme really friggin hungry. These variouswings of the wine seem to take turns to hold you, and it, aloft. But I expect great Nebbiolo to also set itstannin loose above its palate, like a cloud; an ethereal, heavenly mattress offluff. While this wine certainly holdsme suspended, it has not quite set its tannin free: it’s still there at thebottom of the mouth, growling like a caged Shiraz. But it’s stunning wine nevertheless, and amongst the best use I’ve seenof the confounding prehistoric Nebbi in this confounding prehistoric land. Adam is a winemaker to watch!

Gaja Costa Russi Langhe 1997
$380?; 14.5% alcohol; cork; drunk 4MAY10; 94+++ points
The Gaia family bought this vineyard from Russi in the Langhe in 1967. It’s officially 95% Nebbiolo and 5% Barbera, and is classified Langhe rosso. But this wine reeked of juniper and the leaves of the nightshades, which had me suspicious about the presence of Cabernet sauvignon. The wine is cone-shaped: it starts with the most elegantly slender point of the gastronomy stiletto, and just gets wider and wider until you feel like Bacchus and Pan are trying to show you something that’s bigger than your infant sensories can handle. The initial aroma was estery, with a musk and banana fringe on the classic Nebbiolo medlar berries and raspberry. Then came those leafy vegetals, and by then we were in too far: black tea tin led to pure carbon blacks, the coal scuttle, and the boiler oven. The final mighty tannins are junipery, and are matched by astonishing natural acidity. A very very fine wine indeed. Royalty. Remember to wave as you go down!

Michael Dransfield wasn’t quite writing about Nebbiolo when he suggested:

… send the dream-transfusion out
on a voyage among your body machinery.
Hits you like sleep - sweet, illusory, fast,
with a semblance of forever.
For a while the fires die down in you
until you die down in the fires.
Once you have become a drug addict
You will never want to be anything else

But you get my drift, don’t you.

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Castagna Adam’s RibThe Red 2009

$35; 13.5% alcohol;Diam cork; 93-4+++ points

Because of its braw infant structure, this wine is too youngto point: the wise appraiser should withdraw from limiting its bright potentialwith numbers. It is more intense andtaut than the 08; more austere and unformed. It has rude blueberry in abundance, but where the older wine has marellocherry, this has acrid juniper riding shotgun, and it has aniseed and licoricewhere the 08 has other fleshy fruits. The palate has staunch Protestant astringency, tannin and acid. I should think my next appraisal should be inabout 2020, by which point some of the Nebbiolo’s puppy fat will have gained agrasp of these hard black Shirazbones. Tasted November 2011

Pizzini King Valley Nebbiolo 2005
$35; 14.3% alcohol; cork; drunk 7-8MAY10; 79++ points
Hard to work out whether this one’s intense or just plain tense. It doesn’t exactly jump with raspberry. Instead, it seems more along the lines of harness leather and old tobacco pouches, and its tannins quickly move from velvet to dolomite, without floating on a cloud above the fruit palate. It seems therefore to be made in the SuperTuscan mould, rather than as a pure and simple Nebbiolo. It’s still good, almost grand wine. But it has a sullen, surly density that almost threatens me. Open for a whole day, it begins to show some fruit sinuousity, but those black tannins are still almost violently dominant. Silence is violence.

SEMILLON

2010-02-01T18:42:00.009+10:30

Margan Hunter Valley Semillon 2008
$18; 11% alcohol; screw cap; 95+++ points
This baby instantly reminded me of the incredible Lindemans Bin 3455 and Bin 3450 semillons from 1968. Fortunately, the economic rationalist idiots of Southcorp subdivided and flogged those old Lindeman vineyards in 1996, and it took the drive, passion and obsession of the Margans to begin buying those five blocks, rejuvenating the old vines, and making wines like this splendid wonder. It’s very special country, with the Fordwich Sill, a freakish plug of ferruginous clay of volcanic origins imparting style and flavour that compares to the distinction afforded wines like, say, Petrus, by their peculiarly miraculous geology. This drink begins with classic semillon lemon butter and lemon sabayon aromas, with a nose-tickling top note that smells like that deep red Broke Fordwich dirt on a hot summer’s day, dry grass pollens on the breeze; maybe even some juniper.

But in the Hunter, 2008 was cooler than normal, and Andrew had to coax the grapes to ripeness with painstaking viticulture, giving us a wine even more focussed and fine than normal. Which is saying something. The palate is as lean, tight, and humourless as a slide rule, but we can already see a little cushioning softness giving it flesh akin to those mighty old Lindemans’ Bins. While they drank beautifully - under the squishy old corks of their day – for twenty years, this wine will last even more satisfactorily under that beautiful screw cap. It has a particularly savoury, stony, appetising finish.

We can read the source of Andrew Margan’s fanatical cold steel winemaking techniques in The Grape And I, the seminal wine volume written by his father Frank the year those Lindy’s jewels were created. “...just inside is a gleaming mass of new equipment”, he wrote of Lindemans’ winemaker Karl Stockhausen’s radical new German winemaking equipment. (Wineries had dirt floors and stinky old oak in those days.) “The Willmes air bag press is there ... beside it is a blue anodised centrifuge for cleaning up the white juice. Stainless steel tanks rear into the roof. There is not a speck of dust to be seen. Everything has a place and there is a place for everything. It shrieks Teutonic thoroughness, order, thought, hygiene and efficiency. It has peace, restfulness, and an immense feeling of security. It is all this that makes it to me the most absorbing and most beautiful winery interior I have ever seen. Largely because that equipment is there, because it allows the white grapes to come in and be gently crushed and quickly cleaned and kept from the air in stainless steel sealed tanks and fermented and put into bottle in a matter of six weeks, and then everybody breathes a sigh of relief because the air cannot get to it anymore and all that lovely golden colour and fresh, full flavour is trapped in the wine until you and I buy it and chill it and drink it and swoon.” Swoon indeed. This is the best new semillon I’ve tasted for many years; perhaps the top white release this year. It should be hung with more gold than the hoards of Attila the Hun. Who judges these wine shows?

Cullen Mangan Vineyard Margaret River Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2009
$35; 11.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 02-06JUN10; certified biodynamic; 94+++ points
There's something about the butter of Semillon that the austere beach blondeness of Sauvignon blanc requires. The Bordelaise worked this out centuries ago. This austere work of Vanya Cullen and her beloved gardens simply serves to entrench that Old World old wives' tale. This seems to have spread across it a thin layer of white Danish butter and below that some preserved and crystallised lemon peel and below that a crunchy layer of rhubarb conserve, and below that a pit of guano. With heavy acid hoods hanging about the courtyard so heavy that you just want 'em to heavy their heaviness away. But, you know, boys in the hood do hang about longer than. Shockin' wine.

Lenton Brae Margaret River Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2009
$24; 12% alcohol; screw cap; drunk 31JAN10-1FEB10; 94+++ points
This is probably the finest, tightest Lenton Brae white yet. It is so aloof and aversive in its austerity, it could be overlooked by even the most grovelling semi slut. But if you relate it to young Hunters, which the whole conservative wine world seems determined to promote way above their station, this has a similar juvenile elegance as far as form goes, but with full-blast stone instead of willowy acid: it seems brittle. I'm not knocking the true Hunter Semi masters, of whom Andrew Margan is clear ruler, but suggesting Hunter Semillon gets more adoration than it deserves, and while there's often an old McWilliams or a Tyrrell that appears at show after show and wins trophy after trophy, most of what is made there is watery swill. This is far greater wine, with that stony, pithy, sliderule authority and a finish that sits in your sensories like the Sphinx for thirty ot forty minutes after you've swallowed it. Edward Tomlinson, the maker, says it's about half and half Semillon and Sauvignon blanc, but I think the Semi's predominant with its force and weight; the Sauvignon will serve largely to shorten the life of the bottle. Nevertheless, I think is a very safe ten to fifteen year bet; maybe much more. Try it on - it's an utter bargain at his meagre price.

Lenton Brae Wilyabrup Margaret River Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2008
$30; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 94+++ points
Ed Tomlinson, take a bow. I know this is only 100 dozen strong, and available only from your beautiful winery, but a wine so good should never be easy to get. The Kiwis AND the Bordelaise should be bowing, too. To you. 100% new French oak fermentation hasn't really made the wine a lot more complex: it's added a tantalising new aspect, sure, but while the fruit seems quite elegant and svelte on the face of it, it's soaked that oak up without releasing so much as a stray splinter of wood. Sure, of course it's there, but it fits seamlessly, and the wine will crawl all over it within a few years, which is what this beauty is all about. The oak seems to have added extra butter to the semillon, which is hardly a complicating character, and simply supported the naturally hempish methoxypyrazine characters of the sauvignon. So it's made both those components more like themselves, whilst simultaeneously marrying them more securely. The palate's a lot bigger and more forceful that the bouquet had me imagining, but it retains that elegant poise, and as it slides and sashays off down the long sweet street of your sensories into your gizzards, it makes you wish she'd come back and say "Hullo Honey", in that special long cigarette holder voice, just like Marlene in a fur. She does in a way. Incredible! Bouillabaise at Marseilles. 11 MAR 09

Margan White Label Aged Release Hunter Semillon 2005$30; 10.5% alcohol; screw cap; drunk 5-7MAY10; 94+++ points
There’s a great deal of bullshit spoken about Hunter Semillon, and a lot of very ordinary wines released beneath its appellation. Then the wine show circuit loads favourite rarities with bling, and Jancis Robinson stands up and says Hunter Semillon truly is one of the great wines of the world, and on we go. Let me suggest that Andrew Margan is one of the great winemakers of Australia, and he understands Hunter Semillon better than anyone else I know. This is manifest in his determined procuration, restoration and rejuvenation of various ancient vineyards around that big humid valley. This one’s from the dry grown Beltree Vineyard, planted in light alluvium over yellow clay by the Elliot family in the 1930s. It has that brilliant lemon sabayon character that the very best Semillons show, along with the acrid whiff of that loose country. The palate is beginning to turn up its viscosity, but below that comforting unction there’s a staunch wall of natural acid which will carry the wine for at least twenty years. Then this will be one of the great wines of the world.

Margan Hunter Valley Semillon 2007
$18; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 93++ points
My favourite Hunter semi meister, Andrew Margan, says 2007 saw this old ex-Lindeman’s semillon block (30 year-old-vines; dry grown; volcanic clay; 1.1 tonnes/acre) ripen very quickly in its third year of drought. But he picked it at a modest alcohol before losing natural acidity, so we have a slightly more accessible Hunter semi than usual. Alluring whiffs of wheaten straw, very faint honey and Bickford’s lime stack the gentle bouquet; these flavours slide smoothly onto the palate, which is more viscous than usual, and therefore slightly more comfy. Grilled garfish now, or ten years cellar. www.margan.com.au (9.2.8)

Jeanneret Stumbling Block Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2006
$19; 12.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+ points
At first sniff, I thought this bright baby – only just bottled – was as close as Clare had got to Michel Dietrich’s stunning Quelltaler semis of ’82, ’84, and ’86. The first whiff to hit target was a delightful creamy fruitiness, pineapple as much as clingstone peach. But there’s bright savvy b. lemon and savoury herb there, too, giving the effect of a lemon/clove sabayon poured over a lightly-poached salad of those fruits. Forget Maggie R and Nuhzullund.

Lenton Brae Margaret River Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2008
$25; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 93+ points
When that great natural scientist, Dr. John Gladstones, first decided that Margaret River had all the attributes of a great wine district, and began encouraging people to spend money there and plant grapes, I wonder whether he ever dreamed there'd be wines like this grown there? This could have come from Bordeaux! A tidy matchbox edge with hints of the Maggie R coffee rock begins the game by tickling the nostrils, opening them til they flare. Below that there's elegant - not over-ripe - pineapple and carambola and guava, and perhaps the tiniest insinuation of expensive gingery French oak. The palate's slender without being grassy or battery-acidic, with the unsalted lemon butter of the semillon lifting the skinnier sauvignon neatly, giving a most entertaining sweet-and-sour effect. The finish is very long and dry, the acrid stony bits lingering as the fruits gradually decline to become a very happy memory. Exquisite wine for delicate seafoods: whiting, gar, scallops, in beurre blanc, poached onion rings and capers on the side; a few grains of very fresh black pepper. It's a credit to the Tomlinson family, to winemaker Ed, who repeats this coolly calculated trick every year, and to Doc Gladstones. With an S on the end. 11 MAR 09

Juniper Estate Margaret River Semillon 2008
$26; 13% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 07JUN10; 92+++ points
Somewhere in the dunes of that immaculate Semillon dessert, where the creme and the mild driest white peach seem to dance for the entire caravanserai, Semillon reaches this delicious, teasing climax, which is real long and great for the both of you. Cream, creme caramel, junket and sabayon are the smoothers; the most delicate pale peach is the fruit, coffee rock is the phenolic dries, and gentle fresh lime is the acid. Get down. Or bury it for a full decade. I'd be having it now with fresh scallops on their half shells, oozed with beurre blanc.

The Islander Estate Vineyards Wally White Kangaroo Island Semillon Viognier 2006
$43; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 92++ points
Pretty much along the lines of the wild yeast/older oak/long lees Dowie Doole Tintookie Chenin Blanc 2006, this unusual blend is utterly gorgeous. Chalk, matches and hessian whiffs give the nose its acrid edge; below that lie the bosc pears and crême caramel, below them the pure white bacon fat of pancetta. I don’t know of a better Kangaroo Island white. It’s just slightly hot, which is a pity – if it had come in at 13% I reckon it’d be much better. Still, I can imagine it giving a rich goose confit a run for its money. It sure needs big food. King Hell.

Juniper Estate Margaret River Semillon 2005
$22; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 92+ points
From unirrigated vines in the Wilyabrup Valley in the heart of the Margaret River region, this is one of the best semis around. It reminds me of a fresh marmalade of lime, blood-orange and ginger on buttery toast. Fermented and matured in fine French oak, it’s waxy and smooth, with a gentle rise of natural acidity and very fine, velvety tannins, a little like viognier. It’s delicious sipping now (try it with char-grilled scallops), but it’ll last for years.

Pepper Tree Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2008
$19; 11.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92+ points
Bacchus knows, this smells like Bordeaux! Ygrec; Vinding-Diers; Dietrich ... big and little names from the big red district, bashing away at this austere, acrid, but almost frail style which betrays the yeasts and sulphur attitudes as much as the dirt ... it's really smart wine, with that neat smokebox sulphur, almost matches, but not quite saltpetre or gunpowder ... aromas which latch very neatly to the grassy methoxypyrazine edge of sauvignon and cold district semillon ... the palate's not as sharp as the bouquet hints, which is cool ... beats most Kiwi savvy's-B hands down: more elegant, more refined, more savoury and appetising, and it won't dissolve your new bands. Langouste! 09 MAR 09

J.E Ngeringa Altus McLaren Vale 2004
$32 for 375ml.; 16.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92 points
We used to muck about fortifying fresh pressings at Mountadam in the ’eighties. Even the botrytis riesling scraps went into oak with a blissful dribble of good clean full-strength grape spirit and left to purr. Not many of these truth syrups ever reached the market. Altus is what I would imagine our consequent appetisers would drink like if we’d made ’em out of Italian varieties and kept the barrel right up high under the galvo. This IS made in the Tuscan vin santo manner, using rack-dried fruit and maximum oxidation, but this is not fortified. It’s organic semillon from the Willunga faultline: all soy, balsamic, anchovy juice on one side of the brain and rude raspberry on the other. Fresh, but kinda rusty. This might sound rude, but if you must dress it, try thin slices of fresh baby ginger root, cucumber and soda, on nice clean big ice. Avant, not aprè. Or sink it nude. I don’t care. I’m dreaming of a cocktail of this with a little Plymouth Navy Gin and a slice of blood orange... with the cucumber, it’d be like a first-class Pimm’s. I’ll show that Pete Petiot a cocktail or two!

Sevenhill Inigo Clare Valley Semillon 2008
$19; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 92 points
It was Michel Dietrich, an Alsatian with Bordeaux semillon experience, who taught Clare how to make semillon, beginning in the vintage of 1982 at Quelltaler. He used clever oak and a dash of sauvignon blanc to make wines of incredible unction and longevity, and his vintages of 82, 84 and 86 are still scrumptious. The savvy Liz Heindenreich has chosen to make a wine that was immediately more approachable from the rolling Sevenhill vineyards, which are just a little north of the Quelltaler suite, or what's left of it, as Fosters' economic rationalists managed to butcher most of the priceless old wonders left over there from the days of Buring and Sobels, planting friggin merlot in their place. Merlot. Anyway, Liz has stonier, bonier soil than the terra rossa over calcrete that blesses Quelltaler, and I don't know why I'm going on about that place other than vent my anger at its gradual destruction, which commenced when Wolf Blass bought it from Remy Martin twenty years ago. This wine has some of the sweet lemon butter bouquet of Michel's wines, but with a disarming whiff of meadow blooms in place of his oak. It's gorgeous, understated, very feminine stuff, with beautifully chubby viscosity in the middle palate, and then very firm, stony acidity that really sits there like a rock, supporting the long, teasy finish. It has an unusual streak of gentle menthol running right right through it, which I quite like. Maybe it's from the narrow-leaf eucalypts which surround Sevenhill. Perfect for fragile fish flavours, like gar or whiting flashed through the pan and served with beurre blanc and some soft poached onion; maybe a caper or two, and a strand of fennel. FEB 09

K1 by Geoff Hardy Silver Label Adelaide Hills Semillon Viognier 2008
$18; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 91+++
Now here’s a clever use of viognier. If you read all the above reviews, I doubt that there’s any more than one use of the word tannin. Having such squishy, low-phenolic, botrytis-susceptible skin, semillon generally has bugger all. Viognier’s so full of it that Australian winemakers tend to fine it all away, leaving a drink that’s nothing like viognier: tannin is virtually its principal ingredient. It is, after all, almost identical, DNA-wise, to nebbiolo, whose raspberry fruit is one delicious thing, but whose tannin floats across the top of the mouth like a disconnected cloud. So, what does the V-max do to yon Geoffrey’s semi? First, it adds a mealy, dusty edge to the buttery, faintly peachy, faintly vegetal green salad semillon. Then it adds grainy passe-crassagne pear, calling in some supportive fruit. That’s a good start. But the palate’s where it changes the gear. The tannins make sense of the semi, adding a balancing touch of tongue-drier. So we get a light, elegant, stylised wine that I’ll punt will cellar beautifully (5 - 10 years?), but, like, if I had it now with a slightly warm salad of rocket, whitlof, butter lettuce, mung sprouts, pear poached in pinot (75%) and sauternes (25%) with cloves and sliced, and shredded drunken chicken, I’d give it 94. 31 MAR 09

Grosset Clare Valley Adelaide Hills Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2008
$32; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 91+ points
Yellow capsicum, alfalfa sprouts, lemon balm and corsican mint give this wine its edge. Loquat and Passe-Crassane pears give fruit. I mean they’re the smells it evokes. And vague wax, like good sound altar candles, fresh; not lit. Fetta soused in lemon juice, too. The palate’s pretty much in tune with all of that, although I can’t taste any Jesuits. The quincy pear aroma reflects in the final tannins: it’s very dry, which makes me hungry, which makes me thirsty. A man can’t eat on an empty stomach. It nearly forgets it’s only a drink about ¾ of the way. Chook a l’orange. www.grosset.com (17 AUG 8)

Moss Moses Rock Margaret River Sauvignon Blanc Semillon 2008
$18; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 91+ points
Jane Moss makes the Moss Brothers wines. Moses was a naughty boy horse with a granite outcrop named after him. It’s on the coast, five kays from the vineyard. Like all Moss Bros, but especially the whites, this wine’s amazing quality for its price. There’s enough billionaires per hectare at Maggie R to see the prices of stuff like this go twice as high. The butter and phosphate tones of the semillon fill the gooseberry and peashells of the savvyB just so. It’s clean, healthy, wholesome wine that’s a step above most of the humdrum kiwi juice from Marlborough. www.mossbrothers.com.au (17 AUG 8)

Woodstock McLaren Vale Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2007
$15; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 91 points
The first packaged and promoted 2007 to hit my snifter was this breath of fresh air from the Vales. The semillon gives it lovely dry mealy tannins that work the palate, and overshadow the simply grassy acidity of the savvy b. The semi also provides pleasant aromas of dry meadow florals, instead of the normal battery-tipped-on-lawn that distinguishes most South Australian sauvignon. It's clean, lithe and tight, and while more of your drink now think later school than the rest, makes perfect music with squid, prawns, pitta and stuff. www.woodstockwine.com.au

Wandin Valley Reserve Hunter Valley Semillon 2007
$20; 11.5% alcohol; screw cap; 89+++ points
Classically Hunter, and therefore lighter in body and alcohol than Margaret River or South Australian semi, this is a crunchy, bright drink for those averse to fatty, peachy chardonnay, sauvignons blanc that are too grassy and simply acidulous, and rieslings that are too staunch and challenging. Crunchy Packham pear sums it up. It has a beguiling hint of spice – almost white pepper – in its pretty, modest bouquet. Too many Hunter conservatives insist on faulty cork, so it’s good to see this one fresh and zippy under the screw, which will keep it happy for at least a decade. Whiting. www.wandinvalley.com.au

McWilliams Mount Pleasant Lovedale Hunter Valley Semillon 2006
$??; 10.5% alcohol; screw cap; 88++ points
Planted by the legendary Maurice O’Shea in 1946, one decade before his death, Lovedale is one of the Hunter’s greatest treasures. This is a very good example of what the vineyard produces, but like many warm area semillons, it smells to me of petiols, or the stalks of vine leaves, and grape stalks. Particularly when machine-harvested, semillon absorbs these aromas like a sponge. But this was hand-picked and destemmed before gentle crushing by Phil Ryan, the Mount Pleasant master, so I dunno. There are fine citrus aromas, and the faintest whiff of summer meadow. The palate is sublimely elegant, to the point of watery, another typifying aspect of much Hunter semillon. It should age extremely well, but I’ll admit, in this condition, it’s just not my favourite style.

Peter Lehmann Margaret Barossa Semillon 2003
$??; 11.5% alcohol; screw cap; 88++ points
Aha! The lovely creamy lemon butter nature of good semillon well made slumps about this glass; a few years’ bottle has mellowed it and buttered it up even more. It’s not up to the extreme standard of the Hunter at its best, which rarely occurs outside of Margan’s, or something like the latest Elizabeth from Mount Pleasant, but it’s lovely soft semi maturing well. The screw cap will ensure more safe years, mind you, but right now this is a pleasing mellow white wine, with only a dash of the petiol greens that spoil most Barossa semis, especially those harvested by the dreaded machines. The finish is still a tad weedy, like petiol greens. Maybe Barossa semillon does that without any petiols. I dunno. But there’s sufficient dry dusty tannin to knock most of that verdancy out, leaving the butter and cream. Perfect roast chook wine. Spuds. Parsley. Sour cream.

Cape Jaffa La Lune Mt Benson Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2007
$40; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 88 points
Peach sabayon and Paris Creek biodynamic yoghurt - with fresh peach – are the major whiffs in this new certified bioD baby from the Hooper family’s vineyard on the Limestone Coast. There’s a little of the petiol (leaf stalk) greenness of semillon, cutely bolstered by the tropical fruit spectrum of savvyB, but no grassy methoxypyrazine or oxalis. The flavours follow suit: quite assertive and bright, and typical of the amplified nature of the best bioD wines. That creamy, peachy dessert flavour reappears for a neat curtsy at curtain fall. Encore! Grilled whiting and endive. www.capejaffawines.com.au

III Associates Sabbatical McLaren Vale Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2007
$??; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 87+ points
Even the wizard wine conductor, Brian Light, could not remove the weediness from this McLaren Vale semillon. That occurs in the vineyard. Semillon needs humidity, which Bordeaux, Margaret River and the Hunter Valley share with McLaren Vale, but for some reason - clones? machine harvesting? petiols in the must? - semillon doesn't seem to much like McLaren Vale. Which is not to say this is bad wine: it's just weedy, and I don't like the flavour. Many people, of course, do. There are other fine things about this wine, but the only way I can abide it is to chill the bejeezes out of it, in which case it becomes more crunchy and flinty. So why did I point it so high? Because, technically, it's pretty good wine, and it'll be better in a year or two, earning it that plus. MAR 09

Peter Lehmann Barossa Semillon 2008
$13.50; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 87 points
Aha! No overt petiol greens! Much better! The petiol is the stalk of the vine leaf, and mechanical harvesters tend to pick enough to make much Barossa semi - and some of her riesling - taste strangely green, like cape weed, or well, like petiols. This is more gentle lemon butter, with the smell of the white lemon pith. It's simple, clean, very easy chug-a-lug for long, thirsty, afternoon discourse, or maybe even that basket of salt'n'pepper squid on a boulevard somewhere. If you're sick of Kiwi and Hillsbilly savvy-B battery acid, this is more comforting and considerably cheaper. 09 MAR 09

Cape Jaffa Limestone Coast Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2008
$15; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 85 points
The semillon dominates this wine, which is what you’d expect. It’s buttery, with maybe a tweak of home made lemon slice. With a little shot of freshly-cracked limestone giving a tiny edge. The palate’s buttery, too, without going as far as peach, and mercifully, there’s none of the petiol greens and capeweed that mucks up many semillons from warmer areas. The finish is just nicely limey. JAN 09

Longview Red Bucket Adelaide Hills Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2009
$16; 11.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 07JUN10; 77 points
So there you go. The Adelaide Hills can make wines like this, too. It's weedy, weedy Semillon. There IS some butter. If the butter scene in Last Tango In Paris was filmed on a Capeweed-infested lawn, it would smell like this. I can't imagine what it should taste like. But I'll bet that wouldn't taste like this, either.

RUM

2009-11-16T22:39:00.002+10:30

NEW!
Renegade Rum Company Monymusk Distillery Jamaica 5 Year Old Rum
Lab sample; 46% alcohol; tasted 16 NOV 09; 94 points
At its fresh best, old-style Batrossadeutscher streusel yeast cake made with dried apricots smells like this little sweetheart from a distillery that’s no longer there, but WAS one of the oldest in Jamaica. There’s also a good mouthful of soft nougat and Colombine Caramels. It gives a slightly mournful autumnal expression, but there’s some wry wistful joy in there, a sort one keeps to oneself. The palate is very much reminiscent of soft dried pears; the finish warming without getting prickly. The rum spent five years in old bourbon casks before being finished in Islay, at Bruichladdich, in French casks which were used to make sweet fortified whites – read frontignac – at Banyuls in the Mediterranean. And I think it’s the fronti which has helped release that simply sweet hint of musk and rosewater which threads right through the rum, drawing all those confections and fruits into the one gentle, genteel cornucopia. It has the spirit of gewurztraminer about it. And yes, you could take it neat with apricot struesel and a cup of white tea any morning of the week. 3,960 decanters filled.

NEW!
Renegade Rum Company Foursquare Distillery Barbados 6 Year Old Rum
Lab sample; 46% alcohol; tasted 16 NOV 09; 94 points
First distilled in a copper pot, then concentrated in a column still, five years in bourbon barrels then finished in French oak from Ribero el Duero tempranillo, ooh aye. This is the one for the lumberjacks, which, lest you imagine a derisive tone, include the greatest of all winemakers, and our most famous, carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth. All in one. His very own little trinity. Dried apricots and Golden Syrup aromas ooze about the bottom of the glass, but the top is all lignin-derived: apples poached in cloves, cassia and nutmeg. Really get bold, and jam your hoooter right into the glass, and you’ll see intense toffee bubbling with Curaçao orange rind,ad, bugger me, strawberries! Let it sit for half an hour, and you’ll come over all runny in the middle, such is its burnished complexity, whether you like oak or not. After forty five minutes, it’s smelling like one of those orange-flavoured dark chocolate balls. This is exciting, highly-entertaining rum, like a roller-coaster. Like Coney Island, and Luna Park. Glorious! 3,870 decanters filled.

NEW!
Renegade Rum Company Diamond Distillery Guyana 6 Year Old Pot Still Rum
Lab sample; 46% alcohol; tasted 16 NOV 09; 93 points
The Port Morant Distillery was built in 1732 on the Demerera River. The last vat still from there was moved to the Amalgamated Diamond Distillery, where it hisses on. This rum lay five years in bourbon casks, and then, at Bruichladdich on Islay, was finished in tempranillo French oak casks from Ribero el Duero (!). It must have been a rather characterful and robust spirit from the start, but the woods have added a veneer of burnished walnut and the whisper of great aged whisky or Cognac. It smells a little of walnut shells, too, even pickled walnuts, and coconut iced cinnamon cake. After all that, it’s almost simple to drink, in that it’s completely harmonious, homegenised and smooth ... luxurious rum for the hyper suave Chivas sophisticate; or Louis XIII buffs. 6,650 decanters filled.

PINOT NOIR

2009-10-24T15:07:00.018+10:30

PHILIPS WHITE AND JONES DISCUSSING THE TRAJECTORIES OF BASS PHILLIP PINOTS NOIR IN THE EXETER ... ADD ANOTHER L TO THE LATTER, OF COURSE (HE'S A VICTORIAN YOU KNOW) ... CLICK TO SEE THE ZITS ... THANKYOU MILTON WORDLEY FOR THE GREAT PHOTOGRAPHY

Bass Phillip Premium Pinot Noir 2008
$??; 13.8% alcohol; cork; 10JAN10; 95++ points
I know Phillip Jones is a little prickly about me suggesting his Hillcrest Pinot was his best to date. Maybe he can start to relax. This sensual blob of gastronomic ordnance is from his own vineyards at Leongatha. It has sobering authority, with a whiff of the volcano and all, but is generally a dense, perfectly-formed young thing of a certain voluptuous level of health. Its acidity and tannin are racy but tough, its fruit not yet poking its head out. It has astonishing focus and direction, and to reach this level of refinement without filtration is a feat of bravery, sure, but also reflects some pretty savvy vineyard and winemaking voodoo. It gives me an excuse to stay alive for another fifteen years.

Hillcrest Yarra Valley Premium Pinot Noir 2004
$55; 12.6% alcohol; cork(!); 95+ points
Made by the much mythologised Phillip (sic) Jones, of Bass Phillip (sic), from the 34 year old dry-grown Woori Yallock vineyard previously used by James Halliday, I reckon this is the best Australian pinot I've had. Jones is tres feral, of course, and many of his wines are unfiltered and cloudy, like this one's groovy $38 (92+) little sister - they're both girls - but this has the extra spice of very expensive oak, and extra careful bunch selection. Jones thinks it's about as good as he gets. Rich, smooth, velvety, thick, healthy, breathtaking - very naughty Burgundy indeed, hiding in Australia like this. Coq au vin. www.hillcrest.com.au

Moss Wood Vineyard Margaret River Pinot Noir 2006
$53; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94+++ points
She’s been sitting here for a week now, and I’ve still only managed to drink her down to the top of the label, while I’ve waited for her to show the slightest sign of breathing. Hardly any change. This wine will live for twenty or thirty years. 2006 being the coldest, slowest, latest Margaret River vintage in forty years, one might expect such royal disdain from this revered vineyard. It’s very clean cherry-plum-raspberry sort of pinot at this stage, after a week, just as it was after a day. Maybe it’s developed a little beetroot; a little tabac. It’s after the extremely plush patent leather rather than the silk then velvet manner. A rather mysterious raven in a tuxedo and Bal a Versailles, by Deprez. Musk. Dried apple. She’s got Kahlua on her breath. Stunning sweetness of fruit and perfectly poised, neck-turning tannin. It’s like thanks I’ll move along and then wha-??? And you realise there’s wickedness afoot if you’re extremely patient, remain very well behaved, and certainly don’t fidget. It’s one of those wealthy spunks John Singer Sargent painted. She’ll take you when she likes.

Port Phillip Estate Morillon Tete De Cuvee Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir 2007
$46; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 15 OCT 09; 94+++ points
This is as good as Mornington has got thus far. It's mysterious, heavy and compressed. It almost smells of gun blue and gunpowder, but not quite. It reminds me of Domaine de l'Arlot Nuits Saint George 1er Clos des Forets Saint Georges 2004 as a young wine. It's black cherries, soot, black cats and licorice, with cassis and framboise below, which is not to say it's too alcoholic. It's just surly and authoritative and dense. The palate is lithe, tight, and ungiving, with little of the cheery raspberry and whatnot you'd expect, say, of Morey St Denis. This is one scary, sinister mutha. It needs at least a decade. Then, it'll kill you, but not by percussive intrusion. It'll slay by undressing itself, and then your defences. Forget all the firearms shit. This is a cross between Carmen Miranda wearing nothing but a hat made of fruit, and Nastassja Kinsky turning into the black panther in Cat People:

See these eyes so red
Red like jungle burning bright
Those who feel me near
Pull the blinds and change their... minds
It's been so long

Still this pulsing night
A plague I call a heartbeat
Just be still with me
Ya wouldn't believe what I've been through
You've been so long

Well it's been so long
And I've been putting out the fire with gasoline
Putting out the fire
With gasoline

If you haven't got my gist yet, this wine is not for you. It's for me. And I'll have to drink this bottle now, so I can join the girls.

Isabel Marlborough Pinot Noir 2004
$45; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 94+ points
Swoon. Schmooch. Sigh. This is what it’s s’posed to be like in Pinot World. Luscious and viscous, spicy and totally seductive, there’s no point in resisting: she slides all over your sensories like some wicked therapy oil, massaging every little worry away. I’d always thought Martinborough, (North Island), was the sexiest NZ pinot site, but this beauty says the wide valley of Marlborough, in the South, can do it just as well. Something with truffles. www.isabelestate.com

Romney Park Reserve Adelaide Hills Pinot Noir 2006
$36, 13% alcohol; diam cork, 94+ points
Romney Park’s Reserve Adelaide Hills Pinot Noir 2006 ($36) was one of the few trophy winners deserving of its gong at the Adelaide Hills wine show. The peanuts in charge had served it in thimbles at that event, so now, with keener curiosity and a proper glass, I slid the proboscis in … I was already seated so I couldn’t sit down and weep, in the company of a polite couple I’d only just met, so I could barely disrobe and dance … The oak stonkered me first. Perfectly apt, old, seasoned French barrels had adorned the welling fruit with an edgy piquancy that reminded me of a Spanish lady I met on a train … All that fleshy fruit: a little roll of it protruding over the edge of her polished black satin. Like the cleavages between each toe, puffing up against the edge of the low-cut flamenco shoe leather, as mysterious as baby beetroot; but as simply obvious in intention, purpose, and presentation as pomegranite and raspberry; as tight with gushing blood as a juicy black cherry ... I licked it. Mmm. Tang of sweat, putting an edge on the savoury olive oil texture … and yes, a little kalamata amongst the cherry and baby beetroot, with a dollop of sour cream, like a borscht … “Utterly wicked and sinful”, I was scratching, “swoooonful! – now to 2014 – ” when the bodgie pterodactyls outside swooped me back to Hahndorf. Romney Park is named after the Romney sheep they once counted, with a doff of the beret to Domaine de la Romanée Conti, the sacred heart of Burgundy. While Ashton Hills pinot is probably closer to the austere DRC in style, this red is more like Smitty’s devine Domaine de l’Arlot: more amiable and fleshy from the start, with one less zero at the end of the price. 15 FEB 08

Marchand & Burch Great Southern WA Pinot Noir 2007
$70; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points
Burgundian winemaker/viticulturer Pascal Marchand is half of this hot partnership in the deep south west; the other bit’s Jeff Burch, owner of Howard Park. Think: traditional winemaking combined with the best cool fruit Burch could coax from the Porongorup and Mount Barker vignobles, and some determined biodynamic tendencies. Inhale: ripe wild cherries in chilli chocolate sauce, nutmeggy oak, and richly composted earth. Drink: silky syrup with slender, persistent natural acidity and extremely fine-grained, gently insistent tannins. Exhale: sheer, saucy, deep pleasure, especially when it contains some roast pork belly. Ponder: langorous, teasing, appetising luxury that hangs on and on.

Penfolds Cellar Reserve Adelaide Hills Pinot Noir 2007$49.90; 14% alcohol; cork; tasted 20 FEB 09 and 7 MAY 09; 1 MAY 10; 93+++ points
“It’s a wine of its vintage” said Peter Gago when I suggested this was a more feminine and cheeky pinot than most of the dour macho brutes that went before. Peter’s still managed to make a pinot in the Penfolds style, but with less of its predecessors’ sheer might. It reminds me of some of the early Morey St Denis wines which Jacques Seysses made at Domaine Dujac, but it’s probably still much bigger than those – it may only ever look feminine amongst the brothers lined up about it on the Penfolds bench on these amazing days! From the fresh whole berries that sit on top, down through the borscht and fruitcake to the reduced turnip greens of its tannins, it’s a lovely pinot noir, and one which will thrive with a decade’s dungeon, if the Portuguese bark contribution permits. It’s had only natural yeast, hand-plunging, and no fining, filtering or tannins added, and it’s much the sweeter for all that. The oak’s just dandy, too: nine months in French barriques, half of them new.

Phi Single Vineyard Yarra Valley Pinot Noir2010

($55; 13% alcohol; screwcap; 8,640 bottles; tasted 25-27JAN12; 93+++ points).

I love Pinot I can see myfingers through: somehow a little translucency reassures me that the exerciseis about to become a lot more elegant and refined. I’ve had young Burgundiesfrom very famous vineyards which this wine would merge into neatly on thetasting bench – it’s disarmingly chubby with maraschino cherry, black Russiantomato and blood orange flavours as much as framboise liqueuer. It’s slightly fleshy, in the cutest, nuttiestway. And then, that same relentlesschalky tannin. (I say chalk, becausemany don’t know what volcanic Kraznozems, which are not chalky, taste like. They’re ferruginous and deep and quick to drain.)Very fine, highly appetising, and teasing more than satisfying, it’s perfectnow with goat’s cheese and smoked salmon. But it’ll get rounder and more opulent in the cellar, like that Phi Chardonnay2010. It’s a beauty.

Port Phillip Estate Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir 2008
$37; 14% alcohol; Diam cork; drunk 14-15 OCT 09; 93+++ points
Spicy, not quite abrupt, Burgundian timber itches the inside of your nose when you put it in here. You don't have to put it in very far. But there are blackberries which ease this lumberjacked machismo. Deadly nightshade. Juniper. Anise. Dried figs. Baby spinach. Chicory. Peppery watercress, like the stuff Colonel Light left in the Delamere Creek in 1836. Some sorta thing blacker than a cherry. Dried prunes. That all makes your nose feel well scratched. I'd like to say that when you put it (the wine, not your nose) in where your teeth are, it's soothing, but no. It wangs around your mouth like a polecat in a cage trap. It's livid and vivid and very hard to feed. But shit it's a good wine. It has all the tight stuff, all the intense black devilry, all the hot gearbox and clutch of a pinot which will be a ravishing beauty in about six to eight years. So call it a Jaguar (car) and forget the polecat bit. No bullshit. The tannins (extra fine and velvety) and the acid (not quite Sandoz or Owsley, but pretty swift) and the sheer sinewy nature of the fruit and the sap all add up to a trip that's worth waiting for. And I don't mean a Ford with a Jaguar badge. I mean pre-aircon 4.2, stripped to the bones. Bravo, sweet Sandro Mosele!

Romney Park Pinot Noir 2007
??; 14% alcohol; diam cork; 93+++ points
This wine is tighter and meaner than the 2006 ever was. It has the trademark Hahndorf acidity jammed through it like a stake. Even at 14% alcohol, the natural acid is fierce. The wine has many facets of wild black cherry and hedgerow berries, even black tea, but it's as tight as a fist, and will need a good lie down before it'll be letting anything loose. I'm not saying it's not pretty or entertaining or anything, for it most mercifully is, with cute raspberry gels, lemon drops, and lollyshop topnotes in general. But that palate is as tight and disciplined as I've seen in Hills pinot, maybe ever. These minimal oxygen wines of the Shorts are the opposite in style to the less retentive pinots of Steve George. It will be fascinating to have a pair of 97s in a decade! 04 APR 09

Bass Phillip Crown Prince Pinot Noir 2008
$??; 13.8% alcohol; cork; 10JAN10; 93++ points
A doughy cherry tart, not quite cooked. Whiffs of white pepper and Marello cherries. Menthol. Toasting marshmallows. The wine is perfectly gentle, with a soothing and comforting viscosity. Umami. Then it tightens into a savoury, astringent juvenile as pure as the driven ice. So modest voluptuousness soon turns to the stuff that will keep this lovely wine alive for a decade or two. Its extremely fine tannins and brilliant natural acid dance a merry darn thing indeed, winding that long tapering whiprod of a finish up real tight.

Morillon Port Phillip Estate Tete du Cuvée Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir 2006
$??; 13.5% alcohol; Diam cork; 93++ points
I spose if you’re copying a wine style from France you might also copy their ling. This coulda bin called sumpin different. But it doesn’t jam in my craw, the ling. Nor does the wine. I like the fact that it’s not a juicy fruity pinot, filling the Port Phil’s top bot, nor is it a big tannic bugger, pretending it contains shiraz but not really. This is perfectly balanced, perfectly formed young pinot, understated in almost every way. But add all that understatement together, and you’ve got a simple, humble, plainly crafted antipodean wine that should have the haunches of all Burgundy ashiverin. Nice knock. Spare ribs.

Grosset Adelaide Hills Pinot Noir 2006
$65; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 93 points
Probably Grosset’s best pinot, this won’t be out for a week or two, but there’s only 300 cases, so jump the queue or squeeze out a pre-release squirt. It’s a different style to Steve George’s exemplary “lightness of being” DRC models, with their paler hues and firmer acidity: it’s built more around riper tones and more obvious, hearty oak, closer to earlier Penfold’s than current Ashton Hills. The flavours are of the chewy black cherry family; the aftertaste still quite acidic, but with black tea tannins in place of the tight raspberry-and-lemon finish of Ashton. Great with T-Chow duck. www.grosset.com.au (9.2.8)

Montalto Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir 2005
$37; 13.2% alcohol; screw cap; 93 points
Montalto is one of the more stunning vinstallations on burgeoning Mornington; it’s more of your Shaw & Smith (with a shiny bolt-on restaurant) than Rockford, with PR flak packed with shrapnel like “spectacular…natural…premium…extra virgin…springfed…pure …natural wetlands…highly-regarded…award-winning…self-sustaining”. What? No “nestled in”? Nope. But here’s a damned fine pinot. Nutty, and more astringent wild cherry than simple raspberry, this is firmly acidic, firmly tannic, clean-as-a-whistle pinot for the cellar, more DRC than Juicy Fruit.

Blind River Marlborough Pinot Noir 2007
$40; 14% alcohol; screw cap; drunk 14-15 OCT 09; 92+++ points
Many Kiwi pinnerwahists (they really call it pinner wha in the Land of the Wrong White Crowd) seem to be stuck in an oak addiction similar to many Australian redmen of the seventies and eighties. This wine is acrid with sharp blackwood sap. But there are many cherries (wild little black ones, and marello), a hint of persimmon, some kalamata and some anise, all adding up to quite a smell. The swaller department is more entertaining and fruity, as those dark fruits climb over the carpentry in a determined manner, leaving the drinkers grinning that mad purple grin that people develop when they're in red heaven. I've enjoyed shlucking this baby, but it'll be more sinful sensually, and less schoolmarmish paddy whack wise, if you let it forget the examinations, roll a few doobies, and sleep off the rest of its secondary schooling in the dungeon. It has sufficient acid to eat some of that oak and support some of that fruit for, well, what? A decade? If you prefer a bit of biffo, get it now at Vintage Cellars, which means you'll have to come to Australia.

Moss Wood Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir 2008
$??; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; consumed 21-24 OCT 09; 92+++ points
On first opening, this seemed simple. Maraschino, raspberry, maybe some grilled cashew, and alcohol. It almost went down the sink. But on day three, whoop-y-doo! We got us a convoy. Spicy Burgundian oak, cherries, vanilla bean, creme caramel, firm yet sort of distant acidity ... suggesting the wine should be left in the cold for four years, or decanted for about four hours. The typically brief label text suggests the wine was made to the Moss Wood recipe on Mornington, but names no culprits ... Sando Mosele is my bet, but theplace is Dromana, not Red Hill, where Sandro waves his wand. When Clare Mugford gets back to me I'll let you know. In the meantime, this is the lighter, simpler little sister to the Moss Wood Margaret River model lauded above. I'll be keen to discover why the Mugfords went to Mornington, and not Tassie, for this distant addition to their fold.

Bass Phillip The Estate Pinot Noir 2008
$??; 13.5% alcohol; cork; 10JAN10; 92++ points
Iced borscht with sour cream and raspberries afloat just about wraps up the bouquet department. There’s a mint leaf, too. This is the least viscous of the Bass Phillip trio. It has similar authority and force to its bigger siblings, but is the most slender and least complex – it’s less acidulous and its tannins are finer, too. It’s great schlűcking pinot for the earnest beginner or casual connoisseur alike; give it another few years and it’ll be a very serious mature dinner wine.

Eldridge Estate Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir 2006
$??; 14% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 24-28 APR 09; 92++ points
Deceptive wine, this, as many an alluring pinot finds itself. It's delicate and nutty (cashew) with stacks of cherry (marello and maraschino). It also has a fascinating savoury tweak of Chinese olive. The oak is subtle and gently spicy (ginger and nutmeg); the flavours gentle but persistent, with precise acidity and elegant tannins to offer perfect counterpoint to the wine's finely viscous texture. It's too cute now: it needs three more years to properly vol up to us. It was perfect, though, with rabbit liver pate on rye, one caper per slice, at breakfast in the rain.

Hurley Vineyard Estate Balnarring Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir 2006
$40; 14.8% alcohol; Diam cork; 92++ points
A sinuous, complex mess of black cherries, beetroot, fennel, cedar, old nutmeg, musk, confectioner’s sugar, anise and whatever you’ve got the time to wait for, this is an alluring and engaging pinot from one of the southern hemisphere’s best pinot sites. And it’s not a mess, really. It’s quite neat and tidy. But it’s not behaving yet; it’s not trained. It lashes restlessly about the mouth like a sinuous beast, leaving a light coating of black tea tannin and a long acidulous astringency. It’s big, but balanced, long, intense and strapping. I’d love to drink it in four years, but it’ll go much longer than that. Give it plenty of decanter, serve it in big glasses, and have it with classic boeuf bourguignon. And somebody whose eyes you can gaze into for at least two bottles. One before; one after. FEB 09

Paradigm Hill L’ami Sage Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir 2005
$40; 13.9% alcohol; Diam cork; 92++ points
Just under a tonne to the acre on the smug cool of Mornington must mean extreme intensity, in any variety. Make it pinot and you’ve got my nostrils flaring. A whiff of sooty oak opens the glass, then, reluctantly, a long, tight, infuriatingly shy red gradually exudes. Beetroot, black cherries, bilberries and blueberries simmer away in it; charcuterie meats hover below it; magic ethereal topnotes will gradually evolve above it. It has svelte acidity and the muscles of a sprinter. Wait five or six years. Duck.

NEW!
Pipers Brook Vineyard Estate Tasmania Pinot Noir 2009$42; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92++ points
Highly refined, yet almost melancholic in an autumnal decay sort of way, this moody salon cat puts me somewhere between Morticia Addams with a martini and Eartha Kitt on the Campari. It’s never droll. With apologies to both women, its top note is old white pepper box. Marello cherries this time. With Red currants and some estery banana cream. Just between you and me, it’s too much of a tightwad to put on flesh, but it remains nicely sensual, as in a very close thing. I love the way the acid snakes away through all that black velvet tannin. There’s some hedgerow stuff there too, almost like basil or peppery cress like the stuff Colonel Light’s doctor left growing all up the Delamere Creek. This wine is sufficiently well-mannered to be ideal with fat tuna steaks as raw as you can get them with about 5 ml of pink-white-black (in that order) char-grilled flesh on the outside. Oh yes. I haven’t mentioned fruit. Well I sort of did. Bit it’s more as if those fruits were poached in Sauternes and whipped into a crème. It’s custardy. Very tidy.

Toi-Toi Central Otago Pinot Noir 2008
$??; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 20-23 June 09; 92++ points
While I reckon this may be quite a lot more alcoholic than the above claim, this is a wine of some elegance and poise. Prune and beetroot abound, but there's a lovely burst of florists' and confectioners' colour at the top of the bouquet, teasingly dancing through and around the blazing staves. The palate has a cheeky raspberry gel simplicity and texture about it, and then the cooper comes knocking again. Repeat the whole exercise, and the glass fills up with exquisite Morello cherries. Not too bad at all.

Herbert Mount Gambier Barrel Number 1 Pinot Noir 2006
$??; 13.6% alcohol; screw cap; 92+ points
Black tea and walnut shells seem to add their dry, dark, woody aromas to this, the best barrel of Herbert’s in 2006. Below those moody, slightly acrid topnotes there wells a bowl of beetroot, prune, raspberry and marello cherries. The palate’s beautifully viscous, with all the above flavours in neat balance. If there’s a style hint required for tragic Burgundy nuts, think along the lines of a junior Domaine l’Arlot. Like the standard 05 model, the wine is better for its honesty: it’s not forced, sophisticated or pretentious, but just, simply, overwhelmingly, HERE, NOW. Juicy pork cutlets.

Stefano Lubiana Primavera Tasmania Pinot Noir 2006
$28; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92+ points
Dear Stefano’s been plugging away there on the Derwent for nearly twenty years, after the shock of telling his family their Riverland vineyards weren’t what he wanted, selling out and moving so far south they could hardly see him. This is the result: a hearty, fruity, honest son-of-a-gun of a pinot, gloriously wholesome and healthy. Black cherries. Crème caramel. Dry dark spices too hard to track down. That’s the nose full. The palate? Lovely neat acidity, all natural, with fluffy raspberry and cranberry whip around it. Like a trifle. Wet sponge cake. Cream. Cassis. Vanilla custard. Leaves the mouth like a sylph on the fly. Pork cutlets.

Stonier Mornington Peninsula Reserve Pinot Noir 2005
$45; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92 points
It’s a good thing, watching the Mornington wineries hit their straps. Stonier is one of the oldest, and the vines that went into this fine pinot are around twenty-five years old. It’s an elegant, yet complex red, with harmonious twists of dried fig and prune humming along beneath a dusting of lightly sooty oak and the beginnings of leathery maturity. There’s some appropriately cute tannin, too, drying off the tail. Half an hour in the decanter really sets it loose. Confit of duck. (18.11.26)

Dominique Portet Gippsland Pinot Noir 2009
$??; 13% alcohol; screw cap; drunk 21-22MAY10; 91++ points
An honest and straightforward wine, this babe never attempts to be anything it's not. It has a seep of smoky carbon, heading towards peat, and pleasant hints of prune, dried apple, and blanched almond. The palate's neat and tidy, and works the mouth gently, puckering the cheeks and the gums ever so slightly, releasing the mouth juices in anticipation of food. Like rabbit rillete, or T-Chow duck. It's much better after twenty four hours' air, indicating it's worth stacking some away for a couple of years. Never complex or overbearing, it's a pleasant, almost cheeky, fresh and savoury drink that can be savoured slowly without demanding too much Pinotphilippia in the conversation department.

NEW!
Paracombe Adelaide Hills Pinot Noir 2011$20; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 91++ points
I can’t believe that these vines are nudging 30 years of age: it seems like yesterday et cetera; more difficult to accept is that this cheeky baby comes from the horror vintage of 2011. But the Droggies picked this before the moulds took hold, gave it their no-nonsense old barrels treatment, and got it on the market fast so the wood’s ready for 2012, which is now. I was about to call it sassy, but it’s almost too big to hang much sass. It’s certainly savoury, in the precise sense of the appetizing herb of that name. It smells of Montmorency cherries and red currants. It also smells of summer in the dust, something there was very little of in the second wettest vintage in Australian history. It’s acrid and spicy, along the lines of cordite and cumin. Then it smacks you in the mouth. That’s sassy. And brash. While it has modest viscosity, it’s teasing more than reassuring or comforting. There’s not a lot of syrup about it. It’s tannic (fine-grained; bone dry) and acidulous and audacious, all of which are character traits that a year or three of dungeon would fix to the point where you won’t believe it’s the same wine. It makes me crave the gelatinous nature of the grilled egg plant and pork belly. Wah Hing tea-smoked duck. Every week it’ll settle a little, and it’ll be almost ready to behave when it hits the tables in the sun at Festival time, when I’ll bet you’ll see it along every footpath from the Hydey through town and way up the Parade. Shloosh it in a decanter or jug in the meantime. The price looks really silly.

Herbert Frosted Mount Gambier Pinot Noir 2005
$25; 12.2% alcohol; cork; 90++ points
A tweak of spicy, slightly sooty wood gives this ripe-raspberry-lollies-and-marello-cherries delight a pleasant walnut shell edge. Like all three current Herbert pinots, it’s disarmingly open of face, reminding me of the parlour maid in The Duchess of Duke Street, which is before any of you were born. This one has the most prominent acidity, and will be the best performer in the dungeon, if you feel a little Max Mosely sesh coming on. It’s simple, but never duh-dumb nor pretentious. Perfect fare for smoked hocks served on blue cabbage, with poached beetroot, Spanish onion and kalamata olives.

Cloudy Bay Marlborough NZ Pinot Noir 2005
$40; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 90 points
Martinborough, at the bottom the north isle, truly owns the Kiwi pinot throne. But this naïve south isle blossom proves that even Louis Vuitton can do it there, on a mighty industrial scale. Such sanitary wine is scarce in Burgundy, but the simplicity and barefaced cordial nature of this fruity cutie makes it the perfect tailgater to the CB savvy b along all those endless boulevards of thirsty blondes and tan blokes with deck loafers and no socks. Made for chargrilled meats, red or white, served by big Greeks.

Hurley Vineyard Harcourt Balnarring Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir 2006
$49; 14.9% alcohol; Diam cork; 90 points
Too much, too much alcohol. What a pity. If your pinots are hitting the scales at 14.9, you have to start wondering why you’re growing it there if you really can’t face picking it at 13.5%. Maybe you should be growing grenache. Not posh, though, grenache, especially on a peninsula like Mornington, where there are more Ferraris than school buses. Or there used to be. Maybe now that the money’s all evaporated we might see some grenache planted there, and a few more school buses. Now, this wine. Black tea, black spice, black soot, black cherry, black iron like a steam locomotive, maybe some old pre-ground black pepper ... then a slurp of viscous, elastic goo goo like that stuff that sticks to the wall when you hurl it, but black again. I want pinot to be full of dark pink and eventually some russet. FEB 09

Penfolds Bin 23 Adelaide Hills Pinot Noir 200
$40; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 15APR10; 89++ points
Cellar 23 is a rather hallowed hall buried deep in the hill at the back of Penfolds’ Magill Estate winery; it’s where the Penfolds Pinots age in barrel, and has also been the site of some very special, er, underground tastings. Now it’s given its number to a new Bin Range of Pinots designed to be a little easier on the pocket than the Cellar Reserve. There is no secret that the record heat blitz of 2009 fried much of South Australia’s vintage; fortunately the cooler higher Hills fruit had not yet achieved veraison when this blasted through, and so we have a survivor from what Peter Gago calls “some of the younger vineyards”. I always thought that the notion of Penfolds developing its own style of Pinot seemed unlikely if not impossible, but here you have living proof that’s now been done. This is not Burgundy. This is indubitably Penfolds. It has greenish tannins that Peter calls “rhubarb”, which is close to my “weedy”, but these will assimilate and mellow with five years dungeon. Which is what this wine’s all about: cellar. It’s bright and sassy, cheeky and cheery in this its infancy, with a quite sharp juniper edge adding some cut to its nutty fats.

Stoneleigh Marlborough Pinot Noir 2005
$19; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 89 points
Burgundy must sweat when it sees pinot of this quality, made after its own traditional manner, at this price. The free-draining river stones of Marlborough, at the northern end of New Zealand’s south isle, grow pinot effortlessly, reflecting the sun’s heat from beneath the vines to ensure full ripening. Supple cherry, raspberry and prune flavours abound, with hints of dark charcuterie meats. Saltimbocca. (18.11.26)

Herbert Mount Gambier Pinot Noir 2005
$18.50; 12.8% alcohol; screw cap; 88 points
Considering this lovely bright young thing is made from only one clone (55V12), while deities like Steve George spent 25 years cutting 2? clones down to six in pursuit of pinot truth, this is a fair dinkum cutie. It reminds me of the first Morey St Denis Jaques Seysses made at Domaine Dujac in Burgundy, all those years ago. Nutty, with pretty maraschino fruit, and just a hint of suitably spicy oak, with a nice, thick, almost waxy texture, it’s a primary duckster, or maybe chook-a-vin accompanist. Good thing is it doesn’t try to be anything it’s not.

Moorooduc Estate Devil Bend Creek Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir 2007
$25; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 88 points
The devil’s in the detail: while this label’s a tad ambiguous, this is not an estate wine, but a blend of grapes from around Mornington – it’s their cheapy. Nothing cheap about its production, however, with all the proper pinot business going down in the winery. Pleasantly unobtrusive oak adds a dry spicy edge to the marello cherry/raspberry/beetroot fruit, and to the palate’s nicely viscous texture. The flavours are pleasantly nutty, like cashew, in a conserve of all those fruits in the bouquet. 2007 was a disgusting year across Victoria, so it’s a wonder this got through the crap. Roast duck or pork.

Oyster Bay Marlborough Pinot Noir 2007
$23; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 87 points
Aniseed and licorice aren’t the sorts of things I expect to find growing in pinot bottles, but they seem to be growing very well in here. Hard to say how much of that comes from oak, and the lumberjacks have certainly been at it in here. There’s fruit, too: minty blackcurrants and black cherries, but more kalamata. So it must be seen as a savoury sort of pinot: one that irritates enough to make one hungry. (“Would one be interested in giving one one?”, Billy Connelly asked last time I saw him, but he was speaking of neither me nor a drink, as he’s not allowed to drink. He was joking about the language and his beautiful crazy wife, Pamela.) So this is black licorice more than raspberry. Big volume commercial pinots like this seem to be tending toward a generic soft dense shiraz sort of style, which might be what Burgundy was like when they regularly topped it up with shiraz from Algeria or the Languedoc, or, if they could afford it, the Rhone. Syrupy smooth aniseed balls. Or rings. Well waxed. You’ll not be coughing up fur balls after drinking this polished rake. Or his tattooed missus. FEB 09

Holly’s Garden Whitlands Pagan Pinot Noir 2006
$??; 13.5% alcohol; cork; 86++ points
Whitlands is high (850 metres), cool and beautiful. The pests are phylloxera, wombats, currawongs and humans. I can’t understand why this wine smells a little porty, and yet is only 13.5% richter. It’s thick and pagan to drink, like some witch’s essence, with beetroot and blackberry and carbon, like a fresh-shaved Staedtler 6B artists’ pencil. It has no finesse. It’s thick and velvety with tannin, then it gets thicker and more tannic. I know that sounds tough, but, well, I can stand a pinot that sucks your lips into your oesophagus with its astringency, but I’m scared of this one waving a spear at me.

Kooyong Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir 2008$48; 13.5% alcohol; cork; drunk 4-7MAY10; 84+
Pancetta and capocollo smells be here; along with some of that tussocky, sedge and fen bouquet of Mornington Peninsula. Beetroot, too, and prune. Slightly sooty oak. The palate’s bone dry – as dry as crushed bone china – and the fruit scarce. It is staunch, sparse, austere, ungiving wine which may do big things in your dungeon, but I suspect that thinning skein of fruit flesh won’t be enough to fill it properly and carry it.

Deviation Road Adelaide Hills Pinot Noir 2007
$??; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 83 points
You don’t often encounter porty pinot, so this is a novelty. 2007 was a hot drought year in the Hills, and it’s been very well captured in this bottle. I’m not saying it’s simple: it’s black and thick and stacked with licorice and aniseed balls, and it’s got unobtrusive oak and strapping acid, but let’s face it, why not make a shiraz? I can’t hlep thinking this would have been better picked at 13. Sure it would have been acidic, but it would have been more like presentable Burgundy.

SANGIOVESE

2009-09-09T12:58:00.008+09:30

Castagna La Chiave Beechworth Sangiovese 2006$75; 13.5% alcohol; Diam cork; tasted 16-20 AUG 09; 95+++ points
Sometimes I think she glimpses at me, over her shoulder, but not often. No white of eye, only mascara and cheekbone. She sits here on my desk with her back to me. Once, I thought I saw lipstick, but so fleeting it may have been a smudge in my brain, a tragic shard of lust. It’s all shiny black leather, disappearing in the dark to a raven muss of hair. She’s been eating morello cherries and Valrhona Cœur de Guanaja 80% chocolate, and she’s wearing Jean Desprez Bal à Versailles to enhance the fact that she hasn’t showered for days. When she moves her legs, I hear stockings. And that scarlet Louboutin clack.

NEW!

Castagna La ChiaveBeechworth Sangiovese 2009

$75; 14% alcohol; Diamcork; 94+++ points

Maybe it’s a reflection of Castagna’s stubborn inheritednose that it’s these royal Italian varieties that seem so slow maturing thatthey’re never ready for appraisal upon release. They make Shiraz look like Gamay in this tough stonyground. We can expect CastagnaSangiovese and Nebbiolo to usually be wines of extreme longevity. Nevertheless, this blend is so elegant as toinitially appear fleeting to the nose. Wrong. Things change. Legend says Sangiovese is the blood of StJove. Whether or not it’s really God’sblood, this heavenly elixir certainly draws the blood of the drinker to theedge of the lips: it’s so rudely sensual it left me feeling like I’d beenkissing too hard. Its smooth sweetnessseems to come from blueberry, blackberry, fig, marello cherries and those juicysuper-colossal Greek olives; its counterpoint edge from meadow herbage,spinache, tamarillo, Cherry Heering, and blood orange – in fact that rindy aromais accompanied by enough curacao bitterness to remind me of Campari. So we have another Castagna that entertainswith its youthful see-saw between fleeting, ethereal elegance, and hubs-locked,snow-chains-on determination and grunt. It will be a truly stunning wonder in five years; as it stands, it’ssimply the best current release Sangiovese grown and made in Australia, beaten only by thedramatic 2006. Tasted November 2011

Penfolds Cellar Reserve Barossa Valley Sangiovese 2008$65; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 15APR10; 94+++ points
You walk out of the sun and dust into a grand Tuscan kitchen. One Mama’s plucking a cock, another’s stewing black cherries on the big polished wood stove. The fruit is juicy and cheeky, with dried apple pith. The smell of that hot polished stove, with all its pot blacking, never leaves the room. An old man sits in the gloom, smoking a pipe. This masterly Sanger needs years. It’s all natural ferment and unfiltered and real. It comes from the old vines on Kalimna and some more near Marananga: two of the grandest of the Barossa’s geological sub-regions, with the most intense flavour. So they work for Italian varieties as well as French, see. Beautiful wine! STOP PRESS: I've just discovered that this wine will not be released until the 2005 and 2007 have been sold, by which time this utter glory might be even closer to perfection.

Castagna Un Segreto Beechworth Sangiovese Shiraz 2005
$75; 13.5% alcohol; diam cork; 94++ points
You can wake these honeymooners by letting them breathe in the decanter, or by leaving their cork out for a few hours if you prefer them more bristly than considered. They should be in the dungeon, really. But by Bacchus they’re a smash once they’re up: so perfectly married that they’re like a new variety. Heady, sensual, rudely fruity and meaty, and absolutely seamless, they’ve had the appropriate exposure to some fine spicy oak, whose influence will subside as the fleshy fruit absorbs it over the next decade. Slender and smooth, barely tannic, but beautifully, exquisitely, furrily dry, this is a new benchmark for Castagna and biodynamics. www.castagna.com.au. (Tasted late 2007)

Penfolds Cellar Reserve Barossa Valley Sangiovese 2006
$51.90; 15% alcohol; cork; TASTED MAY 09 and 1 MAY 10; 94++ points
There’s an old movie in which the ravishing young Sophia Lauren gets stuck between the entry lounge and customs at an airport in New York because she won’t part with the special donkey meat mortadella her friends at her hometown mortadella factory made for her as a farewell gift. US Customs won’t let her though with a smallgood, so she sits in the transit lounge for days until it’s all eaten. By the fourth hot summer’s day, I could smell her coming off the screen. This wine immediately reminded me of day four. It also has the unusual, but surprisingly attractive aroma of feathers, which I see in the best sangioveses. And, as far as drinking goes, I know sangiovese means the blood of Jove, but this one’s pure Sophia blood: as fiery and sultry and black-haired and black-tempered as a sultry dark Latina can be. It’s easily the best Penfolds sanger yet released. All natural yeast, no additions, a year in five year old French barriques ... you get the drift ... stunning complexity and depth, with bone dry, classic Italian tannins, and then the sweet returns of that delicious fruit. The only Australian sangiovese which impressed me more – maybe apart from Castagna’s first effort when it was young – was the barrel sample of 2008 Peter Gago tipped up next: that’s one’s even more brutally Italian and sublime, so be ready for that lass when she comes.

Tenuta di Valgiano Collina Lucchese 2004
$130??; 14.5% alcohol; cork; drunk 13 NOV 09; 93+++ points
Francesco Saverio Petrilli walked into my house with this in his hand about three hours ago. Saverio's the sort of bloke whose wine you feel like drinking even before you know he makes it. This had been opened before he arrived, and half had been guzzled by some lucky bastard, but no complaints from Casa Bianco. It's delicious, complex, glowering wine with the sulks, perhaps because it had been opened on a bonnie Australian spring day of 38 degrees Centigrade. It comes from vineyards run by Saverio and his partners in northern Tuscany. He's too well-tempered to talk much about what's in it other than to admit that after the sangiovese, shiraz, and merlot admitted to on the back, there are "some other things". It's delightful wine, still smelling alarmingly of healthy fresh grapes. Just carried into the cellar by a fresh draughthorse in well-oiled harness. Like the one Flavio Bagnara used to hoist me upon when I was four. Saverio says that with increasing commitment to bioD practises, the style changes from 05 on, for the better. I will like to see that. For this is georgeous dry bright wine with lots of smarts and entertainments, from bright acidity and mudstone tannins, up through a spiral staircase of sinuous fruits and ethereal ionospheres of dreams to its beginning, in the dirt. Lovely wine. And as I said to begin with, it has the sulks. It will give more if you wait.

Castagna Beechworth Un Segreto Sangiovese Shiraz 2005
$75; 13.5% alcohol; Diam cork; 93++ points
Tiwi women were singing with jazz musicians at the Sydney Opera House on Radio Nash when I opened this. I was in Australia. Sangiovese and shiraz. Very dark chocolate and leather. When the harness at Tahbilk was still freshly dressed and you could smell the breath of the clydesdales. But it’s railway-station dry with fine coal train tannin, with a fruity garland of mulberry and blackberry, the latter stewing for the Fowler’s Vacola jars, drying there on the tea towels... Next day it’s more vibrant, fresher, more supple and streamlined. It’s confoundingly dense, but the sangiovese is just beginning to appear. It needs three more years. But it’d be stunning with properly larded kangaroo, or venison fillets, in about five minutes. 23 NOV 08

NEW!

Castagna Un SegretoBeechworth Sangiovese Syrah 2009

$75; 14% alcohol; Diamcork; 92-3+++ points

Extreme elegance; extreme concentrate. Slender, intense and snaky; harsh with swarfand blackwood. Syrupy with essence ofcoffee and chicory; dry and tannic like black tea leaves. Blueberry and blackcurrant gels in darkchocolate; the whiprod acidity of the fencing foil. Once again, it’s all attack and feint, parryand plunge, and this back-and-forth will keep the drinker very well entertaineduntil there’s peace in the valley in about five years time. In one way, the infant tannins here seem moreNebbiolo-like than Sangiovese, but the deeper I delved I discovered that notreally to be true: these tannins will never be ethereal: they’re too much apart of the chassis of the wine; far too viscerally savoury to ever letgo. I imagine that in five years mypoints will start at 94. Tasted November 2011

Amadio Rosso Quattro Adelaide Hills 2007
$??; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 14 OCT 09; 92++ points
While the companion to this wine, the straight sangiovese 08, is tight and drawn and dry in a most adult savoury manner, this one, at a year's extra age, in bed with merlot, barbera and nebbiolo, jumps with fresh fruity berries and the sort of vivacity that can only come from exceptional vines in an exceptional site, made by a particularly savvy dude of a gastronomic intelligence which is above average. The mossy, mushroomy soil aromas of the merlot work beautifully with the pinot-like black cherries of the barbera, and take a pretty, polished note from the bright raspberry of the nebbiolo. The palate's ungent and chubby, but still lithe and fairly delicate of flavour. This is a merry and jolly wine for laughter and indulgence. If you have neither of those, the wine will assist you.

Amadio Adelaide Hills Sangiovese 2008$??; 14% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 14 OCT 09; 90+++ points
As dusty as the old Tuscan hills in summer, this wine has surly, savoury layers rather than overt, lively fruit. Anise, licorice and soot hints decorate a deep, intense well of beetroot and fig, wild black cherry and hedgerow berries; the bouquet has an acrid edge that prickles the nose like dried spice. So it's a wine for adults. The palate is tight and ungiving, with sufficient viscosity to carry all that dry stuff, and leaves the mouth oozing juices, anticipating food. Like osso bucco with black olives in the sauce, hearty, complex pasta dishes, or even your very basic pasta with oil and parmigiano grano. This wine will look great in about six years; now, it's a slightly awkward teenager for happy afternoon dining, rather than starched linen and chandelier stuff in the night.

Coriole Vineyards McLaren Vale Sangiovese 2007
$??; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 91++ points
Vibrant, bright, marello cherry and raspberry, maybe a squirt of cassis, plush vanilla-and-spice oak, and just a simmering lick of aniseed stack up to make this sanger sing like Pav. “Ooh, but I am just a little songbird”, I heard him say on the news, when asked about the results of an Italian election. Well, folks, here we have a neat little songbird of sangiovese singing away with that perfect tenor tannin, as if the great throat does not function without a taste of cigar. Spaghetti and black olives; osso bucco; saltimbocca; any of the Coriole Lloyds’ great cheeses and olives. www.coriole.com

King River Estate King Valley Sangiovese 2006
$??; 14.7% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 22-23 June 09; 91 points
Lovely glimpses of the memories of lollyshops long demolished deck these licorice and aniseed halls: musk, raspberry, mint leaves, and lemon sherbert aromas tease the old hooteries as much as the toasted oak that lies beneath like a very hot, but cooling, bed. The palate has some severe whip aerial acidity, but the whole thing seems a bit big-boned and disjointed compared to what I suspect it will become. Which is not to say it’s ever gonna be elegant. Imagine a frontier town with a confectioner sharing two storeys with the local fruit conserverie. The building’s on fire. While the jams are burning with the candy, the hookers are leaping off the upstairs verandah, their scented lace shredding as it catches on the fancy iron lacework of the balcony ...

Zonte's Footstep Vine Dried Langhorne Creek Sangiovese Barbera 2005
$18 at the cellar; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 90 points
The vineyard wallahs cut the cordons supporting these grapes, but left the bunches hanging there in the leaf canopy to dry like currants, before they were picked, well into May. This gives the blend a distinctive old Italian feel, doing away with most of the leafy greens such varieties often project when grown on a large commercial scale. This leaves us with a slightly leathery, almost oxidised style of palate, but with great concentration of flavour, after the style called amarone. It's like Christmas pudding, in its pungent earthiness and complexity. Ideal for dark game meats, stewed.

Innocent Bystander Bleeding Heart Sangiovese Merlot 2006
$20; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 89 points
Gracebrook King Valley sangiovese and Sexton Yarra merlot be here. Makes this a super-Tuscan? Blackberry, musk and aniseed/licorice twists about the sensories in a quickly gratifying way. More lap dancer than Fonteyn. It’s clean, vibrant and fresh, but more brusquely intrusive than innocent or bystanding. La Lollo meets Fellini in a bar. I’m struggling. I’m seeing this from a bloke’s perspective. But I reckon it’d be similarly gratifying to many, many women, who can of course enjoy it without lap dancing, if they must. The tannins need protein; the acid needs fat; the fruit needs blood and fungus. Eat! www.innocentbystander.com.au

Neagle’s Rock Clare Valley Sangiovese 2006
$25; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 88+ points
Unless/until the drought-driven sand dunes finally get down to Clare, it looks like sangiovese’s there to stay. Mitchell’s and Pikes were the pioneers; the Neagle’s crew planted in their leanest ground just south of the township. This smells like somebody sat on a raspberry tart in the back of an old Jag: there’s all that naughty goo on the leather and a tweak of polished walnut veneer. The viscosity’s a little fluffy, but soon there’s a whip ariel of steely acid apparent, and quite furry tannin to make you yearn for something rustic. Like rabbit stew, or coq au vin. www.neaglesrock.com

Vintage Cellars Sangiovese Toscana 2006
$15; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 88+ points
This is the first Chianti to ever wear a screw cap, thanks to the bright young things – Jeremy Stockman and Grant Ramage - who scour Earth for the bargain imports Coles’ Vintage Cellars has been throwing at us. So it’s also the freshest, brightest, cheekiest young Chianti you could possibly have seen, due simply to the lack of cork or inferior plastic plug. Be afraid, Ockerwogs, be very afraid. This is damned good sanger, at a quality and price no Australian maker can match. Yet. Clean, sizzling sharp, slightly spicy, perfectly tannic… well, perfectly sangiovese. Not profound, but highly entertaining. Saltimbocca.

Vigna Bottin McLaren Vale Sangiovese 2006
$??; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 88 points
Thick and rich with the sort of flavours usually gotten from the biggest sanger berries, this has just a whisper of the strange, unlikely, but alluring whiff of feathers that I usually associate with this variety from a cooler place. But it’s more along the lines of poached beetroot and dried fig, with a hearty meaty plushness about it. Pot au feu at Jo Goldenberg’s sort of thing. The palate’s easy and slick, with more of that big-hearted easiness the bouquet signalled. JAN 09

Vigna Cantina Barossa Valley Sangiovese 2008
$18; 14% alcohol; Diam cork; tasted 4-9 SEP 09; 84 points
10 year old brunello clone in terra rossa over calcrete at 200 metres at Gomersal; 12 year old piccolo clone in ironstone in clay loam at 350 metres in The Moppa, and 10 year old grosso clone in terra rossa with ironstone over limestone at 320 metres at Koonunga Hill should make a stunning blend of sangiovese. But I've had two bottles of this, one drunk lustily with pasta, the other tasted over several days, and both seemed a little doughy and dull. Scorched cedar and old whole nutmegs give some acridity to a well of dried currants, raisins, prunes and figs in the sniffing division; the palate is a little claggy and seems to have a viscosity which struggles against releasing its best attributes. Still, it's a reasonably pleasant soft and mellow wine with pasta, its gentle velvety tannins working the hunger division of the palate gently but persistently. It worked well with my smoked rabbit tom yum stew with okra, garlic sprouts, onion, garlic, cherry tomatoes, diced red capsicum, bird's eye chilliesand long pepper.

Rookery Kangaroo Island Sangiovese 2005
$17; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 75 points
There’s not too much in the way of subtlety going down here. Raw American oak, like A. P. John chips, have not done this wine all that much good. Smoky, sooty wood smothers the promising fruit a little like the 2008 bushfire. It’s like somebody ground up a stack of black leather Bible covers and tipped ’em in the fiery furnace. Then they shovelled in the charcoal. Thin, bitter cherry flavours don’t quite provide balance. Old French barrels, please. The sangiovese deserves it. 10 OCT 98