NEW!
Quattro Mano la Morada 2010
$25; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 310 cases made; tasted 3-5 JUL 12; 94+ points
Quattro Mano is a wine-bent trinity more than a quartet: sommelier-cum-cooper Philippe Morin, wandering winemaker Tony Carapetis and agricultural scientist Chris Taylor. These three Quattros reckon there is a fourth one but he’s a mystery like Zorro or something. They also reckon morada means purple in Spain. Across the border it means the house. It’s the Portuguese equivalent of Dr Penfold calling his farm cottage The Grange. The subconscious presumption is not misplaced. Operating from a Hahndorf address but in this instance using Barossa piedmont fruit from a forty year old Stockwell vineyard, they’ve got a fair dinkum trinity of Portuguese reds into this bottle: it’s 53% Touriga nacional, 31% Tinta amarelle and 16% Tinta cao. It’s a very different style of wine, but with the changing weather, history could well see such a blend eventually become as important to Australia as Max Schubert’s famous Shiraz-based blend. How? (1) Beauty. (2) Authority. (3) Adaptability. Last one first. For example: The Widdops of Old Mill Estate in Langhorne Creek are the unsung pioneers of Touriga nacional in today’s marketplace. From this hardy, characterful vintage port grape they make a fine pink sparkling, a great dry rosé, a meaty dry red blend, an authoritative premium dry red varietal, and, you guessed it, a vintage port. See. So, next? Authority. Without having to wait for five years, as is the minimum with serious Shiraz of Grange standard, and at the meager alcohol of just 13%, this blend offers plenty of authority without shouting. It does this through (1), beauty. It is immediately ravishing: you can smell its heady peppery blueberry perfume spilling across the table as you pour. It has amazing intensity of flavour in a totally seductive, slender – but not wiry - frame. And it’s as silky as the finest lingerie: it is not velvet. It has no macho molecule in its body. Pity more of those who’ve just madly planted Tempranillo everywhere didn’t have a hard think about these varieties instead. I think history will show Touriga nacional to be better suited to our coastal viticulture – most of Australia’s prime vignobles lack the high diurnal temperature extremes required by Tempranillo. Go buy this exquisite wine.
12 August 2012
05 May 2012
PENFOLDS GRANGE 2007 REVIEWED
New crop of treasures from the
2012 Winemakers' Winemaker
and his brilliant Penfolds team by PHILIP WHITE
Synæsthesia is hardly the word to open a story about anything, but there it is. Your correspondent has just spent some precious time in synæsthete’s heaven!
Better viticulture, better understanding of terroir, more sensitive winemaking by a deadly crew, much improved cooperage, extreme good luck with the backers and an uncommonly intelligent, protective and painstaking captain with a rock’n’roll soul is what makes this the most memorable Penfolds release I can recall.
These new wines bow low to the profound and distinguished house wine style which has developed since Mary Penfold first made wine at the tiny cottage she gratefully called The Grange at what was then MacGill. But the wines also push the quality boundaries to an unbelievable degree, given the constantly-changing definitions of extreme demanded by the last fifteen vintages.
These are expensive wines; so they should be. I hope they are most profitable. Let’s be very serious now. Forget Ian Parmenter and his gastroporn chefwits at Tasting Australia: these great wines alone do more to assert South Australia’s epicurean intelligence upon the globe than no end of unaccountable taxpayer-funded junkets to Kangaroo Island or giant picnics in the park. These wines are a key part of Australia’s most lethal and revered gastronomic arsenal: our pointiest end. Yet it is a marvel that they can survive and thrive as they do, given the chaos and bilious swilling of the last decades of roller coaster business thanks to whoever owned Penfolds at the time.
Or whoever wanted to own it. Shake it out, rationalise it, gut it.
On that matter, I’ve watched the inner machinations of Penfolds and its managers with both bemusement and concern since before the days when its MD, John Spalvins, sold its major vineyard around The Grange cottage so his developer mate John Roche could replace it with a twee ghetto for the dying rich, with streets called Shiraz and Hermitage. But more than any other Grange custodian – there have been only four since 1951: Max Schubert, Don Ditter, John Duval and Peter Gago – Gago, like dear Max, seems to have spent an awful lot of energy protecting Penfolds from its owners. The thought of Grange coming from the same outfit that invented the execrable Fosters lager is perverse in the extreme, and finally coming to an end. Whew.
Before we begin speculating about who the next threat will be, we should pause a moment and consider the fact that the winemakers of the world, and its most noted wine aficionados, realize all this: early in March, Gago was embarrassed and reluctant when summoned urgently to Germany, to Düsseldorf, to the world’s largest annual Wine Fair, ProWein.
The august Institute of Masters of Wine, together with an elite jury of international winemakers and the drinks business, Europe’s most powerful liquor industry magazine, handed him the Winemaker’s Winemaker award. That’s as good as it gets, Champion of the World.
“By years of Penfolds service - only 23!,” Gago said at the time, “I am still almost the most ‘junior’ member of this team. I’m naturally chuffed and thankful. I’m also feeling guilty – it’s harvest, and I’m 12,000 miles away! Payback, no doubt, awaits when I return in a day or so!”
“Peter Gago, a man who commits heart and soul to everything he does … ” said Lynne Sherriff MW, Chairman of the Institute of Masters of Wine. “It cannot be easy to manage an iconic brand and continue to take it to a new level, but he seems to constantly innovate and raise the bar of one of the world’s most appreciated and valued wine labels.”
You never hear that said of Dom Perignon, Lafite or Margaux.
So congratulations to all you Penfolds mob: this is an astonishing achievement. As usual, Australians seem more appreciated internationally than locally: you deserved a bigger celebration! And now you release these mighty wines. The smartest bits of Australia, and the gastronomic world, are very very proud of you.
Better viticulture, better understanding of terroir, more sensitive winemaking by a deadly crew, much improved cooperage, extreme good luck with the backers and an uncommonly intelligent, protective and painstaking captain with a rock’n’roll soul is what makes this the most memorable Penfolds release I can recall.
These new wines bow low to the profound and distinguished house wine style which has developed since Mary Penfold first made wine at the tiny cottage she gratefully called The Grange at what was then MacGill. But the wines also push the quality boundaries to an unbelievable degree, given the constantly-changing definitions of extreme demanded by the last fifteen vintages.
These are expensive wines; so they should be. I hope they are most profitable. Let’s be very serious now. Forget Ian Parmenter and his gastroporn chefwits at Tasting Australia: these great wines alone do more to assert South Australia’s epicurean intelligence upon the globe than no end of unaccountable taxpayer-funded junkets to Kangaroo Island or giant picnics in the park. These wines are a key part of Australia’s most lethal and revered gastronomic arsenal: our pointiest end. Yet it is a marvel that they can survive and thrive as they do, given the chaos and bilious swilling of the last decades of roller coaster business thanks to whoever owned Penfolds at the time.
Or whoever wanted to own it. Shake it out, rationalise it, gut it.
On that matter, I’ve watched the inner machinations of Penfolds and its managers with both bemusement and concern since before the days when its MD, John Spalvins, sold its major vineyard around The Grange cottage so his developer mate John Roche could replace it with a twee ghetto for the dying rich, with streets called Shiraz and Hermitage. But more than any other Grange custodian – there have been only four since 1951: Max Schubert, Don Ditter, John Duval and Peter Gago – Gago, like dear Max, seems to have spent an awful lot of energy protecting Penfolds from its owners. The thought of Grange coming from the same outfit that invented the execrable Fosters lager is perverse in the extreme, and finally coming to an end. Whew.
Before we begin speculating about who the next threat will be, we should pause a moment and consider the fact that the winemakers of the world, and its most noted wine aficionados, realize all this: early in March, Gago was embarrassed and reluctant when summoned urgently to Germany, to Düsseldorf, to the world’s largest annual Wine Fair, ProWein.
The august Institute of Masters of Wine, together with an elite jury of international winemakers and the drinks business, Europe’s most powerful liquor industry magazine, handed him the Winemaker’s Winemaker award. That’s as good as it gets, Champion of the World.
“By years of Penfolds service - only 23!,” Gago said at the time, “I am still almost the most ‘junior’ member of this team. I’m naturally chuffed and thankful. I’m also feeling guilty – it’s harvest, and I’m 12,000 miles away! Payback, no doubt, awaits when I return in a day or so!”
“Peter Gago, a man who commits heart and soul to everything he does … ” said Lynne Sherriff MW, Chairman of the Institute of Masters of Wine. “It cannot be easy to manage an iconic brand and continue to take it to a new level, but he seems to constantly innovate and raise the bar of one of the world’s most appreciated and valued wine labels.”
You never hear that said of Dom Perignon, Lafite or Margaux.
So congratulations to all you Penfolds mob: this is an astonishing achievement. As usual, Australians seem more appreciated internationally than locally: you deserved a bigger celebration! And now you release these mighty wines. The smartest bits of Australia, and the gastronomic world, are very very proud of you.
Penfolds Reserve Bin A Adelaide Hills Chardonnay 2010
$95.00; 13.3% alcohol; screw cap; 94+++ points
It’s a year since I tasted the ripping 2009, which the world adored, but I reckon this is another step up. It has more of everything, but in a leaner, more compressed form. It has an arrogant, blank authority, in a brittle racing body. It reminds me of the sign on Ben Lexcen’s wall: “If it won’t break it’s too heavy”. Think of the Great Sphinx of Giza, but with a body as svelte as a whippet’s. It has the same acrid topnote of the 09, like the prickly whiff of a hardrock quarry after a blast, over a wedge of barely-ripe grapefruit. Then I smell lemony sabayon and crêpes suzette and delicate flake pastry and the brain sets a-wanderin’. But it’s all been concentrated by nature, some very clever growers and white wine maker Kym Schroeter and the Penfolds cellar wizards, who somehow hammered and hummed and willed all that vibe and goodness into this flinty, lemony austerity. It wears a corset of fine-grained French oak that affects its shape much more than its flavour or smell. It makes you sit up straight and marvel. It makes you hungry. It gets better in the decanter. And it’ll cellar brilliantly. A remarkable wine, surely amongst the best Chardonnays on Earth. An all from our lil ol Hills.
Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay 2009
$130.00 (Cellar Door); 12.9% alcohol; screw cap; 94+++ points
Like the Bin A, this Yattarna seems to be another authoritative step forward in a very distinctive house style. The difference? I was going to say it’s more right wing, but that’s not true. The Bin A is a rock maple Telecaster; this is a solid rosewood Les Paul: basically a plumper, even more permanent sort of thing. More of a pyramid than a Sphinx. It seems to have been sitting there somewhere for millennia, never changing. Why would you? Your face won’t fall off if you’re a pyramid. But now it’s been iced, and on the smell of the stone there’s all those precise citrus fruits gradually sinking in a fresh nougat wallow, with chips of rind, maraschino cherries, almonds and hazelnuts. The oak is more prominent, too, but its ginger and spice sits real pretty with all those hopelessly mexed mitaphors. It’s a blend of Derwent Valley Tasmanian fruit (50%), Henty (south-western Victoria - 43%) and 7% Adelaide Hills, a component which I reckon adds to that stone. It’s great and rare to drink a Chardonnay that sets the imagination whizzin’ so. Got a perfect cellar? Start checking at six years, but it’ll probably be jim dandy in a decade.
Penfolds St Henri Shiraz 2008
$95; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points
Maybe I’m dreaming, but I thought the 07 had really fresh marine terroir aromas, like Bordeaux, I suppose. It was pretty, but I mumbled that it was a little out of character for St Henri’s soulful heritage, and blamed it on the component of Robe fruit in that blend. This wine has similar tweaks, in a much less obvious way. It’s like the intense, fresh smell of Mornington Peninsula Shiraz. Here, it adds to the glory. But there’s no Robe this year: this is from the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale, Langhorne Creek, and the Adelaide Hills, in that order. It’s 91% Shiraz, and 9% Cabernet Sauvignon. Maybe it’s the Langhorne Creek fruit adding that ethereal estuarine air. The wine is smooth, but much more velvet than silk so far: it’s gonna live for a very long time. It has the aromatic patina of the blacksmith’s cottage kitchen with Christmas coming on: prunes and poached almonds and grilled bacon … currants ... fruit mince … fig and date and dumpling dough. The polished iron wood-fired stove. Holy hell. Bring it on, Granma! Pity they couldn’t release it at forty years of age … but like RIGHT NOW.
Penfolds Magill Estate Shiraz 2009
$130; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94++ points
Here’s another one that reminds me of the blacksmith’s cottage in the early ‘sixties: the sooty chimney’s not quite extracting the dark fumes from that iron pot of blackberries stewing on the stove … Mary Penfold’s little cottage kitchen in The Grange would have smelt like this every year when the figs, or blackberries or mulberries were ready … there’s gunpowder, too, and polished black leather: the deaf birdscarer’s come in for a cuppa, no milk, ta Mrs Penfold thankyou … aniseed, poppy seed … boisterous rollicking tannins … green coffee beans going in the roaster … The wine has a savoury edge – as in the herb, savoury – that draws one’s blood to the back of the lips. It’s intensely appetizing wine rather than satisfying, its madly individualistic fruit getting supportive, harmonious oak. Then, once I’d sat back and thought properly about it, like swallowed a fair bit of it, I reckoned that it’s a brash thrash cut of a real old doo-wop style … it’s got red hair and I’ll bet there’s a bright red kilt in there somewhere.
Penfolds RWT Barossa Valley Shiraz 2009
$175.00; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 95++ points
Blackberries in dark Val du Rhona Chocolate; apple slices in same. Bright and vivacious the flash of Spanish eyes. Split stone. Australian summer dust. And as I probably say every year, not only do we know that through this Red Wine Trial, yes, you can make Barossa Shiraz in French oak, and yes, it still looks utterly Australian. The battle betwixt the oaks of France and Missouri is much more interesting to watch since vast improvements occurred in the cooperage and maturation of American oak: the standard spongiform/balsa/bourbon/coconut stuff is no longer all you get from the Quercus alba. But on the other hand, this French oak is gingery: fresh powdered ginger. The flavours are silky wicked: they got the red-bellied black snake sheen. So imagine a wine with the sinuous texture of a great Hermitage but a nose that’s really 100% Australian Shiraz. Sheep beneath the gums. Hot black tea from a pannier bubbling in the eucalypt flames. And that wicked blackberry syrup. Awwww. Thirty years?
$95.00; 13.3% alcohol; screw cap; 94+++ points
It’s a year since I tasted the ripping 2009, which the world adored, but I reckon this is another step up. It has more of everything, but in a leaner, more compressed form. It has an arrogant, blank authority, in a brittle racing body. It reminds me of the sign on Ben Lexcen’s wall: “If it won’t break it’s too heavy”. Think of the Great Sphinx of Giza, but with a body as svelte as a whippet’s. It has the same acrid topnote of the 09, like the prickly whiff of a hardrock quarry after a blast, over a wedge of barely-ripe grapefruit. Then I smell lemony sabayon and crêpes suzette and delicate flake pastry and the brain sets a-wanderin’. But it’s all been concentrated by nature, some very clever growers and white wine maker Kym Schroeter and the Penfolds cellar wizards, who somehow hammered and hummed and willed all that vibe and goodness into this flinty, lemony austerity. It wears a corset of fine-grained French oak that affects its shape much more than its flavour or smell. It makes you sit up straight and marvel. It makes you hungry. It gets better in the decanter. And it’ll cellar brilliantly. A remarkable wine, surely amongst the best Chardonnays on Earth. An all from our lil ol Hills.
Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay 2009
$130.00 (Cellar Door); 12.9% alcohol; screw cap; 94+++ points
Like the Bin A, this Yattarna seems to be another authoritative step forward in a very distinctive house style. The difference? I was going to say it’s more right wing, but that’s not true. The Bin A is a rock maple Telecaster; this is a solid rosewood Les Paul: basically a plumper, even more permanent sort of thing. More of a pyramid than a Sphinx. It seems to have been sitting there somewhere for millennia, never changing. Why would you? Your face won’t fall off if you’re a pyramid. But now it’s been iced, and on the smell of the stone there’s all those precise citrus fruits gradually sinking in a fresh nougat wallow, with chips of rind, maraschino cherries, almonds and hazelnuts. The oak is more prominent, too, but its ginger and spice sits real pretty with all those hopelessly mexed mitaphors. It’s a blend of Derwent Valley Tasmanian fruit (50%), Henty (south-western Victoria - 43%) and 7% Adelaide Hills, a component which I reckon adds to that stone. It’s great and rare to drink a Chardonnay that sets the imagination whizzin’ so. Got a perfect cellar? Start checking at six years, but it’ll probably be jim dandy in a decade.
Penfolds St Henri Shiraz 2008
$95; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points
Maybe I’m dreaming, but I thought the 07 had really fresh marine terroir aromas, like Bordeaux, I suppose. It was pretty, but I mumbled that it was a little out of character for St Henri’s soulful heritage, and blamed it on the component of Robe fruit in that blend. This wine has similar tweaks, in a much less obvious way. It’s like the intense, fresh smell of Mornington Peninsula Shiraz. Here, it adds to the glory. But there’s no Robe this year: this is from the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale, Langhorne Creek, and the Adelaide Hills, in that order. It’s 91% Shiraz, and 9% Cabernet Sauvignon. Maybe it’s the Langhorne Creek fruit adding that ethereal estuarine air. The wine is smooth, but much more velvet than silk so far: it’s gonna live for a very long time. It has the aromatic patina of the blacksmith’s cottage kitchen with Christmas coming on: prunes and poached almonds and grilled bacon … currants ... fruit mince … fig and date and dumpling dough. The polished iron wood-fired stove. Holy hell. Bring it on, Granma! Pity they couldn’t release it at forty years of age … but like RIGHT NOW.
Penfolds Magill Estate Shiraz 2009
$130; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94++ points
Here’s another one that reminds me of the blacksmith’s cottage in the early ‘sixties: the sooty chimney’s not quite extracting the dark fumes from that iron pot of blackberries stewing on the stove … Mary Penfold’s little cottage kitchen in The Grange would have smelt like this every year when the figs, or blackberries or mulberries were ready … there’s gunpowder, too, and polished black leather: the deaf birdscarer’s come in for a cuppa, no milk, ta Mrs Penfold thankyou … aniseed, poppy seed … boisterous rollicking tannins … green coffee beans going in the roaster … The wine has a savoury edge – as in the herb, savoury – that draws one’s blood to the back of the lips. It’s intensely appetizing wine rather than satisfying, its madly individualistic fruit getting supportive, harmonious oak. Then, once I’d sat back and thought properly about it, like swallowed a fair bit of it, I reckoned that it’s a brash thrash cut of a real old doo-wop style … it’s got red hair and I’ll bet there’s a bright red kilt in there somewhere.
Penfolds RWT Barossa Valley Shiraz 2009
$175.00; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 95++ points
Blackberries in dark Val du Rhona Chocolate; apple slices in same. Bright and vivacious the flash of Spanish eyes. Split stone. Australian summer dust. And as I probably say every year, not only do we know that through this Red Wine Trial, yes, you can make Barossa Shiraz in French oak, and yes, it still looks utterly Australian. The battle betwixt the oaks of France and Missouri is much more interesting to watch since vast improvements occurred in the cooperage and maturation of American oak: the standard spongiform/balsa/bourbon/coconut stuff is no longer all you get from the Quercus alba. But on the other hand, this French oak is gingery: fresh powdered ginger. The flavours are silky wicked: they got the red-bellied black snake sheen. So imagine a wine with the sinuous texture of a great Hermitage but a nose that’s really 100% Australian Shiraz. Sheep beneath the gums. Hot black tea from a pannier bubbling in the eucalypt flames. And that wicked blackberry syrup. Awwww. Thirty years?
Penfolds Grange 2007$625; 14.5% alcohol; cork(!); 93++ points
This is a Grange. There’s no doubt about that. It has all the fractal chaos of any baby Grange. It has the tar and the boilerstoker’s apron; the fig and quince and syrupy black cherry liqueur; it has panforte and dates and over-ripe persimmon and tamarillo. It has black Iberian ham and the balsamico; it has the glowering warmth and the soul and the enveloping reassurance that dear Max likened to a mother. It has the faint swarfy whiff of Max’s father’s smithy, and if in this its infancy a wine could have a sound this one would ring like a forge, especially if it were under screwcap. It’ll live for decades if you’re lucky with the cork, and it will always be a properly luxurious delight. It is an exceptional wine. But it’s not a great vintage. Simple as that. Not even Penfolds can fix the weather.
Penfolds Bin 169 Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2008
$250; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 95+++
Here we finally have Peter Gago’s French oak Cabernet. Just as the RWT French oak Shiraz offers a Francofoil to the American-oaked Grange, this one offers friendly epicurian rivalry to the ritually American-oaked Bin 707 Cabernet. Man, it’s out there on the nether edges of Cabernet territory: a wine that will take decades to understand. Its aroma set my hand off on its own, scribbling “nettles and tomatoes … curry tree … mace … blueberry … juniper … sage … wormwood … blood.” Drink it. “Fluffy … cotton wool tannins… brittle acid … nettles … Cheong’s tea-smoked deer gristle … sweet musk and violets aftertaste … lemon pith … steely flux-like acidity … extreme longevity” and so forth. It’s like you have a windscreen made out of pure Cabernet and it shattered, and only Old Father Time will have the patience to reassemble it. But it is indeed a beautiful, rare, and totally uncompromising Cabernet of the highest order, and one day it will be perfect. Penfolds have opened this new royal lineage with some very blue blood indeed. It’s too early and tight to tell, but eventually, this wine will probably blow the exquisite 707 clear off the table.
Penfolds Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon 2009
$250.00; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 96+++ points
I never thought I’d see this: my hands typing a review of an American oak Cabernet with points beyond 95. Why? How? Try this: “coffee, mocha, coffee, mocha, balsa, cedar, mahogany, rosewood, sinister tropical vines climbing smartly up the stairs … bitter lemon, orange bitters, ginger … camphor … drinks like a wild Indian adventure … lotsa citrus and ginger … hack a way through will you Stavros? … all vines and stranglers this wine … then the gentle wash of velvet as the wave recedes … you know, to me, this is still Penfolds conquering Cabernet, rather than letting it skank about all over them ... it’s the gayest wine in Australia … probably the most sophisticated in the original sense of the word … bitter viny teethmarks … now an highly polished liqueur more than a wine: a Kahlua as much as a Cabernet, and one which holds an extremely powerful position in the Coca-Cabernet steaks. [Spelling deliberate].” I simply don’t know how they did this in 2009. It’s majestic.
27 January 2012
ROSÉ
Castagna Allegro Beechworth Syrah Rosé 2010
$30; 14% alcohol; Diam cork; 95++ points
This is like one of those
people who radiate such cornflower-blue health that they make you feel
sick. It’s riddled with well-being: watermelon, pomegranate, raspberry …
and I was just about to switch over through the blood orange and its pith to
the bone china tannin when the dry edge was violently installed by a falcon
whacking into a juvenile Wattle Bird on the veranda behind me. When I
asked why the little bird was trying to get into the bedroom they explained it
had just escaped the talons of a hungry demon from the blue, but didn’t tell me
because it was all over in a flash. That’s the first time that’s ever
happened in my immediate vicinity in the middle of a wine appraisal. You
don’t get raptors in vineyards managed under the old petrochem regime.
When you use poisons, you get sick insects. Sick insects mean sick birds
and snakes, and sick birds and snakes means dead raptors, as they’re the end of
the food chain. Nothing sick about that hungry, heaving falcon.
Anyway, once I got the feathers outa my carby I realized that this wine has a
delicious 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’s
gustatory stage like a viper. These rosés of Julian’s are always pretty
much the best in the country: out of thousands of entries, the 2001 Allegro was
outright winner of all classes in my Top 100 in 2002; the only time a rosé ever
rose 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. No cavities in this one, though: it’s pure cool smooth stone-shaped beauty, like a Brancusi head. It smells like the caramel aroma of roasting crayfish shells. With an absolute gush of rosy fruits and petals, from blood orange to cherry nougat. It’s syrupy, but before you begin to think that, there’s lemon and crisp white plum, and then there’s the fine stony tannins, and then there’s the maraschino crunch, and pickled orange peel, like Campari, and saffron. It finishes dry, but you never feel cheated like most dry drinks make you feel if they’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 of Good Time Charlie picking her before the heat set everyone’s cleavage perspiratin’. This year she’s a flirty daughter of grenache, cabernet, pinot meunier 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 Castagna Shiraz, the Old Mill Touriga Nacional, and anything pink or puce made by Dominique Portet. She’d break hearts with Tony Bilson’s snapper poached in saffron court bouillon or coddled salmon with red wine sauce. www.charles meltonwines.com.au
Old Mill Estate Langhorne Creek Touriga Nacional Rosé 2007
$18; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 93++ points
Ferrari scarlet, this baby’s a racer in every other sense of the word, right through to its cheeky smokin’ tail. Chockers with maraschino cherries, raspberries and cranberries; fleshy with a sharp lemony topnote, and an acrid terroir edge that’s somewhere between hot clutch and struck flint, this is a serious XXX-rated toy that will actually improve in the cellar, if you can only manage to get outa the driver’s seat and let her cool down. Made from the grand vintage port grape, touriga nacionale, it has texture and mouth-filling viscosity like no other pink. Take it for a squirt to your nearest fishmonger or fowl rotisserie.
Gomersal Wines Barossa Valley Shiraz Rosé 2008
$??; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+ points
Instead of helping his lovely wife, Gabriella, with running the show, Baz White spends most of his day telling people what to do whilst he glares at his shiraz across dusty Gomersal Road from the winery’s ample veranda. This stare seems to keep the starlings, pardalotes, odiums and mildews at bay, and I think also frightens the grapes into ripening. It terrified this poor 2008 mob so thoroughly they’ve obviously started to bleed: for this smells slightly bloody, and like previous vintages actually reeks of blood orange. There’s the classic whiff of the dusty road, too, and while there’s some of the softer unction that Gabriella 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 up around 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 going to be quenching any thirst today. Just get inside safely with Gabriella, and try not to look at Baz glowering at you from George Grainger Aldridge’s fearsome portrait of the bastard that’s hanging there on the wall, also staring at the vineyard over the road. I reckon this would go perfectly with those slices of candied orange dipped in bitter dark chocolate, no? JAN 09
Old Mill Estate Touriga Nacional Langhorne 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 immediately smells more like a dry red, with leather and walnut, and then the dusty aroma of its country in summer, with a rustic twinge of the tractor shed. Think more of a classic, ageing Penfold’s Barossa blend of grenache, mourvedre and shiraz – it even has an insinuation of old oak, which must have come from the slowly oxidising natural lignins of the grape pulp. Think of opening the door of a dusty old Jaguar in your 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 younger vintages, and these rise steadily as the glass sits on the table, but there are also more meaty dry red characters oozing up with time, and the developing tannins are more like those from a much more full-bodied red. This lovely wine is to be served cool, not chilled, as you would a good dry red. 01 MAR 09
$30; 14% alcohol; Diam cork; 95+ points
This is probably the best rosé I’ve had, excluding the odd Crystal or Krug. No cavities in this one, though: it’s pure cool smooth stone-shaped beauty, like a Brancusi head. It smells like the caramel aroma of roasting crayfish shells. With an absolute gush of rosy fruits and petals, from blood orange to cherry nougat. It’s syrupy, but before you begin to think that, there’s lemon and crisp white plum, and then there’s the fine stony tannins, and then there’s the maraschino crunch, and pickled orange peel, like Campari, and saffron. It finishes dry, but you never feel cheated like most dry drinks make you feel if they’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 of Good Time Charlie picking her before the heat set everyone’s cleavage perspiratin’. This year she’s a flirty daughter of grenache, cabernet, pinot meunier 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 Castagna Shiraz, the Old Mill Touriga Nacional, and anything pink or puce made by Dominique Portet. She’d break hearts with Tony Bilson’s snapper poached in saffron court bouillon or coddled salmon with red wine sauce. www.charles meltonwines.com.au
Old Mill Estate Langhorne Creek Touriga Nacional Rosé 2007
$18; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 93++ points
Ferrari scarlet, this baby’s a racer in every other sense of the word, right through to its cheeky smokin’ tail. Chockers with maraschino cherries, raspberries and cranberries; fleshy with a sharp lemony topnote, and an acrid terroir edge that’s somewhere between hot clutch and struck flint, this is a serious XXX-rated toy that will actually improve in the cellar, if you can only manage to get outa the driver’s seat and let her cool down. Made from the grand vintage port grape, touriga nacionale, it has texture and mouth-filling viscosity like no other pink. Take it for a squirt to your nearest fishmonger or fowl rotisserie.
Gomersal Wines Barossa Valley Shiraz Rosé 2008
$??; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+ points
Instead of helping his lovely wife, Gabriella, with running the show, Baz White spends most of his day telling people what to do whilst he glares at his shiraz across dusty Gomersal Road from the winery’s ample veranda. This stare seems to keep the starlings, pardalotes, odiums and mildews at bay, and I think also frightens the grapes into ripening. It terrified this poor 2008 mob so thoroughly they’ve obviously started to bleed: for this smells slightly bloody, and like previous vintages actually reeks of blood orange. There’s the classic whiff of the dusty road, too, and while there’s some of the softer unction that Gabriella 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 up around 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 going to be quenching any thirst today. Just get inside safely with Gabriella, and try not to look at Baz glowering at you from George Grainger Aldridge’s fearsome portrait of the bastard that’s hanging there on the wall, also staring at the vineyard over the road. I reckon this would go perfectly with those slices of candied orange dipped in bitter dark chocolate, no? JAN 09
Old Mill Estate Touriga Nacional Langhorne 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 immediately smells more like a dry red, with leather and walnut, and then the dusty aroma of its country in summer, with a rustic twinge of the tractor shed. Think more of a classic, ageing Penfold’s Barossa blend of grenache, mourvedre and shiraz – it even has an insinuation of old oak, which must have come from the slowly oxidising natural lignins of the grape pulp. Think of opening the door of a dusty old Jaguar in your 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 younger vintages, and these rise steadily as the glass sits on the table, but there are also more meaty dry red characters oozing up with time, and the developing tannins are more like those from a much more full-bodied red. This lovely wine is to be served cool, not chilled, as you would a good dry red. 01 MAR 09
Clancy Fuller Two Little Dickie Birds Barossa 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 styles of pink to give them complexity, this brute’s made of the stuff. It very happily dominates the much simpler grenache. This is deadly alluring: once again showing the gunpowdery, flinty edge of indigenous yeast, which opens the whole crunchy-crisp adventure. It could come from the south of France, but it’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 over your 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 teenybopper sugar. 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 Valley cabernet, merlot and shiraz I know. Santamaria sardines on rye with raw Spanish onion.
www.dominiqueportet.com (28.20.6)
Fairbank Sutton Grange Winery Central Victoria Rosé 2007
$??; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 93 points
Gilles Lapalus makes this scrumptious, austere, pheasant eye rosé with a great deal of respect for the beauties of the south of France. This one’s what he calls syrah (shiraz), with cabernet and merlot. Frost, hail, and drought buggered 2007 for most in his neck of the woods, but this is no tank of waste from that carnage, like so many contemporary rosés. Rather, it’s a triumph of intelligent, traditional, respectful winemaking, with its bouquet of musk, raspberry, blood orange and marzipan, and its neatly viscous palate of all those, plus. One for the gastronome. Smoked mackerel, char-grilled. www.suttongrangewinery.com
J.E Ngeringa Adelaide Hills Rosé 2008
$28: 13% alcohol; screw cap; 93 points
Once the stalks were removed from the biodynamic 2008 shiraz, and the berries were left for twelve hours, this juice was simply dyin’ to run out the bottom of the vat. This suited everybody, because the shiraz left behind would be more intense, not to mention the little matter of us getting this sassy menace to drink. Imagine maraschino cherries in a squirt of lemon juice, on a linen frocked table in the middle of a flowery pasture just browning off in the first breath of summer. The anticipation of company. Crusty bread, goat cheese. Watercress, alfalfa sprouts. The flavours of raspberry and blood orange. Acidity that makes your lips swell with blood. Swoon. I feel Fellini looking over my shoulder. www.ngeringa.com
Margan Hunter Valley Shiraz Saignée 2006
($20; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 93 points)
The French word reflects the manner in which this exemplary rosé was made: you bleed the free-run juice from your shiraz before pressing. The vineyard’s deep, loose, red volcanic soils give a tidy acrid edge to the raspberry and maraschino fruits that vibrate around this glass. Drink it, and you’re wallowing in a pot pourri of chopped red fruit topping from your granny’s best ever trifle. Have it with smoked mackerel on dark rye with lemon juice.
www.margan.com.au (28.10.6)
Mt. Bera Adelaide Hills White Cabernet 2006
($16; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 93 points)
One of the nicest things I ever had in Hindley Street was a 10 y.o. Houghton cabernet rosé, in Ceylon Hut. It was like clairette - Bordeaux made quick - as Billy Shakespaw sunk in the Boar’s Head. That became claret, a word the EU now forbids us from using. But this proves we can still make it! Not white: darker than rosé, but simple: 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 feral and meaty. Here, John Edwards has used his cool climate cut of it to perfection. It has a similarly sharp acrid edge to the masterly Gibbston, offsetting the comforting texture of chicken stock or fish stock below. That pleasing roll of puppy fat, cute and fresh, balanced the huskily sexy edge in the bouquet. Iot’s a bonnie, fun drink for grown-ups and fish. www.mtbillywines.com.au
Old Mill Estate Touriga Nacional Langhorne Creek Rosé 2005
$16; 12.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93 points
If you had a beautiful comfy old cracked leather chesterfield, and just gave it a big drink of saddlesoap or R. M. Williams’ fabulous leather dressing, the smell 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 becoming more along the lines of dried fig, date and pear, than the fresh plums, marello cherries and blood orange which are on the decline. It smells a little like lipstick; a little like Italian smokehouse meats, like cacciatora or prosciutto. 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 cool cellar. It leaves a cheeky little dollop of raspberry on the palate after it’s swallowed, reminding the drinker of its bright rosy youth. Perfect wine for serious tapas, mezes, or antipasto. 01 MAR 09
Yangarra Estate Vineyard Small Pot McLaren Vale
Carignan Grenache Mourvèdre Rosè 2011
$25; 12.9% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 30 October – 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 its pears-and-strawberries opening, through all those neat little fatty acids to the citrus and bitter cherry sector and then the pithy tannins that pull you back for more pears and strawberries. It’s all over you. It is a tease of a wine, never quite letting you see everything at once … letting you suspect that maybe you have, then unveiling a glimpse of some other surprise. It gives a cheeky illusion of simple and cute sweetness, then washes that away with an authoritative sweep of something bitter and very adult, like Campari and soda. I want it with smoked salmon, fennell, raw spanish onion, capers and horseradish cream on thin dark rye. This was the made from the co-fermented juice of the new baby bush vines, left to tick through a carbonic maceration before pressing into tank. The winery stank of roses, maraschino cherries and Turkish delight.
$25; 12.9% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 30 October – 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 its pears-and-strawberries opening, through all those neat little fatty acids to the citrus and bitter cherry sector and then the pithy tannins that pull you back for more pears and strawberries. It’s all over you. It is a tease of a wine, never quite letting you see everything at once … letting you suspect that maybe you have, then unveiling a glimpse of some other surprise. It gives a cheeky illusion of simple and cute sweetness, then washes that away with an authoritative sweep of something bitter and very adult, like Campari and soda. I want it with smoked salmon, fennell, raw spanish onion, capers and horseradish cream on thin dark rye. This was the made from the co-fermented juice of the new baby bush vines, left to tick through a carbonic maceration 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 finally got their accreditation from the Australia Certified Organic mob; this is their first sale of fully accredited biodynamic fruit. Unlike most shiraz rosés, which are the free run from normal dry red shiraz, allowed to dribble out overnight so the remainder of the tank is more like the sort of thick black muck beloved of the Parkerilla, this wine was even picked with rosé in mind, while its natural acidity was still quite high. Pity more shiraz makers didn’t follow suit with their normal wine: nearly all our shiraz would benefit from higher levels of natural acidity. So we end up with quite an explosion of vibrant healthy pink in the mouth division: tart cranberry or yellow salmonberry more than raspberry, astringent wild cherry more than sweet farmed ones. Maybe even blood orange, but with the zest of the Seville orange, which is what they use to make Cointreau, Curacao and Grand Marnier. It’s lovely, dry, crunchy rosé that would perfectly accompany some greasy smoked mackerel and chêvre on rye. One lesson: because biodynamic 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 the magical Castagna rosé, it would be better balanced. It will be better in two or three years. Nice now, but for grown-ups only.
Old Mill Estate Touriga Nacional Langhorne Creek Rosé 2008
$17; 12.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92++ points
Immediately bright and cheery, this big pink shunts out evocations of all manner of rosy fruits with a slightly wild, vegetal edge: ripe ox-heart tomatoes, red currant, cranberry, wild cherry, blood orange, rocha pear, feijoia, persimmom, tamarillo, watermelon, pomegranite -- even a slice of red spanish pineapple. Beside these vibrant fruits rises a brightly sharpened edge of burlap and dust, which makes the nostrils flare with anticipation, and even tickles them. The palate’s perfectly viscous and comforting to feel, with a gentle, homogenised syrup of all those fruits settling the sensories until the more acrid and edgy reflections of the vineyard’s complex earths and alluviums rise with the acidity to put anticipation and hunger back into mind. It’s beautiful, evocative, appetising and tantalising wine which can handle a deep chill, even a big ice block with a mint, cherry and strawberry garnish, but is best 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 an
opened rosé in the fridge for a fortnight, but being a perverse torturous
bastard, I did exactly that to this exquisity. It’s better! So it’ll cellar
beautifully, and be big-time go in two or three years. Fresh? At the Bushing
King 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 there
must have been. It’s scrumptiously crunchy served cool, not freezing, with all
manner of nutty soft nougat aromas and turkish delight, raspberries and
cranberries, and a very adult, stone-dry finish. Tuck your pretty knees under a
table at Fino and let Shazza manage the solids.
Margan Hunter Valley Shiraz Saignée 2008
$??; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 92+ points
Funny thing. This rosé has the same aroma of dry summer grass and the basalt-derived dust of Broke Fordwich that I found in Andrew Margan’s stunning 2007 semillon – even down to the hint of juniper. (Andrew grows horny goatweed between the vine rows, which may explain some of that acrid herbaceousness, and justified his suggestion that the best thing to drink this with is an amorous friend.) But instead of the delicate lemon butter of the semi, this has rude charcuterie meats, maraschino cherries and cranberry in the second row. It’s really live cheeky wine: it gets right up your nose. The palate’s not as fullsome as that meaty bouquet might suggest, but rather pleasantly juicy and bone dry, with tannins like a number ten bus, and crunchy natural-looking acidity. It does make one feel rather like hopping through a hole in the hedgerow for a spot of lusty frotting in the sward, but there’s a serious surfeit 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 basil sort of stuff would be handy. Nothing like a little bocconcini and breadcrumbs in the cot, eh? You don’t even need glasses, really. JAN 09
Port Phillip Estate Mornington Peninsula Salasso Rosé 2009
$22; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; drunk 5-7MAY10; 92+ points
Crisp goju berries (a.k.a. medlar) seem to grow in this glass: along with a neat carbide reek and a shot of guano, or burlap phosphate sacks. In other words, acrid, appetizing smells. There’s a cute lozenge of goju left in the middle of the tongue as the bone dry tannins wrap about it, making the soul very hungry indeed. Seafood on the char grill, please. Prawns and scallops; squid.
Old Mill Estate Touriga Nacional Langhorne Creek Rosé 2007
$17; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 91++ points
Squishy ripe strawberry, raspberry, and blood orange are the principal aromas here, backed up with the fleshy smell of the white pith of the strawberry. It smells 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 whipped cream. But then another wave of aroma rises: the acrid, edgy smell of the dry delta alluvium, and the hessian/hemp/burlap aroma of dry meadow grass. With time, there’s a whiff of charcuterie meats, like pancetta, which simply makes it 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 and appetising. While this seems a more frivolous and chuggable drink than the 2008, it takes on a more serious air as it opens and warms with time in the glass. 01 MAR 09
Domaine de Saint-Antoine Costières de Nîmes Rosé 2006
$13; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 91+ points
All the better for a couple of years' age, this meaty little south-of-France wonder 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 and prosciutto profusion: it needs bouillabaise, fast! Just a few mackerel or snook smoked on the char first, and then, the full-bore bouillabaise. Some grana pecorino would be good, too. Oh ma Lawdy. Thirteen bucks. Bone dry. Juicy and meaty and nothing like that Rockford goo. Vintage Cellars for Aussies, and 1st Choice. Thirteen bucks. 05 MAR 09.
All the better for a couple of years' age, this meaty little south-of-France wonder 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 and prosciutto profusion: it needs bouillabaise, fast! Just a few mackerel or snook smoked on the char first, and then, the full-bore bouillabaise. Some grana pecorino would be good, too. Oh ma Lawdy. Thirteen bucks. Bone dry. Juicy and meaty and nothing like that Rockford goo. Vintage Cellars for Aussies, and 1st Choice. Thirteen bucks. 05 MAR 09.
Stoneleigh Marlborough Pinot Noir Rosé 2006
$19; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 91 points
There are two extremes of drinkable rosé. The first is the lollypop sweet raspberry cordial stuff like the famously mis-spelt Alicante Bouchet. Far too sweet 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 tannin to dry its finish and tease the palate. It’s all maraschino and raspberry, slippery smooth and satisfying. While it sang with seafood tomato sauce on vegeroni, it was more The Blind Man than Pavarotti. www.stoneleigh.co.nz
De Bortoli
Yarra Valley
Pinot Noir Rosé 2011
$22; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 90+ points
On the other hand, this
one’s more slender, staunch and vegetal. It smells more like turnip
greens and burlap onion sacks – it is indeed the colour of a pale brown
onion. That burlap character, which I imagine, perhaps foolishly,
to derive from a methoxyopyrazine, as occurs in Sauvignon blanc, is devilishly
alluring and appetizing. The wine then shows a cheeky and relieving twist
of its sister’s puppy fat in its strapping acid and summer dust tail – perhaps
this is Dame Nellie’s manager. He carries just the memory of the last
brief sniff of her pink cheek. Otherwise, it’s just a skinny dude in a
suit. Jolly good company, however, with smoked chicken or rabbit,
chillies notwithstanding, or a juicy hare stew.
False Cape Kangaroo Island
Montebello Rosé
2007
$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. Even if 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 out of the smoker. It’s the closest Island pink to the XXX-rated beauties you slurp with your bouillabaise in Marseilles, corks willing. 10 OCT 98
Gundog Estate Canberra Rosé 2009
$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. Even if 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 out of the smoker. It’s the closest Island pink to the XXX-rated beauties you slurp with your bouillabaise in Marseilles, corks willing. 10 OCT 98
Gundog Estate Canberra Rosé 2009
$20; 13% alcohol; screw cap; tasted 07JUN10; 90
points
Blood orange, poached quince and Iberian ham seem to be the aromas here, along with some nostril-tickling acrid split stone and maybe some burlap. The palate's viscous and sweet, a bit like cranberry jelly. To use an emulsional metaphor, if Cochise was a Maori, he'd have this with his lamb. Only the Bratash 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 those plonk-mongers who have their hands on, among other things, the levers of wine industry power, our current flood of rosés made from bleached, sugared dry red will evaporate. But I fervently beseech the mighty Bacchus to ensure the continuation of lovely smart dry ones like this. Made from free-run juice bled from dry red fermenters, the wine is fresh, viscous, and brilliant, whilst the stuff left behind for the presses is more concentrated and profound. So both wines are better. Tuna sashimi; wasabe. www.taltarni.com.au
Charles Melton Rose of Virginia 2007
$21; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 89++ points
Good Time Charlie’s blended cabernet, shiraz and pinot meunier with a great big glob of grenache to make this. And glob is the word: rosy grenache reminds me of some kind of maraschino and raspberry jelly gloop you’d get in sideshow alley. But this wine’s been built and blended so that simple sweet grenache gets a tarter texture and some spice. It’s perfect autumn schlücking with chevre and nuts or kippers on rye with raw onion. 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 a savoury, appetising edge like dried meadow grass. It’s wholesome and accomplished, 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. A Mormon, maybe? A Cooneyite? He’ll come round. The Devil always wins. It was made by Jeff and Brody Howard at Dudley Partners. 10 OCT 98
Blood orange, poached quince and Iberian ham seem to be the aromas here, along with some nostril-tickling acrid split stone and maybe some burlap. The palate's viscous and sweet, a bit like cranberry jelly. To use an emulsional metaphor, if Cochise was a Maori, he'd have this with his lamb. Only the Bratash 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 those plonk-mongers who have their hands on, among other things, the levers of wine industry power, our current flood of rosés made from bleached, sugared dry red will evaporate. But I fervently beseech the mighty Bacchus to ensure the continuation of lovely smart dry ones like this. Made from free-run juice bled from dry red fermenters, the wine is fresh, viscous, and brilliant, whilst the stuff left behind for the presses is more concentrated and profound. So both wines are better. Tuna sashimi; wasabe. www.taltarni.com.au
Charles Melton Rose of Virginia 2007
$21; 12% alcohol; screw cap; 89++ points
Good Time Charlie’s blended cabernet, shiraz and pinot meunier with a great big glob of grenache to make this. And glob is the word: rosy grenache reminds me of some kind of maraschino and raspberry jelly gloop you’d get in sideshow alley. But this wine’s been built and blended so that simple sweet grenache gets a tarter texture and some spice. It’s perfect autumn schlücking with chevre and nuts or kippers on rye with raw onion. 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 a savoury, appetising edge like dried meadow grass. It’s wholesome and accomplished, 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. A Mormon, maybe? A Cooneyite? He’ll come round. The Devil always wins. It was made 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’s
stunning Touriga Nacional Rosé, those made by Sutton Grange, Dandelion, Sandro
Mosele and, if you can handle the bubbles, Louis Crystal and Krug Rosé
Champagnes, 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 a
textural wine. Strawberries, raspberries, cranberry and maybe grapefruit
are 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’t
call it that is a puzzle, yes. Smoked salmon with capers and brown onion on
rye. 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 rosés you’ll find to guzzle in the funky bouillabaisse and fish grill joints of Marseilles. Which is one wicked city… (remembers…) This is mourvèdre, or mataro as we call it. What the Spaniards call monastrell. It has a naughty little whiff of hessian above a rosy wash of maraschino cherries, pomegranite, raspberry and watermelon. Not one of your poofy Chuppa Chuppa pinks. Chèvre. Dan Murphy. www.terrafelix.com.au
Dominique Portet Yarra Valley Cabernet Merlot Shiraz Rosé 2008
$??; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 88 points
Smelling a little of the marine dunes and pigface that typifies many Mornington Peninsula rosés, but with cranberry and pale strawberry below, this little blossom smells quite a lot more svelte and racy than it actually is. For the minute you put the sniffing business behind you, which is better done sooner with most of the crap rosé currently being factoried in Australia, the minute that pleasantry – in this case – is out of the way, you get a nice fat mouthful of fluffy, ethereal insinuations of pink fruits, like salmonberries and cranberries. 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, slightly hot alcohol, and acid. Fish’n’chips with sweet chilli sauce. JAN 09
Bay of Shoals Kangaroo Island Rosé 2008
$18; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 86 points
Made from shiraz grown on the seashore at the moody, tidal flatwater of the Bay of Shoals, with all those sea birds, this is a bright raspberry/strawberry/maraschino cherry pink of medium sweetness. It has all those 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 Rockford Alicante 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 cabernet sauvignon. Made in a sort of south-of-France rosé style - think clean fresh Tavel – this wine’s meaty and spicy. Malian seems to have deliberately mutated to accompany all sorts of tapas and antipasto, but especially the smoked prosciutto, and cured sausages. After a blast of dark cherry juice, the palate’s tight and dry, with fine velvety tannins. It’s tart, but well worth cellaring. 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 and appetising, acrid phosphate, this more complex pink smelled as if it would be bone dry. It’s not quite that dry, but it’s still more interesting and facetious than most dim pinks. It seems to have some chippy oak in there somewhere, amongst the meaty sort of flavours sangiovese releases in rosé. Think pancetta, prosciutto and Iberian ham, with that lovely white fat. 10 OCT 98
Domain Day Mt Crawford One Serious Rosé 2008
$15; 12.8% alcohol; screw cap; 81 points
Cranberry. Salmonberry. Tin. Custard apple. Tamarillo. It’s a thick, complex smell for a rosé. Fritz. (Which is Barossa white pork offal sausage to have cold on white Vienna sandwich bread with lotsa salted butter and Rosella tomato sauce.) It’s all here. The palate’s thick, too, and then there’s a gap, and then there’s a sorta hot tannic aftertaste. And then there’s a layer of syrup that moves into the mouth, 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 who sings “I gotta woman loves me all night long” on an aggro slide tinny. Everyone knows 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. And it tastes like that, too: like half raw charcuterie meats, strawberries and maraschino cherries. And yep, whoever wrote on the back that it tastes like watermelon was pretty much on the mark. Watermelon with alcohol and bone dry tannin. 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 all the key ingredients for a slutty rosé. Even some meat on the turn. Make of that what you want. But the palate’s so dumb and simply sweet that this honky brer needs to run for it. Read away. I need other stuff. A lot of people need this, though. Boy George.
$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 rosés you’ll find to guzzle in the funky bouillabaisse and fish grill joints of Marseilles. Which is one wicked city… (remembers…) This is mourvèdre, or mataro as we call it. What the Spaniards call monastrell. It has a naughty little whiff of hessian above a rosy wash of maraschino cherries, pomegranite, raspberry and watermelon. Not one of your poofy Chuppa Chuppa pinks. Chèvre. Dan Murphy. www.terrafelix.com.au
Dominique Portet Yarra Valley Cabernet Merlot Shiraz Rosé 2008
$??; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 88 points
Smelling a little of the marine dunes and pigface that typifies many Mornington Peninsula rosés, but with cranberry and pale strawberry below, this little blossom smells quite a lot more svelte and racy than it actually is. For the minute you put the sniffing business behind you, which is better done sooner with most of the crap rosé currently being factoried in Australia, the minute that pleasantry – in this case – is out of the way, you get a nice fat mouthful of fluffy, ethereal insinuations of pink fruits, like salmonberries and cranberries. 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, slightly hot alcohol, and acid. Fish’n’chips with sweet chilli sauce. JAN 09
Bay of Shoals Kangaroo Island Rosé 2008
$18; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 86 points
Made from shiraz grown on the seashore at the moody, tidal flatwater of the Bay of Shoals, with all those sea birds, this is a bright raspberry/strawberry/maraschino cherry pink of medium sweetness. It has all those 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 Rockford Alicante 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 cabernet sauvignon. Made in a sort of south-of-France rosé style - think clean fresh Tavel – this wine’s meaty and spicy. Malian seems to have deliberately mutated to accompany all sorts of tapas and antipasto, but especially the smoked prosciutto, and cured sausages. After a blast of dark cherry juice, the palate’s tight and dry, with fine velvety tannins. It’s tart, but well worth cellaring. 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 and appetising, acrid phosphate, this more complex pink smelled as if it would be bone dry. It’s not quite that dry, but it’s still more interesting and facetious than most dim pinks. It seems to have some chippy oak in there somewhere, amongst the meaty sort of flavours sangiovese releases in rosé. Think pancetta, prosciutto and Iberian ham, with that lovely white fat. 10 OCT 98
Domain Day Mt Crawford One Serious Rosé 2008
$15; 12.8% alcohol; screw cap; 81 points
Cranberry. Salmonberry. Tin. Custard apple. Tamarillo. It’s a thick, complex smell for a rosé. Fritz. (Which is Barossa white pork offal sausage to have cold on white Vienna sandwich bread with lotsa salted butter and Rosella tomato sauce.) It’s all here. The palate’s thick, too, and then there’s a gap, and then there’s a sorta hot tannic aftertaste. And then there’s a layer of syrup that moves into the mouth, 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 who sings “I gotta woman loves me all night long” on an aggro slide tinny. Everyone knows 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. And it tastes like that, too: like half raw charcuterie meats, strawberries and maraschino cherries. And yep, whoever wrote on the back that it tastes like watermelon was pretty much on the mark. Watermelon with alcohol and bone dry tannin. 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 all the key ingredients for a slutty rosé. Even some meat on the turn. Make of that what you want. But the palate’s so dumb and simply sweet that this honky brer needs 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 Rosé
2011
$18; 11% alcohol; screw cap;
tasted 27 JAN 12; 70 points;
With a flesh-coloured Band
Aid of cotton drill for a necktag (like Cape Jaffa) and the odd Rolls Royce R&R
insinuation (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 drawings
of the grapegrowers’ shoes on the front (like Trevor Smith) this release seems
lost 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, the
second-wettest vintage in Australian history, the vintage explanation in the
propaganda sheet is of interest, too. It
doesn’t mention that Grenache thrives only in hot, dry conditions, and is
particularly susceptible to bunch rot and mildew in wet seasons, but says “Cool
conditions during March meant we had to pick our grapes a little later than
usual 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 taking
off as a serious variety, there’s a shortage of it, and somebody like these mysterious
R&R growers have healthy old dry-grown bush vines, whose fruit should be
worth at least $2000 a tonne if it were good, why would you pick it late for rosé
at $18?) It’s fluorescently pink wine, like smoked salmon. It smells a little like soap, or apples waxed
for the cold store. It is only modestly
viscous and very slight of flavour. Maybe
the flesh pink facets of the package are there to give the illusion of the healthy
fleshiness which does not appear much in the wine. Vegans and vegetarians can drink it with
impunity. I agree with the Goebbels Division which says it tastes of
pomegranate. It’s also like watermelon: “Eat,
drink and wash your face all at once,” as they say of watermelons in Dixie. It has an
insinuation of chalky tannin and not much acid. It reminds me of most of the rosés
of the south of France,
in a difficult year.
25 January 2012
SPARKLING WHITE
Krug Vintage 1996
$500; drunk 25 APR 09; 98++ points
Any duffer must agree with
the Krug family when they call this vintage “extreme, eccentric champagne”. On
another level, it’s that way because it’s so stubbornly, insistently Krug in
its style, being a combination of the dogged determination of the Krugs to
maintain their house distinction through a unique formula honed consistently
since 1843, and one of the most formidably confounding vintages in a century.
1996 was the last Krug
vintage to which Paul Krug II contributed: it was blended by him, his sons Rémy
and Henri, and his grandson Olivier, who famously reported “Throughout his
life, 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 is
saying something. While the 1928 was growing ricketty when I last tasted it in
the early ’nineties, it still had the whiff of sublimity, a skerrick of its
original fruit, and astonishing, living natural acidity holding its old flesh
to its austere, rigid skeleton.
1996 was a freak year,
weather-wise. The on-off summer alternated between sodding rain-driven humidity
and extreme dry heat, which eventually surrendered to a sunny, clear autumn
with freezing nights. The Krug system of pressing each parcel of fruit in or
near its source vineyard, then fermenting and ageing the must in neutral, old
Argonne barrels and taking complexity from deliberate oxidation and extended
lees contact, whilst eschewing malo-lactic fermentation, the reserve then
stored in chilled stainless steel away down in the chalk until required, always
gives wine of character and finesse far beyond the sum of its components. And
by deliberate oxidation, I mean it: once the Krugs have decided on the
composition of each cuvée, its barrels are drawn from below and tipped on the
blending room floor, from whence the wine flows back down through a pipe
through the chalk to the blending tank way below. The winery smells very good
at assemblage!
The vagaries of 1996 have
obviously bowed very low to the Kruggiste method, for this wine is indeed an
astonishing, perfectly polished thing of beauty: the typically Krug
counterpoint of extreme complexity with unlikely finesse. Chardonnay, pinot
noir and pinot meunier have been blended to conjure a wine of such beauty and
confidence that it seems almost matter-of-fact. Normal. The done thing. Oh how I wish! Ripe anjou and comice pears
seep calmly through the bouquet, with some sort of exquisite honey and ginger
brioche, yet to be invented. The palate is creamy and reassuringly smooth in
that strangely assertive and matter-of-fact way, and ever-so-gradually tapers
off, leaving a rapier of stern acidity and the feeling that something very very
rare and special has just happened to your gustatories. The aftertaste is
incredibly fresh and enlivening; the bead and mousse ever so fine, gentle, and
persistent in its caress. I once asked Henri how much research they’d done into
the secret of Krug’s tiny bubbles. He said such information was a highly
confidential 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 on
12JAN10; 97+++ points
There's an apocryphal yarn about the murderer who, upon being strapped into the electric chair, looked at his executioner and said "This'll teach me". This wine always reminds me of that. I don't really know why: the damned thing is so profoundly confronting in its beauty and intensity that the mind does go silly, in a willy nilly, electrocuted sort of way. Thoughts fall to 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 in one's chair with a really silly smile and a glass, empty, clutched in a grip that makes Charlton Heston's rifleman speech look like something uttered by a total softcock. The smell of an organic wheatfield, almost ripe, after the lightest rain. The smell of the most delicate brioche. Hazelnut. Wet chalk. Sliced, poached almond being fastidiously placed on a perfect marzipan icing in the kitchen of La Crayere. Oyster mushroom, and enoki. I can smell it for an hour, happy to postpone the execution. But finally, involuntarily, the glass finds its way to the lips, and like all Krug, just seems to evaporate into my organs. My body. The corpuscles, the genes, the chromasomes vibrate in immaculate harmony, and purr. This must send a transmission so powerful it can be received by other life forms, billions of light years away. I remember Remi Krug remarking twenty years ago that he admired the way I guzzled the Grand Cuvee, rather than inhaling common air through it to make that obscene gurgling noise and spitting it like an Englishman. "But I am a Vikin, and Krug comes properly perforated with bubbles installed by the Krug family," I responded. "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!
There's an apocryphal yarn about the murderer who, upon being strapped into the electric chair, looked at his executioner and said "This'll teach me". This wine always reminds me of that. I don't really know why: the damned thing is so profoundly confronting in its beauty and intensity that the mind does go silly, in a willy nilly, electrocuted sort of way. Thoughts fall to 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 in one's chair with a really silly smile and a glass, empty, clutched in a grip that makes Charlton Heston's rifleman speech look like something uttered by a total softcock. The smell of an organic wheatfield, almost ripe, after the lightest rain. The smell of the most delicate brioche. Hazelnut. Wet chalk. Sliced, poached almond being fastidiously placed on a perfect marzipan icing in the kitchen of La Crayere. Oyster mushroom, and enoki. I can smell it for an hour, happy to postpone the execution. But finally, involuntarily, the glass finds its way to the lips, and like all Krug, just seems to evaporate into my organs. My body. The corpuscles, the genes, the chromasomes vibrate in immaculate harmony, and purr. This must send a transmission so powerful it can be received by other life forms, billions of light years away. I remember Remi Krug remarking twenty years ago that he admired the way I guzzled the Grand Cuvee, rather than inhaling common air through it to make that obscene gurgling noise and spitting it like an Englishman. "But I am a Vikin, and Krug comes properly perforated with bubbles installed by the Krug family," I responded. "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 extremes
forever. So this sinister black-and-silver
label hides a see-sawing range of flavours that covers the
wheatfield/brioche/lemon pith characters of the chill, as much as the gently
chubby riper umami/glutamate insinuations of the heat and humidity. Given the elegance of touch chef de cave Dr
Richard Geoffroy shows in his blends, these facets here seem more overt than in
the 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 of
avocado, which occurs at the sunny extreme; the chilly and austere lemon and
chalk characters are there to balance, but so far, they remain remote and
contrasting. I won’t say straining to
balance, 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 to
get the money? Certainly not writing
about 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 Tail shortbreads magnify, jumping the gastro ropes into the genteel ring with the toasted hazelnut, the lemon and strawberry pith, through the middle mousse and the perfect richness and that fabbo dry dry tail with all its langorous and perfect 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 Blancs
2004
$67.50; 12.5% alcohol; crown
seal; 94+ points
It’s been a year since I
last drank this scrumptious luxury, and in that time (this particular bottle
was on lees until 13th February 2009) it has become much more rare, a lot more
expensive, and, well, better. I drank it today at The Victory, with the Domaine
de la Romney Parkers, half the Honeymoon Hillers, and none other than Doug
Govan himself. Antonio Carluccio sat unrecognised a table away, photographing
every dish he ordered while he drank Paxton’s Quangdong Farm Shiraz and Romney Park’s
new pinot noir. But the star of the day was this amazing fizz: think of
Billecart-Salmon’s Blanc de Blanc without the Avize component. The damned thing
does immediately make me think of Mesnil-sur-Oger; even Krug’s Clos de Mesnil
BdB nipple polish. Delicate cashew and carambola aromas have joined the dry
meadow blooms that were there a year or so ago, and the apples have become
slightly poached quince, with maybe just half a clove. I’m waiting for a better
Australian fizz. This is now simply exquisite – easily the best South
Australian sparkler, ever, and maybe the best Australian. It’s gorgeous,
delicate, forceful, elegant: hand disgorged upon order, and best about three
months after disgorgement, so I’d be calling Rod Short at Romney Park
to 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 the private Kreglinger company (founded in Belgium in 1797 it procured Piper’s Brook, founded in 1974, in 2003). It’s a gorgeous drink: all cracker biscuits, brioche and pickled lemons in the prickly bouquet; crunchy terroir-driven gears in the mouth. Increasingly, with wines like this, Tasmania is showing that there’s little point in going all the way to France for fizz. Kreglinger’s Belgian, and they’ve come all the way here. I’m with them. (2.2.8)
Lilbert Fils Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Champagne NV
Kreglinger Tasmania Vintage Brut 2001
$46.50; 12.5% alcohol; cork; 94 points
René Bezemer made this wondrous explosion of titillation and luxury for the private Kreglinger company (founded in Belgium in 1797 it procured Piper’s Brook, founded in 1974, in 2003). It’s a gorgeous drink: all cracker biscuits, brioche and pickled lemons in the prickly bouquet; crunchy terroir-driven gears in the mouth. Increasingly, with wines like this, Tasmania is showing that there’s little point in going all the way to France for fizz. Kreglinger’s Belgian, and they’ve come all the way here. I’m with them. (2.2.8)
Lilbert Fils Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Champagne NV
$90; ??% alcohol; cork;
drunk 6MAY10; 94 points
My money was immediately on this babe coming from Mesnil: it has that cute aroma of paper flowers that usually signifies that ville. But no - it's from further north: 60% Cramant, 30% Chouilly and 10% Oiry, with an abolutely minimal doseage. It has incredible finesse for a wine of this price: so crisp and crunchy it seems almost brittle, like those crunchy Italian almond biscotti. Very stylish indeed, and cheap!
My money was immediately on this babe coming from Mesnil: it has that cute aroma of paper flowers that usually signifies that ville. But no - it's from further north: 60% Cramant, 30% Chouilly and 10% Oiry, with an abolutely minimal doseage. It has incredible finesse for a wine of this price: so crisp and crunchy it seems almost brittle, like those crunchy Italian almond biscotti. 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 as much greengrocer as fruiter and haute pâtisserie in its complex, yet very fine and reserved bouquet. The palate’s creamy, full and basically plain sinful; the aftertaste lingering and teasing as much as cleansing and relaxing; and the bead very very tiny once your pour settles, which is a good thing, as we don’t want too many cavities in our drinks now, do we? Seriously, you’re a bit of a boofhead buying anything Champenoise short of $150-$300 cru prestige stuff when this 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-order sparkling, which I reckon’s in the Kreglinger/Arras/Clover Hill/Yarra Bank league, and given its junior status and kindergarten price, comes scarily close to the Gosset/Krug school. It was whole bunch pressed in a basket, fermented in 6 year old hogsheads, underwent full malo in oak, and was cold-stored in barrel. The aroma of the stuff jumps from the glass to your nose while the glass 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 800 bottles! While it’s rich and creamy, it’s still precise and tight, and after about 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 bit sort of fat and boring”. (15.2.8)
$28; 12.5% alcohol; crown seal; 93+ points
Romney Park is no one trick pony. I was first nailed by the disgorged-to-order sparkling, which I reckon’s in the Kreglinger/Arras/Clover Hill/Yarra Bank league, and given its junior status and kindergarten price, comes scarily close to the Gosset/Krug school. It was whole bunch pressed in a basket, fermented in 6 year old hogsheads, underwent full malo in oak, and was cold-stored in barrel. The aroma of the stuff jumps from the glass to your nose while the glass 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 800 bottles! While it’s rich and creamy, it’s still precise and tight, and after about 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 bit sort of fat and boring”. (15.2.8)
Gratien & Meyer Cremant de Loire Brut
$25; 12.5% alcohol; cork(!); 92++ points
$25; 12.5% alcohol; cork(!); 92++ points
With recent stunning chenins
blanc from Coriole, Dowie Doole and Jardim do Bomfim, it’s a joy to push the
chenin 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 the
botrytised ones, like Moulin-Touchais, take fifty years to approach. This
hyper-cool fizz has a little chardonnay to add cream to the lean acidity of its
chenin, making a beautifully smooth, slightly plump seduction that makes me
dream of smoked oysters, foie gras, and nightingales in aspic with juniper
berries. Or chêvre on rye with capers, if you don’t eat little birdies. Take a
bottle to the beach, or a case to Kangaroo
Island. Vintage Cellars
and 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 fizz over 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.) Which is why you might need this healing morning sickness brekky. Leave your bowl in the fridge overnight, add rich cream, and devour before the dog bites you. Or have it neat the night before. www.greenpointwines.com.au
$37; 12.5% alcohol; cork; 91 points
Next time you plan a hangover, spill a bottle of this rich, sweet, bedside fizz over 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.) Which is why you might need this healing morning sickness brekky. Leave your bowl in the fridge overnight, add rich cream, and devour before the dog bites you. Or have it neat the night before. www.greenpointwines.com.au
Pirie Tasmania
Non-Vintage
$32; 12.5%; Diam cork, 90
points
Many years ago one engaged
Dr Brian Croser in a conversation concerning his forthcoming Petaluma fizz. Dr Croser, who wasn’t yet a
Doctor, wanted nevertheless to call the wine Croser, a word which, one
suggested, was difficult to pronounce without the corners of one's mouth
turning down. On the other hand, Piccadilly, being the picturesque Adelaide
Hills village in which said wine was grown and manufactured, was a word one
couldn'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 Croser
retorted that as his wine was destined for international markets, like England, Piccadilly was an inappropriate
appellation as many people imagined that part of London to be the sort of place in which
prostitutes solicited. Which led one to wonder what in the names of Bacchus and
Pan he imagined these people thought went down, or indeed who went down, in
Petaluma, the now bankrupt Californian capitol of seedy strip clubs,
arm-wrestling and chook-farming after which he had named his Piccadilly winery
in 1976. Once bitten twice shy? Anyway, Dr Croser called his wine Croser,
leading that wag Harry Ayers to crack in London's
The Spectator "at least he didn't call it Brian". As well as
fizzmaking ex-partner Dr Tony Jordan (Chandon), a severe rival of Dr Croser's
was always Dr Andrew Pirie, a similarly confident, dour and trite sort of cove
who quite correctly believed Tasmania was the better site for the growing and
manufacture of superior fizz. Having planted the first Pipers Brook vineyards
in 1974, Dr Pirie took twenty years to begin laying down the base wines for his
superfizz, which of course he named Pirie, a word which is difficult to enounce
without leaving one's kisser in a grimace. These cocky doctors never seem to
think any of this through. Meanwhile, Croser floated his Petaluma
on the stock exchange, to see it consumed in 2004 by, well, a brewer, which was
soon producing Croser which tasted like it came from Petaluma, not Piccadilly, gaving him big time
sulks. The only reason one relates this is that, perhaps not surprisingly, Dr
Pirie 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 one
can only wonder whether it ever made wine skins, Kreglinger, one of the oldest
companies on Earth, was soon releasing a very fine wine called Kreglinger, a
terrible tangle of a brand name. Even if they’d named it after its maker, René
Bezemer, the brand would have felt better in the mouth. But, as one can see, in
this business people move along whether they want to or not, and Kreglinger is
closer phonetically to Krug, which is hardly a pretty word but most certainly a
pretty fine drink and anyway the Krugs can get away with calling their elixir
that because they're German and they’re the Krugs and Krug has 36% fewer
cavities. One presumes that the embittered Dr Pirie has finally levered his
Pirie brand back out of the Kreglinger/Pipers Brook grasp, because the press
gumpf that accompanied this bottle claims this non-vintage blend of chardonnay
and pinot noir to be a "relaunch of PIRIE". One might suspect Dr
Pirie imagines his brand must have run aground to make a relaunch possible or
indeed necessary, if one gets one’s drift, but this is quickly replaced by
confoundment when one reads that he seems to think it actually sank:
"Finally," he writes, "the re-emergence of one of Australia's
most highly acclaimed sparkling wine labels and the origins of the brand
PIRIE". While syntactically this non-sentence is hardly a triumph, it does
say “re-emergence”... “Emerge”, one's trusty Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
On Historical Principles states, means "to rise by virtue of buoyancy from
or out of a liquid". So unless Dr Pirie thinks his liquid is rising out of
the Pirie liquid made by Kreglinger's Bezemer, or he was dreaming of
submarines, one might imagine he refers somehow to the Tamar River, which flows
through the valley of the same name, past the Tamar Ridge Estates vineyards
owned 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 highly
contentious A$1.5 billion wood pulp mill there in the Tamar. Its wineries and
vineyards presumably help to indicate its faith in its own capacity to keep the
environment 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 syntax
climax, one presumes that it's not really a label he’s referring to, but a
drink. And it's not a bad drink, although one can't quite see what all the fuss
is about. It has the right sort of small spherical cavities vertically emergent
- not too big, and persistent - and it smells like wheat, almond biscotti, and
the white pith of oranges, lemons, and strawberries. Not their skin, or their
fruity 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 it
were made after the Krug mould, but never quite got there, which is fair
enough. Krug is a pretty big call for anybody not called Krug. It seems to have
had perhaps a little too much malo, or pinot, or perhaps Dr Pirie's
deliberately oxidative winemaking has overwhelmed the fruit by, well, oxidising
it, at the expense of finesse. But there's no need to go into that, whether by
running aground or submerging: it is indeed, only a drink, and not a bad drink
at that. Especially with almond biscotti. Although the finish, which Dr Pirie's
letter calls "strong", is sufficiently abrupt and citric - in a hot
lemon 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 battered
humuhumunukunukuapuaa with mayonnaise and plenty of lemon juice. These may
eventually appear in the Tamar if the Gunns mill manages to warm its waters
sufficiently. 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 a reputation for small-volume, high-quality Italo-Australian wines from the fanatically gardened Versace vineyard on the deep loamy plains north of Adelaide. They bought fronti -- muscat blanc a petits grains -- from other vineyards to make this naughty sweetish fizz. It has the classic grilled pineapple bouquet of a moscato fizzed to champagne levels and maturing sensibly, 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 drink a bottle of that in two seconds flat!” Which he narrowly avoided doing. I made up for him. I wish somebody in the Adelaide Hills would plant a nice high cool climate frontignac vineyard: in the hotter climes, where the stuff grows like weeds, the wine lacks essential acidity and soon takes on a burnt rubber bouquet, rather than this model’s char-grilled pineapple. MAR 09
$??; 11.5% alcohol; cork; 89 points
Dominic Versace, and his feisty cousin, Armando Verdiglione, are making a reputation for small-volume, high-quality Italo-Australian wines from the fanatically gardened Versace vineyard on the deep loamy plains north of Adelaide. They bought fronti -- muscat blanc a petits grains -- from other vineyards to make this naughty sweetish fizz. It has the classic grilled pineapple bouquet of a moscato fizzed to champagne levels and maturing sensibly, 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 drink a bottle of that in two seconds flat!” Which he narrowly avoided doing. I made up for him. I wish somebody in the Adelaide Hills would plant a nice high cool climate frontignac vineyard: in the hotter climes, where the stuff grows like weeds, the wine lacks essential acidity and soon takes on a burnt rubber bouquet, rather than this model’s char-grilled pineapple. MAR 09
GEWURZTRAMINER
NEW!
McWilliam’s Mount Pleasant 1946/66 Hunter Valley Sauternes
From a private collection; 10.2% alcohol; cork; consumed
January 2012; 96 points
In 1966, the winemakers at
McWilliams decided a batch of sweet Muscadelle, made by the mysterious genius
Maurice O’Shea in 1946, deserved a touch of freshening. So they put it in a tank with some sweet
Gewurztraminer to make a blend, 36% of it being the O’Shea wine. Even under
cork – we were lucky - the resulting wine was striking in its freshness and
vibrancy, 46 years later. Overwhelmingly heady blossoms, even the pungent elder
flower, poured from the glasses and over the table in the most composed and
authoritative ooze. Honey and
butterscotch came to mind, but such simple words cannot do this alarming
tincture justice. It was sublime.
Elegant, yet with the most seductive syrupy texture, the wine held its
freshness until the bottle was spent. It’s not exactly common, but, cork
willing, 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 souls
who've lived near the top of the Barossa Range through a few winters can
appreciate how much more wild and wooly is the weather there: it's a freezing
blustery place for most of the year, then in comes the blanching summer dry and
the air is crisp and crunchy as a chip and you hear the odd thud as the big
regums drop their mighty limbs. This gewurz has wind in her hair, and reeks of
the bleak sandstone and schist-based soils that make up the High Eden Ridge.
Winemaker Louisa Rose, who has property on said ridge beside Mountadam, knows
this weather. She fermented this gewurz in old Frecnh barriques, and it smells
like it's all wild yeast to match. Then comes the frail yellow rose aroma of
the variety at its best, maybe some lychee or guava. The palate's dry as
ground-up bone china. But the fruit is fleshy, and just manages to cover all
that stone and acid. Perfect for the pickled cabbage and smoked sausage
choucroute, 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
Musk
sticks, ripe raspberry fruit gels, maraschino cherries, blood orange, ly-chee,
freesia – lotsa purdy party favours in this bouquet. But it’s all very
well-formed and polite – there’s no sign of misbehaviour. No seductive
wickedness. The palate shows some of the errant tropicals and spice I need in
gewurz, 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. Cucumber
sandwiches: white vienna
bread, unsalted butter, crusts cut off.
22 January 2012
FIANO
NEW!
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
NEW!
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!
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