What's been good and bad in your wine-drinking week, post away here please.
My highlights were:
A Monday flight of 2002 reds, 4 shiraz, a cabernet and a grenache, a strong range (no barossa fruit bombs here) and personal preferences all over the place:
Te Mata Bullnose Syrah (NZ) Even the NZ person in the group failed to pick this, he was looking for leafiness and didn't find it here, ripe but not over-ripe (14.5%), spicy, peppery, red/black cherry, savoury notes, restrained oak, fine tannins, a very nice wine and worth the $40+ asking price.
Heathcote Estate Shiraz A very subtle wine, but blossomed in the glass, the more you sip the more subtle complexity you find in this wine. It's not as big and brooding as I expected from some reviews I've seen, more a little over medium-weight for my palate, but the balance is superb and the tannins fine. Perhaps lacking a little in fruit intensity, perhaps the effect of relatively young vines. The group (famous for loving big rich soft barossa shiraz) rated this first.
Reschke 'Bos' Coonawarra Cabernet A richer style of Coonawarra cabernet, heaps of cassis fruit and a touch of cedary oak, hints of the Coonawarra tomato leaf make this an easy pick in a line-up of shiraz! The plate is dense and rich, sweet fruit nicely balanced with fine tannins and clean acid, long finish. Perhaps not completely "classic" Coonawarra, but very good.
Petaluma Adelaide Hills Shiraz/Viognier Another fairly subtle wine, I think it needed more air time at this age to strut its stuff, some nice spicy plummy fruit, fair amount of nice oak and apricots noticable on the finish from the viognier.
d'Arenberg Sticks & Stones McLarenVale Tempranillo, Grenache, Souzao The second time I've tried this, liked it better the first time with food, you can tell this one is a bit different, it stands out from the crowd with relatively unfamiliar but pleasant bright fruits of different parts of the spectrum, some raspberry grenache, but also cherries with a herbal overtone , it's just a bit angular and disjointed at present, needs a little time to settle I think.
Fonthill Dust of Ages McLarenVale Grenache Another wine that turned out to be not as intense as some reviewers found, nice density and mouthfeel, with mostly raspberry spectrum fruit, smooth palate and soft finish, just a little simple in comparison with the others in this flight. I took the remaining quarter of the bottle home and enjoyed it with BBQ chicken.
![Smile :-)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
Also tried a bottle of the Houghton Gladstones MR Cabernet 99 to see if I needed to buy more at the special price available this week, this is one classy cabernet in the big, firm, rich MR style, but avoids the overly fierce tannins of some, this one deserves a good 5 years rest in the cellar. I can feel a credit card melting already....