Yesterday was the 2nd Friday lunch. A dinner of rare steak, chips and salad, accompanied by 3 wines presented blind, glasses marked with red, green , and blue dots the only identifiers. 6 questions about each wine in a semi-serious options game.
Red Dot.
Garnet red to the rim, definitaly appeared to be the older of the 3 wines. Nose of cassis and white pepper which revealed mint after an hour in the glass. Nice complex palate of cassis, plums and later mint with a solid acid backbone and subtle French oak. Initially picked by myself as Shiraz due to the amount of pepper on the nose. Unfortunately shiraz was not one of the options provided. This proved to be a Cabernet Franc. <b> Jackson's Hill 2000</b> could be, no IS, the nicest Hunter Valley red wine I have had in a long long time. Nice drink alone but went superbly with food.
Green Dot.
Similar colout to the red dot but more vibrancy, did not appear quite as faded. The nose was also pretty similar at first, but then opened to reveal chocolate and spicey oak. The palate had a touch more acid than the red dot and to me tended to be a little unbalanced but this became a lot less evident when had with food, and indeed went very well with the steak. Surprisingly I picked the varietal and the maker and vintage. Not bad since I only tasted it once at CD 12 months ago. This was the <b>Cape Mentelle "Mongrel Mob" Sangiovese 2001</b>, a hand labelled rendition of the wine now commercially available from CM. It is also a very good value wine at $18 a bottle.
Blue Dot.
Now this was a wine of a different Safari. Deep Purple would have been proud to wear this colour. Almost black to the rim, it stained the glass when swirled and is obviously from a winemaker who does not fine or filter too heavily looking at the fines that remained on the glass after swirling. A BIG nose of black stewed plums complete with syrup that had slightly caught and briary spiciness with cloves and cinnamon. A big wine in the mouth, very full body and a big lush mouthfeel. Again stewed black plums dominated the same flavours as the nose and the wine was slightly sweet on the finish. The tannins were very fine. The options given were Merlot, Zinfandel, Malbec. ?Merlot - lots of plums but I have never tasted a merlot with this much body. ? Zin - could well be, heaps of body and flavours are consistent apart from the plum dominence, and not enough tannin for me in a zin this young. ? Malbec - I have never had one that was this full on although everthing else seems right. Went for the Zin. Wrong. <b>Ferngrove "King Malbec" 2001</b> named after the King Orchid found in the area, Great Southern that is guys. A very interesting wine and I might just get a couple to see how they develop. They would be great for the Barbie, and even better for feeding to idiots in an options game.
All in all three very interesting wines to "take the palate for a stroll" and I would happliy drink all three again.