To Magnum or Not, That is the Question

[Rossco]

I have more than I thought -
99 Houghton Jack Mann

We had a standard size bottle at an offline last year and it was so fresh & youthful, we all thought it was 2012.

So providing providence & storage (and cork holds up) is exceptional, I dare say this wine will live forever.

[michel]

I have more than I thought -
99 Houghton Jack Mann

We had a standard size bottle at an offline last year and it was so fresh & youthful, we all thought it was 2012.

So providing providence & storage (and cork holds up) is exceptional, I dare say this wine will live forever.

is it oaky?
I find Houghton reds very oaky but was keen to try a JM

[Chuck]

I had a fascination with large formats until I realised they were just multiple bottles of the same wine. When to open them was the issue. Like a 6l bottle of Yalumba 1998 Signature. When do you open that? Eventually sold it to buy standard bottles. Slowly drinking the others.

Carl

[Rossco]

We had a standard size bottle at an offline last year and it was so fresh & youthful, we all thought it was 2012.

So providing providence & storage (and cork holds up) is exceptional, I dare say this wine will live forever.

is it oaky?
I find Houghton reds very oaky but was keen to try a JM

I dont remember it being over oaky (I didnt record notes of that night) but i do remember it being very fresh and juicy with the malbec component really shining through. It was one of my WOTY that year.

[kenzo]

Hey Kenzo,

I think you're doing alright, most of your bottles are two decades and older while a few are only a few years away. You're in a good place.

Regarding the Tahbilk Marsanne, the only thing I can tell you is that a regular bottle of 1992 was stellar at 19 years of age. I expect that with your magnum being 19 years of age you should be safe. When you do open it please do let us Tahbilk enthusiasts know how it was.

Cheers ..................... Mahmoud.

Thanks Mahmoud - now the problem is getting access to the cellar!

I polished off most of my late 90s Marsannes about 3 years ago at a wedding party - most had developed a golden hue and had a delicious honeysuckle flavour to them, without being cloying at all. Some were past it (but still interesting). All under cork.
I need to stock up again!

[Wizz]

I have more than I thought -
99 Houghton Jack Mann
99 St henri
96 Yalumba Menzies
09 JJ Prum Goldkapsel
09 Schloss Lieser Goldkapsel
17 MacForbes Woori Yallock
17 Pooley (1 of each of the pinots)
Thought there were Wynns Johns Riddochs as well, must have gone to Auction

and I have a pile of Auburn Riesling in Magnums too.

Dumpring boy would be perprexed

That I only have 10 magnums, or that I have these ones?

There are about 25 Auburn Magnums left too

[Mahmoud Ali]

I want to know more about these 'Auburn Rieslings' - producer, vintage, and some history.

[Wizz]

I want to know more about these 'Auburn Rieslings' - producer, vintage, and some history.

[url]http://www.auburnwines.com/[/url]

I was one of the owners. Max Marriott was also a shareholder and made the wines - he's now putting out wines in Tassie after working around the world -

[url]http://www.animwine.com/[/url]

The third owner was Dave Patterson, the winemaker at Tantalus in the Okanagan Valley:

[url]https://tantalus.ca/[/url]

We made small batch riesligns from many of Central otago's subregions mostly off dry but we we also made a dry in 2013, and from time to time made stickies as well. Critics loved them - we got two 20/20s from Ray Chan, the Winefront boys liked them too, so did Stelzer, Hooke, Halliday even Lisa Perotti Brown - 90 to 96 points all over the place. But they are a hard sell in Australia.

We stopped after the 2014 vintage as max was working in Oregon by then. Iv'e got a share of the leftover stock.

To blow the trumpet a little - my love of German Riesling is fairly well known, and to me the Auburns sit comfortably as the best you'll see from NZ and they bat up well against German Kabinett and Spatlese.

[JamieBahrain]

"Have you acquired any / many magnums and why?"

Yes, especially since being abroad where magnums are normally 2 x the price of 750ml.

Magnums age beautifully and the larger format doesn't concern me as occasion for me can be mid-week. Also, I buy mostly Barolo and Barbaresco in magnum and these wines do not die quickly if opened.

Australian magnums are problematic. Price is stupid and the move to screw cap may have created a vessel in which wine ages for as long and gracefully as magnum. So Aussie wines may need longer in the cellar now, perhaps making expensive magnums obsolete!

Recently, I think it was my 94 or 96 BP, that saw 750ml and magnum side by side with the magnum singing versus more fatigued 750mls.

[Mahmoud Ali]

I want to know more about these 'Auburn Rieslings' - producer, vintage, and some history.

[url]http://www.auburnwines.com/[/url]

I was one of the owners. Max Marriott was also a shareholder and made the wines - he's now putting out wines in Tassie after working around the world -

[url]http://www.animwine.com/[/url]

The third owner was Dave Patterson, the winemaker at Tantalus in the Okanagan Valley:

[url]https://tantalus.ca/[/url]

We made small batch riesligns from many of Central otago's subregions mostly off dry but we we also made a dry in 2013, and from time to time made stickies as well. Critics loved them - we got two 20/20s from Ray Chan, the Winefront boys liked them too, so did Stelzer, Hooke, Halliday even Lisa Perotti Brown - 90 to 96 points all over the place. But they are a hard sell in Australia.

We stopped after the 2014 vintage as max was working in Oregon by then. Iv'e got a share of the leftover stock.

To blow the trumpet a little - my love of German Riesling is fairly well known, and to me the Auburns sit comfortably as the best you'll see from NZ and they bat up well against German Kabinett and Spatlese.

Thanks for the background and the links. I have heard about Tantalus but cannot say that I have had any, at least not yet.

Cheers .................. Mahmoud.

[Wizz]

I have more than I thought -
99 Houghton Jack Mann

We had a standard size bottle at an offline last year and it was so fresh & youthful, we all thought it was 2012.

So providing providence & storage (and cork holds up) is exceptional, I dare say this wine will live forever.

Thanks Rossco, checking my records this one predates my cellar database which started in 2002 - so I'd say I bought it on release and its been in climate controlled storage since I built that in 2004 - I guess I shouldnt open it yet then,

[michel]

I have more than I thought -
99 Houghton Jack Mann

We had a standard size bottle at an offline last year and it was so fresh & youthful, we all thought it was 2012.

So providing providence & storage (and cork holds up) is exceptional, I dare say this wine will live forever.

Thanks Rossco, checking my records this one predates my cellar database which started in 2002 - so I'd say I bought it on release and its been in climate controlled storage since I built that in 2004 - I guess I shouldnt open it yet then,

Any chance me and Dumpring Boy can try it....

[n4sir]

With a group of eight or more people I still think magnums are the ultimate format - there is always ample enough to go around the table without someone missing out.

I first switched on to magnums many years ago, back in the nineties I always thought right from release they tasted better from magnum than from a standard 750ml bottle. There's the usual reason speculated - twice the wine volume to airspace/temperature means slower development, but I think equally as important for a wine under cork there's less incidence of random oxidation due to the more specialized/smaller bottling lines. With the exception of cork tainted bottles I can't think of too many magnums I got around to opening and thinking 'well, that was a pity...'

I have quite a collection of the things and they can a bitch to store, especially the Riesling magnums and larger formats. I remember people being shocked when I told them I had over twenty dozen magnums in my cellar: despite opening quite a few over the last few years, at last count there are still around 238 to get through as I still buy them to keep up verticals and can't help myself when I see a bargain.

Cheers,
Ian

[n4sir]

I have more than I thought -
99 Houghton Jack Mann

We had a standard size bottle at an offline last year and it was so fresh & youthful, we all thought it was 2012.

So providing providence & storage (and cork holds up) is exceptional, I dare say this wine will live forever.

is it oaky?
I find Houghton reds very oaky but was keen to try a JM

Jack Mann was very oaky (even for Houghton) in the nineties, but usually had the fruit to match. Depends on if you like the show-stopper style, because (at least back then) that's what they were usually made to be. I got a 1996 magnum lying around somewhere, that won a stack of trophies from memory...