Last week, my wife and I went to visit family in Brisbane and as she turns 30 in April, had the first of her birthday dinner/lunches (yes, there are probably 2 to come - her birthday is actually in April).
Dinner was at Bruno's Tables in Toowong. Chosen due to decent write-ups, french cuisine and the fact that it was BYO. Food was uniformly excellent, service pretty decent and a good time was had by all.
The "two 30-year olds" were both 1975 wines (my wife's birth year). they were:
Chateau Montrose
Burge & Wilson Cabernet (Barossa)
The Montrose was purchased from Dan Murphys ($100) and the B&W was bought at auction (thank you Mark) for a princely $26 or so. Both were really enjoyable, holding up well, with fruit, softened tannins and fair length. Of the two, the B&W was considered to be the better drink by most of the diners and it did have a softer, more volumptuous mouthfeel and texture. The Montrose was unsurprisingly a tad more austere, fairly astringent on the back palate but still soft and velvety at first sip. In short, I was really impressed by both wines and couldn't separate them because I really didn't have much of a basis for comparison. If I had to choose, it would be the Montrose because I thought it was more 'interesting' (yes, I know, a useless wine descriptor - but I rarely if ever get 'tobacco', 'cigar boc', 'cedar', 'plums/cherries/chocolate' or any other type of food: most reds taste like wine to me!
) but I was elated that both had stood the test of time and turned out to be enjoyable drinks.
Now I'll have to crack the Chateau Montrose 1975 Magnum - we'll see if that's any different.
-- George Krashos
