It's been a big week, but I've been too busy enjoying it to bother about tasting notes. My Thai friends are visiting, Meta is into wine in a big way, used to be a prolific poster in the original Auswine forum when he was living in Canberra, so I took him and his wife on a lightning winery tour on the way back from Melbourne to Canberra.
Monday was Great Western and Pyrenees:
Garden Gully, which is being resurrected by a local consortium as an outlet for other small wineries in the area as well as wines under the Garden Gully label, but it seems they have lost the previous shiraz vineyard.
Seppelts Gt Western CD and the Drives tour was fun, Chalambar 2003 Shiraz is a ripper, didn't like the new Moyston Cab-Merlot much though, got them to send back my 6-pack of St Peters 2002 plus a few bottles of the Show Sparkling Shiraz 94 and Chalambar.
Bests Bin O Shiraz 2001 is very good and the self-guided wander around the underground cellars amongst the big barrels is fun, the bottle cellar behind the security grill and the rack of dust-covered bottles would be interesting to delve into.
On to Moonambel,
Dalwhinnie has to be one of the prettiest CD/Vineyard spots around, the wines are pretty good too, the firm, fine tannin structure on the Cabernet is outstanding and I think the fruit will cope. The frost-affected 2003 vintage and small harvest means the Dalwhinnie wines may not make it to retail this year, DJ said he was focussing on export and mail-order regulars, so if you want some, it may be smart to get them soon.
We were sprung by Ian
Summerfield tasting his shiraz grapes and taking photos, he proceeded to give us an impromptu lesson on testing grape ripeness and baume levels, at the winery Mark Summerfield was finishing up the day pressing merlot and let us taste the pressings and also a tank sample of the 05 Shiraz, vintage 05 is looking pretty good in western/central Vic. The 03 Summerfield reds have settled down nicely since the "just-bottled" samples at Wine-Oz last November, I think TORB has some TN on the way.
Overnight at Bendigo, dinner at the Bridge Hotel Dining Room (recommended by David Jones at Dalwhinnie), food was good, the waiter a little non-plussed when I wandered up to the wine rack to check vintages (I've been caught before, wine lists aren't always updated), he commented that vintage shouldn't matter in Australia, the weather is hot/good every year.
Chateau Leamon has released their 2003 reds, again small yeilds from a frost-reduced vintage, the Cabernet/Cab Franc/Merlot blend at around $20 has excellent tannin structure to go with nice fruit, the reserves at $38 are showing their new oak and are a bit subdued in the fruit department at present, they may not make it to retail this vintage either.
Harcourt Valley Winery is a lovely spot, the reds on tasting were Ok, not outstanding, the higher-priced reds not available for tasting.
On to Heathcote, we got off to a bad start finding
Heathcote Wines outlet in the main street, the tourist map guides you in the wrong direction and the person behind the counter seemed to take it as a personal insult when we pointed that out. I gather this place has changed hands recently and they are trying to buld up a mail-order business by offering discounts to "members", the reds are quite good and reasonable value, from the cleanskin up, with the 2002 Curagee Shiraz @ $40 to members being the standout.
Munari only had a couple of reds left for tasting and sale, but it was a pleasant visit with the sound of the grape press in the nearby winery as a background. Deborah Munari suggested we call in at nearby Huntleigh, but it wasn't a great suggestion,
Huntleigh is on the market and has sold grapes to Barnadown Run rather than making wine last vintage and this, so stocks can be run down, the tasting samples had been open 4 or more days and were pretty tired, except for the 2001 Shiraz which held up a bit better than the other 2 reds on offer.
Overnight at Rutherglen, a pre-dinner stroll from town around Chambers and back along the derelict railway line, then an excellent dinner at Beaumonts (Ric the Chocalate Mud cake wasn't the same one you had last time, or as decadently good, see Ric's forthcoming Chapter 5 of his recent tour).
We were out at
Warrabilla before 9:30 and received a friendly welcome from Red Dog as well as Carol and Andrew. Before tasting our way through the current Warrabilla reds (2004) Andrew did a quick blend from several barrels of 2005 Shiraz, he's pretty happy with the vintage despite some late rain.
Next stop was
Bullers, to let Meta try the Calliope Shiraz and the Rare Muscat and Tokay, the Tokay seemed to have a lot more life and character than the surprisingly flat Muscat. We were told the current $60 price tag would be increasing soon, as other Rare-level blends in the area were $100+
After a lunch stop for Parker Pies (I'm in training for a May trip to SA with Ric and the Meat Pie King) the last winery was
Morris, where they showed us the 3 levels of muscat and tokay with two sets of three glasses to quickly assess the increase in complexity and age. The CD-only Tokay and Muscat are good value at around $30.
To cap off the week, I had organised a dinner at Rock Salt Cafe, with a menu designed for red wines from my cellar. The Menu and wine selections are here:
http://users.tpg.com.au/handreck/RedBigotWineDinner.htm
This retirement gig is a bit tiring so far, I may have to go back to work for a holiday!
When I opened the origional, although the wine had only recently been bottled, the Cork had not sprung back properly, and already, there was a purple stain three quarters of the way up the cork. I started off the TN by saying, "A sledgehammer nose with an eye watering level of VA, ..." Smithy knew the level of VA in the wine, cause its been tested and figured the wine I tried was dodgie so sent me another one. Here is that TN.
