TN: Blacktongues 15/6/05 - The Funky Bunch

[n4sir]

For those of you not familiar with these events all the following wines were tried blind, and after about an hour all participants voted for their most preferred, two next preferred and their least preferred drops.

I’ve included my own impressions and rankings, the group votes, and a group ranking based on most preferred votes counting for double, second and third one vote, and least preferred minus one vote.

While I thought last weeks cool climate wines were difficult at the time, they were a breeze compared to this group. I’ve tagged this lot as “the funky bunch” not because they were kinda cool, but because of the disgusting array of smells and flavours everyone seemed to pick up with a lot of the wines; Band-Aids, Dettol, metal, various dead animals and excrement.

Most of the wines were closed tight for most of the tasting, and as you can gather exhibited quite a range of Brett faults and/or were badly over-oaked, getting worse as they breathed. By the end of the session I was really struggling to find a third place wine, because I bluntly thought the remaining wines probably didn’t deserve a vote.


2000 Burra Burra Lone Star Shiraz $22: Inky purple colour with a glowing hue. A good start to the night with a sweet, earthy nose with plum/blackberry fruit, ozone and potpourri, but with breathing it turns rather feral with stinky/over-ripe orange characters. The palate opens with black olive and spicy blackberry, finishing with ample tannins, and heavily toasted/smoky oak that becomes greener and stinky with breathing. This was a wine that started relatively well but degenerated as the tasting wore on – in the marathon taste off for third it just seemed to get worse.

My ranking: =4th place
Panel ranking: 8th place

Votes: 0 most, 0 second & third, 0 least



2002 Anvers McLaren Vale Shiraz $28 CD: Inky purple/red colour. Like all but one of the following wines a very closed nose at first, with some buttery/nutty oak matched to dark chocolate; with breathing it turns wild, with burnt rubber, cherry and raw spirit characters. The palate seemed to be rather flat all night, opening with some concentrated blackberry but then appearing rather toasty/stinky mid-palate with a touch of green, dropping off dramatically. This almost seemed like an effort to make a blockbuster Barossa style gone horribly wrong.

My ranking: 9th place
Panel ranking: 7th place

Votes: 0 most preferred, 2 second & third, 1 least



2002 Font Hill Silk Shiraz $30: Inky purple/red. The nose slowly opens with sweet raspberry fruit and ground pepper, some herbs and mint, but disturbingly develops chlorine and acetone characters with breathing. The palate is extremely sweet at first, with tangy raspberry/cherry fruit, bubblegum, and even blackcurrant, finishing fairly long with an element of green that sticks out after the sweet fruit. Like the Burra Burra this really went backwards with breathing.

My ranking: =7th place
Panel ranking: 9th place

Votes: 0 most, 0 second & third, 3 least



2002 Squid Ink 3 Associates McLaren Vale Shiraz $45: Inky purple/red colour. Slightly toasted oak and stewed blackberry fruit on the nose at first, becoming stinky with diesel fumes. The palate opened with spicy raspberry/blackberry fruit and slightly green/olive tannins, but by the end of the night developed revolting mousy/metallic characters. This was the mystery wine last month whose identity was withheld until it was given another run; everyone agreed this one was very different, but we parted company here as I found the palate too disgusting for my taste.

My ranking: 10th place
Panel ranking: 2nd place

Votes: 5 most, 3 second & third, 1 least



2002 Charles Melton Barossa Shiraz $43: Inky purple/red colour. Despite a lot of coaxing the nose remained very tight, releasing some simple plum characters. The spicy/tangy fruit on the palate likewise remained rather closed, playing a definite second fiddle to dark/toasty, slightly stinky oak, and dropping away leaving very dry tannins on the finish. This is the third Blacktongues this wine has been shown, the previous two under screwcap, and despite Steve’s effort to source one with a cork it still didn’t do any better. Perhaps as TORB suggested some wines simply just don’t look good in these formats; if so this is definitely one of them.

My ranking: =7th place
Panel ranking: 6th place

Votes: 0 most, 3 second & third, 0 least



2003 Braydun Hill Shiraz $26: Inky purple/red colour. A slender nose with slightly stinky/toasty oak, spicy blackberry fruit and a hint of dark chocolate that while wasn’t impressive at least wasn’t offensive. The palate again is rather dark/smoky, with peppery/spicy fruit that was to me on the lean side, finishing sweet with some alcohol heat. This was WOTN for the panel, but in the taste-off for third I found it a touch bland and alcoholic even in this bunch of surrounding wines.

My ranking: =4th place
Panel ranking: 1st place

Votes: 5 most, 4 second & third, 0 least



2003 Heathcote Estate Shiraz $39-45: Inky purple colour with a vivid glowing purple hue. A slender, earthy nose of stewed plums/blackberry, very clean in nature and seemingly devoid of any oak characters. The palate is just as clean, driven by rich plum/blackberry fruit leading to a spicy/slightly peppery mid-palate, finishing with ripe, big powdery tannins on the finish. While on the boring side the bright, clean fruit with no stinky or overt green/oak characters made this my number one wine, although outside of this tasting it's not worth the money. In a room full of lemons this one sucked the least.

My ranking: 1st place
Panel ranking: =4th place

Votes: 1 most, 3 second and third, 0 least



2002 Braydun Hill Shiraz $26: Dark to inky red with a hint of purple. With the exception of the Burra Burra this was the only other wine to be open from the very start featuring a fragrant mess of a nose, a bit like a Shiraz Viognier blend. It seemed to bounce between floral greens/chalk with some underlying leather, tight lemon-sherbet oak, and medicinal/Dettol characters and a hint of chocolate. The mid-weight palate is just as sweet and green on entry, finishing very long and dry with fine/green tannins. This was a real contrast to the 2003 and many panelists correspondingly hated it; in the coin-toss for third somehow this ended up with my vote.

My ranking: 3rd place
Panel ranking: 10th place

Votes: 1 most, 1 second & third, 10 least



2002 Shingleback McLaren Vale Shiraz $29: Dark to inky red/purple colour. Faint hints of coconut, banana and varnish on the nose suggests this could be a quite heavily extracted/oaked wine. The sweet palate opens with surprisingly dry tannins, followed by a tightly bound mixture of tangy raspberry fruit and some chocolate, finishing dry with black olive and buttery oak on the aftertaste. This just may come around with a lot of time in the cellar, although I also got the feeling the fruit may never catch up to the oak.

My ranking: 2nd place
Panel ranking: =4th place

Votes: 0 most, 5 second & third, 0 least



2003 Seppelt Chalambar Shiraz $20: Inky purple/red colour. The nose was dominated by buttery/coconut oak, with subtle hints of earthy/plum fruit buried well underneath. There’s a faint hint of dry herbs on the palate, but the fruit is likewise hidden behind a massive wall of tight, black olive tannin. At the tasting I found it too oaky and too closed to judge it fairly – leave this one in the cellar for a long time folks.

My ranking: 6th place
Panel ranking: 3rd place

Votes: 1 most, 4 second & third, 0 least



Cheers
Ian