The Auswine Forum

We arrived Melbourne yesterday, weathering the 30-hour door-to-door trip from nyc remarkably well. Still, we wanted dinner close to the hotel and chose city wine shop, a bottle shop and wine bar. They have an eclectic selection of retail wine that can be consumed at the table for a $20 corkage fee.

while I was trying to figure out a bottle, one of the workers/waiters approached to see if I needed help. We got to talking about cold climate shiraz and after a bit, he suggested a bottle from the back (perhaps it's allocated?), the 2016 Clonakilla Shiraz O'Riada for $45 (+ $20 corkage). The wine had a beautiful nose of violets, spice and red fruit. I appreciated the restraint of the perfectly ripe fruit, maybe just a step from greatness on the midpalate followed by a long, beautiful finish.

a great first bottle of wine for our trip!

A good choice, and not a bad price considering on-premise consumption !

Yes, I have contemplating that I am underweight Clonakilla and John Duval. Will fix that.

Just picked up a few of these. Glad to hear they are travelling well.

Cheers
Ian

TN for a bottle opened in Nov.
Far too young, of course. Plenty going on; nice weight & texture. Bags of potential.88 points for now.

We tasted the whole range at CD. This stood out for VFM. IIRC, I paid $40, which makes the price above very competitive.

The City Wine Store is my "go to" when in Melbourne. There's always something interesting by the glass, and I can grab a couple of interesting bottles to take to my hotel room as "backups".

However, my reminiscing is not the reason for this post.

I have stocks of earlier vintages of O'Riada (i.e. 13, 14). When is a good time to open one? I was going to leave them until 2020 to open the first one.

Cheers
Allan

Waiters Friend wrote:I have stocks of earlier vintages of O'Riada (i.e. 13, 14). When is a good time to open one? I was going to leave them until 2020 to open the first one.

I've also got 2013 and 2014 in my cellar. I was planning to wait at least until the 10 year mark, as I prefer Shiraz with a bit of age on it. There are quite a few tasting notes on CellarTracker that indicate these will both go the distance. Drinking windows on The Wine Front are 2017-2035 and 2015-2030 respectively.

I haven’t had the 16 but the 15 is a lovely wine
Still very young with time to improve, but drinking very nicely in its youth