The Auswine Forum

G'day

You may ask "It's 40 bloody degrees in Perth this week, so why are you drinking a full bodied shiraz?" Well, I felt like a red, and it's being served at cellar temperature 17 degrees and the decanter is in the fridge.

My first taste of this, and this is everything I would hope for from Plantagenet, in what what an excellent WA vintage. Crimson / purple in the glass. The nose is complex with dark plums, a little blueberry, cloves, some mocha, and black pepper. The palate has fruit "tang" in a red fruit spectrum, in addition to the plums and blueberries flooding the palate. Not surprisingly, it's fruit-forward in its relative youth, but there's excellent supporting acid, and tannins provide grip without auxking the cheeks in too much.

Very long finish, and well balanced. I reckon this will age well over 15 years, and I have a few in the cellar awaiting their opening. From my experience with this wine over a couple of decades, I expect the palate to fill out some more, the flavours to become more complex, and the spices to become more apparent on the nose. But time will tell.

Cheers
Allan

Plantagenet don't get a lot of mentions - I guess location is the enemy, which is a shame as there are some great wines coming out of Gt Southern. I did think the wines were nicely balanced for cellaring and would have confidence in your 15+ years prediction based on past form.

My last bottle of Plantagenet shiraz was last seen in a desk pedestal in the Dublin office prior to an office rejig. We never did find the rogue pedestal, but I hope the lucky recipient got a pleasant surprise and enjoyed it. I sorted out a bottle of Cabardes instead from the local bottle shop for our BYO meal, and that bottle did us fine in a rather different, but pleasingly funky way.

Ian S wrote:Plantagenet don't get a lot of mentions - I guess location is the enemy, which is a shame as there are some great wines coming out of Gt Southern. I did think the wines were nicely balanced for cellaring and would have confidence in your 15+ years prediction based on past form.

My last bottle of Plantagenet shiraz was last seen in a desk pedestal in the Dublin office prior to an office rejig. We never did find the rogue pedestal, but I hope the lucky recipient got a pleasant surprise and enjoyed it. I sorted out a bottle of Cabardes instead from the local bottle shop for our BYO meal, and that bottle did us fine in a rather different, but pleasingly funky way.

You are pretty much on the spot: Great Southern have been discriminated as the mediocre wine region. I tried a few Plantagenet in the past, they are solid wines for their prices, in some cases their quality exceeds their McLaren Vale counterparts.

Indeed Plantagenet doesn't get much mention and is rarely seen in my neck of the woods. Currently the provincial wholesale website tells me that there are no Plantagenet products in Alberta. However sometime in the past there must have been some available because I had a pair of 1994 Plantagenet 'Fronti' - a Muscat de Frontignac. When I came across the wines I wrote to the winery in 2008 and got a response from the then winemaker John Durham who was new at the time and hadn't heard of it and suggested it was likely a one-off wine. I think it was shortly after this I opened a bottle and though it no longer had the fresh, muscaty grape quality it was quite interesting and by no means over the hill and provided quite a bit of interest, so much so that I felt no need to hurry along with the second bottle. Somehow, unintentionally, another decade has gone by.

All this is to say that Plantagenet seems to make enduring wines.

Mahmoud.