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Budget pinot noir – no it doesn’t exist. I’ve always thought that’s probably true but I have drunk a couple of wines recently that come close to fitting the bill exactly. The Trentham Estate 2009 pinot got a rave review in a recent Age Greenguide. It is justified rave. This is a big wine with farmyard odors early on and [...] One of the world’s rubbish wines that I have always enjoyed is gamay Beaujolais. I drank a gorgeous, spicy entry-level Paul et Eric Janin Moulin a Vent 05 at Source Dining in Albury a couple of weeks back – I have already indicated that this restaurant offers some of the best food in NSW - the wine [...] In the pure interests of science I have been working my way though some local pinot noir wine over the past week. Like many pinot tragics I have wasted a lot of money and effort trying to purchase great French red burgundies mostly without a great deal of knowledge or with great success. I’ve scored about as many times as I had rewarding adolescent romances – so I do treasure my miserable track record. Good burgundies are out there but hiding – they are even claimed to exist – at prices that don’t necessarily break the bank – but they are hard to find. What about Australian pinot? Most of the following – not all – come after an afternoon attack on Dan Murphy’s liquor store in Melbourne following a read of the 2009 and 2010 versions of James Halliday’s Australian Wine Companion. I’ve got to say – despite banning advertising on this site – that Dan Murphy’s had many of the top ranked pinots at prices often better than the vineyard. A good source of top ranking Aussie pinots. Continue reading Australian (& 1 NZ) pinot noir Fairport Convention is one of my all-time favourite bands. They still perform although their early album with Sandy Denny Liege and Lief remains my favourite. Denny died tragically in 1978 after skipping through a number of groups. Liege and Lief is monumental folk-rock music: ‘To rouse the spirit of the earth and move the rolling sky’. Try: Come [...] Last year I reviewed one of the best wines I drank that year, a 1991 St Hubert’s Cabernet. I thought I had exhausted my stock of these great old wines when I found, this evening, a 1992 St Hubert’s Cabernet-Merlot nestled away, the sweet thing that it is, in a sinful back alley of my diminuitive [...] My friend Professor Chongwoo Choe has come to his senses and returned to live in Melbourne. He and his wife put on a sumptuous dinner last night with four exciting French wines that he had managed to gather while on his regular academic field trips to France. To start off we enjoyed a Chablis Grand Cru Grenouilles [...] One of the great wine makers of Australia is Brian Croser of Petaluma. He makes lovely chardonnays and a Riesling you would die for but one of the wines of his that I really like is the Cabernet-Merlot. I drank my sole (sob!) remaining bottle of the 1990 vintage this evening. It is 88% cabernet and 12% [...] I found this webpage from the Australian Taxation Office on excise charges on alcohol and tobacco products very useful. Taxes ideally should reflect damages of these products which are presumably related to alcohol and carcinogen content respectively. With respect to alcohol this is volumetric taxation rather than ad valorem taxes levied on product value. All forms [...] I enjoyed two great old vintage wines last night with old friend Chongwoo and his kin. A 1976 Wolf Blass Black Label Cabernet-Shiraz for a pre-dinner warm-up was, I thought, in excellent condition – Chongwoo thought it a bit faded. These very old wines are a matter of taste – they don’t appeal to all. Wolf [...] Metala Cabernet Shiraz was one of the more reliable, long-lived South Australian red wines that is sourced mainly from Langhorne Creek in South Australia. At a recent retrospective, wines from Metala were sampled back to 1945 – the 1951 shiraz-cabernet was still sound after 50 years in the bottle and one of the best wines [...] The Knight family Granite Hills Vineyard at Mount Macedon produces probably the best Riesling in Victoria. I have only a few of these in my cellar and tonight I drank the 1989 Knight Granite Hill Riesling. It was originally an austere, cool climate-style Riesling that, in a good vintage, would last 20 years from birth. [...] Occasionally I think we all forget how good aged Australian cabernet can be. Shiraz is so often promoted as the Australian red wine with cellaring potential. Most of the red wine in my cellar is shiraz. The exceptions are the wonderful Wynns cabernets, the Penfolds Bin 707s, which often disappoint me, and a collection of odds [...] I have enjoyed two good older Shiraz wines over the past few days. By coincidence both were from the 1993 vintage. In my budget-constrained middle age (school fees, viagra bills etc) I am constrained to drink off my vineous wealth so there might be a few more of these types of posts over the next [...] A mid-afternoon escape from the Global Finance Conference yesterday afternoon landed me in Walter’s Wine Bar on Southbank. I ordered my usual cheese platter and launched into three sample size (75 ml) glasses of extraordinary Italian wines: a 2002 Umberto Cesari Sangiovese, a 2005 Farnese Montepulciano and a 2001 Pasqua Valpolicella. These are powerful flavoursome wines [...] Today travelling to the south coast of NSW – to Ulladulla – to do some bird-watching, swimming (I used to say, go surfing) and generally to enjoy life. I’ve got a couple of bottles of 1990 Wendouree cabernet to ease the burden of my transport discomfits. Also have some trashy sex-violence-crime novels for the more serious [...] I was fortunate enough to drink three well-aged, red wines over the past few days. I’ll bet you are all glad to hear that and to have the opportunity to share, if only vicariously, in my pleasures. Its kind of ‘Will you buy me an ice-cream? No, but I’ll let you watch me eat it!’Besides I [...] |
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