Monthly Archives: August 2015

Aussie wine reviews – seven varieties, six regions, four states

5 August 2015People, Uncategorized, Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Jim Barry Veto Riesling 2015
Lodge Hill vineyard, Clare Valley, South Australia
$35
Peter Barry and sons Tom and Sam put a bit of the mongrel into their new riesling. It zigs away from Australia’s traditional pure, delicate, lime-like style towards greater ripeness, with notably more body, grip and texture. Later harvesting, partial barrel fermentation in older oak and prolonged ageing on spent yeast cells contributed to the more assertive style. However, it remains bright, fresh, vibrant and recognisably riesling. The intensity of fruit flavour and strong acid backbone suggest good ageing potential. However, it remains to be seen whether the richer texture and grip add to its age-worthiness or bring the wine to early maturity.

Bremerton Graciano 2013
Langhorne Creek, South Australia
$24
The red variety, graciano, grows in small quantities in Spain, Portugal and Sardinia. In Spain it makes a “fresh and aromatic contribution to Rioja blends, and the small but growing number of varietal wines”, writes Jancis Robinson. At Canberra’s Mount Majura winery, Frank van de Loo, includes it blends, but also makes a straight varietal. And down in Langhorne Creek sisters Lucy and Rebecca Willson let graciano loose in this cellar-door wine (bremerton.com.au). Deep coloured, with vivid crimson rim, it offers vibrant berry and herbal flavours on a brisk, acidic palate

Curly Flat Chardonnay 2013
Curly Flat vineyard, Macedon Ranges, Victoria
$44
Fermentation and maturation in oak barrels introduces aromas, flavours and textures not found in the grape itself. The affect of oak varies from resiny, woody and intrusive to a symbiotic one, where the oak lifts the whole wine to another level of drinking pleasure, even of beauty. We find this in the painstakingly handcrafted wines of Curly Flat. The interplay of intense fruit flavours with the oak, and the spent yeast cells during maturation, results in a powerful, multi-dimensional, silky, elegant dry white.

Hay Shed Hill Shiraz Tempranillo 2012
Margaret River, Western Australia
$18–$20
In 2012 eastern Australian vignerons shivered through their second consecutive cool, wet vintage. But their Western Australian counterparts experienced, “an almost complete lack of summer rain with early season high temperatures giving way to mild middle and late vintage pattern”, writes Hay Shed Hill owner, Michael Kerrigan. The sunshine shows in Kerrigan’s lovely blend. Ripe, juicy, soft shiraz forms the base of the blend, while a small amount of tempranillo adds tannic grip and exotic spicy notes.

Mount Pleasant Elizabeth Semillon 2014
Hunter Valley, NSW
$12.99–$20
If you enjoy Hunter semillon’s idiosyncratic style, Elizabeth remains one of Australia’s best value cellaring wines – and a great beneficiary of the screw cap. For a modest price, you can cellar a dozen, drink a bottle every year or two, and enjoy the journey from the light and lemony freshness of youth to the honeyed, toasty mellowness old age. The screw cap ensures the sound condition of every bottle opened over the years. Before the screw cap, cork-sealed semillons yielded widely varying results, from the brilliant to undrinkably oxidised, or cork tainted.

Lindemans St George Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2012
St George vineyard, Coonawarra, South Australia
$44.90–$60
A recent masked tasting paired Lindemans St George Vineyard Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon1998 with Chateau Calon-Segur 1996. The host, Bob Irwin and wife Chizuru, couldn’t have found more perfect examples of these regional specialties. From the first sniff, wine number one could only have been a Coonawarra cabernet; and wine number two a classic “claret” – a blend of cabernet and merlot from Bordeaux’s Medoc sub-region. The 17-year-old St George remained vibrant, varietal and beautifully elegant – and an absolute pleasure to drink. The current-release 2012 vintage possesses similar qualities and should provide outstanding drinking for several decades.

Brewing up history – Goulburn’s Bradley Grange

5 August 2015Beer, Beer review, PeopleChris Shanahan

Bradley Grange, Goulburn. Photo Chris Shanahan

The remarkable Bradley Grange property, housing the Old Goulburn Brewery, lies behind the big merino’s arse, near the Goulburn back roads Canberrans once navigated to avoid main-street.

Grange’s buildings, designed by Francis Greenway and built from 1833, housed “the various activities associated with brewing, malting, milling, coopering, smithing and stabling”, according to the brewery website.

Amazingly, the buildings survived the centuries. And now restored to their original shapes, if not full functionality, they stand as a unique museum of colonial architecture and commerce.

We visited for the beer and finally did taste it in the old malt house. Before that, however, the ghosts of brewers, coopers and maltsters past lured us through the old buildings.

There’s a homespun feel to the displays. But beautifully written information boards in the various galleries give profound insights into the brilliant mind of Francis Greenway, and the diverse – and surprising – influences on his designs.

Old Goulburn Brewery Goulburn Gold 750ml $9.50
The Old Goulburn Brewery barman, Michael, isn’t telling us much. In fact he’s serving the pale golden beer blind, leaving us to work out what it was. Well, it was delicious, surprisingly so for an ale of just 2.7 per cent alcohol: gentle, soft and malty with an assertive, refreshing hops bitterness.

Orkney Brewery Skull Splitter 330ml $7.50
Orkney’s “wee heavy” delivers the dessert-like richness of traditional, strong Scottish ale. Forget about hops and bitterness. This is all about rich, sweet malt flavours – including caramel- and –molasses-like characters – combined with a heady 8.5 per cent alcohol. It’s a delicious, harmonious, winter warmer – in fact, far from skull splitting.

Wine review – Leo Buring, Aldi and Hewitson

2 August 2015Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Leo Buring DWR18 Leonay Watervale Riesling 2014 $33–$40
Leonay is Australian riesling royalty, descended from beautiful, long-lived whites created by John Vickery in the 1960s. Amazingly, and despite numerous changes of ownership and management over the decades, the wine retains its integrity. And, thanks to the screwcap (championed by Vickery while working for rival company Richmond Grove in the late nineties), the wines evolve magnificently for many years. We recently tasted Leonay Watervale 2005, which at ten years displayed the region’s intense, fresh, lime-like vivacity, with the subtle, honeyed patina of age. The intensely fruity, yet delicate, 2014 offers comparable ageing potential and quality.

Aldi 5171 McLaren Vale Cabernet Sauvignon 2013 $12.99
A couple of extravagant reviews for Aldi’s $13 cabernet sent Chateau Shanahan’s BS metre into overdrive. We all want Grange for $10, but we’re yet to find it. However, we regularly find excellent drinking, even bargains, among the big retailers’ private label wines. At present Aldi’s taking challenge to Woolies and Coles. While that provides good, cheap, drinking for consumers, winemakers must worry at the growing number of retailer labels displacing producer brands. Oh, yes, the wine: this is solid, chunky cabernet, packed with flavour and burly tannins, if not finesse.

Hewitson Baby Bush Barossa Valley Mourvedre 2013 $28
Baby Bush comes from mourvedre vines propagated from a Barossa vineyard planted in 1853. The venerable old vines produce Hewitson’s distinctive Old Garden Mourvedre ($88). But, Hewitson wonders, has the Baby Bush name had its day? “The oldest Baby Bush vines are now 18 years old, so not quite babies any more”, he writes, and adds, “The youngest vines to qualify are ten years old”. Generally the junior partner in the classic three-way blend with grenache and shiraz, mourvedre provides exotic drinking on its own: a robust, spicy red with currant-like fruit flavours pushing through quite firm, rustic tannins.