Monthly Archives: September 2015

Craft brewer becomes Bright’s social hub

9 September 2015Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Bright, on a cold weekday night

Bright, Victoria, on a cold weekday night and diners spread sparsely through the town’s eateries. Culinary landmark, Simone’s, hunkers opaque against the winter chill, hiding and nourishing an unknown number of diners.

Nearby, the brilliant, glass-walled, Japanese-inspired Tani restaurant, bares its innards to passers by, revealing a less than half-full house – in contrast, apparently, to the sell-out weekends.

But across the road, locals pack into brightly lit Bright Brewery. The tiny start-up of nine years ago is today a spacious, buzzing social hub for the town, busy even on a cold night out of tourist season.

Local bed-and-breakfast operator, Graham Badrock, says the brewery and eatery, founded by the late Fiona Reddaway and husband Scott Brandon, earned its wide community appeal as much for its inviting ambience and decent, fresh food as for its excellent beers, brewed on site.

Lobethal Bierhaus Bohemian Pilsner 330ml $5.90
On weekends, Lobethal Bierhaus, in the Adelaide Hills, comes to life as a family watering hole, with singles, mums, dads and kids spilling from the beer hall onto the large outdoor area. On a hot day, the Bierhaus’s pilsner refreshes with its full, clean, malty palate and assertive hops bitterness.

Stone and Wood Forefathers Phil Sexton English Brown Ale 500ml $8–$10
Forefather for fathers day? Corny as Kansas, for sure, but who cares when the beer’s this good. A glowing mid-brown colour it offers deep malty flavours and a dry finish, with a pervasive and lingering bitterness, totally in harmony with the malt. The beer salutes craft beer pioneer, Phil Sexton.

Wine review – Tim Gramp, Angoves and Bloodwood

6 September 2015Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Tim Gramp Watervale Riesling 2015 $20–$22
Sydney, late August, and winter taking time out, we turned to riesling. At East Restaurant, east Circular Quay, Mesh Eden Valley 2013 ($25 retail) appealed for its intense, maturing flavours and fresh acidity. But with spring in the air, Tim Gramp Watervale 2015 thrilled even more with the searing yet delicate, lime-like vitality unique to riesling from this Clare Valley sub-region. The very finest of these Watervale rieslings retain lime-like flavours into mellow old age. But there’s a special beauty to these pure, vivid, very young wines.

Angoves Long Row Shiraz 2014 $9–$11
Australia’s tradition of cross-regional blending gives our larger wine makers great flexibility to maximise wine quality at any given price point. In this instance, Angoves combine more powerful shiraz from generally lower yielding vines in McLaren Vale with simpler wine from higher yielding vineyards in the Riverland. For around $10 a bottle you get a decent medium bodied dry red with ripe, vibrant varietal flavour, a juicy mid-palate and soft, drink-now tannins.

Bloodwood Orange District Cabernet Franc 2014 $30
Perhaps best known as a blending variety in France’s Bordeaux region, or in its own right along the Loire Valley, cabernet franc arrived in many Australian vineyards misidentified as merlot. In Orange, Stephen and Rhonda Doyle welcomed theirs as a much loved, albeit unplanned child – and even extended plantings when, as an early ripener, it flourished in Orange’s cool climate. From it the Doyles make a distinctive, medium-bodied red. Deep, fragrant and crimson-rimmed, it offers cherry- and –chocolate-like flavours layered with strong but fine, drying tannins.

Wine review – Parker Coonawarra Estate, Yalumba Galway, Giant Steps, Curly Flat, Scuttlebutt and Wagner Steeple

2 September 2015People, Vineyard, Wine, Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Parker Coonawarra Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2013
North-western Coonawarra, South Australia
$18.90–$24
Our wine of the week earned its place for sheer flavour, value and fidelity to the Coonawarra regional style. The winery now belongs to WD Wines, an energetic business that also owns the Hesketh and St John’s Road brands. Jonathon Hesketh and Phil Lehmann, drive the businesses – Hesketh in charge of marketing and Lehmann making wine. In the excellent 2013 vintage, Lehmann captured the ripe, full flavours of the cabernet grape, complete with the mid-palate flesh that can be missing in cooler years. His approach for this wine, made to meet a particular retail price, emphasises Coonawarra’s cassis-like varietal flavours (OK, there’s a touch of mint), with sufficient tannin to give true cabernet structure and authority. This is a lot of wine for the price.

Yalumba Galway Vintage Shiraz 2013
Barossa Valley, South Australia
$10.45–$18
Yalumba Galway “Claret” once counted among Australia’s great reds, built for the cellar. It raised important eyebrows, including the only ones that counted in 1965, when, at an Adelaide lunch, Prime Minister Bob Menzies declared the 1961 vintage to be, “the finest Australian red I have ever tasted”. But time, markets and marketing diluted the Galway name. Today it stands in the crowded drink-now segment, offering generous and loveable – if not eyebrow-raising – quality. Galway 2013 delivers the appealing flavours of Barossa shiraz – ripe and generous fruit, with soft, easy tannins.

Giant Steps Tarraford Vineyard Chardonnay 2014
Tarraford vineyard, Yarra Valley, Victoria
$45
Pulp Kitchen on a cold Saturday night, and the rich, earthy food calls for, and gets, equivalent wines: a taut, elegant, savoury 2007 pinot noir from the great Burgundy vineyard, Clos de la Roche, made by the highly regarded Olivier Bernstein. However, we begin with an outstanding Australian chardonnay, inspired by Burgundy’s originals. From a cooler Yarra sub-region, it reveals all the brightness and intensity of modern Australian chardonnay, boosted by the delicious inputs of barrel fermentation and maturation.

Curly Flat Pinot Noir 2013
Curly Flat vineyard, Macedon Ranges, Victoria
$50–$56
Curly Flat’s pinots invariably rate well on release and develop nicely with bottle age, and little wonder given Phillip Moraghan’s attention to detail in the vineyard and winery. Tasted alongside the leaner, savoury, maturing, richly textured 2011, the new 2013 appeared ripe, fruity and soft. But with air and patience over a few days of tasting, the wine’s deeper, savoury flavours emerged, along with the silky texture and substantial tannins essential in top-shelf pinots. Right now, the 2011 provides more satisfying, mature drinking, but the 2013 has great potential, which it should begin to reveal in as little as one year.

Skuttlebutt Sauvignon Blanc Semillon 2015
Margaret River, Western Australia
$16.15–$18
The back label gushes fruity descriptors: citrus zest, passionfruit, gooseberry, ripe melon and ripe peach flesh, with a sting of “savoury nettles” thrown in. On the other hand, we can settle for “very fruity”, because it is, with the unbeatable freshness of a young wine, barely away from the bosom of mother vine. Suck it down joyously now. You can never get closer to the freshly fermented grape than this.

Wagner Stempel Riesling Trocken Gutswein 2014
Siefersheim, West Rheinhessen, Germany
$36
Winemaker Daniel Wagner writes, “There is no doubt this is a vintage of very high quality, which, however, could only be brought in at the cost of tremendous losses through selection”. Wagner’s comment if anything understates his attention to detail in the vineyards, which ultimately produces such racy, delicate, deeply flavoured rieslings. Though full bodied for riesling, Wagner’s 2014 remains delicate, with apple-like flavours, cut through with thrilling acidity. The combination of intense flavour, finesse and high acidity suggest good cellaring prospects – if you can resist the urge to drink it now.

CCA–Casella beer venture headed for top five

2 September 2015Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Packaged beer drives volume growth

The Australian Beer Company, a joint venture between Coca Cola Amatil and Casella Wines, launched its Yenda draft beer range in October last year and bottled versions in March 2015.

The company began its push into beer under former Group Managing Director, Terry Davis. Releasing the company’s half-year results on 21 August, Davis’s successor, Alison Watkins, said Yenda, “is now on target to become a top-five craft beer brand”.

She said beer and cider volumes almost doubled in a year, “primarily driven by the successful launch of Yenda in packaged format in March”.

At the March launch, CCA explained its optimism for the crafter beer segment. It pointed to a 25-per-cent growth rate in consumption of craft beer and its comparatively small share of total beer sales – 3.9 per cent, compared with over ten per cent in the UK and US.

Beer reviews

Anchor Brewing Co Liberty Ale 355ml $4.50
First brewed in 1975 to commemorate Paul Revere’s historic ride 200 years earlier, San Francisco’s Liberty Ale impresses from the start with its brimming freshness and rich, creamy head. The delicate, fruity, malty palate, complete with intense but delicate and lingering hops flavour and bitterness complete a perfect ale.

Southern Bay Australian Lager 330ml $4.50
The bottle, bearing a best-before date of May 2016 and purchased in a Canberra retail outlet, had clearly seen better days. The head faded and died quickly, the aroma and flavour failed to show the freshness and briskness of lager and indeed tasted flabby and tired. Still drinkable if unexciting, the beer perhaps suffered from a packaging failure.