Yearly Archives: 2015

Wine review – A.C. Byrne and Co, Guigal and Paringa Estate

13 September 2015Wine, Wine reviewChris Shanahan

A.C. Byrne and Co McLaren Vale Shiraz 2013 $9.99
German grocer Aldi continues to ginger up the Australian retail wine market with perfectly targeted private labels, including the AC Byrne and Co brand. The company doesn’t bother with the expensive, pointy tip of the wine pyramid. Instead, it supplies the fat middle bit where most wine drinkers spend their money. Aldi buying director, Jason Bowyer, shows a nose for quality in big value wines like this McLaren Vale shiraz. For $10 you get a rich, fruity and smooth expression of one of Australia’s most satisfying regional-varietal combinations.

Crozes-Hermitage (E. Guigal) 2010 $34–$38
Melbourne’s impressive Cookie bar (Curtin Building, 252 Swanston Street) offers Guigal’s maturing red by the glass – a wonderful, warming treat on a cold winter’s day. It’s also available at the River Restaurant, Moruya, and in some retail outlets. Its continuing availability, and low price for a wine of this age and provenance, point to a distributor clearance of slow-moving stock. It delivers the medium-bodied, warm, earthy, savoury flavours of shiraz grown in this northern Rhone Valley appellation. Wines of Crozes-Hermitage sit below those of Cote-Rotie and Hermitage in the northern Rhone pecking order.

Paringa Estate Peninsula Range Mornington Peninsula Chardonnay 2013 $25
Leading Mornington producer, Paringa Estate, offers three chardonnays: Peninsula Range 2013 ($25), Estate 2013 ($35) and The Paringa 2011 ($50). The wines reveal varying hues of the estate’s chardonnay and winemaking, with discernible quality increases, albeit not directly in proportion to price. The entry-level wine therefore provides wonderful drinking and an impressive display of modern Australian chardonnay making. Fermentation and maturation in oak barrels added texture and interest to the dazzling-fresh, cool-grown, citrusy varietal flavours.

Tempranillo from six top Aussie winemakers

9 September 2015People, Wine, Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Mayford Tempranillo 2014
Mayford vineyard, Porepunkah, Alpine Valleys, Victoria
$38
Though planted throughout Australia and used by about 340 winemakers, Spain’s tempranillo remains a niche variety. Our vignerons harvest just four to five thousand tonnes of it annually, depending on vintage conditions – about one tenth the volume of pinot noir, or one hundredth of shiraz. However, it makes instantly appealing red wines in a spectrum of styles. At a recent “Tempra Neo” tasting featuring six producers, Mayford stood out as the most complete red. Its ripe blueberry-like varietal flavour came packaged in strong, savoury tannins that gave a chewy, satisfying richness to the palate and an assertive, dry finish.

Mount Majura Vineyard Tempranillo 2014
Mount Majura, Canberra District, ACT
$45
After the deeper, darker 2013 vintage, Mount Majura 2014 reveals a fragrant, fruity side of tempranillo. The aroma and palate both suggest ripe, red berry characters, which push through the variety’s distinctive firm but fine tannins. The bright fruit character gives the wine tremendous drink-now appeal – though the tannins and underlying savouriness should see it evolve for three or four years in bottle. At the “tempra neo” event promoting the variety, winemaker Frank van de Loo said “tempranillo is very sensitive to site and vintage”. The latter explains the notable variation between last year’s wine and the new release.

La Linea Tempranillo 2014
Adelaide Hills, South Australia
$27
David Le Mire and Peter Leske source tempranillo from a range of sites in the Adelaide Hills. In 2014 their blend offers a notably aromatic, lively, buoyant expression of the variety. Intense, delicious fruit flavours, combined with fresh acidity and fine-boned tannins, make this elegant, medium-bodied wine very appealing now. Tempranillo’s savoury side might show through with bottle age. But I doubt it will ever appeal more than it does now in its fresh and fruity youth.

Running With Bulls Tempranillo 2014
Barossa Valley, South Australia
$18–$24
The Yalumba group’s Running with Bulls rated as the bargain of 16 Spanish and Australian tempranillos tasted at a “tempra neo” event in late August. Yalumba began working with the variety in 1999 and until recently produced two tempranillos under this label – one from the Barossa, the other from Wrattonbully, hundreds of kilometres to the south, near Coonawarra. The new release shows a pleasingly ripe, fleshy face of the variety with an abundance of caressing, soft tannins, typical of the Barossa Valley.

Gemtree “Luna Temprana” Tempranillo 2015
McLaren Vale, South Australia
$18
Mike Brown marches to the biodynamic calendar and writes, “We called the wine Luna Temprana as “temprana” is youthful and early and “luna” denotes the wine’s growth via the lunar cycle”. He makes specifically for early drinking, meaning it’s all about fruit, unadorned by winemaking inputs. The fresh, musk-like fruit really sings at present, though the variety’s savoury tannins give a solid grip to the finish.

Tar and Roses Tempranillo 2014
Heathcote, Victoria
$19–$24
Don Lewis and Narelle King write, “Our aim is to preserve fruit characters through the production process to the finished wine. It’s these fruit characters that underpin our style”. However, the pair like to build on the fruit flavour, particularly through maturation in oak barrels. They preserve fruit character by fermenting with selected yeast strains, adjusting acidity and controlling temperatures of the ferment and the cap of skins. The result is a solid tempranillo combining pure fruit character with the flavour and tannins of oak. The currently noticeable oak flavours will likely submerge into the wine after a little bottle age.

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.

Wine reviews – Joseph Chromy, Lustau and Stella Bella

31 August 2015People, Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Joseph Chromy Tasmanian Cuvee NV $25.50–$30
Czech-born Josef Chromy built a fortune in meat before investing in (and disposing of) various sizeable Tasmanian wineries. The latest venture, at Relbia, a short drive southeast of Launceston, includes 60-hectares of vines, a winery, restaurant and functions centre. Chromy’s non-vintage blend demonstrates, deliciously, why Tassie became the centre for Australia’s top-shelf sparklers. Cool-grown pinot noir (two thirds of the blend) and chardonnay give a great depth of flavour to this dry, delicate wine. Eighteen months maturation on spent yeast cells added depth and structure to the wine, but the fruit flavours remain at the centre.

Lustau Pedro Ximenez San Emilio Very Sweet Sherry 375ml $27.55–$30
What better company for a plush Debbie Skelton dessert than a mellow sweetie from Xerez, Spain? The makers sun dry their pedro ximenez grapes and allow the super sweet juice to ferment briefly. They arrest the ferment, add spirit to the still very sweet juice and move it to American oak casks in a “solera” system – a progressive ageing process that takes in young wine at one end and pushes out mature stuff at the other. The mature wine offers sensational raisin-like sweetness and dried-fruit flavours, with the ethereal texture and patina of aged characters derived from oak maturation.

Stella Bella Skuttlebutt Margaret River Cabernet Shiraz 2013 $18
Stella Bella, one of Margaret River’s larger producers, makes wines under the Stella Bella, Serie Luminosa, Suckfizzle and Skuttlebutt labels. Like so many other high quality makers of any scale, Stella Bella’s lower priced wines benefit from the considerable effort put into the top wines. You can enjoy the $30-odd Margaret River cabernet, knowing it’s in the mould of the flagship $75 Serie Luminosa cabernet. And the drink-now, $18 Skuttlebutt cabernet shiraz brings true Margaret River cabernet flavours and elegant structure, fleshed out pleasantly with the addition of shiraz and a splash of merlot.

Reviewed: Penfolds new Max Schubert Cabernet Shiraz 2012

26 August 2015Wine, Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Penfolds The Max Schubert Cabernet Shiraz 2012
Barossa Valley and Coonawarra, South Australia
$450
This new red marks Penfolds’ continuing move upmarket under Michael Clarke, chief of parent company Treasury Wine Estates. The wine salutes the late Max Schubert, whose deep purple thumbprint still marks Penfolds reds 64 years after he created Grange. Schubert was a master of the cabernet–shiraz blend, perfected perhaps in the legendary 1962 vintage Bin 60A Coonawarra Cabernet Kalimna shiraz. The new release’s intense crimson rim and opaque red–black colour put it firmly in the mould of the Schubert originals. A blend of Coonawarra cabernet sauvignon (48 per cent), Barossa Valley cabernet (13 per cent) and Barossa Valley shiraz (39 per cent), it currently offers a powerful but smooth matrix of fruit and oak flavours and tannin. Over the decades we can expect the fruit flavour to flourish and the elegant structure of the cabernet to emerge in what should be a great Australian red.

Hay Shed Hill Pitchfork Shiraz 2013
Margaret River, Western Australia
$16
Winemaker Michael Kerrigan continues to steer Hay Shed Hill’s Pitchfork wines in a delicious direction. While the recently reviewed cabernet merlot really stands out, his shiraz, too, provides outstanding drinking at the price. Sourced from a number of Margaret River vineyards, the medium-bodied wine delivers juicy, ripe varietal flavour in an elegant, drink-now style, with lovely soft tannins.

Oakridge Over the Shoulder Pinot Gris 2014
Spring Lane vineyard, Coldstream, Yarra Valley, Victoria
$18–$22
Winemaker David Bicknell opted to harvest grape early, ensuring fairly high acidity and comparatively low alcohol (12 per cent) for this difficult variety. Fermentation and maturation on grape solids gave the wine a rich texture and the funky notes of sulphur compounds which, in small doses, integrate tastily into overall flavour. But the richly textured palate, combined with lively acidity, is what this wine is all about.

Anderson Reserve Petit Verdot 2008
Rutherglen, Victoria
$26
The late budding, late ripening petit verdot grape struggles to ripen in Bordeaux, where it adds colour, spice and tannin to cabernet-based blends. In hot Rutherglen it ripens fully, producing for the Anderson family a deep, vividly coloured red of generous, if jammy-ripe fruit flavours, masses of soft tannins and a heady alcohol level of 14.8 per cent. This rich, solid, smooth winter warmer sells for $26 a bottle at cellar door and andersonwinery.com.au.

Clonakilla O’Riada Shiraz 2014
Murrumbateman and Hall, Canberra District, NSW
$36–$48
Winemaker Tim Kirk calls O’Riada “an archetypal Canberra shiraz, full of red fruits and spice”. O’Riada fitted that broad description in our tasting, where we lined it up alongside Kirk’s flagship Shiraz Viognier 2014 ($90–$100) and cheaper Hilltops Shiraz 2014 ($28–$33). Our group of six enjoyed the solid Hilltops wine, but as the night wore on, the levels in the other two bottles declined more rapidly. Ultimately, in vocal opinions, as well as volume consumed, the intense, silky shiraz viognier won the day by a comfortable, but not wide, margin, over the classy, harmonious O’Riada.

Craggy Range Le Sol Syrah 2013
Gimblett Gravels, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand
$113–$120
From the lean, stony soils of Hawkes Bay’s Gimblett Gravels sub-region comes a shiraz mightily removed from the styles we see in generally warmer Australia. The back label says, “The vineyard is hand harvested in several passes late in the growing season and only the best and ripest bunches are selected”. Indeed, ripeness is the issue in this location, meaning part of thrill in drinking Le Sol is the tension between the barely ripe white and black pepper flavours and the riper berry characters. Although medium bodied, it’s a wine of considerable power and flavour intensity, revealing a deep, peppery, savoury face of shiraz.

Lion to include nutritional info on beer labels

26 August 2015Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

What’s in your beer

If you’re confused about what goes into beer, you’re not alone. Galaxy research, cited by Lion as it announced plans to include nutritional labelling on its Australian beers, found that “87 per cent of Aussies don’t know what goes into beer”.

Lion said that from August it will begin putting the information panels on its “wholly-owned Australian beer portfolio – meaning 887 million bottles of beer will carry helpful information on sugar, preservative, calorie (kilojoule) and carbohydrate content every year”.

The rollout will begin on Lion’s biggest brands, including XXXX, Tooheys, Hahn and James Squire, before spreading out across the entire portfolio.

Lion says the new labelling will be part of a broader public education campaign on beer facts and myths. There have been growing calls from some quarters in Europe, the US and Australia to include nutritional information on alcohol labelling.

Reviews

Sünner Kölsch 500ml $5.90
Kölsch, one of Germany’s classic beer styles, made only in Köln, is pale-lemon -coloured ale that’s been cold cellared, like a lager. Not surprisingly, it straddles the style border between lager and ale, with ale-like, rich, fruity palate and lager-like briskness. Sunner is a vibrant, fresh, easy drinking but complex example of the style.

Cavalier Courage 330ml $4.90
The website describes Cavalier Courage as an Australia blonde ale “developed to help raise awareness of and funds for research into motor neuron disease”. Every bottle sold generates $1 for the cause. Exuberant hopping matches the flamboyant head. The lively palate offers gentle malt character and an assertive hoppy bitterness.

Tasting Victoria’s wine spectrum, from the cool Yarra to hot Rutherglen

23 August 2015People, Vineyard, Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Oakridge Over the Shoulder Yarra Valley Chardonnay 2014 $18.10–$22
Just-released Oakridge 2014 rates among the top few Australian chardonnays anywhere near $20 in price. There’s a thrill in every sip, underpinned by the most delicious fruit: imagine fresh, ripe nectarine with the added briskness of lemon or grapefruit juice. But there’s more to a really good wine than just the fruit. In this instance fermentation in oak barrels and maturation on spent yeast cells added a complementary patina of flavours and textures. These elements are the sauce to the main ingredient, fruit, which must always remain at centre. Congratulations to the chef, David Bicknell.

Oakridge Over the Shoulder Yarra Valley Pinot Noir 2014 $18.10–$22
Oakridge Over the Shoulder pinot, like the chardonnay, offers most of the thrills of the variety at a fair price. However, where the chardonnay drinks beautifully now, the pinot, despite its rampant and lovely fruit, needs a year’s bottle age to move from fruitiness to what pinotphiles call “pinosity”. This is where the many elements of the wine come together as a fragrant, silky, seductive, satisfying whole. Right now the bright, ripe, pure varietal flavour hovers above the deeper savoury elements waiting to push through – which they did in the five days we spent with our bottle.

Anderson Verrier Rutherglen Durif Shiraz 2008 $32.50
Based largely on wines made from the durif grape, Rutherglen’s burly reds, have been called wines for heroes. Howard and Christobelle Anderson’s blend, from their unirrigated vineyard, fits the regional durif stereotype, mollified by the addition of shiraz. A deep and brooding winter warmer, it offers very ripe, earthy, porty aromas and flavours, fleshy mid palate, sturdy (but not hard) tannins and mellow bottle age. Durif, by the way, is an accidental cross of shiraz and peloursin, discovered in Montpellier, France, in 1880 by Francois Durif and imported to Australia by Francois de Castella in 1908.