Peter Lehmann Clancy’s Barossa Red Blend 2013 $11.40–$15
In the wine industry, new ownership or new marketing staff typically spells packaging changes, with the hope of increased sales. It seldom works, especially where the marketer shows little understanding of a brand’s underlying values. It came as no surprise therefore to see Peter Lehmann’s new owner, the Casella family, blast the publicity trumpets for its repackaging of the entry-level Clancy’s label. It seems to me, though, that the Barossa story comes second to the Banjo Patterson Clancy’s theme. However, the medium-bodied, soft wine behind the label offers easy drinking and fair value.

Zind-Humbrecht Terroirs d’Alsace Riesling 2011 $35–$46
On a cool night at Chairman and Yip’s new Barton home, a riesling from France’s Alsace region provided an interesting contrast to Australian styles. At five years the cork-sealed wine showed the deep gold colour of bottle age, but was otherwise fresh and lively with no sign of oxidation or cork taint. Typical of Alsace riesling, the wine’s distinctive, strong, ripe flavour came on a richly textured, slightly viscous palate with a firm, dry bite to the finish. It’s a unique and enjoyable style, suited to the Chairman’s richer dishes, but a little strong for the more delicate ones.

Mount Trio Porongurup Shiraz 2014 $22
The Porongurup range, a half-hour’s drive north of Albany, Western Australia, provides slightly cooler growing conditions than low lying areas in the vicinity – though both share the tug-of-war between hot continental air and cooler sea air to the south. The cooler conditions produce another subtle shade of wine flavours for the vast Great Southern region. Although Mount Trio shiraz weighs in at a hefty 14.5 per cent alcohol, it’s lively and fresh, laden with ripe-berry flavours and not as heavy on the palate as the alcohol level suggests. Bright fruit, smooth texture and soft tannins make for easy current drinking.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2016
First published  21 and 22 May 2016 in goodfood.com.au and the Canberra Times

Jim Barry Watervale Riesling 2016 – wine of the week
Florita vineyard, Watervale, Clare Valley, South Australia
$13.90–$18
The first of the 2016 wines reviewed here comes from the Barry family’s historic Florita vineyard at Watervale, the Clare Valley’s southernmost sub-region. The late Jim Barry bought Florita from Lindemans in 1986. It had been source of many great, long-lived Lindemans and Leo Buring rieslings made by John Vickery from the 1960s. The new wine shows remarkable floral and citrus-like perfume – characters reflected on a fruity, brisk and thrilling dry palate. A modest outlay gives you a lot of drinking pleasure.

Hentley Farm The Stray Mongrel Red 2014
Hentley Farm vineyard, Seppeltsfield, Barossa Valley, South Australia
$26–$30
The Stray Mongrel combines two traditional Barossa red varieties, grenache and shiraz, with zinfandel. The stray in the pack is an early ripening, dark and tannic variety, originally from Croatia (where the oldest of its several names is tribidrag) but better known as Puglia’s primitivo or California’s zinfandel. The wine packs a lot of flavour and character, revealing the lively fruit and aroma of grenache, richness of shiraz and the distinctive grippy, drying tannins of the zinfandel. It’s quirky variation on a traditional Barossa theme.

Hentley Farm The Old Legend Grenache 2015
Hentley Farm vineyard, Seppeltsfield, Barossa Valley, South Australia
$62–$65
Whether in France’s Chateauneuf-du-Pape or the Barossa Valley, grenache generally finds itself blended with other varieties, notably shiraz and mourvedre. On its own it tends to give a strong confection-like character reminiscent of bubble gum. But we now see a number of excellent straight grenaches, including Hentley Farm’s, made by Andrew Quinn. Owner Keith Hentschke believes earlier picking, and a 60–90 maceration of the wine on skins, dumbs down the fruit a little. The result is a bright red wine, harmonising fruit with savoury, spicy and earthy characters. A backbone of fine tannins gives a satisfying grip to the finish.

Tahbilk Cabernet Sauvignon 2013
Tahbilk vineyard, Nagambie Lakes, Victoria
$17.10–$24
Tahbilk’s long-lived, medium bodied cabernet comes with a mother load of sturdy, grippy tannins that permeate the underlying fruit flavours. Though the sweetness of the underlying minty- and blackcurrant-like varietal flavours offsets the tannin, it remains a wine to tame with age or by serving with high-protein food. Pink, juicy lamb, for example, will strip away the tannin and expose the really lovely fruit at its heart. It offers exceptional quality for the price and has a proven ability to evolve deliciously over many years given cool, stable cellaring conditions.

Mount Trio Pinot Noir 2014
Mount Trio vineyard, Porongurup, Western Australia
$20–$22
The Porongurups Range is a granite knob rising from the landscape about half an hour’s drive north of Albany, Western Australia. In the late 19980s, husband and wife Gavin Berry and Gill Graham and partners planted vines there, some of the first in this particularly cool part of the vast Great Southern region. The couple’s pinot captures much of the aromatic, flavour and textural charm of the variety. Delicious, sweet fruit, a touch of savour, and a backbone of fine tannin lift this above many pinots in this price range.

Xanadu Stevens Road Chardonnay
Xanadu Stevens Road vineyard, Margaret River, Western Australia
$56–$70
Xanadu, the western arm of Rathbone Wine Group, makes several excellent chardonnays, ranging in price from the $14.40–$18 Next of Kin, through the $29.60–$37 Xanadu, to the $56–$70 Reserve and Stevens Road wines. Stevens Road comes from the best rows in a vineyard of that name. Quality is further refined by using only the best barrels in the final blend. Mouth watering and juicy, with dazzling acid cutting through grapefruit- and nectarine-like varietal flavours, it’s a wine to revel in now, though bottle age may add new layers to it.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2016
First published 17 and 18 May 2016 in the Canberra Times and ct app

Wily Trout Vineyard Canberra District Pinot Noir 2015 $30
Until recently Susan and Robert Bruce’s Wily Trout vineyard lived in the shadow of Poacher’s Pantry, the couple’s successful food outlet located on the same site. However, their son Will now runs the vineyard and oversees winemaking at Eden Road winery. He’s determined to lift the quality and profile of the wines, and plans a few surprises too – including a hop-infused sauvignon blanc, made jointly with BentSpoke brewery. Bruce’s 2015 pinot shows a fresh and fruity face of the variety, with smooth texture and fine, mouth-drying tannins. It’s not a pinotphiles pinot, but a lovely, moreish drink indeed.

Mount Trio Porongurup Riesling 2015 $22
The Porongurups Range is a granite knob rising from the landscape about half an hour’s drive north of Albany, Western Australia. In 1989, husband and wife Gavin Berry and Gill Graham and partners planted vines there, some of the first in this particularly cool part of the vast Great Southern region. The small operation made just 266 dozen bottles of this delicious riesling in the 2015 vintage. Riesling from the region can be shy when young, but this one leads with assertive, citrus-like varietal aromas and flavours. However, the palate remains delicate and bone-dry with tingly, refreshing acidity.

d’Arenberg McLaren Vale Footbolt Shiraz 2013 $13.95–$18
Time and again at tastings, bottles of McLaren Vale shiraz empty well ahead of their more delicate, cool-climate peers. People praise the latter, but drain the former. Why? It seems nothing pleases the senses more than a deep, dark red, rippling with earthy, ripe fruit flavours, backed by savour and tannin. Pleasingly, the pleasure remains in reach as even the modestly price d’Arenberg Footbolt delivers the true Vale experience. It’s ripe, rich, fruity, savoury and satisfyingly grippy, without being heavy or porty.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2016
First published 14 and 15 May 2016 in goodfood.com.au  and the Canberra Times

Hungerford Hill Classic Tumbarumba Pinot Noir 2014 $26–$36
An Anzac weekend sweep through Batlow and Tumbarumba turned up several appealing wines. Batlow, of course, makes apple cider, while Tumbarumba, originally planted to vines for sparkling wines, now makes appealing, elegant table wines, too. Tumbarumba’s Café Nest–movie theatre offers fresh local produce, some grown on site, and several local wines by the glass. The selection is negotiable, so we negotiated pinot noir and chardonnay, Tumbarumba’s two specialties. The area’s grape growers sell mainly to out-of-district winemakers, including Hunter-based Hungerford Hill. Theirs is a comparatively, full, ripe style of pinot, though still medium bodied and very gentle on the palate.

Mount Tumbarumba Vineyard On the Fly Chardonnay 2013 $25
Despite living in Canberra and managing the Quarry Hill vineyard, Richard Cottam finds time to tend the Tumbarumba vineyard he established 25 years ago. The two-hectare vineyard, located on a 40-acre block previously owned by his father, and grandfather before that, provided the grapes for this delicious chardonnay, enjoyed at Tumbarumba’s Café Nest. Cottam left the winemaking to Adrian Brayne. The wine shows the bright, intense grapefruit- and nectarine-like varietal flavour of cool-grown chardonnay, set in the rich texture derived from barrel fermentation and maturation. For stockists see mounttumbarumba.com.au.

Coppabella The Crest Tumbarumba Chardonnay 2013 $20–$26
Jason and Alecia Brown’s lovely chardonnay relieved a poor meal at the Tumbarumba Motel. We expected fresh local food and wine by the glass. It’s what the visitor centre promised, and what we’d enjoyed at a winemaker dinner there some years earlier. It wasn’t to be, alas, but the chardonnay and a Hilltops shiraz took our minds off the food. The chardonnay, from the Browns’ 70-hectare Coppabella vineyard, showed the zesty, mouth-watering fruit flavour of the variety grown in this cool climate, and fleshed out by use of oak fermentation and maturation.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2016
First published 8 May 2016 in the Canberra Times

Clonakilla Canberra District Pinot Noir 2015 $55
Until 2014 Clonakilla blended its pinot away into other wines. But now it stands on its own, albeit in tiny quantities made from 777 and 115 clones Tim Kirk planted recently, and an unidentified clone his father John planted in 1978. The wine shows the ripe flavours and round, delicious fruit of the warm 2015 season. Winemaking influence can be tasted in an underlying earthy character, and felt in the very smooth, slick texture. The overall impression is of richness, ripeness and softness, but not at this stage the soaring perfume and firm, fine backbone we see in the best of the breed.

Thorn-Clarke Sandpiper Barossa Shiraz 2015 $13.95–$19
David Clarke and family own two vineyards in the warm Barossa Valley and two in the adjoining Eden Valley, to the east. The two regions form the Barossa Zone. The warmer Barossa Valley vineyards produce red wines, while the cooler Eden Valley produces both whites and red wines. The entry-level Sandpiper shiraz combines fruit from across the family’s vineyards. The fermentation technique captures the aromatic, fruity character of shiraz in the full-bodied, ripe, juicy style of the warm region. Round, soft tannins add to the texture of a generous, drink-now red.

West Cape Howe Western Australia Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2015 $15.20–$17
In this delicious dry white, winemaker Gavin Berry combines fruit from two Western Australia’s areas: the vast Great Southern district (principally Mount Barker and Frankland River) and Margaret River. Winemaking in stainless steel tanks and early bottling aims to capture the fresh, fruity and distinct character of the two varieties. Herbaceous and tropical fruit flavours of the sauvignon blanc combine happily with the lemongrass-like semillon in a zippy, medium-bodied white made to drink young. Berry writes, “The season was particularly strong for sauvignon blanc. Moderate temperatures near harvest saw the delicate aromatics and fine acid structure preserved in the fruit”.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2016
First published 1 May 2016 in the Canberra Times