Four Winds Vineyard Riesling 2011 $17 Four Winds vineyard, Murrumbateman, Canberra District, New South Wales This gold medal winner from the 2011 regional wine show could easily pass as a Mosel. The low alcohol (10 per cent), delicate lime-like flavour and high acidity move it way beyond the spectrum of flavours we normally see in … Continue reading Wine review — Four Winds, Tintilla Estate, McWilliams Mount Pleasant, Mount Eyre, Hill-Smith Estate and Yering Station →

Taltarni Shiraz 2008 $30–$39 Heathcote, Victoria We put this in an office tasting alongside several far more expensive reds, and for me it was the wine to come back to for a couple of glasses – each one as interesting as the first sip. Heathcote reds can be a bit heavy, alcoholic and over the … Continue reading Wine review — Taltarni, Yalumba, Shaw and Smith, Ballabourneen, Best’s and Grosset →

Cumulus Wines Climbing Pinot Gris 2011 $18–$22 Orange, New South Wales The difficult, wet and cool 2011 vintage caused much devastation in vineyards across Australia. However, some white varieties, including pinot gris, seem to have benefited from the cool conditions – for example, in the recent local wine show, Mount Majura Vineyard won a gold … Continue reading Wine review — Cumulus Wines, Dopf au Moulin, Voyager Estate, Coolangatta Estate, Ingram Road and Barwang →

Tim Gramp Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 $21 Gramp Vineyard, Watervale, Clare Valley, South Australia I’m not sure how a wine this good at this price makes commercial sense. By my reckoning Tim Gramp’s yield of just .076 tonnes to the hectare implies production of just 57 dozen bottles from a hectare of vineyard. But let’s not … Continue reading Wine review — Tim Gramp, Grosset, Madfish, Maximus, Turkey Flat and Yering Station →

Chapel Hill Il Vescovo Tempranillo 2010 $20 McLaren Vale and Adelaide Hills, South Australia Today we review two tempranillos, each emphasising a different facet of this Spanish variety. Chapel Hill’s version, made by Bryn Richards, leads with fruit – big, joyous buckets of it, ripe and mulberry like, gushing from the glass, up your nose … Continue reading Wine review — Chapel Hill, Tar and Roses, First Creek and Stefano Lubiano →

  Red Knot by Shingleback McLaren Vale Shiraz 2010 $9.40–$14.95 Shaw and Smith Adelaide Hills Shiraz 2009 $40 Brothers Kym and John Davey own and manage the 100-hectare Shingleback vineyard – a big enough operation to produce outstanding regional wines across a range of price points. Their entry-level Red Knot shiraz presents a bright and … Continue reading Wine review — Red Knot by Shingleback, Shaw and Smith, Tahbilk and Tulloch →