First of all I would like to say congratulations to our team at Veraison. We have received a chef's hat award from the Australian Good Food Guide. This is an exceptional accolade for our team, all the hard work is paying off.
I particularly enjoy matching the wines to incredible food coming from the kitchen. This week I have been particularly enjoying a little Pinot Noir from Veneto in ITALY of all places! A truly exceptional match with the quail. Customers enjoying the degustation at Veraison are particularly commenting on the combination.
Once again congratulations to all the team who are aiming to keep Veraison as one of the best restaurants in Toowoomba. Keep up the good work.
With Christmas only a few weeks away I am already looking forward to Christmas dinner. Normally the roast dinner in the middle of summer accompanied by red wine leaves me sweltering. This year I am going to be a little different and pour out sparkling shiraz. You get the same lovely deep aroma & flavour of a good shiraz with the advantage of it being served chilled. The fizz in the glass adds to the cheer of the moment of course.
Here are a few of my favourites to try.
Barossa Valley Estate - E&E Black Pepper Sparkling
Bleasdale Sparkling
Penny's Hill - Black Chook Sparkling
Seppelt - Silverband Sparkling
Peter Lehmann - The Black Queen
St. Hallett - The Black
We have a number on the wine list at Veraison. Why not drop in and try some for yourself? Even order some with our Christmas party specials.
I was fortunate enough to be invited to “The Mornington Peninsula is Coming to Town” wine trade show in Brisbane last Monday. Of course the show featured predominantly Pinot Noir & Chardonnay. Both of these grape varieties thrive down there as they enjoy the cold ocean breezes blowing across the vineyards. Across the board their Pinot Noir was exceptional but I was particularly taken by the Chardonnay.
It seems that the lovely folk of Mornington are moving right away from the typical peach, nectarine & stone fruit flavours. They are moving more toward the leaner & tighter grapefruit-like flavours. This is a deliberate move to bring their style of Chardonnay closer to the French Chablis style. To me the difference was so stark that I thought the first wine in our master class had something wrong with it. As an avid Riesling & Semillon lover I happen to quite like it. That slightly sharper, zippy flavour & linear behaviour on my palate is something I quite like. My offsider for the day wasn’t so convinced. I will be interested to see if other regions will move in a similar direction.
Will it catch on? I guess only time will tell.
Buy a bottle of Mornington Peninsula Chardonnay from the 2009 vintage or later & see if you like the difference.
This year I was fortunate enough to be an associate judge at the Mediterranean Wine Show here in Toowoomba. This was my first time and I found it a very rewarding & educational experience. However the one particular 'class' of wines which I found most difficult to judge was the Pinot Gris/Grigio class. I had read James Halliday's statements "judging this class is like judging different shades of white". I couldn't agree with him more! We had about 15 different entries to distinguish & they seemed to have the variability of a box of matches.
I have drunk both Gris & Grigio a number of times before & found them to be somewhat bland & uninteresting. This is more of a personal preference statement & hardly something you would base your show judging on. Nevertheless, I thought that in my wine drinking time I just hadn't come across some of the better quality drops yet. But a week after the wine show when I was notified of which wineries had entered the Mediterranean Wine Show that year I was blown away. There were some very big interstate wineries in the mix who had been making wines for a very very long time. These people who would have access to very good fruit and there would be no question about their winemaking skill. I had been scoring some quality Pinot Gris & Pinot Grigio all along.
For me now, I have stopped looking for the Holy Grail. Although one of my wine show companions said he would show me a great Australian Pinot Gris, I am happy to wait for that day. I now understand that this is all Pinot Gris & Pinot Grigio are: Certainly clean and crisp, probably refreshing after mowing the lawn, but for me, lacking in pizzazz. If I wanted that I would still reach for a Riesling. If Pinot Gris is the next big thing in white wine, I just don’t get it?! -Andrew
For a long time I have been looking for a website that offers me ratings & price comparisons on international wines. There is a plethera of these websites for Australian wines, winecompanion.com, jeremyoliver.com and many others. Now, finally, I have found a website that does this for international wines as well as Australian.
If you are into your French, Italian, German, South African & US wines you need to check out www.vinopedia.com It's free and it's fantastic.
Their database is huge and access both the Winespectator & Robert Parkers webpages for further tasting notes & ratings. If you are subscribers to these pages you will have further access to more detailed information.
But the most usefull tool on Vinopedia website is the browser extension. This is a small download that interfaces with your web browser. Once installed, you can select any wine on any webpage, 'right click' on your highlighted selection & select 'Find on Vinopedia'. This will take you straight to any information they have for that particular wine. A mighty helpful tool.
There is a demonstration on how this works on the Vinopedia webpage. Simply click the icon below to have a look. Definately worth checking out.
It has been long noted that certain grape varieties are suited to growing in particular regions. Perhaps the hardiest of all grape varieties is chardonnay. It will grow almost everywhere. However I don’t see too much chardonnay on the market that comes from the Northern Territory. Although this is an extreme, it highlights the point that there are grape varieties that grow well & make great wine in some places and not others.
Some wines are so temperamental that they can only be grown in very specific regions of Australia that offer the ideal growing conditions. Others are a little less fussy & will be found in a number of different regions.
Below I have assembled a list of wines primarily broken down by variety. Under each variety, I have listed regions around Australia that are noted for producing some of the better wine from these varieties. This list is put together in broad brush stroke terms and is not the be all & end all of who produces good wines. As I have already mentioned above, some varieties are quite hardy and will grow well in a broad range of places. In fact one of the most exciting thing about trying wine is finding the diamond in the rough, the wine that defies the odds and comes up trumps under unfavourable circumstances.
Chardonnay
Although growing almost anywhere, the majority of the better chardonnays come from cooler climate areas.
Adelaide Hills – SA
Geelong – VIC
Margaret River – WA
Mornington Peninsula – VIC
Yarra Valley – VIC
Tasmania
Riesling
Originating from the border between Germany & France where it is quite cool & mountainous. Look for Australian riesling from…
Adelaide Hills – SA
Clare Valley – SA
Eden Valley – SA
Sauvignon Blanc
Once again it’s cooler climate areas that provide better fruit for wines. It is little wonder then that the New Zealand sauvignon blanc are doing well.
Adelaide Hills – SA
Margaret River – WA
Mornington Peninsula – VIC
Semillon
A hugely underrated wine that loves the slightly warmer climates. The Hunter Valley has ideal growing conditions for this variety, season after season.
Hunter Valley – NSW
Sparkling
Given that most Australian sparkling wine is made from both the pinot noir & chardonnay grapes, go for cooler climate area.
Mornington Peninsula - VIC
Macedon Ranges – VIC
Tasmania
Yarra Valley – VIC
Verdelho
Originally from the island of Madeira off Portugal, this is a warmer climate grape that doesn’t mind a slightly wetter summer.
Granite Belt – QLD
Hunter Valley – NSW
Rose
Predominantly made from Grenache, Cabernet or to a lesser extent Pinot Noir. Look for regions that tend to grow these varieties well.
Adelaide Hills – SA
Barossa Valley – SA
Margaret River – WA
Yarra Valley – VIC
Pinot Noir
A temperamental grape that almost needs ideal cool climate growing conditions to set fruit. Cooler areas of Australia are by far the best.
Adelaide Hills – SA
Geelong – VIC
Mornington Peninsula – VIC
Tasmania
Yarra Valley – VIC
Shiraz
SA boasts the largest reputation for this variety. SA & some areas of VIC are similar in climate, soil type & terroir to the Rhone Valley in France.
Barossa Valley – SA
Clare Valley – SA
Coonawarra – SA
Grampians – VIC
Heathcote – VIC
McLaren Vale – SA
Cabernet Sauvignon & Merlot
Heralding from the famous Bordeaux region in France, these varieties are quite well suited to regions which grow good shiraz.
Barossa Valley – SA
Coonawarra – SA
Great Southern – WA
Margaret River – WA
McLaren Vale – SA
As the weather starts to cool down again, I particularly enjoy rediscovering deep, dark & brooding red shiraz & cabernet. These are the wines that command time to sit and pondered over, rather than the glug & chug wines which generally make their appearance at barbecues over spring & summer.
There’s nothing I like better than to sit in a lounge chair, after a long night at Veraison and gently swirl something intense & red in my glass. The more things you can smell & taste in a wine the better. This is what is referred to as a complex wine. It becomes an adventure unraveling the flavours & bouquets of these beauties. I love the golden moments when trying to describe that familiar flavour in there that I just can put my finger on. Even more fun after you have had a couple.
This whole process takes time. The wine firstly needs to breathe to allow it to open up. A decanter will help speed up the process but a good wine will still need about an hour. Large bulbous glasses are great for swirling This really gets the bouquet going and allows the wine to open up further in the glass. This is ‘activating’ the wine for those who enjoy using correct industry terms.
For those of you who enjoy shiraz, look for Elderton Command, Peter Lehmann Stonewell, Yalumba Octavius, Penfolds St. Henri, Grant Burge Meshach, Jim Barry McRae Wood. On a local note I was recently particularly impressed with Symphony Hill Reserve Shiraz – gold medal winner at the Sydney International Wine Show
Cabernet Sauvignon drinkers should look for Penfolds Bin 389, Grant Burge Shadrach, Wynns Black Label, Bowen Estate, Vasse Felix Hetesbury. Local Granite Belt cabernet like Boireann Lurnea & Witches Falls Prophecy are certainly worth discovering.
Last month I was able to try what could become the future for wines bottled in Australia. The bottles had been placed on my desk before I arrived at work. In a light hearted “think quick” moment a work colleague picked up a bottle and threw it to me as I walked through the door. With my coat in my dominant hand and my bag over my other shoulder I grasped with my non dominant hand and fumbled with the greatest of ease. The wine literally ‘bounced’ off my shoe and rolled away.
Sirromet are going green! They have released the first wines in a plastic bottle in Australia. Aptly titled ‘First Step’, their range consists of a chardonnay & a cabernet merlot blend. The bottles remind me of the elongated, tall & narrow cans of energy drink you see these days. Under screw cap & made of recyclable plastic. The amount of energy used to create one of these bottles is considerably less than their glass counterparts. The bottles are made here in Australia & weigh a fraction of a glass bottle. The carbon footprint at Sirromet is reducing by the minute!
The wine inside was a real surprise. After assembling a red hot wine tasting team we opened them up. Chardonnay first. We could smell it leaping out of the bottle and our glasses as we poured. This had an amazingly fresh, bright & zippy nose. Abundant stone fruit aromas left one member saying “I could sit & smell this all day”. Looking for more than just smell my wine I took it upon myself to run it across the palate. A very well structure palate & refreshing chardonnay. Interestingly the palate wasn’t as forthcoming as the nose but nonetheless it was well made. The cabernet merlot was a little more the reverse, slow nose & great palate. We worked the wine around & around the glass to loosen it up a little. Then as if someone had flicked a switch at the 3 minute mark the nose came alive. Lots of blackcurrant & tobacco leaf aromas. On the palate it was great. A good solid cabernet merlot with abundant fruit, & refreshingly, not too much tannin. This was a delight with the steak we were eating.
I assume people like to age wines so I was curious about the ‘best before’ stamp on the back of the bottle. This sparked some discussion at our table. We concluded that generation Y and their tendency to want things now won’t having this one sitting in the cellar for long. Who could blame them? These bottles were keeping the wines fresh & ready to go.
The future is looking very green at Sirromet. If this is the first step then I am looking forward to the second.
At Veraison, as a matter of course, we offer to decant red wines. It simply makes them taste better. You will never make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, but “every wine deserves a chance”, my wine principle always said. He was of course referring to decanting a wine or “letting it breathe”. It’s amazing how letting a wine breath can really make it improve.
Whether you are at a dinner party or in a restaurant, red wine sitting in a decanter always looks great. But it’s not all looks, what is actually happening while it’s in there?
The bottom line is this, fruit juice cannot be stored on the shelf & expected to last. Yet aged wine is the thing that wine drinkers love. So the wine maker adds a preservative, usually sulphur. Sadly though, sulphur tends to mask the taste of the wine. The best way to explain the effect of sulphur is to open young bottle of red wine & immediately try a mouthful. Sulphur is the sour flavour that wants to make your face pucker up. I have a few people at Veraison who open a bottle and think “that’s exactly the same as the last bottle of red that I had.” Sadly they think that this is just “red wine flavour”. Of course it tastes the same, all we have here is a big glass of sulphur flavoured juice. We need to remove this preservative.
Decanting is the answer. Sulphur is removed during the process of oxidisation. As air (in particular, oxygen) is in contact with the wine the sulphur is removed. The more surface area the wine has in contact with air, the more effective this takes place. This is exactly the reason decanters are generally bulb shaped. Pulling the cork out of a bottle does not let it breathe adequately.
You can purchase decanters from most home-maker stores. If you do not have a decanter you may wish to “double decant” your wine. All you will need for this is a clean plastic jug. Simply pour the wine into the jug then pour it back into the bottle. You may wish to repeat this process a number of times.
This is something you can try at home. Take 2 bottles of the same red wine. Decant one wine for a time, and leave the other wine sealed. Time is important. A young wine (younger than 2002) will generally take longer to lose a lot of the sulphur. Generally 2.5 to 3 hours. An older wine (2002 and older) will generally be under 1 hour. After allowing time, pour a glass from both the decanted & unopened bottle. With the sulphur removed you should be able to taste the juice which the wine maker intended.
It is widely known. As a well made red wine ages, it is more delightful to drink. The most expensive wine ever bought was a bottle of 1787 sauterne from Chateau d’Yquem for A$113 500. One would wonder whether a wine made the year before Captain Cook discovered Australia would be any good today. On face value this may not seem like a good value for money purchase, but this is not the point. If offered to hold onto the bottle, we would probably turn it down in fear of an imminent butterfingers moment. Like any collector’s item, the value of a wine is largely determined by it’s current condition & past history.
Penfolds ‘Grange’ is widely considered the benchmark by which all other Australian wines are measured. Whether you like it or not is a separate issue. ‘Grange’ commands attention based on precedence & history. At over $400 a bottle, it is not usually the bottle you open to have with Sunday lunch. It is kept as a collector’s item or drunk at a special occasion.
I met with an associate this last weekend who once owned a bottle of every Penfolds ‘Grange’ made since 1951. Realizing that he was never going to drink any of them he sold the complete set as a collector’s item for a 6 figure sum. Wine at this level is well out of reach for the majority of us. The question is then, at what stage does a wine cease to be a drink and move into the realm of a collector’s item?
The truth is you can collect any wine. If you are looking to start a collection, look for wines that will cellar well & therefore increase in value over time. Ask what other people have. At Veraison we carry some premium Australian shiraz from current vintages, right back to the early 1990’s. Peter Lehmann ‘Stonewell’, Grant Burge ‘Meshach’ & Yalumba ‘The Octavius’ are examples. These wines are robust & made to last at least 10-20 years. Most of them are drinking well now but in another 20 years they may become as sought after as the Penfolds ‘Grange’. However, the bottom line is most of us are limited by our budgets. This will largely determine what we put away as an investment & what will go into our glasses with lunch.
My selection will give a brief idea of some toys for boys available on the wine market at the moment.
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