Offcuts

While the other half is enduring a regrettable alcohol-free period, I have been scouring the cellar for inexpensive tid-bits that I had hoped would generate enough interest to write up. Alas, no mixed success so far, although the experience does highlight how much one's impressions of a wine can change over time.

I purchased a few bottles of the Seppelt Chalambar 2005 a little while ago after tasting it once and finding it sufficiently delicious. My second bottle, consumed last night (and around six months after the first) was not nearly so interesting. It was generous enough, and distinctive in character, but I found it unattractively blurred and thus utterly unrewarding to contemplate as anything other than a tasty quaffer. Perhaps I was in a bad mood, as it's not a bad wine by any means. Or perhaps it was a dud bottle.

By contrast, the Clonakilla Hilltops Shiraz 2006 has never tasted so good as it did the other night. The last few tastings of this wine (a personal favourite) have been ever so slightly disappointing, as I have found the wine to be lacking in clarity and ever so clumsy. Although it still feels like a gangly teenager, on the basis of my latest tasting it may yet achieve a more harmonious maturity. An intense blast of purple jubes, licorice allsorts and pepper on both nose and palate characterises this wine, which is of significant flavour density. The structure is not quite resolved, with acid sticking out a bit, and tannins feeling a little chunkier than one would like. But my experience of this label is that it drinks best with several years' age on it, so it's certainly heading in the right direction. Good drinking.