Winemaker comments from Penfolds Rewards of Patience, Sixth edition, 2008:COLOUR Medium deep red.NOSE A lovely vintage. The wine is fresh and primary with blackberry, liquorice, camomile, spice aromas.PALATE Sweet plump blackberry, liquorice flavours and dense, ripe, generous, chocolaty tannins. Delicious to drink now but will steadily improve for another ten years.My comments from Full Pour, unlimited edition (unlimited supply!), 2010:CAPSULE Medium deep red. Southcorp branding machine in full effect here as it’s been changed from previous vintages in favor of a slightly naff plastic number. Wonder what Pantone number this exactlyCORK Oh fuck me, it’s another cork. Sure hope this isn’t a bad bottle. Shouldn’t this cork be slightly higher in the neck? Hm. Well, here goes nothing… (Chris removes cork with corkscrew bought at a SAQ in suburban Montréal) Well hey, at least this isn’t a composite cork. Still looks kind of half ass and cheap, though. What’s this? “Australia’s Most Famous Wine?” That nice, but is that supposed to, you know, entice me? I mean, come on. Men At Work is still Australia’s most famous band, but given the choice I’d rather listen to Scattered Order. I wonder if I should be a complete toff and smell this thing?Ugh.This doesn’t bode well.COLOUR Shiny in that filtered to death kind of way. Deep dark opaque monster.NOSE When I was a kid, Mom seemed to enjoy eating peanut butter sandwiches with sweet pickles on them. Those were disgusting, but not as disgusting as this wine. We’re dealing with the worst kind of cork taint here: that entirely subtle amount of TCA that’s like a slow, fat person walking in front of you on the Tube. You know where you’re going, but damn it, you just can’t get around that person to get there. It’s a bummer. No matter how you try, just as you think you’re about to smell delicious, older Aussie shiraz, you get a snootful of vile, cardboardy, annoying, frustrating cork taint.PALATE Who fucking cares? This is going right down the sink. Shame I didn’t save the receipt from when I bought it five years ago so I can drive the 1100+ miles back to the shop where I bought it to get my money back. Instead, I’ll make a note not to buy any more Penfolds wine unless it’s either screwcapped or on incredibly deep discount, which given the near-parity of the Aussie dollar with the US dollar is about as likely as me voting for Meg Whitman next month.Sigh.Penfolds
Price: $20 that I could have spent on
Closure: Cork
Source: Retail