Category Archives: Red

Penfolds Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon 2000

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Graphically at least, this bottle seems to suggest a radical break with Penfolds tradition. Gone is the slightly daggy, endearingly old school label that looks as if it were designed by a TAFE graduate armed with nothing more than a biro and a ruler. Instead, we have a perfectly ordinary, utterly corporate, yawn-inducingly generic label that strikes me as if it were designed solely to lend Penfolds product an air of internationally respectable cachet that would allow them to be sold alongside, oh, Mouton-Cadet on duty free shelves in Heathrow airport. It’s sad, really: packaging is important, and this just screams ‘Hey, we sold out to Southcorp, home of awesome heating equipment. Oh, and we make wine! International style wine guaranteed to never, ever raise eyebrows!’ Oh well.So: how’s the wine? In the glass, it’s deep, dark, rich and visibly aging at this point, a dark, rich red tinged with a hint of molasses. The nose seems just a little bit dumb, promising nothing more than aged wine, hinting at well-scrubbed linen closets and air-dried laundry. Things finally get going when you actually drink some: there’s still a good sense of sweetness and heft here, amplified by very subtle cedary oak, that expands into a somewhat simple, slightly sour, really rather delicious finish supported by some well-rounded tannins.Given the somewhat bright acidity here, this wine really doesn’t work well on its own. Add a steak, though, and I think you’re in the right place in terms of doing what the winemakers presumably were hoping you’d do. This is fairly decent cabernet, not really international style (the sourness! the moderate alcohol!) and also definitely not Bordeaux (no minerality! no greenness!), so I suppose it really is uniquely Penfolds. Not bad, and yet somehow lacking (at least to me). Would I buy it again? Yeah, probably. Would I wait so long to drink it? No – something appears to have gone missing along the way. I’m not getting particularly interesting aged characteristics here, and I’m thinking this might’ve been more interesting five years ago.Penfolds
Price: $18
Closure: Cork

Wynns Coonawarra Estate Alex 88 Cabernet Sauvignon 2006

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Wynns’ series of single vineyard bottlings over recent vintages prompts, amongst other things, the question: why? The back label suggests each bottling represents an outstanding parcel of fruit from a particular vineyard in a particular year, which is fine; but what, exactly, does “outstanding” mean in this context? Of the two I’ve tasted (the Johnson’s Block and this one), both seem within the same order of magnitude of quality as the Black Label, yet slightly outside the mainstream of regional style set by that same wine. Perhaps a distinctive character, not ostentatious quality, is the point here. I can dig that.

This was really disjointed for the first while but is coming together nicely. Used coffee grounds, ripe red fruit, polished sideboards full of old cutlery, and a few pine needles too. I wouldn’t describe the aroma as elegant, which is a shame to me as Coonawarra Cabernet can be terribly stylish, but it’s also flagrantly, sexily aromatic. The culprit, it seems, is fruit that errs on the side of very ripe, and oak that bludgeons in its custard, cedar profile. I’m being picky, though.

The palate is plush and generous, such that the wine drinks well now. Somehow, it seems more varietal than the nose, especially in its herbaceous overtones. As with the nose, the fruit here is sweet and red, and slightly stewed. There’s a nice linearity to the flow, with a consistent level of fruit intensity and density from early on through to the finish. Some interesting complexities of flavour, especially on the after palate where something akin to aniseed seems to poke its head out, along with a bit of menthol. Tannins are silty, globby masses of texture, kind of like wading out onto a mud flat with bare feet.

It’s not really my style of Cabernet, but I think it should win quite a few friends nonetheless.

Wynns Coonawarra Estate
Price: $A35
Closure: Stelvin

Wayne Gretzky Estates Meritage 2006

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At the fairly ritzy SAQ Sélection on boul. De Maisonneuve Ouest Saturday afternoon, I put the bottle of Osoyoos-Larose I’d gone there to buy in my card… and then I noticed a pitiful clump of neglected bottles nearby. What? One of Canada’s best known sportsmen had produced a wine? What the hell? The capsules were dinged up, the back labels all had French language labels hastily applied, peeling already, with typefaces that didn’t match anything; underneath were labels that appeared to have been designed for US export. The URL on the back didn’t work (it’s outdated), there were still more slapped-on labels talking about a charitable foundation… ugh, what a mess.Of course, I immediately put back the prized bottle of Osoyoos-Larose and bought this wine instead. After all, Wayne Gretzky, eh?So: how is it? Fairly ordinary looking in the glass, the nose offers up simple, attractive, cherry-berry flavors with just a hint of oak and/or glue; I’m not sure which. In the mouth, you get a somewhat thin, somewhat fake wine with body that seems largely derived from alcohol with maybe a little bit of residual sugar, not extract; there really isn’t much by the way of flavor here, but at least what little you get isn’t bad, especially not compared to the Jackson-Triggs merlot from last week. With some aeration, it improves a bit to the point where voilá, you’ve got a decent pizza wine: little red fruits, some smoky oak, decent acidity, and a good enough finish. Not too shabby! Overpriced by Californian standards, it didn’t seem that expensive in a Canadian context. I’d be interested to see how their current wines are faring; there could be some potential here for a exceptional sub-$20 wine in the future.No. 99 Estates Winery
Price: C$17.99 (US $17)
Closure: Synthetic cork

Jackson-Triggs Proprietors' Reserve Merlot 2005

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It’s Friday night here in Québec, and I just got back from the long walk to the local state-owned liquor store. I asked (in bad French) where the red Canadian wines were, and the clerk switched to English, joking that they didn’t have many owing to the “border skirmishes” between here and Ontario. Sorry, folks, but it was either this wine or the Dan Aykroyd, so I went with what they had.If there’s a nose to this wine, I’m sorry, but it’s escaping me at the moment. Although it’s a lush reddish color with just a hint of browning (presumably due to the somewhat iffy plastic cork), it doesn’t smell of much more than somewhat dusty (ready: oak-chip-y) red fruits with a whiff of something not quite right like nail varnish. It’s not exactly appetizing, alas.Rich, full-bodied, and nicely tannic in the mouth, the primary flavor is something that I don’t associate with Merlot, and I’m not sure exactly how to describe it. There seems to be an unwelcome greenness or stalkiness here, which suggests to me that this wine has been chaptalized; there’s plenty of alcohol here (beaucoup de jambes, mes amis), but the flavor profile doesn’t match. It reminds me of frozen Supreme Pizza, the kind with a lot of green pepper on it and industrial pepperoni that tastes of little more than pepper. In short, folks, this wine is kind of nasty. Unfortunately, it’s all I have until I can get into Montréal proper tomorrow (I’m out by the airport in a generic business hotel at this point), so it’ll just have to make do. In the meantime, let’s hope that room service gets here quickly.Jackson-Triggs
Price: C$16.35
Closure: Synthetic cork

Moxie Sparkling Shiraz NV

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mox.pngSome wines work a treat over a long, Summery lunch.  Others make a roast beef taste twice as good as it normally would (especially if consumed before dinner). In my constant quest to categorise wine according to its most suited purpose, this shall hereafter be known as “the wine that goes great with Dominos pizza on a night where you decide to chuck all the hard work you did last week in the gym because it’s rainy out and you just can’t be rooted walking on a treadmill for an hour.” Admittedly, a niche category, but one I suspect some of our valued readers can identify with.

Indeed, it can be hard to find a good pizza wine, and I don’t mean a good gourmet crocodile and chermoula pizza wine, but a good pepperoni, or a good ham and pineapple, pizza wine. When confronted with such nourishment, most options seem either to lack robustness (causing one to feel a sense of loss with every barely discerned sip), or are of an excessively Italianate manner (compelling a sense of approval, if not satisfaction). This sparking Shiraz from Langhorne Creek, though, seems to hit precisely the right note. 
Aromas of cured meat, spice, garlic, tomato and yeast; yes, a delicious slice of pizza indeed, after which smelling this wine is like inhaling a barrel full of crushed blackberries. It’s somewhat one-dimensional but, more importantly, cuts through heady flavours of pepperoni and crust with a thrust and parry of juicy black fruit and high toned vanilla. It’s pure fun, quite vulgar and, somehow, exactly what one wants to smell after a mouthful of savouriness. 
Being a sparkling wine, the mouthfeel is tingly and refreshing almost by default; again, a desirable trait when coupled with a potentially greasy, overpowering food like cheap pizza. As it is, any trace of oiliness is whisked away with each sip, leaving behind echos of sandalwood oak and your current waistline. It’s not a sweet wine, but neither is it excessively dry, so the fruit has fullness without becoming cloying or heavy with time in glass. As with several other Dowie Doole wines I’ve tasted, this seems designed for pleasurable drinking rather than contemplation; a worthy goal indeed.
The label design, which I feel compelled to reproduce here, suggests nightclubs, fast times and thoughtless consumption. To me, though, here’s a wine that makes fast food a bit special on a Monday night. 

Dowie Doole
Price: $22.50
Closure: Diam

De Bortoli Gulf Station Pinot Noir 2008

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I feel truly ungrateful. A few days ago, this bottle was purchased for the very reasonable sum of $A16.15 at my local Dan Murphy. In the scheme of things, that’s not a lot to pay for a bottle of wine, let alone a bottle of Australian Pinot, a sub-species that, until recently, was difficult to obtain for under $A25 or so. And, to jump to the end, this is a very sound wine, tasty and clean, with confidently expressed varietal character. Hence a niggling sense of ungratefulness as I reflect that, as good as this is, there are others in its price range that may be even better. Truly, we are spoiled.

Give this a bit of time in the glass, and firm aromas of spice, plum and a little beetroot, plus some stalkiness perhaps, start wafting aloft. It’s totally varietal and quite elegant, holding back an overt sense of fruitiness in order to express more subtle pleasures. There’s a point to be made here about the chosen style and price point, and one shouldn’t underestimate De Bortoli’s obvious conviction to produce a stylish wine at a price point where many consumers might expect obvious delights. 
In the mouth, a textural pleasure with much more tannin than expected and fairly bright acidity too. Structurally, this means business. Flavour takes a little while to build on the tongue, and seems held in check for now by that rather imposing tannin/acid framework. Nonetheless, there’s a clear sense of ripe, plummy fruit on the middle palate, along with more stalk-like influence and a bit of sweetly spiced oak. Medium bodied, the whole seems poised and balanced. If I’ve a criticism, it relates to a lack of intensity that, for me, needs to be at the next level to match the ambitions expressed elsewhere on the palate. A nice, sweetly fruited after palate and quite a long finish to boot. 
If given the choice, I would drink a Hoddles Creek wine in preference to this, the latter being of the same region and variety, and only a couple of bucks extra. By comparison, this wine feels slightly calculated, perhaps too much of a sweet talker. But, frankly, I’d never turn it down if I were offered a glass, because it just tastes so good.

De Bortoli
Price: $A16.15
Closure: Stelvin

Luca Syrah Laborde Double Select 2006

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There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for anyone to be using a bottle this heavy: to do so is just rude. It makes it harder to hold and pour, more expensive to ship, and of course there’s the whole doing right by Mother Earth thing to consider. Worst of all, buying this wine will make you feel like a total prat. After all, what idiot wants to be seen buying the biggest, heaviest, most ostentatious bottle in the shop? Please.On to the wine. Shortly after opening the bottle, I noticed that I had a huge sticky smear of something all over my left hand (I’m a southpaw). Yuck. I retrieved the cork from the garbage and sure enough, there’s a bunch of sticky, gooey mass at the end of the cork and smeared up the side of it. I haven’t had the pleasure of this experience before; I trust the wine is OK and that this is just an one-off, a production oddity.The nose is curiously slight: if Vosges made a chocolate bar called “Gentlemen’s Dark Chocolate with Cedar,” then this is what it would smell like. Oak oak oak and oak… and yet, there’s a pleasant, fleeting floral sourness hiding in there somewhere too. Still, I don’t get a real sense of place, just a sense of cash flow: this wine smells like money.Amazingly purple-y youthful, the wine looks ravishing. Tasting it, though, leaves me a bit less a-flutter: it seems just a bit insubstantial in the mouth at first, quickly hiding behind massive woody tannin and finishing on a slightly sweet note, again managing to taste more expensive than anything else.In short, this is a wine for a hedge fund manager with a penchant for bling. This wine would be absolutely perfect with a steak dinner at the finest steakhouse in town: I’m thinking El Gaucho in Seattle would sell cases of this to Microsoft marketeers dining prospective clients in town to visit the Executive Briefing Center. Drinking it on its own is a bit of a chore, rather like gargling with lavender water and sawdust, but add a fine cut of meat and even a cigar and now you’re talking serious money.Luca
Price: $20
Closure: Cork

Dowie Doole Cabernet Sauvignon 2007

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The third of three current release Dowie Doole reds tasted (also tasted: 2007 Shiraz and 2008 Merlot). This is the most interesting for me personally, as I strongly prefer cooler climate expressions of Cabernet. Yet, ironically, this is perhaps my favourite of the three; it’s strongly regional and quite delicious. 

A very expressive nose of ripe red plums, light cocoa and tea leaves, along with a bit of spicy oak. It’s one of those wines you can smell from across the room, and its character becomes more interesting and subtle as you approach, rather than simply becoming louder. The aroma profile is a bit blunt perhaps, lacking in elegance and shape. But it’s hard to argue with something that smells this good.
On the palate, lots of everything: fruit, oak, texture. It’s not a heavy wine, just generous, with good flow through the mouth. Flavours are of more ripe plums (perhaps slightly stewed), spicy vanilla oak and some chocolate, though less than on the nose. There’s herbaciousness too, though unlike the dusty leaf of a cooler climate wine, this expresses as sun-scorched, once-luxurious foliage. An especially tasty, sour finish of plum skins and sweet tannin. 
I was going to say that you have to like the style, but I don’t especially, yet I still find this quite convincing. Just drink it.

Dowie Doole
Price: $A21
Closure: Stelvin

Clonakilla Hilltops Shiraz 2002

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Six months too late to call it spring cleaning, I found three bottles of this hidden in the bedroom closet last weekend. Oops. Talk about suboptimal cellaring conditions: nearly 80 degrees in there all summer long. I decanted it, set the decanter in an ice bath to cool it off a bit, and waited an hour before drinking: I hope that mitigated any damage I did as best I could.There’s a visual texture to the wine that’s unusual: there’s a blackly rich core of fruit in the glass, thinning out to a less intimidating rim at the edge of the glass. Better yet, there’s a suggestion of particulate matter, with bits stuck to the sides of the glass; presumably, more of the same in the wine itself lends it all an impression of body and richness. I have no idea why, but the older I get, the happier I am when my wines have a certain look of, well, relation to the world of the natural. I don’t like wines filtered to a glossy smoothness; I want to be reminded that they were grown in dirt and raised in wood.At first, the nose is off-putting, smelling sweet, strangely sweet, the sweetness of blackcurrant jam. It’s only temporary, though: wait half an hour at least and its true nature will out. There seems to be an overall level of Brett here that teeters between “ugh, no thanks” and “OK, I can deal with this”; harsh patent medicines duel with roasted smoky notes, and no one comes out on top. Ultimately, the off notes mostly win out, which is a disappointment in the extreme; the quick flashes of roast coffee and bacon fat are there all too briefly before being one-upped by slightly metallic aromas of the medicine cabinet.Still, there’s enough interest here to make me want to finish (just) a (single) glass before tossing the rest of the bottle and waiting another year or two to try one of the six bottles remaining. The texture is beautiful, a rich, solid mass that glides forward on lovely, smooth tannins into a long, silky finish that most wines would kill for. Ultimately, though, the strange qualities of the wine carry the day, and you’re left wondering what happened – I remember this wine being profoundly beautiful five years ago, but I’m just not feeling the love right now. Sadly, the warm cellaring spot probably didn’t help matters. Oh well. Clonakilla
Price: $20
Closure: Cork

Dowie Doole Shiraz 2007

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I’ve tasted all three current release Dowie Doole reds in the “standard” range, though this is only the second note I’ve posted (Cabernet to come soon). There’s a definite family resemblance at work in the way the fruit is expressed in these wines that makes this trio of labels variations on a theme. Though they show different flavour profiles, they are all primary, fresh wines of attractive vibrancy.

If anything, this Shiraz is a better drink now proposition than the Merlot. There’s an immediate burst of fruit on the nose, along with some spice, vanilla coffee and something darker and more savoury (a bit like licorice or some other tangy delight). It shows easy balance between each element; this is very natural-smelling, apparently free of strain or artifice. Over time, the aroma grows more expressive and even spicier.
In the mouth, I found the fruit flavours too simple at first (verging on confectionary), until the wine had spent half an hour in the glass. After this short rest, a more nuanced range of flavours emerged, without sacrificing a core of playful red and black berries. On entry, a good tingle of acidity that carries chocolate and berries through to the middle palate. This wine fills the mouth with ease so that, although it is only medium bodied, its drinks in some respects like a wine of larger dimensions. A good burst of clean fruit and spice on the middle palate. Though I suspect oak contributes significantly to the overall flavour profile, the fruit is always discernible in the mix. An easy after palate and soft, lightly drying finish round things off. 
Personally, I marginally prefer the Merlot to this wine, as it shows a bit more sophistication and bit less confectionary fruit. But you can’t go wrong with either as a tasty quaffer. This is a satisfying, delicious wine.

Dowie Doole
Price: $A21
Closure: Stelvin