Category Archives: Red

Kent Rasmussen Sousão

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There’s a curious class of wines that just smell grapey – not particularly like wine. At first, this wine seems like one of those; it’s a rich, fruity smell that smells just fine, if not particularly sophisticated. The nose is odd: there’s something vaguely volatile there, not bad though, and just a whiff of something unripe, almost like a New Zealand merlot with that faint hint of capsicum (green bell pepper). It’s weirdly like unripe tropical fruit of some kind – I’m thinking green papaya salad. Don’t misunderstand: it’s not “wrong” or “bad” – it’s just really different.Hugely tannic and wildly acidic, my first thought after having a sip was “bad idea.” It’s fairly hot, not particularly flavorful, and taste something like burned coffee grounds mixed with overripe papaya. The trick seems to be to not take such a big sip; with less in the mouth, it’s somewhat more palatable – but even so, I am decidedly not a fan of this wine, alas. Sure, there’s some pleasure in trying to suss out what components of Port derive from this, but otherwise? There’s probably a reason you don’t see varietal wines from this grape.Kent Rasmussen
Price: $20
Closure: Cork

Bonny Doon Le Cigare Volant 2005

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The best thing about being an unpaid blogger is that sometimes you don’t have to review the wine – you just have to drink it – and that’s what I’m about to do: put down the laptop and enjoy this bottle of wine.This is the best Cigare I’ve had yet. Rich, smooth, and yet not strictly Californian, it’s got minerality, a savory tannic edge, and is just damn good.Back to the bottle. I promise to write a real tasting note next time.Bonny Doon Vineyard
Price: $30
Closure: Stelvin

McWilliam's Barwang Cabernet Sauvignon 2001

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I picked this up for a song at a local bottlo in the Lockyer Valley. Not terribly promising provenance, to be sure. But it’s drinking really well right now, so I guess this particular bottle hasn’t had too hard a life.

Calm, poised aromas of ripe foliage squished between the pages of old leather-bound books, cedar, vanilla custard, clean blackcurrant juice. A little volatile. It’s ageing especially well in terms of aroma profile, I think, although you’d need to be partial to a fairly high degree of oak influence to fully enjoy it.

Mount Difficulty Pinot Noir 2005

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There’s not much to do in Te Anau, New Zealand, on the night of your very quiet wedding except hunt down a nice restaurant and order the flashest-looking bottle on the list. So it was that I ended up drinking this very wine a couple of years ago. I’ve since tried it a couple of times (most recently in New Zealand with Chris) and it continues to provide enjoyment. Wine’s funny like that; it can be as much about the circumstance as anything else, and often I give in to this subjectivity.

What pleasure in familiarity! It’s like Central Otago in a glass, sweet/sour plum, vanilla oak and ripe tomato leaf enthusiastically leaping from the glass. There’s a bit of peat-like funk that I don’t remember in this wine, and I put it down to the very beginnings of bottle age. The palate is where things are developing more noticeably. Firstly, texture. Mount Difficulty Pinot tends to be quite roughly acidic in youth, and although there’s still abundant acid, it has transformed from sandpaper to plush velvet. Hence, the wine feels full and weighty in the mouth, fruit flavour gorgeously unlocked. Not one for lovers of delicate Pinot, this wine is a full throttle expression of Central Otago fruit, generous and savoury, with ripe vegetal complexities and a cough syrup-like note. After a swell on the middle palate, there’s only marginally less presence on the after palate, and the finish is of good length. Is the finish a bit hot? Or is the oak a tad raw? Perhaps, but I’m not fussed, it’s just so tasty.
It’s a shame I don’t have more of this, as I think it has a good few years’ life left. I’d like to taste it again in perhaps two or three years’ time, as I suspect it will be truly luxurious at that point.

Mount Difficulty
Price: $A50
Closure: Stelvin

Yalumba The Menzies 1999

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I opened this bottle a week ago tonight – and immediately though “ugh, something is seriously wrong with this bottle.” I recorked it, put it in the fridge, and forgot about it until Thursday, at which point I took it back out of the fridge, stashed it behind the toaster, and forgot about it again. Tonight, seven days later, I finally thought “well, I should brave another taste before throwing it out.”  Good thing I did.I don’t know what changed in a week or why the chill-and-warm cycle should have helped, but this wine finally tastes good. There’s still just a flash of that strange, off-putting note on the nose, but at this point I can at least pretend it’s some kind of Australian mintiness, something particularly Coonawarra here. Underneath that is a rich, woody sort of reek peeking its nose around the corner; it’s simultaneously surprisingly youthful, but with flashes of unsuspected age here and there.Texturally, this wine is absolutely perfect to me: full bodied, nicely supported by lingeringly grippy tannins, ending on a very solid woody note that lingers for a while. The overall effect is of very earthy cigar box and pencil shavings: not much rich primary fruit left but all of the body has been left behind to duke it out with well judged oak.Given that it’s been beat up so much over a week and still drinks so nicely, I think the best thing to do would have been to decant this thing at least an hour before drinking. Sadly, this was my last bottle so I won’t get a chance to do so, but trust me: this wine ain’t dead yet.Yalumba
Price: $30
Closure: Cork

Le Rocche del Falletto di Serralunga d' Alba Barolo 1999

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This bottle is a celebration: Mark and John, old friends of mine, signed a lease for an apartment in San Diego this afternoon, which means they’ll be leaving their home in Omaha in two weeks and moving in down the block from us. Fans of Italian wines that they are, they gave us this bottle many years ago – and now it’s time to share it back and celebrate their impending move.

First of all, I have no idea if I’ve titled this entry correctly. I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to Italian wines, so I don’t know if I should simply say “Falletto Barolo” and leave it at that – or write out everything that’s on the label that doesn’t seem like a legal term. (Google tells me that “Giacosa Barolo Falletto” might be accurate as well.) I’m even so clueless that I had to ask Mark to remind me what grape is used in a Barolo. (Thanks, Mark!)

Anyhow: on to the wine. There was a bloom of fragrance released into the room immediately upon removing the cork (which, of course, was an ultralong, very healthy looking one). In the glass, it’s obviously an older wine at this point, smelling something like Hansen’s organic cola, albeit with notes of molasses, dark chocolate, and dried herbs. There’s also something subtly citrus – it reminds me (almost) of dried orange peel and thyme.

Tannins don’t appear to be fully resolved yet, which is surprising at first, but oh, what a lovely texture this wine has – it’s medium-bodied, smooth, almost slippery, but with a definite undercurrent of heavyweight tannin. The overall effect is very surprising to me: this doesn’t even remotely remind me of anything I’ve encountered before, which is probably not surprising given my limited exposure to Italian wines at all. There’s sort of a dried-cherry note here, but on the whole the fruit flavors, such as they are, are decidedly backgrounded in favor of other things, none of which I feel well equipped to describe. The overall effect is somewhat disorienting: it’s more reminiscent of a Hungarian herbal liqueur than what I know as “wine.” To be honest, the intense texturality of it throws me as well: it’s impossible to drink this wine and note be acutely aware of the tannins present, which suggests to me that it might be better to wait another ten years before having a whack at it.

Meanwhile, Mark’s just reheated some Chicago style pizza from Lefty’s, which might work extremely well with this; the tannins really seem to be demanding some kind of meat to counterbalance them. “Yum,” Mark just said, and I think the look on his face sums it up perfectly. According to Mark, the tannins really complement the meat on the pizza, and the combination is what makes this wine work so well for him.

Sadly, I overindulged at dinner earlier on, so I can’t really manage trying some with the pizza, but I’m finding the style more and more interesting the longer I spend with it. The finish certainly does stick around for a couple of minutes, and it reminds me, oddly enough, of something like a wassail bowl: citrus notes hovering around the edge of something sweetly dark.

If anything, this wine seems to be utterly itself, which is a rare enough thing. I fear I’m not well situated to say much more about it, though, given that I’m not knowledgeable about or experienced with Italian wines – and I’m also far to used to drinking wines on their own (rather than with food) to fully appreciate the style, as it really isn’t at all designed to be drunk on its own. Ultimately, though, the true mark of friendship is sharing things that you enjoy with your mates even if they’re not quite up to the task of appreciating it, and for that I am deeply, deeply grateful.

Welcome to San Diego, Mark and John!

Falletto
Price: $NA
Closure: Cork

Clonakilla Hilltops Shiraz 2005

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At the risk of turning Full Pour into the Clonakilla Wine Appreciation Society, I cracked open a bottle of the 2005 Hilltops Shiraz this evening. On its release, I remember liking this wine a great deal, more so than the subsequent vintage at least, and finding it especially dense and serious. So, it’s with particular relish that I am checking in on its progress.

It’s certainly moved on since release. Not that it’s looking tired at all; this wine has just relaxed enough to allow its fruit fuller expression. The nose is a dense rush of violetty, dark berry fruit mixed with some savoury, meaty edges. There’s perhaps a hint of stalk too, though it’s certainly in the background. This label usually strikes me as displaying what I characterise as purple fruit. To elaborate, in my mind it’s a cross between frozen berry desserts and Hubba Bubba Original Flavour; in other words, a little sweet but mostly intense and delicious. Here, now, the fruit is moving freely, structure having relaxed enough to let berry juice flow into the mouth. It maintains poise and an element of restraint, though. There are cough medicine complexities too, quite high toned and aromatic, plus some lovely cumquat-like citrus. Vanilla oak provides a soft and cuddly backdrop. The palate is notably voluminous from entry to finish, with nary a dip in intensity. A very long finish.

A generous, truly delicious wine. For my taste, I’d like to see some more bottle age show itself here, as I feel some decay and additional flow will add extra beauty to this wine’s flavour profile. This label really tends to blossom after about five years; I’ll try another in two to three years.

Clonakilla
Price: $25
Closure: Stelvin

Rosemount Show Reserve Coonawarra Cabernet 2002

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Smelling somewhat like children’s strawberry-flavored breakfast cereal at first, the wine doesn’t seem to change much over time: the nose is attractive if simple, not identifiably Coonawarra, and doesn’t display much in the way of overt oakiness or aged notes.

In the mouth, though, the oak suddenly reveals itself rudely, taking over the texture of the wine and adding an only moderately pleasant charry note to the midpoint of the wine. The finish is fairly long, but again fairly straightforward: a bunch of toasty oak riding roughshod over some fruit that frankly isn’t quite up to the task here.

Is this wine any good? That’s hard to say. I wouldn’t say it’s bad exactly, but it seems like an otherwise decent red wine – competent if somewhat lacking in actual Coonawarra flavor – was lost in the process of making it “reserve” by oaking it to death. I’m not a fan of this style unless the fruit’s as huge as the wood, and in this case it just doesn’t measure up.

Rosemount
Price: $15
Closure: Cork

Clonakilla Cabernet Merlot 2001

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It probably won’t come as a relevation that Chris and I are fans of Clonakilla’s wines. I remember once visiting the cellar door and having a chat with Tim Kirk about this Cabernet blend, and was surprised to hear him express reservations. I suppose the Canberra District calls to mind Shiraz and, to a lesser extent, Riesling, with Cabernet-based wines tending to fall into the same “why would you” territory as Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Still, I’m always on the lookout for glorious exceptions, and I’ve usually enjoyed this label a great deal.

High quality cork. Beautiful, heady aroma of violets, blackcurrant fruit, cedar and some underlying decay. It’s quite a thick, enveloping aroma profile, though it retains some of the angular elegance I associate with Cabernet Sauvignon. I love smelling this wine, and for my taste it is showing enough bottle age to add significant complexity without challenging those who have a distaste for old red wine.

Really good continuity from nose to palate. There are a few striking aspects to this wine as it currently stands. Firstly, the flavour profile echoes the aroma’s complexity and balance of aged versus primary notes. It reminds me a little of aged Hunter red wines, with some light earthiness alongside more classically Cabernet flavours. Secondly, mouthfeel is soft and gently textural, and for a moment hides the degree to which flavours adhere to the tongue. There’s a really interesting interplay between luxurious flavours and structure, which moves from slippery to textured to almost crunchy on the after palate. Here it becomes evident there’s still considerable acidity keeping the wine fresh, and I imagine guaranteeing it a few more productive years in bottle.

Cabernet may not contribute to the Canberra District’s renown, but here’s a wine that, eight years after vintage, is still continuing to improve. Not bad. A beautiful wine.

Clonakilla
Price: $35
Closure: Cork