Tag Archives: Barossa Valley

Yalumba Hand Picked Barossa Shiraz + Viognier 2002

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How often do professional wine writers smell something and think to themselves “Oh dear God, it’s yet another Barossa shiraz with some age to it” and quietly frown, wondering how they’re going to say something exciting and original about yet another wine of hundreds that are superficially the same? Fairly often, I’d guess.

This is yet another Barossa shiraz with some age to it: an initial burst of jammy fruit tempered by marked bottle age notes at the finish of a good sniff. It’s fresh black cherries with cola nut and just a hint of horehound.

The initial attack of rich, sweet Barossa fruit is quickly swept aside in favor of a somewhat tannic, then revoltingly medicinal (honest: this tastes like American cough syrup does, and I’m not a fan) note that disappears quietly into an unremarkable finish. With aeration and patience, this does prove itself to be a well made wine but ugh: that flavor is so strongly reminiscent of childhood medications I took to relieve the itch associated with chicken pox that I really do need to go find something else to drink.

Recommended only if you didn’t grow up in the USA.

Yalumba
Price: $30
Closure: Cork

Teusner Joshua 2007

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Grenache, Mataro and Shiraz but no oak. This Barossa wine is made from old vine fruit in a fresh, approachable style. Tradition meets fast food, you might say, but in a good way.

Penetrating nose that, initially, is all about sweet red fruit, but that quickly gains complexity and savouriness. It ends up being a fresh, somewhat sharp amalgam of fruit, spice and something akin to fennel. Slightly feral or meaty, too. There’s an impression of good detail as well as some fruit depth to back up what is quite a bright aroma profile.

In the mouth, lots of flavour quickly delivered to the taste buds. The entry shows quite bright, almost aggressive acidity that builds as the wine moves through the palate. Although there are fairly relaxed tannins down the line, structurally this wine revolves around its acid. It provides sizzle and good flow, but also balances out the wine’s considerable fruit sweetness to the extent that one’s overall impression is of a savoury flavour profile. Crunchy red fruits, herb and aniseed all vye for attention here. It’s almost medicinal in a Dr Pepper sort of way, and some hints of dried fruits also emerge. A nice crescendo of intensity that peaks at the middle palate. If there’s a fairly sudden drop-off on the after palate, that’s ok, because all that acidity and bright fruit verges on abrasive, especially without food. It continues in this more subdued, plummy key and delivers a pretty decent finish, with perhaps the slightest glow of alcohol heat.

A good food style that’s certainly a lively drink. Try it with pasta or a robustly flavoured meat dish. Wines like this often strike me as “picnic” wines in that I can well imagine drinking it in accompaniment to bread, cheese and charcuterie.

Teusner
Price: $A24.70
Closure: Cork
Date tasted: October 2008

Glaetzer Wallace Shiraz Grenache 2006

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Barossa Valley reds aren’t terribly well represented in my cellar (or, by extension, in my posts to this blog), about which I feel vaguely irresponsible. It’s one of our classic red wine regions, after all, and the fact that I don’t often feel like drinking its wines probably says more about my lack of discernment than anything else. No matter — tonight I’m cooking a spicy pasta dish, and a fruit-driven red wine will be (I hope) just the ticket. Hence this Shiraz/Grenache blend.

Before I describe the wine, I must say a word in favour of the packaging, which is distinctive and classy. A nice alternative to retro/euro labels without descending into tackiness. An intense, pungent nose of baked clay/earth and spice. It smells like a hot Summer’s day, and I’d like to think the fruit experienced a fair few along its journey towards this bottle. There’s also a slightly volatile vanilla note and, of course, a whack of jammy red fruit. Somewhat complex, commendably regional and expressive of real personality.

Good line from nose to mouth, with a clean, immediate continuation of the aroma’s baked earth and fruit notes. The wine is lighter in body than I expected, and more acidic, all of which subverts an abortive expectation of this as a lazy fruit bomb. Not at all. Flavour is certainly generous, but there’s too much spice, earth and structure to allow complete relaxation in the mouth. It’s lively and bright, with acid and loose-knit tannins creating an almost crunchy mouthfeel. There is more red fruit and vanilla here, along with nut/bark-like spice notes. I wish there were a notch more intensity at the mid-palate. Good drive through the lifted after palate, with nary a dip or dodge along the way to a decent finish.

Good balance, complexity and distinctiveness, but little of the depth and three dimensionality of better wines. I admire such a strong sense of style in a wine at this price point, even if this means the wine will be necessarily (and happily) divisive. Lovers of Barossa reds needn’t hesitate.

Glaetzer
Price: $A22
Closure: Stelvin
Date tasted: October 2008

Peter Lehmann Barossa Riesling 2008

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Riesling has provided me and many other wine lovers with a fabulous hunting ground for labels that vastly outperform their price points. Consider: the pinnacles of Australian Riesling; singular styles recognised internationally; routinely sell for $20-40. Even Hunter Semillon costs more at the top end. Here, though, is a $9.50 Riesling from the Barossa Valley, a region not renowned for the variety. On the plus side, Peter Lehmann is a winery that has a history of solid, well-priced wines.

A forward nose of candied pineapple and other tropical fruits, plus a bit of spice. I’m not getting the “crisp citrus and floral” notes referred to on the back label. Instead, this seems a broader Riesling style. In the mouth, some initially welcome acidity fades as lemon and candied fruit notes take over. These flavours are assertive but lack intensity at the same time. I suspect a level of residual sugar contributes to this flavour profile, though there’s nothing overtly sugary about the wine. A dip in intensity through the after palate precedes some bitterness on the rather chalky finish.

Peter Lehmann Chenin Blanc 2007

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Barossa Chenin Blanc. I’m guessing it won’t bump Pinot Gris from fashionably derivative restaurant wine lists any time soon. However, Chenin Blanc interests me as a variety because, as lovely as it can be in the Loire Valley, it seems to leave its personality at home when it travels. And yet, the loveliness of a nice Vouvray keeps me hoping for greater things in our local wines. At under $10, at least this wine makes it inexpensive to test the waters.

Served cold, this wine smells of prickly lemon, green apple, a hint of honey and a slightly waxy note that adds some softness to the aroma profile. Closer to room temperature, the aroma stays remarkably static, gaining in richness but not losing its fundamentally bright, aromatic character. There’s nothing especially wrong with the way this wine smells, but it’s also a bit bland, the way an IKEA bookshelf is bland. You know it will do the job, but you can’t really love it.
The palate seems more strongly influenced by temperature. Initially, this wine displays a tight, almost overwhelmingly lemon-like palate, bright and refreshing in its sharpness and acidity. Mouthfeel is nicely textured, with a blanket of well-judged acidity providing a nice sense of freshness, if not a terribly sophisticated structure. At first, I thought I detected a hint of oxidative flavours, but this seemed to fade through the evening. As it warms, the wine shows notes of honey and round, slightly sweet fruit, all of which provides enjoyment on the mid-palate. Perhaps a hint of minerality too. There’s certainly a good deal of flavour. Acidity carries the wine cleanly through the after palate, where the flavour profile reverts to citrus-driven astringency, clean and satisfactorily long.
A fuller, yet still refreshing Summer white to serve with lunch. I’m not seeing the depth and complexity of a top Chenin Blanc, but on its own terms I think this wine succeeds well, and manages to present a degree of character one might not expect at this price point. It is interesting to note the label encourages bottle age. Excellent value.
Price: $A9.40
Closure: Stelvin
Date tasted: August 2008

Rockford "Basket Press" Shiraz 2001

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My partner had one sniff of this and said “Is this Port?” I had one sniff of that and said “Is that that crushed ants thing I’ve heard people talk about?” In short, this doesn’t smell at all like most red wines: there’s something different. There’s almost a varnish characteristic there as well; not unpleasant, but definitely not “correct” (if Yellow Tail ever shipped with that smell, they’d lose market share overnight).The color is a lovely cloudy ruby, not as dark as you see in Barossa Valley shiraz; it’s more reminiscent of Gallo Hearty Burgundy or canned sangria than anything. I’m not saying that pejoratively, by the way – it really is about that same soft, red velvet cupcake shade of red, and it’s beautiful.In the mouth, this is a medium to heavy bodied wine with a surprising line: at first, grilled toast, red berries, spice; then, it quickly moves on to a mid-palate sensation I can’t describe quite yet, and then it fans out into a soft, gentle, seemingly tannin-free finish that’s all black cherries. All the while there’s that same off note that presents itself on the nose, but I honestly don’t mind it; it makes it different than other wines, and I’m fine with that. There’s also good supporting acidity here, so even if the tannin seems to have gone missing somewhere between San Diego and South Australia, I don’t mind a bit.All in all, this is a rare treat for me. When my parents retired in 1998, they joined the Peace Corps and found themselves stationed in Moldova, a small Eastern European nation that used to be the great wine producing center of the USSR. Given the lack of any kind of modern technology there, most of their wines had similar characteristics to this one. Me, I find this styles to be utterly compelling and a welcome break from the everything’s fine school of winemakingthat’s the norm.If most wines are CDs, this one is vinyl.RockfordPrice: US $22 (tenth)Closure: Technical cork (!)Date tasted: April 2008

Bitch 2005

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Immediately after pouring this in my glass, I thought that this wine smelled like just-fermented grape juice that someone had bunged in the bottle quickly and then shipped over to California. After a few minutes, though, it settled down into something a bit more recognizable as Barossa grenache: dusty, high alcohol dried cherries with a hint of spiciness. What’s really appealing here, though, is a distinct sourness that you don’t often find in wines at this price point or in this style; for every sickly sweet, tiring super-alocholized grenache out there, this wine makes a good counterpoint. Although it’s still huge, alcoholically speaking (15%), the sourness makes it all work. The overall rawness of the wine – even after fifteen minutes, it still tastes freshly made, somehow – is actually kind of fun and would make this a great match for tacos al pastor.Sure, there’s really not much here in the way of tannins, or structure, or complex aromas… but c’mon, the label is kind of awesome, it’s amazingly cheap, and it tastes pretty damn good.R WineryPrice: US $7.99Closure: StelvinDate tasted: March 2008

Gnadenfrei Estate "The Waldemar" 1999

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I began by peeling wax off in tiny flakes, trying to get to the cork, before I remembered that I probably should’ve just attacked with the corkscrew, which worked a treat. The bottle signed a quick whiff of nail polish remover, which dissipated quickly; the cork seemed in relatively good shape for an oldish bottle like this, still intact (albeit well stained).The color of the wine is definitely old: decrepit, even, a mouldering shade of dark rust brown, not particularly appealing (but then again I’m American, right, so I’m never supposed to drink wine that’s any older than a year or two, right?). The nose is, well, old. Really old. It smells like smoked meat (think Montréal) with a side order of truffles and old shoe leather. Overall, it kind of seems like a one-note wonder at this point, and I’m wondering if I was a fool to buy this (more on why later on). In the mouth, it’s surprisingly full-bodied for such an old wine, but the taste is not particularly attractive, tasting of not much more than “old wine” with no complexity. The finish is a bit better, though, with fairly fresh red fruits, a bit of sourness, and a fairly long finish of tobacco leaves with a sweetish edge to it.To be absolutely honest, I’m not sure how to feel about this wine. Is this normal? Is this the kind of thing the English drink and enjoy? I think I’m going to set this aside for a few hours and come back to it later on to see if it’s become something that I innately enjoy; as it is now, it seems more an intellectual exercise than something I’m going to drink with my supper.Gnadenfrei EstatePrice: US $19.95Closure: CorkDate tasted: February 2008—I first heard of Gnadenfrei back in 2001, when the local bottle shop (K&L Wines) carried this exact wine. At the time, I was working for Netscape Communications Corp., and I had a coworker by the name of Waldemar, so I always thought it’d be a hoot to give him a bottle of this. I didn’t – I wasn’t even sure if he drank wine – but I did have the pleasure of visiting Gnadenfrei in October 2002. The experience was entirely unlike any other Barossa winery I visited: Malcolm Seppelt himself poured the wine, rambled on about importing to Pennsylvania, and his wife was upstairs with more tourists. It was decidedly odd, standing there in that dingy basement drinking wines I didn’t know much about at the time.—Even coming back to this wine thirty minutes later, it’s very much improved, and I think I’m almost enjoying it now. If anything, it’s a welcome antidote to the drink-me-now 16% Barossa reds we get in these parts; there’s a definite oddness to this bottle that makes it stand out.

Yalumba Bush Vine Grenache 2006

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Wines don’t have to be “super premium” to be worthwhile. If you’re like me, you’re always looking for wines to drink with dinner during the week, “everyday” wines in the best, most enjoyable sense of the word. I went hunting in the bottlo tonight for just such a wine to accompany gourmet pizza. I almost went for a Sangiovese, but this one pleaded with me to try it. I’m nothing if not attuned to the needs of others.


Fruit bomb, spice, a bit of oak. There you have it, that’s about as accurate a tasting note as one could write about this wine. Aromas are lovely and generous, with loads of raspberry jam type fruit, along with sweet spices (think cloves) and a hint of vanilla oak. It’s simple, but that’s ok because it’s a wine that knows what it is, and does it well.  The palate is a seamless continuation of the flavour profile discerned on the nose. Medium bodied, easygoing, well judged acidity to keep things peppy, but no significant tannins to speak of. The wine is really well constructed, texturally, and sits well in the mouth in this regard. With some time, the flavour developed a slightly medicinal, cough syrup note, that I rather liked. 

The pizza we had with this wine was strongly flavoured, plenty of pepperoni and so on. The wine stood up to this assault well due to the generosity of its fruit flavour, and counterbalanced the savoury pizza with sweet spicy fruit. Not a bad combination at all.

Price: $A17
Closure: Cork
Date tasted: December 2007