Tag Archives: Victoria

Best's Great Western Bin No 0 Shiraz 2004

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This is building really well in the glass. It started simple and lacking in depth, but a very few minutes’ swirling yields excellent development of the aroma. Juicy yellow plum flesh, vibrant spice and a note that is half way to turned earth; that’s quite a reductive description, though, because it smells very coherent with good complexity, not easily separable into individual notes. It is perhaps brighter than some of the other Grampians Shiraz wines I have been drinking lately. 

In the mouth, the fruit becomes deeper in profile, with a rich dark plum note the centre around which spice, earth, coffee and other goodies revolve. Good impact on entry, with a strong burst of texture hitting the tongue along with intense fruit flavour that builds nicely. Assertive tannins take over somewhat on the middle palate, and mask to an extent the fruit, which becomes increasingly savoury as the wine sits in the glass. They are the kind of tannins that start off luxuriously chocolatey and rich, before crossing the line to become aggressively dry. Very fine and flavoursome, though. Really good drive through the after palate to a finish that struggles a bit against all the tannins. The whole is medium bodied and, at times, I thought I could detect some alcohol heat, but this was a fleeting rather than consistent impression.
This is flavoursome and impressive, though in the mouth there isn’t elegance so much as the tangle of limbs associated with a fashion model in training. Should fill out, soften and gain ease in time but, as it is, not ready for its close up.

Best’s Wines
Price: $A55.09
Closure: Cork

Best's Great Western Cabernet Sauvignon 2000

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Wines that prompt me to respond on a level other than the blandly objective are what I hope for each time I open a bottle. This anticipation is always heightened when I taste an older wine. After all, we cellar wines in the hope they will improve and reach the point of maximum pleasure. When writing about such wines, and to paraphrase (or perhaps misuse) Edward Said, I think it’s appropriate to communicate a “sense of the pleasure taken in having tried at least to meet the [wine] on some other level than the ruthlessly evaluative or the flatteringly appreciative.”

What of this bottle, then? It’s an old wine in all the best ways, though it does remind me of why they are such an acquired taste. There are very few hooks here, nothing obvious on which to hang one’s discernment. Indeed, the nose is delicate and hushed, lightweight really, smelling as much like an abandoned hope chest as a Cabernet. Everything is hinted at; old cedar wood, a wisp of vanilla, watercolour red fruit and light spice. It’s an aroma that only makes sense when you step back and understand its subtle flirtatiousness. Incredibly elegant, if not massively complex.

The palate does not speak in quite such muted tones. At first, an impression of some youth, mostly due to drying tannins that fade a little as the wine gets some air. What they leave behind is a rather beguiling flavour profile whose delicacy reminds me of a good Pinot Noir. It’s quite seamless: red fruits and vanilla ice cream at first, turning slowly to a more savoury expression reminiscent of orange peel as much as berries, moving then to a cedar-centred finish with just a twinge of “old wine” sweetness right at the back of the mouth. A strange set of descriptors perhaps, but totally convincing to me. There’s still a bit of velvet texture on the after palate, so it’s not yet at the stage where it flows in the crystalline manner of fresh water, but it’s not far off.

There’s nothing outstanding about this wine in conventional terms. It’s not ultra intense, nor dense, nor complex. But it’s absolutely worthwhile as a balanced expression of aged Great Western Cabernet Sauvignon, no more nor less. I’m enjoying it a great deal.

Best’s Wines
Price: $A35.15
Closure: Cork

Best's Great Western Riesling 2007

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A nose that shows some development, with typically honeyed, toasty, almost kerosene-like aromas. There’s also a thrust of powdery minerality, savoury and strident, perhaps slightly sulphurous, pushing up from below. What little citrus fruit there is sits delicately within this mix, more floral than fleshy in character. As an overall aroma profile, I found it initially cumbersome and loud, but have warmed considerably to its charms through the evening.

The palate is totally consistent with the nose, with some bottle age sitting alongside assertive bath salt-like flavours. On entry, rough acidity makes a rambunctious first impression, before fruit and mineral flavours take over. The fruit is quite full, edging towards an interesting rockmelon note, all the while maintaining satisfying generosity and good focus. I thought at first there was some residual sugar here, but it seems dry, just ripe and buxom. The aged flavours are, to me, most interesting. Sweet honey is slinking its way across the palate in a subtle, elegant way, and there’s enough softening of acidity on the after palate to suggest a happy transformation may well be in store.
Funny wine, this one. It presents a noisy flavour profile, full of elements that are close to clashing with each other, yet the whole comes together and is deliciously drinkable. I know that’s a highly subjective judgement, and I should note the other half did not like this at all. But it ticks a lot of boxes for me: distinctiveness, magnetism, food-friendliness (it stood up to roast pork quite well). To be sure, it’s not an elegant wine, but it’s very fun and, noting the manner in which it is developing now, I suspect it will be quite sensational in five years’ time.

Best’s Wines
Price: $A20.89
Closure: Stelvin

Best's Great Western Bin No 1 Shiraz 2006

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Jeremy over at Wine Will Eat Itself recently blogged about terroir and (amongst other things) its relationship to quality. I’m inclined to think that a sense of place contributes interest quite apart from objective notions of quality and that, indeed, the two can be quite separate. This wine is a real live example, albeit on a regional scale. 

Utterly regional on the nose, with exotic spices overlaying darkly-fruited aromas and some vanilla oak. It’s quite straightforward and lacks the complexity that might elevate it beyond simply being correct. However, if you like Great Western Shiraz, it will be like coming home.
Very much more of the same in the mouth. Lots of flavour from the word go, with ripe plums and blackberries the key fruit characters, along with tantalising spice and balanced oak. Medium bodied, the middle palate is especially luscious, showing the greatest level of flavour density and a velvet texture. The acid and tannin seem very well balanced and provide a nice framework within which flavours can move over the tongue. For all that, there’s a blocky or blurry character  that prevents it from feeling truly sophisticated. And, despite the rich flavour profile, it’s not the last word in intensity, which leaves me wanting more.
Impressive typicité, then, without rising to an exalted level of quality.

Best’s Wines
Price: $A22.80
Closure: Stelvin

Mount Langi Ghiran Cliff Edge Shiraz 2005

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Bit of a Grampians-fest here at Full Pour lately, and why not? Long renowned for quality wine,  and apart from a couple of high flying labels, this historic region seems to sit under the radar and the total number of producers remains low. 

A forthright nose of ripe plums, cherries and not just a pinch but a whole market of exotic spices. The spiciness here is striking and, it seems to me, very regional. It’s quite a dark aroma profile overall, robust too, so words like “heady” spring to mind rather than “elegant.” There’s something to be said for impact, though, and this certainly has punch.
The entry is explosively satisfying, confirming the nose’s character with up-front flavour and substantial palate weight. This really is quite in-your-face, in a good way, with notes of incense, cedar oak, plum jam and other dark fruits intermingling on the mid-palate. Good drive through the mouth, with the after palate lightening a shade, showing less spice and more fresh fruit flavours. A tantalising, lingering finish, riding a velvet carpet of fine tannins.
This is an exceptionally flavoursome wine; not the last word in refinement, but generous and quite delicious. This is the sort of wine that I love, because it’s so true to its region and hence sacrifices none of its essential character, even though it is (nominally) a second tier label. 
As an aside, I do like Mount Langi Ghiran’s classy, strong branding. Nice work.

Mount Langi Ghiran
Price: $A21.85
Closure: Stelvin

Clayfield Grampians Shiraz 2004

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This wine’s a ripper and pleasingly distinct from its 2005 counterpart. The latter’s style (and alcohol level) prompted MA-rated strong language and drug references in my tasting note, but I suspect this won’t call for such colourful descriptions. This is more University professor than the tits-out-in-the-back-of-a-ute-at-SummerNats 2005

But who said intellectuals can’t be sexy? Big handfuls of white pepper and spice on the nose, along with the sort of deep berry fruit that immediately signals impressive concentration (if the dark, dense colour weren’t enough). It’s a very stylish aroma profile, as much for the balance of its expressiveness as any particular element. There’s a decent amount of cedar oak too, noticeable and still a bit raw, yet very well matched to the fruit character. 
In the mouth, a wonderfully sensuous experience. The entry swells elegantly with dark berries and spice, plus a liqueur-like note that speaks of concentration rather than overripeness. Texturally, there’s a lot going on, and it’s structurally coherent in a way that makes it difficult to know where the acid stops and the tannins begin. No matter — the whole is shaped with a firm, precise hand. There’s such intensity of flavour on the middle palate that it’s tempting to label it full bodied, yet it’s not really, perhaps medium to full at most, retaining a sense of proportion even at its most fruit-dense point. The after palate lightens in tone, with some red fruit poking in, and spice becoming more prominent. Extremely fine tannins carry a residue of flavour through the finish for some time.
The 2005 is drinking well right now, which works out well because this wine is a bit edgy and, I suspect, has its best days still ahead. A very satisfying, generous expression of Grampians Shiraz whose fruit and structure should persist through the development of bottle aged complexity. 

Clayfield Wines
Price: $A65
Closure: Stelvin

Farr Rising Geelong Pinot Noir 2007

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Usually, I’m too lazy to plan ahead when it comes to food and wine matching. Today, however, I was organised to a superhuman degree (for me, anyway) and actually thought about what I would drink with what I had planned to cook. So, a venison and beetroot pot roast is just finishing up in the oven, while I am enjoying my first sips of this Pinot Noir from Geelong.

Remarkably funky and characterful nose, the complexity of which seems fruit driven rather than forced through winemaking (who knows if this impression is accurate — kudos to Nick Farr if it’s all his doing). Riotous aromas of char siu, five spice, beetroot, minerality and hessian are neatly wrapped in a brightly expressive package. The aroma profile is truly interesting and seems full of the smells of childhood in a Chinese home (how I miss my mother’s cooking!).
A very flavoursome entry showing more markedly sweet fruit, red currant-like in character. It’s no simple fruit bomb, though. In fact, the flavours here are again complex, with spice and sour-edged rhubarb intruding in on the lusciousness of the fruit. It’s juicy without flab and savoury sans excess. Well balanced, in other words, though I would not call it delicate or elegant. In fact the flavour profile is a bit jingly jangly; it’s about contrast and glitter rather than harmony. The after palate shows some sappy oak and perhaps a bit of stalk action too, again well judged. Decent finish that seems to descend to the bass registers, slowly fading away with time.
Wish me luck with the food match. 

Farr Rising
Price: $A39
Closure: Cork

Bass Phillip Village Pinot Noir 2005

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I really do try to be a sympathetic partner, but I find myself involuntarily laughing when, on opening an unusual wine, my other half has a dramatically negative reaction, sometimes declaring a wine horrible and utterly undrinkable. “Oh really, what don’t you like about it?” I usually ask, knowing I’ll get back an amusingly colourful rant. Granted, he has an extremely low tolerance for things not to his taste (not a bad thing) which, when combined with my forgiveness of odd flavours and wine faults, means we have these conversations more frequently than one might expect. And so it was when we opened this wine a couple of nights ago.

Without wanting to suggest I’ve tasted an extensive range, ever since Chris and I shared a magical moment or two over a bottle of Tetsuya’s house red (a Bass Phillip Pinot made especially), I’ve had a soft spot for Phillip Jones’s wines. This one is testing my loyalty, though. Tasted from the same bottle two days apart, my experience is mixed. On the first night, a masculine wine full of robust, sour berry fruit and stalky, in fact almost twiggy, flavour. Although eliciting the aforementioned “yuk” from my partner, I really enjoyed the robust character and almost brutish force of the flavour profile. Granted, there seemed to be all sorts of weird flavours in there too, quite indescribable and frankly not quite “right.”

Two days on and those odd flavours have won the battle. On the nose, a really odd smell that reminds me of rancid deep fryer fat, mixed with crunchy red berries, freshly ground black pepper and horse hair. Not exactly your clean, New World Pinot Noir. The palate continues this oddness, with flavours of paté on Melba toast, potato chips and utterly delicious sour fruit. And that’s the thing with this wine. It’s not right in the head, yet I keep coming back to it, fascinated by its combination of strange and compelling flavours. Flavour profile aside, it is structured really well, with good movement through the mouth and a well balanced interplay of acid and tannin.

I wouldn’t recommend this wine to a stranger, but I would share it with a friend.

Bass Phillip
Price: $A35
Closure: Cork

Clayfield Grampians Shiraz 2005

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Reading others’ tasting notes helps me to learn — about wine, sure, but more often about a particular point of view. No death of the Author for me; as much as I buy into the idea that wine stands alone, there’s a huge amount of interest in understanding how its aesthetics are shaped by those who practice the craft of wine writing. For one thing, wine writers inevitably hone in on one or other aspect of wine, and this resonates not only in terms of how a particular wine has been perceived, but more interestingly in terms of how wine in general ought to be regarded.

The obvious example is the “fruit salad” approach to tasting notes. We’ve all read them; notes that consist exclusively of a list of smell and taste analogues associated with a wine’s nose and palate, as if the pleasure of wine could ever be captured so reductively. I’m prompted to ask: are the various flavours present in wine its primary pleasure? I can’t deny they form a huge part of it, but (and here we begin to get to the point) I’m smelling and tasting the 2005 Clayfield Shiraz tonight and flavours couldn’t be further from my mind.
What’s striking about this wine is its architecture (if you will forgive my semantic preciousness). Volume, density, texture, presence, thickness, flow, viscosity, impact. The flavour profile itself is identifiably Grampians Shiraz, though certainly a large scale expression of this classic regional style. The nose is immediately full and expressive. Volume is the key word here — it’s like the Spinal Tap amplifier turned all the way up to eleven. The fact that its aroma profile is squarely in the cool climate mode comes as something of a shock. Blackberry brambles, plum and pepper in spades. It has such presence and immediacy. 
The palate is in no way a letdown after this promising start. There is plenty of flavour for starters, very much in line with the aroma. But what’s striking are, again, the architectural elements. The tannins are truly remarkable. At first forbidding, with some time in the glass they begin to melt like chocolate in the mouth, transforming from blocky and solid to a more velvet textural expression, all the while retaining a dry, slightly bitter (as in Angostura) finish. At the same time, a silky viscosity causes the wine to swell sensuously on the middle palate.  The label says 15% abv and perhaps this shows, yet I don’t see perceptible alcohol as a fault a priori. Here, it adds to this wine’s sense of elegant debauchery, like a party guest not quite hiding the fact that they’re snorting a line of coke. Or something. 
Fabulous wine. 

Clayfield Wines
Price: $A45
Closure: Stelvin

Clayfield Massif Thomas Wills Shiraz 2006

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Clayfield Wines is a small maker in the Grampians region helmed by a most engaging winemaker in Simon Clayfield. I recently purchased the currently available range (three Shirazes), and this is the first I’ve tried. It’s the “second” label wine, priced at a very reasonable $A24.

Absolute Grampians Shiraz. A deeply spiced, incense-like nose full of dark, ripe plum fruit. Being a cool climate style, the fruit isn’t as riotous as something from the Barossa (for example), but is clean, stylish and distinctive. There’s also a positive oak note, cheery and bubble gum-like, that suits the fruit well. The aroma seems very slightly lifted in an attractive manner.