May has been incredibly busy with planning and rehearsing for my participation in seven jazz bands at the Merimbula Jazz Festival in a few days. Thankfully, all the hard work is starting to pay off and I’m now in a position where I can catch up publishing my wine drinking over the last several weeks. Unfortunately, I haven’t had enough time to take detailed notes on a fair whack of what has gone down the hatch, so I apologise in advance for the brevity of some my notes hereunder.
The next eight wines are from a very long lunch we enjoyed last week -
Marchand & Burch Chablis 2010 - A correct and proper example of minimally oaked flinty chardonnay showing attractive melon and slightly grassy fruit with a tantalising spine of chalky minerality weaving its magic through the palate. 89
Leeuwin Estate Art Series Riesling 2003 - Terrificly fresh and appealing with a zesty bouquet of lime with a dash of passionfruit leading to an amazingly bright, undeveloped palate riddled with crisp lime and Granny Smith apple tempered by astutely judged mineral acidity. Long satisfying finish. An absolute revelation for me. 91
Leo Buring Eden Valley Leonay Riesling 1991 - Brilliant! Incredibly good light lemon gold colour. Toast and fresh limes in abundance with a bevy of subtle bottle-developed complexity in support. Bouquet and palate so incredibly alive and fresh without the slighest hint of its considerable age or impending maturity. An astonishing wine at the peak of its powers but, seemingly, with an inbuilt confidence for another ten years (plus) of superior drinking to look forward to. 95
Marchand & Burch Mount Barrow Pinot Noir 2010 - Bright cherry fruit on nose and palate with enticing hints of pinot sap and spice. Has terrific structure for a WA pinot with a nice balance of acid and subtle tannin. We enjoyed this wine with kransky and coleslaw! A good effort and comparable to a very good French village burgundy. 88
Brokenwood Graveyard Vineyard Hunter Valley Shiraz 2004 - I poured off half a bottle of this 2 days earlier and was most delighted with its development in the glass as it unfolded into something very special over several hours. The group raved over it and if you have any, it should left alone for a few years and then drink well for up to a decade thereafter. The latent plum and licorice fruit on this wine is just awesome, the aromatics leaping from the glass but only after considerable air. The palate holds medium-body, elegant but resourceful tannin levels and surprising crisp acidity. There’s just enough regional leather and earth to give the wonderful fruit as per the nose a subtle twist. Top wine. 93 points
Orlando St Hugo Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 1998 - I’ve sat on this wine for a dozen years and it has budged very little until now. Consider it ready for business but with a long drinking window ahead. Only 13% A/V and every aspect of this wine says “Classic Coonawarra Cabernet”. Amen. 94
Lindemans St George Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 1998 - The only disappointment of the day. My glass opened well and was enjoying it for the first part until a few comments around the table rang true. “Oxidisied, tired, losing it”. I must say the way this fell away in the glass was a real concern and an hour later was barely drinkable. 90 on pouring, a measly 58 - two hours later. If you have any, monitor this carefully or drink it very quickly!
Stonyfell Metala Langhorne Creek Shiraz Cabernet Vintage Port 1971 - 3 bottles of this nectar in 3 weeks! But this was the best bottle to date (last 2 -93 and 95 respectively) I think a few tears were shed over the monumentality of this bottle. This bottle - 98 points on its ear. The freshest and most complex example of this wine I’ve ever tasted. Earth-shatteringly good fortified.
Francois Raveneau Chablis 1er Cru Chapelot 2002 - Excellent example from one of the world’s greatest producers of this appealing lighter style of chardonnay. Lovely touch of honey to calciferous stones and flinty but ripe orchard fruit with lightly spicy wood in support. No premox (thank {insert your spiritual leader here}). Fully mature - a gentle, perplexing and subtle wine with a still lightly acid-driven finish. Drink up. 90
Hubert Lignier Morey-St-Denis 1er Cru 1999 Veilles Vignes - Still youthful and brooding but with many tell-tale/indicative signs of brilliance emerging. Last bottle tried five years ago was brutally firm and unyielding. In another five years this will be truly outstanding. Tannins are now in check and nicely-meshed to glossy, deepset porcini, sap, cherry and game-tinged superior pinot fruit. Underpinning earth and minerality also a feature. Oak/acid balance first class. Excellent length. 92+
Kangarilla Road Fleurieu Zinfadel 2003 - 14.5% and from a good cellar. Roasted chestnut and slightly raisaned nose and palate with some heat from the alcohol but tolerable to my well-published sensitivity. Surpisingly acceptable palate sweetness and structure for the year, grape and maker - no complaints from me as a quaffer. 84
Campbells Rutherglen Vintage Port 1980 - Another exceptional licorice dominant fortified displaying such amazing youthfulness, one beggars disbelief as to when this will be fully mature. 2040? 95+
Bullers Calliope Rare Liqueur Tokay N/V - Utterly brilliant and so easy to drink. 95
Henschke’s 1996 Keyneton Estate. This has always been a particularly fine wine and is now fully mature. I still enjoyed it for its mellow sweetness, surprising complexity and Henschke-aged typicity, but if you have any, drink it as soon as you can find a reason to open it/them. It will most likely fall over sooner than later. This bottle was worthy of 90 points.
From a jazz trip to Victoria -
1998 Wynns Black Label Cabernet - After 7 hours car travel the first day, I stood the wine up for over 24 hours, removed the cork at 7pm the next night and drank half a bottle over 5 hours. It was almost very good in parts, would score something just under 85 points …. but, surely, it should have been much better than that, vintage and maker considered, don’t you reckon? It was a bit like some of my 1990’s that were, for some strange reason, weedy and bitter …. just lacking. I tried another glass last night - the wine was still greenish and weedy but also showing signs of degradation and oxidation …. lucky to get 70 from me. Very annoying.”
Next up was a most indifferent bottle of 2003 Seppelt Drumborg Riesling - the antithesis of what we opened for my mother’s eighty-second birthday dinner in March this year, this bottle smelled of petrol followed by a lame and almost fruitless palate overburdened by bitter acidity and more of the petroleum character. 62 points. Terrible. Compare this to my note on the previous bottle I mention above - “remarkably underdeveloped bright straw colour. Pure and invigorating pithy grapefruit dominates the superior bouquet and palate with hints of lime and apple in support. Marvellous linear attack in the mouth with bracing mineral acidity providing the perfect foil to a brilliantly poised but focussed Australian classic riesling. Drinking incredibly well now but somehow I detect this will only get better in the medium term. Fantastic cellaring prospect. Exceptional. 95” Both bottles from the same case in my cellar.
With desserts for dinner the same night I opened an older sweet chenin from France - Domaine Delétang Montlouis Moelleux ‘Les Batisses’ 1990 - Grande Reserve
This is Deletang’s top late-picked chenin blanc; a wine without a great deal of colour, somewhere approaching a light lemon gold, followed by an attractive but reasonably sedate nose of honeysuckle, pear, quince and a noticable, quite unusual earthen/minerally character that I couldn’t define/describe to a tee. The palate delivers somewhat of an understatement compared to many other sweet wine styles of the world - straw, honeysuckle and some lanolin with gently sweet pear and toffeed fruit, surprisingly none of the typical chenin apple character to be found here at all, too. The wine is light on its feet with virtually no fatness, although the normal chenin acid seems relatively unassuming (another unusual trait), but there’s reasonable length and a pretty decent finish to round things off. My memory serves me well and my last bottle of this, tried some years back, was more impressive and if anything somewhat more developed and with seemingly more depth, complexity and weight. With all my Vouvray and Montlouis chenin, I rarely have any haste in opening them as they seem to keep on keeping on for yonks. This bottle was somewhat of a disappointment in many ways and I can’t help but think that it had been stripped of some its “goodness”. 86 points from me on this occasion (compared to the last bottle that would have scored easily somewhere in the low nineties). Another relative failure.
At this stage, I gave up on opening anything else from my stash and gave my hosts a bottle of Petaluma 1998 Adelaide Hills Shiraz Viognier for having me. I hope it is drinking better than the last three wines!
Whilst I was at Bendigo, I raided the impressive underground cellar of the establishment where a local jazz band was playing and plucked a fine-looking bottle of 1998 Balgownie Cabernet Sauvignon - a textbook example and totally open for business. If you have any, drink it sooner than later, the wine held quite well in the glass but certainly was at its very best earlier than (some time) later. I rated it at 93 points, perhaps a point or two less when the bottle was finally emptied. Coincidentally, the club’s most excellent general manager is married to Lyndsay Ross (the ex-winemaker at Balgownie) who made this wine. She also recommended an inexpensive 2005 Chianti from Poggiotondo … a modern, internationally-styled red with bucketloads of ripe red fruit and an abundance of well-meshed classical chianti savouriness providing wonderful counterbalance. Terrific wine with a seriously fine but nicely assertive tannin structure to provide good cellaring prospects and perhaps only a point behind the impressively mature and mellow Balgownie. Both outstanding reds.
Since returning home from Melbourne, I opened a John Vickery-inspired wine from Richmond Grove - their 2004 Watervale Riesling. A superior screw-capped white wine probably just coming into its prime drinking window - youthful straw colour, amazingly good aromatics followed by an excellent line and volume of crunchy lime fruit and bracing minerality in the mouth and an impressive departure full of mouth-watering acidity and lingering lime and lemon flavour. Gold medal quality - 92 points - 10-15 year cellaring prospect.
Giaconda’s 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon could be a clone for a middle-ranking classified growth from a good Bordeaux vintage. I enjoyed the wine more on the first night. Somehow the fruit oxidised and faded marginally on the second day. This might suggest not the greatest longevity for this vintage. But still a 90 point wine, day one.
I’ve also opened two very old Australian ports - but in contrasting styles. The Penfolds 1956 Vintage 5 Star Club Port is an amazing old workhorse as it continues to defy death from old age. This particular bottle held a slightly cloudy, ancient khaki/brown/yellowish hue then threw up a cavalcade of nuance on both nose and palate. Amazingly old rancio character best describes the bulk of what you’ll get from this wine - there’s also a wealth of nuttiness, some distinguished christmas cake character, a beguiling “sweet” tarriness, hints of marzipan and molasses, old boots, dusty old oak amongst a zillion other things if you have enough time to navel gaze. It is incredibly smooth, fat and rich in the mouth and possesses a phenomenal fulfilling and rounded finish that just goes on and on. The hardest part to stomach about this wine is the occasional bottle totally destoyed by its uncaring previous owner/s or the rigours of being sealed with a sub-standard T-cork. Otherwise, a very little, but quite pleasurable piece of Australian wine history.
The Stonyfell Metala vineyard and winery at Langhorne Creek in South Australia produced some sensational vintage ports over the years (particularly the ’40’s (the 1945 was revered), ’50’s, ’60’s and the very early ’70’s). I remember drinking many bottles of the most excellent 1967 VP, which was, in fact, not of true vintage port style. Peter Lehmann (who made this wine) once told me this was a late-bottled vintage port (LBV). A “bloody good vintage”, said Lehmann, “so good, I just decided to leave it in wood for about 5 or 6 years”, hence leaving a style leaning a little more towards a “tawny” than most vintage ports that would usually only see up to a maximum of 12 months of wood. Most VP’s are well and truly in the bottle before 18 months after vintage. I managed to pick up some, seemingly, well-cellared bottles of the traditionally-made and quite famous 1971 Stonyfell Metala Shiraz Cabernet VP at a fair price recently and decided to open one last night. It’s been a few years since I’ve tried one. Previous bottles from a close friend’s cellar (now all gone) had always revealed a very deep, lush and robust sweet wine, always opening with amazing freshness, incredible extract levels and seeming invincibility from the dreaded “time” demons. The fill level of this bottle was excellent and the cork in as good as condition as could be expected. I used my handy ah-so to remove the cork (stained to within a few millimetres of the top). Unfortunately, at the last turn and pull of the ah-so the base of the cork crumbled (a common experience with the sherry-shaped bottled). I then made use of my trusty wine funnel and ultra-fine filter to decant this 41 year old port into a Riedel decanter with not a huge amount of sediment left in the bottle. Still in incredibly sound condition this wine impressed greatly with all the hallmarks I remember of this marque. Deep, dark brooding colour, masses of plum, licorice and chocolate fruit on the nose and palate and incorporating scents and flavours of lantana, redcurrants and caramel. Incredibly well-delineated and forthcoming in the mouth with a well-heeled and lengthy brandy-spirit, plum and licorice-infused departure. A hold-no-prisoners style that would displease most Portuguese officiando’s but one that sits very well indeed with me. 93 points. And it ain’t goin’ to die tomorrow (sic).
I also opened another Grosset Polish Hill 2003 Riesling, a top notch example that has entered its prime drinking window with its brilliant, effusive lime, toast and petrol-tinged aromatics followed by a sensational palate holding an immaculate line and a wealth of mostly tight zesty lime fruit, superb counterbalancing acidity, finishing with a crisp, clean and lengthy finish. Drink anytime this decade. 93
Next up, a wine I have been waiting many years to try and holding very high expectations of what would emanate from the bottle. Brokenwood’s Graveyard Shiraz is an iconic label of which I bought multiple bottles from the hyped 1998 vintage, secured at release and stored in my cellar(s) ever since. Made from very low yielding old vines in the lower Hunter Valley, the cork-sealed bottle was splash decanted 2 hours prior to serving, revealing dense and dark staining on a considerable proportion of the inside of the bottle (I believe this phenomenon to be derived from the leeching of tannins, grape protein and red pigments). When poured into the glass, I was surprised at the developed colour in the outer edges although the core retained a healthy-looking opaque deep ruby. The nose reeked of dill and vanillin American oak over ripe plum and blackberry fruit with faint hints of road tar and regional earthiness. The palate was more disappointing with the 14.0% A/V producing a somewhat hot and almost disjointed tannic finish ruining the impact of the preceding mature plum, leather and earth flavours and a strong undercurrent of US oak influence as noted in the bouquet. This bottle simply did not possess the reserves of fruit to sustain such structure and oak treatment. And for a supposed “great” Hunter vintage, I’d call this bottle an abject failure. Errant bottle, one would hope, although I’m not all that keen to open another bottle to find out if I scored a dud. Has anyone here tried one in recent times? Would appreciate your feedback if you have. 78
Lastly, I opened an old bottling (750ml) of Campbells Isabella Tokay. An amazing example, and in terrific shape without a skerrick of staleness evident, especially considering the time this has spent in bottle and its underlying ancient base material. Unlike the heavier Morris Old Premium Tokay style, this wine was particularly impressive for its superior aromatics and slippery, silky but sensationally concentrated flavours of the finest English toffee, cold tea, butterscotch and faint hints of dried raisins (muscatels). Couple this with an awesomely long and incredibly delicate and balanced departure and you have one of the best examples of Rutherglen “Rare” Liqueur Tokay. 94