2001 Penfolds St Henri Shiraz

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This was the other bottle that I brought to dinner with the Pikkara Shiraz. It is one of my Mum’s favorites, and she was coming to dinner so I brought it for her.

This one sat in the decanter for the night and opened up very nicely. I think that it was better received than the Pikkara, but this is not a big surprise, since the Pikkara costs half as much and is a bigger, meatier thing that some people find to be just too much. The St Henri is a gentle, refined Shiraz that sits at the bottom of the price range for the Penfolds premium wines. This range has some serious membership (RWT and Bin 707 among them).

There is not much more to say about it really. For a refined old fashioned shiraz St Henri fits the bill nicely, going well with the rich food at a European style restaurant very easily, even when having seafood. Just don’t pay too much for it – some places want 60 bucks a bottle for this, and you can faily easily find it for almost half of that at a good wine shop like Seattle Wine Co. Be warned that it sells fast too.

Rosemount Mountain Blue redux

I finally had a chance tonight to try this wine with a big beefy steak, and I am happy that I did. As I suspected, the beef flavour and the wine really meshed well together and made the wine more enjoyable to drink.

Another factor that might have helped is that I did let it air a lot longer before drinking it this time (I made a phone call for a while while I was waiting for the meat to cook). Despite the fact that the bottle sat in the fridge for a few days it still did very well.

 So my recommendation for this wine is raised from a wavy hand to a strong thumbs up. For the price I think that it is a great bottle to have with beef and a pretty good bottle by itself later.

2001 Rosemount Estate Flagship Mountain Blue Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon

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Well, the name is a mouthful. I saw this stuff on special at Whole Foods today and I thought that it would be a good addition to the “Drink Now” pile of wine at the house (ask most wine collectors what to drink some days and they will um and ah and claim that they have nothing to drink, despite the apparent abundance of vino sitting around the house. My effort to combat this problem is to make sure that I have a good pile of stuff around that can be sacrificed to my whims of wanting a drink without feeling guilty of shortening the maturation of one of my precious).

This appears to be somewhat of a premium offering from Rosemount. Their GSM has made me a believer in their abilities, and I had never tasted something from Mudgee before, so deciding to give this a try was not hard. It is a shiraz / cabernet blend (85% shiraz) and these are normally very drinkable.

My impression from my first tasting is that despite being a 2001, it might actually do better with some more cellaring. It has a hint of the earthy flavour that I love in shiraz wines but it also has a touch of that bright, sharp taste that I associate with wines that are too young. I am eating it with potato chips rather than a steak though, and the pairing could very well be part of the problem. Despite the relatively low alcohol it feels quite powerful, which is not neccessarily a bad thing.

I think that I will try this next with a big steak or piece of pork by the side to see how it pairs with some food. Based on the nose and the flavour that I taste it could very well improve the enjoyment of this wine.