2004 Heartland Director’s Cut Shiraz

Winery Page

This wine tastes sensational, full of sugar with a slight tannic edge and a great dark berry taste. I also detect notes of cedar in this one, but this might be left over chips of cedar from my hours in the garage building a planter out of cedar for my Habenero plant.

I did not realize until I scanned the blog that I have reviewed this wine once before. Certainly time away has treated it well, and it was as good as it was last time. Still full of sediment too.

This is the exact kind of win that I want more of. I will be sure to get the 2006 of this as well (I already have the 2005 stocked away too). It is interesting that I have not enjoyed some of the other Heartland wines quite so much, but the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum.

2004 Viotollo

Winery Page

Some of my favorite wines are Shiraz grown in Australia from small growers. These little boutique places tend to have interesting flavour and not be shy about making thick unfiltered goodness for me to put in my belly.

The Viotollo went great with the beef that I was cooking. There was a slight tannin structure that you could taste, but this was balanced with a dark, jammy goodness that I love so much. Balancing these flavours is tricky, but the hot climate in Australia seems to make this kind of effect easier to produce.

This bottle tasted fantastic, so I can remember that 3 – 4 years is a great time to drink this stuff. It made a good addition to the meat pies that I was cooking too. I just wish that I had more of this great little wine.

2004 Heartland Cabernet Sauvignon

Winery Page (2004 not listed here) 

After the success of the Shiraz, I was keen to try out the Cab Sav offering from the same folks.

I have to admit, I was expecting something a bit ‘bigger’. The big new world Cabs tend to have a lot of punch to them, and this one is far more subtle than that. Some people like subtle, and I can appreciate it in some forms, but the danger with being too subtle is that it is not memorable.

I will say that there were no astringent flavors to this wine, and it did not kick me in the head the next day. So it basically had no negatives, but no strong positives either. A wine like this is probably good for table wine at a dinner party, because it would not offend anybody and would go well with good food.

Maybe another year sitting in the fridge will help it out.

2004 Billi Billi Shiraz

I grabbed this on New Years eve to head to a low key party, and I wanted to bring something to sip and drink with some folks. I had some bottles of this stuff from Garagiste, and it seemed like a good opportunity to try it.

As it worked out, Jeff was already done with his drinking and nobody else was looking to get hammered, so I basically was the only one partaking. And as normally happens in these situations, I ended up finishing the bottle off myself (probably drank 3/4 of it). This is not a boast of some magical drinking prowess (most bottles I drink are equivalent to about a six pack, which is not much at all) but rather a setup for an interesting attribute of this wine - drinking the better part of a bottle of it will not yield you a hangover.

In terms of taste, it did have a slightly different (although not bad) flavor compared to other Shiraz that I normally drink. Definitely less ‘jammy’, which is great for some folks. Not sure how aging would affect this stuff, because the tannins were not over the top and it was not very sweet. At the price point I got it (about $15 or so) it is probably not heavily designed to be cellared anyway.

Overall, this is good table wine and not bad stuff to drink at a party. I like having a variety of stuff to drink now and then, and this stuff fits the bill well. 

2004 Adelina Shiraz

(winery page not found)

I will admit it, some wines scare me into keeping them for a while before drinking, based on appearance rather than price or reputation. We are all told from childhood to not judge a book by its cover, and yet we all do it until we die because it is human instinct to do so.

The Adelina Shiraz, whenever I pick it up, is always wrapped in exquisite paper around the bottle (nicer than the paper around a bottle of Grange, methinks). The bottle seal is real wax rather than metal or plastic (and bloody hard to get off when you want to open it, really). I would describe this as “packaging drama”. For a $30 bottle of wine, it is impressive. Here is the bottle in its glory:

I just ordered my third year of the stuff (I previously got the 2004 and the 2005, and just ordered some 2006). I decided that after ordering the third year of it, I should make sure that it is stuff that I like (if I really like it, I would start ordering more each year).

To test drive this bad boy I let it sit opened for about an hour while I finished off another bottle of wine and started on my steak. After some breathing time I poured some out and had a go. The smell of this stuff is not something that you notice very strongly. Some of the Australian wine that I drink has a very strong nose on it, but this stuff is more subtle than that.

The smell does not always give away the taste, but with this wine it did. This is not your typical limestone + jam bomb that South Australia puts out by the crateload, but rather a more subtle drop that has the trademark flavour. I will say that I tasted a bit of a tannic edge to this one (and I am not alone in this, I found out perusing the tubes later). The wine was also overwhelmed somewhat by the peppery flavour of the steak rub I used (thank you Tom Douglas). There is a definite dryness to the wine as well.

A lot of what I read about this wine says that it has 15 – 20 year aging potential. The tannins in there will certainly have a lot of time to break down. I have 3 more bottles of it to sit around for a few years to test that theory. I will say that I think that this wine is subtle, but the flavour is good. I poured another glass to drink without food after dinner, and I am quite enjoying it. The tannins in this wine, while obvious, balance nicely with the fruit rather than overwhelming it like the Walla Walla style does. Even though it is different to my favorite style, it is enjoyable and a change and therefore I like it.

Update

After a couple of nights of being open, and sitting in the wine fridge with a rubber stopper in the bottle, this wine has opened up really nicely. The tannic edge has wore off somewhat, and it definitely tastes sweeter. It was very pleasant to finish off – I could not stop at one glass.

If you have this wine, I recommend letting it sit for a few hours before drinking, rather than just an hour or so. Very similar to Wilson Gunn Shiraz in that regard.

2004 Heartland Director’s Cut Shiraz

Winery Page

My latest pickup from Garagiste had 2 different years of this puppy ready to go today, so I opened up the 2004 (being the most mature of the bunch) and had a go with my surf + turf (New York steak and Alaskan Black Cod). I had high hopes since this is a Ben Glaetzer wine, and he has had the Midas touch with Shiraz.

This was an excellent choice. It is a limestone coast wine, and you can taste it. It is very heavy and full bodied (my wife could not handle it) but balanced. The tannins are smooth and match the rest of the wine well at this age. If you like the Mitolo GAM then I think that you would certainly love this.

Now I have two of the 2004 and the 2005 left, and I am happy to have them. Hopefully I can resist drinking them for a while - I am keen to see how this evolves in the bottle. Highly recommended.

2004 Dupere Barrera Bandol

Winery Page (I think – one of the bottles there had the same logo and the name is right)

This one I bought on Garagiste on a whim, because I roll like that sometimes. This seems atypical for French wine to me – it is much more full bodied (14.5% alcohol) and it has a little bit more of that mineral edge (probably because they have limestone in their soil).

It does not have a super deep colour, but that is deceiving because it tastes very full. It has the smoothness and subtlety of something worth much more, and an exotic taste (at least to me). Highly recommended if you can find it.

2004 Redheads Viottolo Shiraz

Winery Page

It was time for the mid-week bedtime wine, and the Viottolo fit the bill nicely. Under $20, already 3 years old and ready to go right now. As I write this review I do my search for the winery page, and behold – RedHeads wine is the maker of the Viottolo. And they also make Pikkara! Funny how the search for Pikkara got me nothing but the sister wine made in the same place was found. I will update my Pikkara posts now to reflect this and maybe help this great little winery out.

My impression of the Viottolo is positive so far. The nose is just what I like in a wine like this – you can smell a bit of the limey flavour. It is a big jammy wine with the definite prescence of the tannins there as well. I don’t know if this was to put some balance in or not. Maybe a little bit more time is needed for this one to bring the balance back to the sugar side of the force.

Which isn’t to say that I dislike this wine. It is interesting, with a complexity that I don’t find in wines this cheap too often. As with the Pikkara, I will try to make sure that I get more of this stuff the next time around. It is great tasting stuff and very good value.

2004 Fox Creek Short Row Shiraz

Winery Page

(WordPress ate my first attempt at this post. I hope this version works at least as well)

I was in the mood to try something new and write about it, so I decided to grab the new Fox Creek Short Row that I had sitting around in the fridge. I have been impressed by many of their offerings in the past, and the notion that this was a special wine made me curious. Note to wine marketers – annotating your wine with some manner of exclusivity is sure to hook me. Say that the wine came from grapes that are only on a certain hill, or only picked on Wednesdays, or have some other special hook, and I will want to try it. I think that I fall for this because this strategy has always pleased me in the past, but who knows how much bias is in that unscientific assessment….

However unscientific it is, it just got stronger for me because the Short Row is amazing. Loads of black fruit, sugar, alcohol and a minerally flavour, with a hint of pepper and a perfect finish. The balance is great – this is not a subtle wine, but all of the unsubtle flavours are the ones I love, so this is a pleasure to drink. The aroma is impossible to miss when you pour the stuff – very much the same kind of style as the Euroa Creeks and the Pastor Fritz, making me wish that I had way more of the stuff.

One of these days I will be good enough at tasting wine that I will be able to catalog what I love about this stuff and look through wine reviews to find other similar wines. I certainly like styles other than this one (the GAM was just as nice for me, but a completely different style), but I don’t find enough of this style for my liking and considering most of the wine of this genre is about $20 a bottle, it makes sense to get loads of it and drink it every day.

2004 Yasa Calatayud Garnacha

(no winery page found)

I had the opportunity to get this for about 8 bucks a bottle, and I took it because I want more cheap stuff to drink and because I have had good luck with Spanish Grenache in the past. Spain has some hot weather, which is bound to bring about a wine to my taste.

I do quite like this stuff. The warm weather has given a mostly tannin-free taste, and it is leaning more towards the dark fruit flavour that I like. It has an interesting combination of a light texture with a dry, rich aftertaste. It is certainly not jammy or syrupy, which is a good contrast to the normal stuff that I drink.

For some reason I get the feeling that this will go well with lamb. I will try that theory out soon.