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 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.

On sediment

When I finished off my bottle of Director’s Cut Shiraz, I noticed that my glass had a huge amount of sediment at the bottom:

I know that some people hate this and think that it is icky, but I have come to love seeing this in a glass. I don’t think that I ever had a wine with huge sediment that I did not like, so normally seeing the chunks of grapey goodness at the bottom of the glass confirms a great bottle of red for me.

I have a picture of the aforementioned display of grape chunks, saved for the lucky readers of my blog (all 6 of you).

Yeah, I realize that this is one of the things that decanting is for. Personally, I enjoy drinking the wine slowly enough to let the sediment stick to the glass so that I don’t end up drinking any of it. Over the years I have gotten bloody good at this, hence my display of 4 chunks at 90 degrees to each other. Besides, I like to think that the chunks are leeching more goodness into the wine right to the end.

Why so much of the stuff? Because some wines are unfiltered. It seems logical to me that filtering the wine would remove bits of grape that could be imparting flavour to the wine as it sits in the fridge, testing my willpower over the years before I give in and open it. Hence I prefer unfiltered wines.

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.

2005 Heartland Stickleback Red

Winery Page

This is going for about 10 bucks in a variety of locations now, so I got half a case to keep around for the time when I need a drink and don’t want to feel guilty about what I am drinking. This is an interesting mix of Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and Grenache by Ben Glaetzer. These are all varieties that I like and a winemaker that I respect, so I figured that this was a good bet.

I must say that I was not blown away by this stuff but not terribly offended either. Perhaps this is a result of expectations set too high – it is in the price point where you should not expect much. It is well made enough (no headaches for me) and it went well with the food. Perhaps the blend is something that I need to get used to.

Certainly if you only want to spend 10 bucks on wine to take to a party or something you can do *far* worse than this. Plenty of wine at this price point tastes astringent or will have you feeling like a dissappointed horse kicked you in the head. My apologies if this sounds like faint praise, but faint praise is still praise.