(madcap seemingly not in Internets)
With my wife out of town, I wanted to open up something cool to take my mind off things. Enter the Pastor Fritz, which was lazing around the wine rack with 4 bottles, its only sin being the lack of aging. What the hey, I said, it was only $20 a bottle and hence might be OK now.
I prepared the wine by opening it up and leaving in the fridge for forty minutes (this is something good to do when you have not had the wine in a cellar at 12 degrees Celsius). After this treatment it was very drinkable indeed.
This is the typical Barossa valley big Shiraz taste. I shared the leftovers with Vinny and Jeff last night, and Jeff claimed it was like chomping into a big block of limestone. They both quite liked it though, and Jeff is right that there is a lot of the sandstone coast terroir in this wine. There is also alcohol in spades (15%) and a great gummy dark fruit taste about it. The two extra days in the fridge, cap on, helped it along rather nicely.
Overall this is right up my alley and my style of wine, so if I ever see it on offer again I will get more of it. I think with some more age it will become slightly more subtle, and by this I mean like Vic Mackey on a good day rather than Vic Mackey on a bad day. Good thing that I have 3 more bottles, hopefully I can constrain myself and wait a year between each bottle.
Note of interest – this was a screwcap wine. I am seeing this more and more out of Australia lately. While I love the ceremony of the cork (and collecting them), for drinking a nice bottle of red during the week nothing beats unscrewing a cap, pouring and then screwing the cap back on.
