2007 Roogle Shiraz

Long time no post

For ten dollars you would normally expect to get plonk that was not worth your time. But Marquis Phillips know what they are doing, even at this price point.

I won’t accuse it of being the smoothest wine out there, but it balances the alcohol and sugar well with a nice rich taste that some would describe as jammy but I find delicious. Screw cap means that you can drink it at your leisure as well.

It might sound like a leap to compare it to Stella’s Garden, but you can tell it came from the same crazy people that made that stuff. Highly recommended – surprise somebody at a party or buy it to drink by yourself on friday night as Battlestar Galactica and Terminator rage away on the telly.

2003 Penfolds Bin 28

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It was a hectic week at work, and I decided to take the missus out to Ruth’s Chris in Bellevue. No point going to a nice steak place without some good vino, so I tried to find something that was somewhat special.

Hunting around I found a 5 year old bottle of Bin 28 hiding back there. I wish I had the willpower to turn it into a 10 year old bottle, but what are you going to do?

It went very well with my porterhouse, as you would expect. It was very dry, but still had the dark fruit flavor that I like to have. Not very peppery in my opinion.

My only mistake was killing the whole bottle myself (wife is pregnant). But I am over that now – just needed lots of water.

2004 Heartland Director’s Cut Shiraz

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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.

2002 Pretty Sally Cabernet Savignon

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I found a good deal on this, and sometimes late at night I want a glass of cheap wine to get me sleepy.

This one has an interesting taste – bright and light without being too metallic. The winery claims that the tannins are well integrated, and I would agree with that. It is light on the alcohol, but does not beat you over the head with this lightness.

After about 30 minutes or so the wine is developing a deeper, sweeter taste. This is a 2002, so perhaps some air will do it good. The rest of the bottle is sitting in the wine fridge with a rubber stopper in it (picked those up in Walla Walla, and they do an awesome job). So I will consume this over the next week or so and see how it develops.

 

2004 Viotollo

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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 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.

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

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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 Redheads Viottolo Shiraz

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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.