I employed my usual strategy of refraining from web research, reading back labels or tasting notes, but I knew, I just knew in my heart-of-hearts that this wine was going to be heavy on the ethanol. No surprises to follow. And there’s no introduction required to this Barossa producer so I’ll throw myself headlong into the task of bringing you a snippet of Struie – a 100% shiraz from the Eden and Barossa Valleys.
Deep, inky, blood-red with purpling edges. Kind-of exciting to see this colour – you know you’re in for a biggie. Dense dark plum and liquorice greet on opening, with some syrupy mocha and punch of pencilly oak. There’s mint and spice – cinnamon and clove, white + black pepper. It’s brambly and earthy with a touch of savoury tomato, while the fruit spectrum covers the dark and brooding black stuff to rich, red and blueberry aromas – it’s raisiny and sweet-smelling. Other characters I jotted down include caramelised fig, toffee apple, vanilla pod. It’s lush and plush.
The palate is red-fruited raisins, some blackcurrant slipping through, white spice and pepper and a little star anise mintiness. Chewy and flavoursome – savoury like rich, slow-cooked ragu, or tarry backstrap molasses, and sweet like a fiercely baked blackberry pie. This wine is cookin’. Rounded and complex, texturally soft and pliant – the tannins seem to be either very fine, or softened. The alcohol fleshes out the back palate with the dense, yet sinuous oak. They’ve really backed off the structural elements – tannin/acid – to bring you a wine of suppleness and flavour. Viscous to all hell.
Vibe
I enjoyed this. It was worryingly drinkable for a high-alc style. But to be honest, it doesn’t really have the X-Factor that you would expect from this label, and you know I love an X-Factor. Yes, the alcohol shows (it says 15% on the label, but who knows?), but it’s not overdone for the style of wine. I think I enjoyed the recent bottle of big-alc Kay Brothers more than the Torbreck (see here for the Kay’s) but altogether this was an enjoyable beast over two nights – one with pizza, and one with lamb roast. Is good, is Torbreck, is not cheap, is not short of fans, is worth a look.
Value: Current release (2009) is $48.50 at cellar door. I vaguely recall buying this 2007 for $40-ish somewhere, so that makes sense. I think it’s OK, considering The Factor is currently $125 and The Laird $700.
Tasted: July 2011
Closure: Cork (a good specimen)
Source: Purchased
Tech-head
Producer: Torbreck – www.torbreck.com – established in 1994 by Dave Powell, formerly of Rockford. A share-farming and semi-virtual enterprise until the 2000’s when they acquired their own property – the Hillside vineyard in Lyndoch – and established their own winemaking and cellar door facility on a nearby property.
Region: Barossa and Eden Valleys, South Australia. Eden provides the varietal clarity and structure while the Barossa provides the power.
Site: 40 year-old Eden, 80 year-old Barossa.
Winemaking: Matured in old and new French oak for 18 months.
Vintage: Eden was hot, the hottest for a long time. The preceding winter was dry too. A little rain in Feb eased the pain. Early, short – yet she was a hottie and correspondingly a goodie. Much the same in Barossa – an early and short vintage, low yielding, but some good quality amongst the carnage.
This wine picked up the Trophy for Wine Of The Show at the WA Boutique Wine Awards – a show I’d never heard of before now. (Turns out to be the Blackwood Valley region’s local event, and I guess any producer of a certain small size can enter). I’m not gonna say the judges messed up, but this wine must've looked a whole lot better in 2008 when it won the Trophy.
The green stalkiness on display is just too much and I found my notes peppered with the word 'green' throughout. The dominant aroma was freshly cut capsicum. OK, major negative dealt with swiftly.
On the plus side there’s a pulsing, driving blackcurrant thread on the nose and throughout the palate, some lovely BBQ char and tar aromas, savoury black olive. Herbal notes include bay leaf and sage, and there’s tobacco leaf and eucalypt wrapped in vanillan oak.
The palate has some decent flavour weight and length, but the greenness and herbal spectrum of flavours dominate, in my view. The dense, chewy blackcurrant is attractive. I feel the structure also lets this wine down a bit – the acid is still too crunchy and seems out of kilter with the rest of the elements.
Vibe
I hate to say it but this was a bit of a disappointment. Further on-line research shows it never soared to the heights of the Trophy in WA, winning Bronze medals elsewhere and 89 points from Halliday. Look, it’s not a bad, bad wine. It’s just not a Trophy-winner in my book.
Value: The current release is $32 so I’m assuming the 2007 vintage was around the same, or slightly less. I think that price is a little too high for this wine (2007).
Tasted: June 2011
Closure: Screwcap
Tech-head
Producer: Windows Estate – www.windowsestate.com.au – Established in 1996 and now owned by the Davies family, the winery/vineyard is located at the northern end of Margaret River (near Yallingup).
Region: Margaret River, Western Australia.
Site: Gravelly and sandy soils over a clay base. The website declares the property as dry-grown.
Vintage: A mild winter leading into a warm and early vintage, finishing hot. A much-heralded vintage in Margs with many wines achieving great show success around the world, especially for cabernet.
One of those rogue bottles that suddenly appear in your drinks cabinet and you have no idea where they came from. With no knowledge of this label I went to Googleville and discovered the people behind the brand are a Kiwi and an American – making wine in northern Italy, and looking a lovely couple in the promo material.
Merlot – the poor, unsung, discredited, shabbily-treated variety. Whatever, let's try it. OK, browning colour but purple nose. Meaty aromas greet, almost Cabernet-like blackcurrant, plummy spice, some charry tarry action – black fruits really. I’m fond of brambly earthy reds and this one has a decent dollop of those characters, along with some coffee and choc-cherry. An attractive nose generally.
The palate is certainly smooth and supple: velvety tannins, soft acid, but still retains a bit of uprightness. A mid-weight style with a touch of black pepper, some herbal spice, coffee and choc. There’s ripeness contrasting with some gorgeous Italian savouriness, but there’s a touch of mintiness which leads me to think I wouldn’t want to see this wine in a cool year. It probably finishes a little short too if I’m pushed to be critical.
Vibe
The 2007 vintage offered the chance for the cooler regions to attain maximum ripeness and I’m guessing Bollini achieved this, although anything less may have seen me use the word ‘leafy’. It is simple, well-made, generally fault-free, but ultimately left me unsatisfied. And I love to be satisfied.
Value: I think this retails around $20. I reckon there’s better Merlot options around from Australia but it’s good to check what the other guys are doing.
Tasted: February 2011
Closure: Screwcap
Tech-head
Producer: Bollini Wines – www.bolliniwines.com – a really, really dull website lacking imagination and information (got that off my chest).
Region: Trentino, North-east Italy – a cool climate area at the northern-most point of Italy.
Vintage: Twas generally a dry winter throughout Italy before the 2007 vintage but rains in June offered some respite. And then the typical warm, dry weather kicked in perfectly for the harvest. Sporadic hailstorms caused havoc here and there. The Indian summer favoured the cooler areas, allowing full ripening and sugars. A very good year indeed.
I’ve been on the Kay Brothers mailing list for some time. The Block 6 Shiraz was the main reason – I tasted it first at a wine club dinner when I was a mere baby, and was impressed by its over-ripe richness and power – a style I was unaccustomed to at the time. As the mailing list has grown and the allocations of this wine have shrunk (and the price has crept up accordingly, although still reasonable) I have in more recent years been buying some of the Kay’s whites and cheaper reds to offset.
In a recent cleanout of the cellar I found three bottles of 2007 Riesling so I chucked one in the icebox to give it a burl. McLaren Vale is not exactly the epicentre of fine Riesling, thus the fruit for this wine is sourced from 60 year-old vines in Eden Valley. I approached this casually and with less-than-the-usual vigour. I’m happy to say I was pleasantly rewarded.
Slightly yellowing straw colour. The nose offered a whole bunch of interesting aromas – from oily kero to damp straw to plummy nashi pear to potpourri and lavender. Probably the wildest descriptor I pencilled down was ‘sweaty vinyl upholstery, crushed ants, balsa-wood, and a handful of pine needles’. I’m smelling it again and I can wholly vouch for that one. There’s a smoky hint, and some citrussy lemon and a little green peach too.
I love an oily palate. This one has it in spades. The acid has been backed off, or diminished with time in bottle, and there’s an enjoyable creaminess going on. Flavour-wise I’m initially hit with salty green peas, giving way to some lovely, sweet grapefruit and lemon juice, and a fine line of minerality. There’s good weight, there’s depth and great length, and with a piece of grilled Snapper and some home-made chippies it went down a treat.
Vibe
An unexpected pleasure from a producer not renowned for its cooler white varietals. Riesling and fish is usually a good mix, especially if you use ingredients that complement the flavours/aromas of the wine. Like lemon juice, thyme, pepper. I reckon I’ll grab some more Kay’s Riesling next order.
Value: Cellar door price was $20 if I remember. Just about right I reckon.
Tasted: February 2011
Closure: Screwcap
Tech-head
Producer: Kay Brothers – www.kaybrothersamerywines.com – established 1890, famous for their Block 6 Shiraz produced in small quantities from 100+ year vines.
Region: The fruit came from Eden Valley, South Australia, although the winery and main vineyards are in McLaren Vale (the sometimes poorer cousin of Barossa but a personal favourite of mine)
Vintage: A short, sharp vintage in 2007 due to the warm and dry winter/spring. Some bodgy weather at flowering and a lack of water approaching vintage reduced yields. An average year.
Tasted blind with the Far Niente. Clearly a US style wine but this is a great year and this is a very good wine. All coffee-choc, blackcurrant and warm vanillan oak, and a touch of sherry character which I can’t really explain (not oxidative, perhaps an oak-derived aroma). Silky rounded flavours covering the spectrum from black to red-berried; meaty, balanced, nice.
Vibe
Stylish and generous. I enjoyed it a lot and rated it in the top 5 for the tasting of 20 shit-hot Cabernet wines. This is a seriously good wine with a Cali price-tag to go with it, although I can’t tell you what it is because their website won’t list prices.
Value: As part of a wider tasting so I don’t know what this retails for, but it’s not cheap. Not available in Australia anyway.
Tasted: November 2010
Closure: Cork
Tech-head
Producer: Araujo Estate Wines – www.araujoestate.com – claiming organic and biodynamic status.
Region: Napa Valley, California – from the ‘historic’ Eisele Vineyard on an alluvial fan at the north end of the Valley, just east of Calistoga. Cobbly soils.
Vintage: The winter leading into the 2007 vintage was a dry one. A mild spring followed providing ideal growing conditions. Summer was also mild, no heat spikes. A great Napa vintage.
Tasted this blind at a recent Cabernet tasting, along with the Araujo. This looked almost Euro. There was a certain sexiness to it that you don’t usually see in Californian wines. It opened a little weedy but shook this off pretty quickly in the glass. Evolved nicely. Blackcurrant dominating the nose. Palate had a bit of tannin action, although it had lovely texture and came alive with each sip. Plummy and raspberry, midweight and a little restrained – again, something not normally associated with this region.
Vibe
I liked this more and more in the glass. Nice evolution over a few hours, but I don’t usually want to sit on a glass for that long to find out. A very good wine from a very good vintage.
Tasted: November 2010
Value: US$115 – ridiculous really, but if you want it, you’ll pay for it.
Closure: Cork
Tech-head
Producer: Far Niente - www.farniente.com – founded in 1885
Region: Oakville, Napa Valley, California. The base for this wine is sourced from the winery’s Oakville Estate – a 100 acre planting known as the Martin Stelling Vineyard. Soils are gravelly loam.
Vintage: The winter leading into the 2007 vintage was a dry one. A mild spring followed providing ideal growing conditions. Summer was also mild, no heat spikes. A great Napa vintage.
