2010 Printhie 'Mountain Range' Sauvignon Blanc
Nettley, showing a little age. Lemon and orange rind, grassy, some wild sage-bush. Lemon-scented honey aromas blend with lime, passionfruit and guava, with a little green tea thrown in. The palate is developed, as expected by now, and shows lemon curd, gooseberry, green bean and roasted green capsicum. Nice weight, texture and acid.
Vibe
Following on from the outstanding 2009 vintage Savvy and maybe falling short of those heights, but still a good wine – although I would be drinking it soonish. A stylish feel, but probably lacks the oomph factor of the previous vintage. As chance would have it, I learned via Twitter that Gary Walsh (Winefront) was tackling the 2010 MCC Sauvignon Blanc on the same night and giving it big raps. I must have a crack at this wine. Stay tuned.
Value: $18 – there's good value in the entire Mountain Range.
Tasted: August 2011
Closure: Screwcap
Source: Purchased
Tech-head
Producer: Printhie Wines – www.printhiewines.com.au - owned by the Swift family.
Region: Orange, NSW - the NSW central tablelands east of Sydney - a region of high-ish elevation.
Vintage: A difficult vintage with yields down across the board for many – although some excellent quality prevailed.
2010 Frankland Estate ‘Isolation Ridge’ Riesling
Minerally, slatey, flinty... There I said it. Floral aromas with citrussy lime and pear – there’s more going on here than in the average riesling flavour spectrum. There’s freshness and zing, lifted flavours and aromas. Refreshing. There’s broad flavours in the citrus and tropical sphere, and some spice and fruit blossom, but there’s also drive and length and focus. And there’s more of that flinty goodness.
Vibe
I don’t care what Philip White says, if I want to call a wine minerally I damn well will, and you all know what I’m talking about. Pure and fresh. Naturally exciting. This is a very good, benchmark WA Riesling. I’ll have some more please.
Value: At $32 it aint cheap, but this is the sort of wine you can pull out at a dinner party and impress the guests. A bit wanky, I know, but that’s wine for you sometimes.
Tasted: August 2011
Closure: Screwcap
Source: Sample
Tech-head
Producer: Frankland Estate – www.franklandestate.com.au – family-owned, established in 1988 by Barrie Smith and Judi Cullam.
Region: Frankland River, West Australia. Adjacent to Great Southern in the cooler south of WA.
Vintage: An ideal vintage for the Great Southern and Frankland River regions. Warm summer days and cool nights. Hard to make a bad wine from this year.
2011 Marq Vermentino
All I can tell you about this new player in the Margaret River region is that it's the private label of Happs winemaker, Mark Warren, and a variety you don’t usually see around Margaret River. It’s light and slightly oily-textured – the flavours are in the spectrum I quite like: lime and pear, peach and apple blossom, grapefruity, floral and perfumed – neat, tidy, gently flavoursome in a restrained sort-of way.
Vibe
Maybe too gentle? It doesn’t have the grunt of other vermentinos I’ve seen, nor the viscosity, but it is freshly bottled so perhaps showing some shyness at the moment. Ne'erless, it's a delightful little romp in the fields, and a perfect pre-dinner drink over spring and summer. With food? You’d be mad not to pair it with seafood – sardines, of course!
Value: Price unknown.
Tasted: August 2011
Closure: Screwcap
Source: Gift
Tech-head
Producer: Marq Wines – www.marqwines.com.au – Happs winemaker Mark Warren's own label.
Region: Margaret River, West Australia.
Vintage: A cracker vintage in the west – perfectly warm temps during the day and cool nights – fruit was ripe with good acids. A winemakers delight.
This wine appeared in a sample pack I received a few months ago and I’ve only just got to it. Yes, I know it says 2009 and I bet you’re all groaning right now. But I have to tell you, I didn’t check the vintage before opening and tasting this wine and assumed from the outset it was current vintage, being 2010, until I looked at the label. It actually looked pretty fresh for it's age.
Willow Bridge Estate are a sleeper out here in WA – we’ve all heard of them, but not many wine nerds probably get around to giving them a crack (this nerd included). They’re roughly 10 years old, and based in the Ferguson Valley (where?). They’ll hate me for saying this, but to set the scene for you, the Ferguson Valley is located approx 100km north of Margaret River in the hills immediately to the east of the regional city of Bunbury. It’s quite a little tourist hub now, can be very pretty, and is worth a visit on your WA trip.
The winemaker is Simon Burnell, formerly of Cape Mentelle in Margaret River, so he knows his stuff. Fruit for this particular wine is sourced from the Pemberton wine region, located south-west of the Ferguson Valley. I love Pemby Savvy. Alright, I know, I’ve probably confused you all now. It doesn't really matter. Read on..
Colour is pale to golden straw. All pineapple and marshmallow, flinty minerality and nettles. Some herbals/florals – nice – and some attractive spice characters in the form of anise and vanilla. Lively pungency still, soft in the acid department, and finishing with sweetish banana passionfruit aromas.
The first thing that I note on the palate is the creamy texture, which I’m guessing is aided by the partial natural fermentation. Flavours are in the greener tropicals – kiwifruit, rockmelon – and some citrussy lemon. On the fringes there’s herbal flavours of lemon myrtle, and lemongrass. Too much lemon you say? Oh, and a bit of lime and a touch of lovely wheatgrass.
Vibe
This does look pretty fresh for 2009 and is drinking well right now. Pemby is quite a bit cooler than Margaret River and therefore the wines exude a bit more lean, yet punchy, minerality, and a bit less of the tropical stuff. When they get the balance right, it’s very nice indeed. I enjoyed this and will probably seek out the 2011 version when it’s ready later this year. I think this wine forms part of the ‘Winemakers’ range, which, thankfully, has undergone a label change in recent times.
Value: The current release is $25 – I’m assuming this wine was in line with that. Up there, but a decent drop.
Tasted: June 2011
Closure: Screwcap
Tech-head
Producer: Willow Bridge Estate – www.willowbridge.com.au – Established in 1996 by the Dewar family.
Region: Ferguson Valley, Western Australia, although this wine is from the Pemberton region, south-west of Ferguson.
Site: Well-drained Marri soils, ironstone gravelly loam over clay.
Vintage: A top vintage in Pemberton – good winter rains preceded a mild and warm growing season without weather extremes or disease.
Had this wine for dinner a couple of nights after the Woody Nook, and because it’s in the same neighbourhood I thought I’d bang up a couple of notes as a comparison exercise.
Rosily are one of the quiet achievers in the region – you see there wines around the cities a bit so I guess their distribution is good. I’ve often enjoyed the cabernet in good years too. The 2010 Sauvignon Blanc goes something like this:
A punch of gooseberry opens the account with some typical Margaret River minerality, a bit of smoky bacon, and a poke in the eye with a lemongrass stalk. There’s a touch of green pea too but it’s blown away by some lemon sherbet and a jube-like aroma. Yellow jubes to be precise. I even detected a spot of spearmint which caught me off-guard, but hey, I like spearmint.
The palate is all citrussy zest, lemon and lime – crisp, nutty – a few green tropical fruits, lychee, gooseberry and some raw pineapple. There’s a bit of green tea too but the fruitier flavours fill every crevice of the palate and coat the tongue in lovely creamy textures. Looks like a bit of oak influence to give some complexity but not so you’d notice it. Good weight/length. What more could you want?
Vibe
Yep, I liked it and gave it a more confident thumbs-up than the Woody Nook. Tasted cleaner and fresher and the texture won me over.
Value: $22 at the bottlo. Justified.
Tasted: May 2011
Closure: Screwcap
Tech-head
Producer: Rosily Vineyard – www.rosily.com.au – A relative newcomer with vines established in 1994 by the Allan family. Mike Lemmes is the winemaker.
Region: Margaret River, Western Australia.
Site: Soil specs run from gravelly loam to coarse gravel to light sandy soils over a clay base.
Vintage: Another superb year in the blessed west. Brilliant for whites with warm, dry conditions throughout summer.
In days gone by, on visits down south, these guys were a staple – if only for the Nooky Port, which if given as a gift would cause one’s friends to titter and wink and blush. At a more serious level the winery was renowned for its Sauvignon Blanc – trophies and gold medals adorn the walls of the cellar door, alongside a gazillion business cards pasted as wallpaper around the tasting room. And of course the Nookery Café was always worthy of a stop for a good/big feed. Well time's hurtled on and port’s a little out of fashion and, for many, the Woody Nook wines also fell out of fashion with the onslaught of new producers, new decades, and new tastes.
On a quick visit for lunch recently we hooked into a platter for two – lovingly ‘80’s in style – and a bottle of the 2010 Sauvignon Blanc. Here’s what it looked like:
Opening with the struck match flintiness of a little sulphur, the nose turned more pleasantly to some lean minerality, cut grass, lavender and pungent herbs – lemongrass and sage. On the fruit side of things I picked out some banana passionfruit and rockmelon – greener tropical fruits generally – some lemon zest and lime leaf. Overall I kept coming back to a driving core of dried orange peel and a sense that the fruit was perhaps a little attenuated.
On first taste the palate tickled a tad with sherbetty acid before stretching out into paw-paw and passionfruit fruitiness, and that old perennial – tinned pineapple. Some good palate weight but I found a little too much coarseness again, flinty coarseness really, but it rounds out at the end and the length is good.
Vibe
I kept swinging between like and ambivalent. In the end the good-guy in me won out over the picky, pedantic bad-guy and I’ll give this wine a moderate thumbs-up.
Value: $22 at cellar door. Fair enough.
Tasted: May 2011
Closure: Screwcap
Tech-head
Producer: Woody Nook Wines – www.woodynook.com.au – established in 1982 by the Gallagher family but now owned by Peter and Jane Bailey. Neil Gallagher remains as winemaker.
Region: Margaret River, Western Australia.
Site: 17 hectares in total, half of which is non-irrigated. No specific soil profile available, however this part of the region generally contains gravelly loams with underlying clay.
Vintage: Another superb year in the blessed west. Brilliant for whites with warm, dry conditions throughout summer.
I don’t know how I ended up with this in the fridge for so long without knocking the top off it. I remember I had a few bottles of this around release time, around the same time it one 7 billion awards. At the time it was punchy, pungent, grassy, lemony and rich and I could’ve sat all day just sipping and smelling. Hey, I probably did.
OK, fast forward to last night. I’m not much chop for writing about wines that are (supposedly) past their ‘best by’ date. I don’t actually subscribe to that theory mind you – I’ve enjoyed many white wines that have been way past best drinking only to find them exquisitely satisfying.
Thus.... on opening I got a little limey sherbet through the nasals, aka grapefruit tang I suspect; with a thread of damp straw and grass. The typical pineapple/passionfruit has ceased to be considered ‘fresh’ yet still linger in a tinned peach and pineapple kind-of theme. I needed a bit of a brain-shift to get behind the aged pea-green savvy character, so I racked up some pork sausages with a fig salad to get me in the mood.
With food most wines take on a new life, especially older white wines, and with a few fatty mouthfuls of pork snags this wine springs up and pops you in the nose with some punchy lift and drive.
What followed was a combo of grapefruit, pineapple and mango juice, lychee and mangosteen characters – and hey, it’s gone all troppo. And yep, there’s still abundant richness and punch. Did I say there was punch? Lemon tart lip-smacking zippy crunchy munchy punch is what I’m sayin’.
Vibe
1. Big punch on the nose. 2. That aged savvy-ness kicked in and I wavered... slightly. 3. Out with the pork. Brought this baby alive. Got betterer and betterer. Delightful food wine. The moral? Don’t forsake the out-of-date drink now whites – mix them up with some good nosh, sit back and enjoy.
Value: Cellar door price is $17. Bargain. Member price is $14.45. Crazy bargain. Go buy some now. Currently selling 2010 (which I haven’t tasted but would happily buy on the strength of the 2009 providing the vintage was tidy, which it was).
Tasted: January 2011
Closure: Screwcap
Tech-head
Producer: Printhie Wines – www.printhiewines.com.au
Region: Orange, NSW – the NSW central tablelands east of Sydney – a wine region of high-ish elevation.
Vintage: A super vintage in Orange. Good rains in winter/spring. Mild summer conditions without the heat that affected most of the eastern Australian regions.
