Wines

Wines for Christmas

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Disclaimer:  I was sent the four wines by Wine Selectors.

When Wine Selectors got in touch and asked me if I’d like to try some of their wines they didn’t really have to ask twice!  This was particularly the case because NOT ONE of the wines they offered to send was a Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc.  Not that I have anything against Kiwi Savvie B but I really don’t understand why Australians drink so much of it when they should be supporting local products.

So, if you’re guilty of always reaching for the NZ Sav Blanc – PLEASE READ ON!

And if you’re not, please read on anyway, and we’ll have a chat about wine and food and Christmas.

Let’s begin with a wine that needs no food at all – but, as far as Christmas goes, if you must do food, think breakfast.  I was sent the Peterson’s Sparkling White NV.  This wine was very pale and, on the palate, it was crisp with some good acidity and TONS of citrus.  It’s not a particularly complex wine (and let’s be reasonable – if you buy a case it’s $9 a bottle) so I wouldn’t try pairing it with food.  Keep it as an aperitif but it would also be perfect for breakfasts and brunches and anyone who wants a Bucks Fizz.

Next up we had the Sauvignon Blanc replacements:  The Lions Den Barossa Valley Babylon Block Riesling 2010 and the Jackson’s Hill The Under Block 2011 Semillon from the Hunter Valley.

Both wines were citrussy – the Riesling lemon and the Semillon lime.  In terms of acidity, the Riesling outshone the Semillon, making it a better partner for any richer Christmas dishes.  Have the Semillon with your oysters and prawns and save the Riesling for your baked ham or roast pork, or even your Boxing Day fish and chips.  I’d also opt for pairing the Riesling with roast turkey, if you’re having one and really want to drink white.

The final wine was the Brokenwood The Bentley’s Boot 2010 Pinot Noir.  While this wine showed the raspberry aromas and flavours that are pretty typical of Australian Pinot Noir it also had a substantial green component – think raspberry or strawberry leaf.  There was a bit of spice on the palate and some reasonably grippy tannins.  We had this with confit duck legs (yes, I know – pairing duck with Pinot Noir shows such imagination …) and this wine would work really well with your turkey.  There’s also no reason why you couldn’t drink it with ham or pork, but I do think there the Riesling would be the better option.

So there’s some ideas for your Christmas drinking … hope you find them helpful!

Kersbrook Hill Shiraz 2005

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Kersbrook Hill Shiraz
Kersbrook Hill Shiraz

Our household has been submerged in a fug of early winter colds for about 3 weeks – at one point, all three of us were ill at the same time which was fun. Needless to say, this put a significant dampener on our enthusiasm for eating out, cooking and drinking. I kid you not but at one point I felt so rough that I didn’t even eat any of the chocolate cake that was in the house!

So, yesterday, I was quite thrilled to come across a random piece of paper with a tasting note on it …

Our local bottle shop is a pretty stock standard affair: there’s plenty of cask wines, a walk in beer fridge, a range of cheap wines (usually on some kind of deal) in the west facing window (don’t get me started on how wrong that is) … Fortunately, the staff are enthusiastic, friendly and helpful and the shop stocks a tiny selection of wines from boutique South Australian wineries. I picked up the Kersbrook Hill Shiraz because I had been impressed by their Riesling and the wine was marked down from $24.99 a bottle to $16.

Kersbrook Hill, which describes itself as an “ultra premium five star winery” makes use of the contract wine making services of Ben Jeanneret, of Jeanneret in Clare. So that explains why the Riesling is so good. I’m not sure whether it was him or Harry Dickinson who made this single vineyard Shiraz – but whoever made it clearly knew what they were doing.

The wine still looks young and there’s very concentrated, almost preserved, black fruit aromas accompanied by black pepper and even star anise. On the palate the wine is a lot spicier again, with black pepper dominant and plenty of ripe, full black fruit. The wine has lovely weight, with very soft tannins and some acidity. I did feel that the wine was just the slightest bit too hot, suggesting that the alcohol was just a tiny bit unbalanced – but that’s also a very common criticism of mine, so I wouldn’t give that too much weight.

The Kersbrook Hill tasting notes suggest drinking with with veal or white meat. I think you’d want to be careful taking this route – ensure you have some reasonably big flavours in your sauce because the wine could swamp a delicate dish. We drank some last night with spaghetti bolognese – the wine having made an appearance in the sauce – and it was a good match.

Even if I’d paid $25 for this wine I would have been happy, so $16 represents something of a bargain. Of course, now I’ve paid $16 for it, I’d probably blanch at paying full tote odds. But that’s just me!

Rose Revolution

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Onfalos BBQ and some very tasty meat

There are plenty of internet based wine ‘initiatives’ around this summer … I’ve already written about the Great South Australian Wine Adventure and, in addition to this, we have the Summer of Riesling and SC Pannell’s All for One, to encourage us to drink Australian wine between the start of the new year and Australia Day.

I guess it’s the warm weather that makes us thirsty …

To add to this, we also have the Rosé Revolution which is all about recognising that rosé can be a serious wine for serious wine lovers. All too often rosés are made to appeal to a market segment that doesn’t normally drink wine – and this can leave them a little too sweet and unbalanced for those of us more used to sipping wines like Sauvignon Blanc or Shiraz.

Last night, Wine Australia hosted the Adelaide Rosé Revolution Live Event at Homestyle Solutions and I was lucky enough to go along and mingle with Adelaide’s twitterati while tasting a variety of rosés, served in Reidel glasses no less, and enjoying some very tasty food provided by Feast! Fine Foods.

The rosés that were poured came from a mix of local and interstate wineries and many were tied in with those being tasted by the Qwoff Boys and their live twitter tasting from the Yarra Valley. The heavy social media element meant that a lot of time was spent with noses buried in phones (when not in the glasses!) but we all managed to fit in a lot of normal socialising along with the serious wine talk.

Of the wines tasted last night (I tasted about eight, but had a serious pen malfunction part way through the evening) there was a huge range of colour and degrees of dryness. There’s been some chat about whether or not winemakers should strive to make dry rosés pale and the sweeter styles darker/pinker in colour … personally, I think that’s a terrible idea. If you think about all the work that has been done to persuade people away from the “white wine with fish and white meat” style of thinking, such a simplistic aim has to be a bad thing, not to mention the constraints it puts on winemakers.* Everyone perceives sweetness slightly differently (and sometimes a wine can have so many fruit flavours it can seem sweet when it’s actually dry!) that the best way to navigate a new rosé is to try it. If you can’t do that – read the back label or have a chat to your wine merchant. A good wine store will have employees who can tell you this type of thing (or they’ll be honest if they don’t know!).

So … my personal highlights of last night were the (sparkling) De Bortoli Rococo Rosé – bone dry and an absolutely delicious wine to serve as an aperitif. The retail price looks to be around $22 which makes it good value for money too (often sparkling rosés are a little more expensive than their white counterparts).

In the still rosés my favourite was the Longview Boat Shed Nebbiolo Rosé. Although some punters may find it ever so slightly off dry that’s definitely balanced by some good acidity and it’s tasty to boot. Not only that, it comes from our own Adelaide Hills. It retails just under $20 and would pair well with food that has a bit of weight and even a bit of spice – think a meaty fish with a slightly spicy marinade that’s been grilled.

My faves from the night

It was a great evening and really showcased the diversity that can be found in Australian rosés and certainly means that I for one will be giving rosé a little more consideration this summer.

If you’ve been involved in a Rosé Revolution event, or just have a favourite rosé the rest of us must know about, please do leave a comment!

* If you care … the colour in a rosé comes from the time the wine spends on the grape skins, but sweetness (or otherwise) comes from fermentation and how much sugar is fermented out of the wine. To try to connect two really unconnected things seems like a bad idea to me!