Chateau du Cleray Reserve Muscadet Sur Lie 1995
By Gary Walsh
This wine was sent in by the importer - Monsieur Olivier Gallut of Old Bordeaux Wines (03 9625 1101) and I must admit that I am not very familiar with the style. It is from the Loire Valley - AC Sevre et Maine and made from the Melon de Bourgogne grape. The ’sur lie’ refers to the fact that it is kept on lees for a period before bottling. Anyone who loves bottle aged Hunter semillon would be instantly familiar with the style. In fact, they should be all over this wine like a nympho on a plate of oysters. It’s wonderful stuff.
Pale yellow green. Aromas of green apple, citrus, hay, soap and funky salty minerally overtones. On the palate it is light and bone dry with flavours of citrus, toast, apple, dirt and minerals. Distinctly salty and savoury too. Soft acidity and excellent slightly soapy texture. Finishes nutty dry and long. Delicious stuff. One of the most interesting wines I have tried in many a month.
Tasted : Sep06Alcohol : 12%
Price : $25
Closure : Cork
Drink : 2006 - 2010
Source : Importer Sample
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Seppelt St Peters Grampians Shiraz 2004
I’d guess that this as all been snapped up by now at retail but a sample bottle arrived this week, which is great, as it saves me opening one of my two bottles. Opps. I wish I had bought a few more now. I think this is the bestest St Peters ever.
Deliciously savoury aromas of blackcurrant/blackberry, pepper steak, spice, white flowers and licorice. More complex than Westfield. On the palate a medium bodied spicy little number with meat, spice, pepper and subtle dark berry fruit. Slinky fine grained tannins. Perfect weight and balance and excellent length of flavour. This could be one of the greats.
Tasted : Sep06Alcohol : 13.5%
Price : $60
Closure : Screwcap
Drink : 2006 - 2022
Source : Winery Sample
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Seppelt Mount Ida Heathcote Shiraz 2004
Bit of a kerfuffle regarding this wine of late with regards to retail allocations. Looks like it has all been sorted out now though. Messy messy messy. Anyway this is a new addition to the Seppelt family, and a good one, and also one that fits logically into the excellent Seppelt portfolio. They are all Victorian wines now you know.
Aromas of boysenberry/raspberry, black pepper, creamy spicy oak and a little licorice. Give it time in the glass and some mint/menthol characters emerge. On the medium to full bodied palate vibrant summer berry fruit, aniseed, pepper, spice and mint. Fairly firm tannins of the fine powdery kind.Tart acidity sends the wine off balance at the moment but this might sort itself out with further bottle age. Dry spicy finish.
Tasted : Sep06Alcohol : 14.5%
Price : $49.99
Closure : Screwcap
Drink : 2008 - 2016
Source : Winery Sample
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Scarborough Blue Label Chardonnay 2005
Scarborough blue label chardonnay is my favourite of all the Scarbies wines. It is a style that relies on lees for complexity rather than oak. Good. I popped into the cellar door the other week and tasted through the range and this was the wine that really tickled my fancy. The dessert style semillon did too but you can’t have too much fancy tickling in one day. I think this is the best blue label release since the cracking 2002 vintage.
Aromas of citrus, lemon rind, nectarine and savoury yeasty overtones with the barest hint of spicy oak. On the palate there are intense flavours of citrus, preserved lemon and stonefruit backed with sour yoghourt and savoury lees derived characters. Penetrating bright yet soft acidity. Very long sweet and sour finish. It’s a beautiful wine. It’s a winner.
Tasted : Sep06Alcohol : 13.5%
Price : $19
Closure : Screwcap
Drink : 2006 - 2008
Source : Winery Sample
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Rockford Basket Press Shiraz 2003
Bigger, sweeter, bulkier than your average Basket Press shiraz, with a luscious mid-palate that’s a flood of licorice and blackberry and raspberry flavour. You need a subscription to The Wine Front to see this part of the post
Price : $46 CDClosure : Cork
Drink : 2005 - 2010
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T’Gallant Moscato 2006
I opened a 2004 Seppelt Mount Ida shiraz to taste this afternoon but I don’t think I’ll write the note on it just yet. It needs a bit more time and anyway it’s not a Friday afternoon sort of drink. This Moscato is though. It is made from Muscat a petits grains rouge grown sourced on a single vineyard at Swan Hill. The ferment is stopped by chilling the wine and it has 120g per litre of residual sugar. I have no idea why they chose to seal it with a cork.
Very pale pink colour. Aromas of peach, grapes and flowers. On the palate juicy peach and green grape flavours with hint of green herbs. It’s frizzante and fresh with a good acid to sugar balance that allows for rapid tippling action. The finish is clean and very refreshing. Lovely stuff. No idea how to rate it really but I do think it most excellent.
Tasted : Sep06Alcohol : 7%
Price : $18
Closure : Cork
Drink : 2006 - 2007
Source : Winery Sample
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Noon Eclipse Grenache Shiraz 2004
By Campbell Mattinson
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Closure : CorkDrink : 2005 - 2011
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Noon Eclipse Grenache Shiraz 2005
By Campbell Mattinson
This is, as almost always, warm to hot on the palate, but boy is it gorgeous too.
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Drink : 2007 - 2015
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Houghton Jack Mann: the story
When you drink the Houghton Jack Mann reds, sourced solely from Western Australia’s Great Southern region, you taste significant fruit power matched to a dusty, stretching, stalker-like length. It’s a great tribute to the bloke who was Jack Mann. He used to travel to Great Southern to play cricket, and between sending down leg-cutters he’d salivate at the wine potential of the place. He spent 51 consecutive years as winemaker at Houghton’s home base in Western Australia’s Swan Valley, and in the process he put his state on the winemaking map – to the enduring benefit of the wine-loving world. He also had a saying: ‘The greatest grape is the noble cabernet. Cabernet sauvignon is the only grape that would be tolerated in heaven.’
The Houghton Jack Mann cabernet-based wine, which he never got to taste, was first produced from the 1994 vintage, and was made by Paul Lapsley. Jack Mann himself died in 1989. His name adorns a wine whose pedigree is largely, shamefully, ignored: it is (in most years) a single vineyard wine produced off vines planted at the dawn of Western Australian wine time – in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is hand-picked, hand-made, fussed over and thought through. It’s fermented in small batches. Most years it achieves excellent ripeness, and with the strength of its various varietal components has an edge of complexity over most other Australian cabernets. The vineyard from which it comes is in the Frankland River area of Great Southern. Like Bordeaux, it is a maritime-influenced region.
Frankland is the driest sub-region of the Great Southern region. It is 220 metres above sea-level, and in this dry, ocean cooled heat the vines strain down into a mix of light medium clay soils and sandy loams. The vineyard block itself is of significant size – it’s nearly 90 hectares. It runs upwards, along a ridge, and the grapes that make it into the Jack Mann cabernet invariably come from the vines planted at or near the top of that ridge – where the soils are skinny and hard. The vineyard is essentially dry grown, though limited water is available should the vines show undue stress – or look as though they are in danger of death. Salinity, of the area’s water and the area’s land, is a significant mitigating factor both to future development and to the way existing vineyards are worked.
Winemaker Paul Lapsley now admits that the 1994, 1995 and 1996 wines were blatantly made to win awards at wine shows. ‘In 1994, our five-year plan was to try to put Houghton on the map as a red wine producer, because up until then it was known pretty much only as a white wine producer. It was calculated then that we’d produce the first three vintages in a concentrated show style to make a statement.’
This is all fine, dandy, and unexceptional – except that the 1994, as a ten year old, has outgrown its bulk, its breadth now outdone by its length. It also tastes as though it has another ten years up its sleeve. The belief now is that, within reason, the quality of the grapes grown on this mature, Frankland River vineyard are of such exceptional quality that they will out-stay whatever winemaking quirks are thrown at them.
It’s why the general belief now is that, if the ‘Jack Mann’ grapes were human, they would make for a great lover … they have staying power.
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Dalwhinnie Moonambel Shiraz 2001
First thing you smell is oak, creamy and vanillin – and while it dominates, it’s not stenching, there is some delicacy there. You need a subscription to The Wine Front to see this part of the post
Price : $55Closure : Cork
Drink : 2008 - 2013
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Howard Park Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot 2005
