THE WINE FRONT

Serious money is suddenly being paid for some of the great old Australian wines, and judging by the experience I was lucky enough to be invited to last Saturday night, no bloody wonder. These were stare-into-the-eye-of-beauty wines, wines that took the 'surprised by joy/impatient as the wind' nature of life and made you stop to appreciate the wonder that is the passage of time. These wines were 40 years old, and they were magnificent. This was Australian wine at its crackerjack best.

These three wines were served together, as a flight.

Mount Pleasant Hunter Valley Phillip Shiraz 1966:
It smelled of sweetness, of roses, of red earth, of leather, of a clean old barn, full of hay and wool bales. It didn't have a lot of stuffing on the palate, but it sang sweetly, if softly, its savoury heart still beating soundly. At the end of its run, but a joy to drink. Lovely lovely lovely.

Tulloch Pokolbin Private Bin Dry Red Shiraz 1965:
Incredible. It took a little time to open up, but over the course of an hour it got better and better - complex, silky, earthy, daring, balanced and intriguing. A wine that it was impossible not to keep returning to, over and over. An amazing experience. Long long long. Savoury, spicy, earthen. Watching it over an hour was like a decade-long trek. This is what wine is all about. Good bottles of this will live for another 20 years.

Lindemans Hunter Valley Shiraz Bin 3110 1965:
Some people reckon this is the best Australian wine ever made - or that it's  right up there. I've not tasted a wine better than it. Monumentally good. Complex, savoury, earthen, blackberried, vibrant and interesting and structured and all that - full of heart, of stuff, of nonsense, of cunning, of substance - and then, wrapping all that up, the softest of soft textures, like drinking the neckskin of your first lover. Eat your heart out. This is the gorgeous eye of wine at its most devastating. Good bottles of it will live forever.