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The Wine thread

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David Votoupal

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Just hot off the back of the beer threads on here, I thought it was time to start a thread on wine :D

So you can list all your favourite wines, what you're likely to open up for Christmas, or whatever!

Let me start with two gems in my collection which I'll be opening up for Christmas:

2000 De Bortoli Noble One
Morris Old Premium Liqueur Muscat

Should be well worth the money I spent on them! :p :D
 
I got me a couple of Australian Grand Prix Ports dating from the early nineties.

My sister gave me one of them for my 21st. She now lives in California but is coming home for a visit early next year. That ought to be a good excuse to crack the bottle she gave me :D
 
Chapel Hill do a nice red, as do Dalwhinnie, Katnook, Pepper Tree, Esk Valley, Te Kairanga and Cloudy Bay.

Don't touch whites.
 

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2001 Taylor's shiraz is a beauty and the Epiphany is a nice lighter style shiraz.

Penfolds St Hugo Cabernet is an old favorite and the Ey Estate is very good

Coldstream Hills Pinot is very good

Vintage Plane do a great dry Rose as do Tamburlaine.

The Scarborough would have to be the best value chardonnay on the market and i rate the Rosemount Hill of Gold chardonnay very highly. Petaluma are always good but usually too pricey.

Vasse Felix from the Margaret River is my fave dry white with competition from Madfish and Cullen.

Shaw and Smith 2002 especially is a top level Sauvignon Blanc from the Adelaide Hills which I reckon beats anything the Kiwis have to offer, including Cloudy Bay. But the Kiwis have all the depth with Stoneleigh, Montana Reserve and Mt Riley also nice alternatives.

I like Verdelho's quite a bit and Sandalford is probably my favorite along with Sandalyn's and Allandale.
 
Windy Peak Chardonnay or Cab sav
Wolf Blass 2000 Sav Blaunc
Anything from Margaret River is usually good
 
Wolf Blass grey or yellow label are both top easy drinking reds.
The Black is the ultimate, however out of my price range.

Mind you, I'm not half biased as I worked in the cellars at Blass' for 6 years!!
 
Coonawarra, Barrossa Valley or McLaren Value, then of course there is Cape Jaffa or Currency Creek

Most SA reds over $15 are fantastic

My personal favouires are Bethany, Coriole and D'arenberg in particular.

Wynss Coonawarra Cab Sav is super but too expensive when you get get quality wine for half the price.

Rockfords Alicante Bouchet as a nice lighter style red.
 
I'm not a girl, so I don't drink white, unless it comes out of a bag at a frenetic pace, but you can't go past the good ole Bin 444.
 
REDS

If you can get your hand on an R buller 1996 "Caliope" shiraz, it will knock your socks off. A great drinking red and a whopping 17%. Roung the 30- $40 mark.

Evry day drinking reds you cant really go past a de bortoli or even the trentham estate sh/cab.
 

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I follow some simple rules and rarely go wrong:

1. Take no notice of wine medals (or their absence) - their presence ranges from meaningless to nonsense.

2. Never cellar Australian botrytis wines, pinot noir or chardonnay (with some honourable exceptions like Petaluma, Tyrrells Vat 47 and a handful of others)

3. In the case of reds in the cellar, usually try one at 6 years - will give a good indication of how it is going, and if it doesn't have any legs, drink the rest of them then

4. Hunter semillons and Clare & Eden Valley rieslings can age superbly, but as per #3 above, check out the riesling at 4 years and the semillon at 6 years.

5. Keep an open mind about all varieties and try to match the food - riesling and gewurztraminer are much better matches with South-East Asian food than chardonnay

6. Read Huon Hooke in the Sydney Morning Herald - he knows what he is doing, but

7. Read between the lines of any reviews - they print reviews of poor wines, and "quite pronounced oak" means you'll pulling oak splinters out of your mouth, "a touch of sweetness" in a dry white usually isn't good news either etc

8. Try to follow vintage reports from reputable sources (eg Hooke). 2002 looks fantastic for reds in SA, 2001 was very patchy

9. Always buy wine in dozens - you get r*ped buying single bottles

10. Follow an Australian version of the French Appellation Controlee system - simply some varieties suit some areas far better than others eg it's difficult to find a bad Clare riesling or a Coonawarra cabernet

Cheers
 
Originally posted by The Doctor
2001 Taylor's shiraz is a beauty and the Epiphany is a nice lighter style shiraz.

Penfolds St Hugo Cabernet is an old favorite and the Ey Estate is very good

Coldstream Hills Pinot is very good

Vintage Plane do a great dry Rose as do Tamburlaine.

The Scarborough would have to be the best value chardonnay on the market and i rate the Rosemount Hill of Gold chardonnay very highly. Petaluma are always good but usually too pricey.

Vasse Felix from the Margaret River is my fave dry white with competition from Madfish and Cullen.

Shaw and Smith 2002 especially is a top level Sauvignon Blanc from the Adelaide Hills which I reckon beats anything the Kiwis have to offer, including Cloudy Bay. But the Kiwis have all the depth with Stoneleigh, Montana Reserve and Mt Riley also nice alternatives.

I like Verdelho's quite a bit and Sandalford is probably my favorite along with Sandalyn's and Allandale.
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You drink well, Doc.

Re St Hugo, I'm a Wynns Black Label cabernet man myself, but have had a few late eighties/early nineties St Hugos from a friend's cellar - excellent Coonawarra cabernets.

Not a riesling man?
 
Originally posted by David Votoupal
Just hot off the back of the beer threads on here, I thought it was time to start a thread on wine :D

So you can list all your favourite wines, what you're likely to open up for Christmas, or whatever!

Let me start with two gems in my collection which I'll be opening up for Christmas:

2000 De Bortoli Noble One
Morris Old Premium Liqueur Muscat

Should be well worth the money I spent on them! :p :D
Click to expand...

Your Christmas companions are in for a treat.

Old muscats and tokays are nectar of the gods - and the best match with Christmas pudding.
 
Re: Re: The wine list thread

Originally posted by Dry Rot
Your Christmas companions are in for a treat.

Old muscats and tokays are nectar of the gods - and the best match with Christmas pudding.
Click to expand...

Indeed, the pride of Australia bar none! :cool:
 
Any fortified wine made by Bill Chambers at Rutherglen is unsurpassable. They're not available everywhere, but are well worth the effort.

Just about all of Penfolds' 'Bin' red wines have been uniformly excellent for thirty years.

I love reds from Mildara, especially their Coonawarra. I have a particular affection for McLaren Vale reds as well.

Geelong and its environs has produced some splendid wines over the past 20 years.

One out of left field, which is not too expensive, comes from the Pyrenees area in western Victoria, Taylors. They cellar well too.

Fergussons in the Yarra Valley are expensive these days and they can stand some age.

Most of the cold-climate Mornington Peninsula wines are eminently drinkable.

I laugh when I see people, quite rightly, laud the wines from the Margaret River area of W.A. When I lived in Perth, during 1973, the only Western Australian wine available was sold in flagons. They didn't think they could compete with other areas in those days, if they sold their wine in bottles.

Mind you, they did produce the finest flagon red wine I've ever drunk. Pity they found out how good they were, eventually.
 

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I have about 140 bottles of wine cellered at my house. Have 4 bottles of Penfolds Grange Hemitage which will not be touched for about 10-15 years. Also a few Leeuwin estate reds, plus Voyager estate wines, including a couple of $150+ bottles of 1994 MT Tom Price limited release from Voyager. Saving them for a rainy day. The rest of my wines are from various other winneries, Sandalford and Harvey Bridge River estate etc.
 
Which would be your ultimate choice for Muscats from NE Victoria, seing that the majority of them truly are top-class wines. It seems so hard to choose- Morris, Chambers, Bailey's, Bullers, Campbells, Stanton and Killeen, Brown Brothers, Booth's, and a few others I can think of. It's not exclusively NE Victoria though, as McWilliams can also come up with the goods and even the Romavilla winery up in Queensland does the stickes well.
 
Originally posted by 1jasonoz
I have about 140 bottles of wine cellered at my house. Have 4 bottles of Penfolds Grange Hemitage which will not be touched for about 10-15 years. Also a few Leeuwin estate reds, plus Voyager estate wines, including a couple of $150+ bottles of 1994 MT Tom Price limited release from Voyager. Saving them for a rainy day. The rest of my wines are from various other winneries, Sandalford and Harvey Bridge River estate etc.
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What vintages are your Granges?

A word of caution - like any wine, they are not immortal, and pre 1980 vintages are either well past their best or gone (despite the silly auction prices). Even Penfolds are recommending that the optimal time for keeping most of the Granges from the last 15 years is 10 - 15 years from vintage.

Nothing worse than keeping a good or great wine too long in the cellar.

Also raises the question of how good your cellaring conditions are?
 
Originally posted by David Votoupal
Which would be your ultimate choice for Muscats from NE Victoria, seing that the majority of them truly are top-class wines. It seems so hard to choose- Morris, Chambers, Bailey's, Bullers, Campbells, Stanton and Killeen, Brown Brothers, Booth's, and a few others I can think of. It's not exclusively NE Victoria though, as McWilliams can also come up with the goods and even the Romavilla winery up in Queensland does the stickes well.
Click to expand...

Over the years I've had the pleasure of attending tastings of top shelf examples from most of these guys, and all are excellent.

Really comes down to personal preference.

I've been into them for over 20 years - hasn't the price soared for quality?

And Bill Chambers should be declared a National Treasure.
 
Margaret River reds are generally nice.

Really though, I'll drink (almost) any red.

In fact, during winter, red wine is THE only alcohol I drink.

(I drink more spirits than wine during summer though.....I don't drink beer at all......)

I wouldn't say I have any idea what I'm talking about when it comes to red wine......I don't take that much of an interest in it........other than drinking it. :)

My personal faves ($10-$20 range anyway) are the Brown Brothers merlot and the Grant Burge Barossa merlot. (I couldn't tell you which years are better)

There's also a half Chilean & Aus red I drink called "Timara" (Cab Sav Merlot) which is very nice for the price. (about $9)
 

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