Barossa Valley to Adelaide, South Australia
Chris really wrote this up better than I did, so I'll liberally just quote him below, in entirety, below. It was One Last Day of running around indulging The Wine Fetish before heading into Adelaide for the evening.
Here's what Chris wrote:
Well, now, let's just copy
some stuff out of our journal, shall we.
Dan and I went to Penfolds this morning. It cost us A$200, which is a fuck of
a lot of money, but strangely enough, I don't feel ripped off - the pours were
about 60 ml, which equates to a raw cost of about $80 per person, so there
really was only a $20 overhead to try these puppies - a lot cheaper than
actually buying a bottle of each for around $900! The gentleman who led the
tasting was friendly, knowledgeable, and funny, and it was a great opportunity
to try their ultra expensive wines that I wouldn't have otherwise tried. Here,
then, are my tasting notes, unredacted for the most part:
1. 98 Yattarna. Tumbarumba, ADL Hills, Fleurieu. Definitely a little bit of
that funky oldness there. I guess that's oak there? -> Tastes pretty good.
Definitely more complex than the Leeuwin. Great length. Nice acids. Just fine.
Might need to be older. Lees-y flavor? Kept on lees about 3/4 of the time
before bottling. Amazing length, really.
2. 97 St. Henri. 'Mainly Barossa.' No phylloxera in SA. Also has Padthaway +
ADL Hills components, etc. Beautiful dried blood color. A blended wine. Done
in huge old oak vats. Beautiful, elegant nose. 97 is about 3% cab. sauv. '98
is 100% Shiraz.
3. 98 Magill; single vineyard wine, ca. 30'000 bottles/year. Adelaide hills
again. 60/40 French/US oak. Again, nice red color. Smells unlike anything I've
had before. Lots of tannin here. Kind of austere in a nearly unpleasant way. A
bit sweet. Seems kind of disjointed; needs time?
4. 99 RWT; all Barossa fruit, mostly old vine Kalimna. All French oak; 75%
new. Again, huge tannins, so obviously better old? Not particularly elegant
now. Nice length. Sweetness lingers on for a bit, pretty impressive but
again... no old world funk here.
5. 98 Bin 707 (after the Boeing jet). Mostly Coonawarra w/some old Barossa
fruit. American American oak here (-> big fruit). Looks like black cherry
soda, kind of smells like cedar shavings / hamster cage. Almost a sour (umami?)
thing going on the mouth, gets you really salivating. Tannins, but under
control.
6. 97 Grange. Very bad year, climate-wise, but Parker sez it's great. Again,
lots of particulate matter. Nose is absolutely stunning, again distinctive &
strange. 2 years new US oak. 3% cab. sauv. Actually smells like crusty bread?
Nah, just smells really beautiful. Again, produces saliva, tannins obvious but
in check.
7. NV Grandfather port. Important to remember that there's a lot of good
brandy in here! Amazing. Beautiful, sweet, rich, amazing.
[That's all I wrote at the time. All in all, it was an interesting experience.
The Grange was every bit as wonderful as you'd damned well expect for about
US$140 a bottle; it really surprised me. It really is in a class of its own.
My favorite overall was the Bin 707, which I think would be lovely if you
could cellar it for at least a decade; however, the St. Henri is lovely and
not quite so expensive (the Grange is $320, the Yattarna $120, the 707 $120,
the RWT $150, the Magill $65, the St Henri $50, the Grandfather $80). Thing
is, though, none of these wines have that Old World funk/terroir thing going
on which I adore so much. Nothing really touched the Clonakilla, Yalumba,
Plantagenet, Mitchell, or Knappstein in terms of sheer audacity and interest.
Yes, these wines were lovely, obviously expensive, and refined, but dammit, I
want more than that. And, honest, I don't want to pay so much for my wine.
A$48 for Clonakilla or even A$15 for the Yalumba Barossa shiraz gives you an
awful lot more bang for your buck than these guys, but I have to admit that
the Penfolds wines are really something very special. Hell, I even liked the
Yattarna, which is 100% chard. It was pretty fabulous; as I will most likely
never, ever have a superpremium chardonnay again, I will just content myself
with pretending that really fine Chablis tastes like this. Still, I'd really
rather spend one-third the price of a bottle of Yattarna on a bottle of
riesling.]
The end of the Barossa.
After we left the rarefied confines of the Special Double Secret Tutored
Tasting Room at Penfolds in Nuriootpa, I spent a few minutes tasting
some other, more ordinary Penfolds wines; the same guy poured them for us,
which was cool 'cuz we'd talked about what we really liked in wines, so we
were able to cut through the crap and just get down to the wines we would most
likely want to purchase. Here they are:
2000 Adelaide Hills Semillon. After some convincing, I tried this. And, guess
what? It's probably the best semillon I've had in Australia. Much more to my
taste than the Hunter semillons; very smooth, elegant, and precise. I suppose
it'd be wonderful if you aged it, but it's great right now. A$27. I still
don't like semillon, though; it's just too vanilla for me.
2001 Eden Valley Reserve riesling, A$27. I liked this enough to buy a bottle.
It's among the better rieslings I've tried, having a very floral nose, lots of
acid, lots of fruit, lots of everything. Sadly, it's under cork. In
retrospect, though, you can probably get better rieslings for less money; it's
very good, but slightly too expensive.
1997 Clare Valley Reserve Aged Riesling, A$27. Hell, I bought one of these
too. It's definitely getting the fusel oil thing going on, and I was warned
that it'll get more like that the longer it goes without being drunk, but I
like it that way. Very well integrated sugar/acid, beautiful nose, all in all
an excellent example of aged riesling. I had a bottle of this in February, but
as far as I can tell, that bottle must have been corked, because it was
nowhere near as wonderful as this was.
1999 Cellar Reserve Sangiovese, A$35. Guess what? I bought this too. It's the
kind of wine you almost never see done in Australia, and that made it all the
more appealing. Great sangiovese flavor, coupled with searing acidity,
although not too much. Dan actually liked it far more than I did. Impressive
as all hell. Still probably a bit overpriced but I guess that's how things go
at Penfolds.
Next stop on the list was Charlie Melton. Melton's about a mile east of
the main drag, off in the hills; it's a nice country shack/barn/winery kind of
place with a small lawn out front; you park in a dirt lot and traipse across
the lawn to the tasting room, which is a wonderful little wood panelled room
with a small fire, a big wooden table, a loaf of bread, and a haphazard
assortment of bottles and glasses on the table. The two women running the
place greeted us heartily, and when I asked where I could spit, they suggested
I do it outside on the lawn, thus communing with Nature, or by using the
spitoon on the table which I hadn't seen at that point. Here's what we tried:
2002 Rose of Virginia. I actually didn't try this, but dude, this is seriously
good rosé if memory serves me correctly. Better than the Lehmann for only
slightly more money.
2000 (?) pinot meunier. I was compelled to buy a bottle of this. It's the
first time I'd ever actually tasted pinot meunier, which is a mutation of
pinot noir so named because the leaves look like they've been dusted with
flour (meunier is French for miller). It was... stunning. Definitely in the
pinot room of the building, but just outside of it. I liked this an awful lot.
2000 (?) Kangaroo something or other syrah (not shiraz!). I gave the staff a
hard time about the name, and they explained that Charlie just called it syrah
for the hell of it, not to indicate that it was especially Rhône-ish or
anything. And I'm fine with that. This was a lovely wine and great value for
about A$18 if memory serves me correctly, with low key oak and a great length
of flavor.
2000 (?) Grenache. Dan bought a bottle of this, and I couldn't even argue
against it. Easily one of the best grenaches I've ever had, this was heavier
than usual, with a good deep color and a very interesting depth of fruit
flavors here. The best grenache yet.
2000 (?) cabernet sauvignon. Again, stunning stuff. This is so totally the
kind of cabernet you read about but never actually get to drink - hats off to
Charlie. I didn't buy any just 'cuz I already have too much cabernet at home.
2000 (?) Nine Popes. This is the wine for which Melton is best known, a Rhône
blend of syrah-grenache with some mataro in there for good measure. Oddly
enough, it really didn't grab me as much as I would have expected. It's no
Cigare, and not significantly better than the Rosemount IMHO. A bit
disappointing, especially given the A$42 price. Still, a good wine.
2000 (?) Shiraz. I bought this one as well, at A$40. This was, to my taste,
the best Barossa shiraz I tried, with a great balance between French oak and
heavy duty Aussie fruit. Others may have been slightly better (Penfolds,
Lehmann), but this one gave me the biggest bang for the buck. Lovely and
feminine, this is good stuff but perhaps not as mind-altering as the
Plantagenet or Clonakilla. Still, what more could you ask for, really? I'm
guessing this may approache the utterly sublime given ten years' age.
Melton were also kind enough to give us a handy one case box with special
cardboard inserts to accomodate all sizes of bottles, which will come in
handy. I guess we're about to fill a second case to go home in Dan's suitcase.
Frankly, we've gone over the top at this point with wine purchases, but we're
still under the A$1,000 mark, and therefore under budget.
So... last stop: Orlando, or Jacob's Creek. The brand spanking
new tasting building opened in May, but was officially inaugurated only a week
and a half ago. Given that I was kind of buzzed when I showed up (I hadn't
spat out any of the expensive stuff at Penfolds, as you might expect), I
decided that we should cool our heels in the restaurant and give the alcohol
some time to work through my system. Now, I guess I was expecting a soulless
corporate experience, but instead I had one of the three best meals I've had
in Australia. Honest! I'm shocked that it was so fucking good. I started with
a Caesar salad (A$9) that arrived in a huge white ceramic bowl, with wonderful
fresh romaine lettuce, huge shavings of parmesan, and lots of bacon hidden
among a delicate creamy dressing with some anchovy in there as well. I had a
glass of the Orlando St. Helga riesling (A$4.50), which struck me as insanely
good riesling at the time, nearly as good as the Grosset, Howard Park, or any
of the other top end Aussie stuff. (And guess what? It only cost A$15.50 at
the cellar door!) After that, I moved on to a grilled fillet of beef with
parsnip and sweet potato (A$20) which was done to perfection - and a nice,
healthy portion at that. I paired it with a Russet Ridge Bordeaux blend
(A$4.50), which was about as perfect as you could get, and, again, amazing
given the low cost. Finally, I shared a humongous cheese platter (A$12.50)
with Dan, which has three slabs o' cheese: a blue, a cloth wrapped, and a hard
Cheddar style cheese, along with some dried apricots and some partly raisined
grapes. Mmmmmm. I had both a glass of Gramp's botrytis semillon and an Orlando
port liqueur (each A$4.50) with the cheese, trading sips with Dan, both of
which were stunning. At this point I was so incredibly happy at the good food
and wine that I shamelessly kissed the supervisor's ass - she was obviously a
bit harried and stressed and I figured it was time to let her know just what a
wonderful job her restaurant was doing. She visibly brightened, stopped for a
minute, and expressed her thanks... not the least of which by sending over two
more glasses of the semillon at absolutely no extra charge. Talk about a
bonus! After a cafe latte (A$2.50), I was ready to drive into Adelaide (barely
legally) and have a nice long nap - but of course I had to snatch up a bottle
of the botrytis semillon (A$15) before hitting the road.
So, how do I feel about Jacob's Creek? Well, admittedly, I didn't really have
any of their wines (apart from a sip of Dan's JC reserve riesling, which was
pretty nice). However, the wines I had were made by the same people in the
same winery, and they were uniformly standouts in their class, although
significantly less expensive than the competition. Most of all, though, I was
floored by the food and tasting building itself, and I came away feeling
mighty good indeed about JC and Orlando in general. Sure, the el cheapo
chardonnay they do may be as interesting as donkey's piss to French critics,
but 20 million fans can't be too terribly wrong.
All in all, it was an impressive, eye-opening day.
Nothing much. Hey, it is civilization.