Slow Food Wine Beer Tasting

I'm a 'wanna-be' chef <gasp>, no really I love to cook! I'm not going to compete with the good Doctor Edward, some of his stuff could be classified as food 'porn' BUT I do like to dabble in the kitchen and I have been flirting with the Slow Cooking movement over the last year. Imagine, if you will, my delight when I found out about the Slow Food exhibition at the Abbotsford Convent. Slow food, a farmers market, tea, wine tasting and beer (YES BEER) tasting. It all sounds like a little bit of hog heaven to me and this little piggy will be snuffling his way through the Convent on Saturday. Wine & Beer review stocks should be dramatically increased and will get posted assuming that my belly still allows me to reach the keyboard.

Technorati tags - Wine, Wine Tasting, Australian Wine, Slow Food, Beer

Web 2.0 Wine Logging

Michael Stajer has provided a very brief rant on technology, Web 2.0 and community driven wine sites. From my perspective however Michaels article is valuable as it points to sources of Wine and Webby goodness that I had not seen before. So (in order of appearance) let me introduce:
- wineLog.net
- cork'd.com - the only one of these that I knew about.
- buyersvine.com
- WineCommune Spy - this looks really interesting.

Guess how I'm spending the morning instead of working?

Technorati tags - Wine, Wine Reviews,

Update 30/08
- Log a Bottle
- Tasty Drop
- Open Bottles

8 Years Apart

I have really appreciated the recent vintages of the Cabernet Sauvignon from Water Wheel in the Bendigo region. The wine just seems to go from strength to strength. It was quite fortunate when I found a back vintage of this wine in Nicks and I knew that I had a recent Cab Sav in the cupboard so when I saw the 1996 vintage I grabbed it. This gives me an opportunity to taste two vintage of this wine, side by side, and eight years apart.

2004 Water Wheel “Bendigo” Cabernet Sauvignon
Lovely cherry plum colour in the class. Scents of smoky earth and oak with plum and dark cherries. Blackcurrant and “Juicyfruit” (don’t know if that translates outside Australia) flavours with mildly grippy tannins. A mellow lingering finish with an aftertaste of blackcurrant rounds out the wine. It is a well balanced and well rounded Cabernet Sauvignon that I would expect to develop very well in the next 5 to 10 years (if the 1996 vintage is any example). Sealed under a Stelvin closure and at 14% (and $15) this wine has won the Frangos and Frangos Trophy for Best Cabernet Sauvignon at the Daylesford Wine Show 2005.

1996 Water Wheel “Bendigo” Cabernet Sauvignon
This wine is a dark brick red colour and is slightly hazy in the glass showing aromas of plum, stewed fruits, cherry and spice. Nice and smooth on the palate again with plenty of fruit flavours, plum and blackcurrant. Very well balanced with a lovely mouth feel. Slightly astringent finish lingers in the mouth with some pepper. Not being well experienced in this area I might be wrong, but I think that perhaps this wine may have gotten as good as its going to get. Sealed with cork (which was dry and crumbly) at 13.5% (and $25) I’m buggered if I know whether this wine has won anything but I don’t care, because I’ve still got another half bottle to drink.

It was great to have the chance to have these two bottles to drink side by side. Without a doubt I preferred the 1996 but what it has shown me is the value of getting a case of good wine in the current vintage down in storage. The 2004 vintage was a very nice wine but I expect it will be an exceptionaly nice wine if I get to taste it again in another eight years.

Technorati tags - Wine, Wine Tasting, Wine Reviews, Australian Wine, Water Wheel, Cabernet Sauvignon , Bendigo

Outback Country Ale

When you experiment with new and unknown stuff every now and then you are bound to trip up, it’s part and parcel of the process. It’s the trial of the beer taster, some are good, some are, well… not so good. Tonight I may have tripped.

I’m drinking, the Country Bitter from the Outback Brewery. Outback is not really so outback, it’s actually in Sydney. Apparently the Country Bitter is not a regular brew for these guys, with one other seasonal/specialty beers (Chilli Beer) it is an occasional brew. The Country Bitter pour a very nice dark gold/amber in the glass, perhaps a little bit hazy. Active carbonation provides a strong foamy head that dissipates to a thick lace. Aromas of straw, yeast and plenty of hops. Strong hops and yeast flavours dominate this beer with some malt and it is very sweet, I swear I can taste porridge. Bittersweet aftertaste is a bit to cloying for my taste. I’m not all that impressed by this one, it is a bit like an overworked home brew, for me it’s just to sweet to be really enjoyable. I think if the sweetness was cut this would be a much nicer beer.

My impression looking at the breweries website is that it is more a home brew brewery that has bulked up on steroids. Now this should never preclude anyone from producing a good beer, certainly some of the best beers I drink are made by avid home brewers. I guess that scaling from a ‘home’ operation to a commercial operation would have significant challenge, so props to the Outback boys for getting out there and giving it a shake.

I’d love to be able to give Outback a strong review so I’m going to try and lay my hands on some of their main stream (regular) beers. I’m a big fan of the smaller brewer and really would like to see these guys do well as it is only with blokes like these pushing the barriers and starting to cut into the market that the big brewers are going to up their game and stop churning out swill. Far from being bad, it’s unfortunate that the Country Bitter is just not to my taste.


Tags - Beer, Beer Tasting, Beer Reviews, Australian Beer

2002 Henschke Henry's Seven

My affair with Shiraz Viognier continues and this one is my current favorite. The Henschke Henry's Seven is blended 60% Shiraz 35% Grenache and 5% Viognier fruit grown in the Barossa. Despite being a very difficult vintage year the 2002 Henry's Seven is (apparently) one of the better vintages for this wine. The wine is a deep crimson and carries the aromas of berries, apricot and spices (pepper/clove) . Extremely smooth and silky on the palate again carrying the sweet fruit flavours. Very fine tannins provide a lingering and exceptionally smooth savoury finish with hints of aniseed.

Henry's Seven is one of my very favorite examples of Shiraz Viognier and never fails to impress. Sealed under a screw cap, I picked up this bottle for $27.

Technorati tags - Wine, Wine Tasting, Wine Reviews, Australian Wine, Henschke, Barossa

Wine Journal II - Another approach

Recently I posted a few notes on one of the wine journals that I had tried to use. Salil commented that he uses a standard spiral bound notebook to record his tasting notes. To illustrate this approach to note taking I asked Salil if he would like to send me a couple of photos of his journal to put up on the blog and he has kindly agreed.

Salil says...
"The pages in the first attachment (with the list of Tempus Two wines) were actually written (or should that be scrawled?) while I was doing a tasting at the Tempus winery a few weeks ago in the Hunter Valley. And as you'll see, I normally don't go too deep into annotations or ratings usually go with an Exceptional/Excellent/Very Good/Good/Decent/etc... system, which is easier to track/think about than going with numbers)."

Note: Click pics to see bigger versions.

So apart from the fact that Salil is tasting WAY to much wine (is that even possible?) my immediate impression is that he has a good approach that works for him. I tend to agree with his comments regarding scoring because in this case the 'grade' that is applied is a personal assessment and not necessarily one that will be sent out to the wide world. Like Salil, I hesitate to score wines (though I have tried in the past); I find that my palate is just not up to the task of making such low level distinctions that are reflected in a 100 point scale.

I know I was a bit hamstrung by pre-printed note books when I first started writing about wines and even now my tasting notes are short and choppy things. It's dumb but I never thought to just grab a note book and write stuff down. Perhaps I need to buy another Moleskine and get "freeform"!

Technorati tags - Wine, Wine Tasting, Wine Reviews

R.I.P. Len Evans (1930 - 17/08/2006)

I was stunned to hear tonight that Len Evans (OBE) has passed away. Len was one of the founding fathers of wine reviewers in Australia and one of the industries leading lights. In his years as a judge, writer, winemaker and industry advocate Len was instrumental in the promotion and development of the profile of Australian table wines both in Australia and around the world.

He will be sadly missed.

Winepros has a nice bio that details some of Lens achievements.

Some other posts at
- Winefront
- The Oz Wine Show
- Vinosense

Technorati tags - Wine, Wine Reviews, News

Wine Journal I

In a recent post I discussed the online wine review site Cork'd. In that post I mentioned my preference to write my own wine notes on paper and so I figured I might pop up some quick comments on some of the wine journals I have used.

The first wine journal that I ever bought was entitled "What I Tasted - a wine lovers journal" and I picked it up through Amazon. The journal is the size of a small pocket notebook, about 10cm x 6cm (I'm guestimating here) and has a hard cover. The first couple of pages discuss a process for tasting and describing wine and different random pages through the book have descriptions for flavours and smells to help you describe the wine in question. Each page allows space to describe one wine with spots for most of the information that you would expect to capture. There are seperate sections for Red, White and Other.

The major fault with this product is its size, its just to small. There is not enough room to write notes, esspecially if you have big clumsy handwriting like yours truly. Another problem is that the book will not lay flat, you really need to hold the little bugger down. Closing remarks, it is a pretty little thing but just not that practical, I've barely used it and quickly grabbed a different journal.

Technorati tags - Wine, Wine Tasting, Wine Reviews

Red Hill Brewery Golden Ale

Back to the beer! It’s been a brilliant late winter day today and I’ve just come back from a longish walk trying to knock off some of the extra kilos that I’ve put on because of all this beer tasting. I like to think that I’m suffering for my art but really I just have no self control and I love a new beer and I do like to crow about it as well! So I’ve come back from my ‘exercise’ and I figure I probably deserve something light and refreshing so tonight I have the Golden Ale from the Red Hill Brewery.

The Golden Ale pours a very cloudy pale straw in the glass. It develops a thin but nicely formed head that fades to a thick lace that holds on very well with fine but very active carbonation. The beer shows lemony citrus smells with mild hops and yeast, the yeast becoming more noticable as the beer warms in the glass. This is a very light crisp beer to drink and it maintains it’s citrus tang through to a clean if a little bitter finish.

The Red Hill Brewery is a fairly new brewery located down on the Mornington Penninsula and would make a very nice interlude in between wine tasting stops. While I’ve not yet been there it appears that they also provide some good food making the stop doubly worth while. The Golden Ale also won a Bronze Medal in this years Australian International Beer Awards. In summary, a good effort that I’d be more than pleased to have again; it’s a perfect summer evening session beer…or winter post exercise beer!


Tags - Beer, Beer Tasting, Beer Reviews, Australian Beer

Primo Estate “Il Briccone” Shiraz Sangiovese (2003)

Family events at our place are always good opportunities to bulk up my tasting notes as both brother and father generally bring something interesting to drink. This weekend provided the opportunity for me to put together some thoughts on several different wines however because I’m starting to get pressed for posts to the blog I’m going to ration them out over a week or so.

As you may have picked up from my other tasting notes I can be less than subtle and I am certainly not the most well rounded wine drinker. I have simple tastes, I like it red and if it’s a Cab then that’s all the better. This one-eyed approach to wine has severely stunted my education and appreciation of many different varietals; the monopolistic wine industry in Australia compounds this problem by only promoting mainstream brands and blends. I’m going to try harder to look to some different blends in the future; at least I will do after I get through my current Cab-Sav glut! That said though, my nod to something different tonight is a brief review of the Primo Estate “Il Briccone” Shiraz Sangiovese (2003).

The Primo Estate “Il Briccone” is a blend of big Shiraz (at 55%) and the fruity and acidic Sangiovese (at 35%), some Cabernet and Nebbiolo make up the difference. Apparently the “Il Briccone” moniker means “The Rogue” and to my untrained and inexperienced palate it is indeed an unfamiliar and unusual beast given my taste buds are normally drowned in Cab. The wine pours dark purple and has a strong smell of mixed fruit, after it opens up a little in the glass it more clearly shows wonderful spicy cherry and plum scents. Again cherry and plum dominate the flavours with some blackcurrant thrown in for good measure. I’m not sure what I expected but was quite surprised at the lightness of the wine; I guess I was blinded by the Shiraz. Smooth lingering tannins give this wine a longer drying finish.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised by this wine and would certainly seek it out again. If “Il Briccone” even hints at what I can expect when I expand my range into the traditional ‘old world’ wines and associated varietals then I can only say roll on future days, I’m in for a fun ride.

Technorati tags - Wine, Wine Tasting, Wine Reviews, Australian Wine, Primo Estate, Shiraz, Sangiovese, McLaren Vale

Redoak Belgium Chocolate Stout

Once more into the breach my friends. This is my second specialty flavoured beer that I grabbed on my recent beer nirvana trip and it’s also from Redoak. Tonight I’m drinking Redoak Belgium Chocolate Stout.

The beer initially disappoints in my glass as it pours without a head, though I’m thinking that this may well be my glass needing a better clean than its currently getting. Dark chocolate brown in colour, and like the other Redoak brew this beer looks just like a Coke. Surprise, surprise, it smells just like a stout, dark malt, molasses and perhaps some coffee. The chocolate smells develop well as the beer warms a little in the glass so I’d suggest that this would be a beer to take a little more slowly or perhaps let it sit for a bit once out of the fridge. It’s a very full flavoured beer and surprisingly it is not at all sweet given its moniker. The chocolate flavours underline this beer but disappointingly the high level of carbonation tends to cut through the unique taste. While the beer has a bitter aftertaste the chocolate does tend to hang around the palate for a while and is pretty nice I must say.

In summary, a very novel and pleasant experience. Given my past bad experiences with the specialty beers I’m starting to getting more comfortable with them and I think this has a great deal to do with the skills of the brewery involved. The team at Redoak are obviously very talented brewers and it appears that they spend time crafting a well rounded product as opposed to just bunging in some flavours which is how I think some of the others approach these beers. Without doubt there will be other Redoak beers hitting the basket on the next trip to Nirvana.


Tags - Beer, Beer Tasting, Beer Reviews, Australian Beer
Chocolate

Wynns Coonawarra Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2003

What is a 'Go To' wine? OK, imagine the scenario, you have guests coming over, perhaps you are going out with some folk that you do no know well enough to experiment with in the wine stakes; you have bolted (running late, as usual) into the local wine shop and have about 35 seconds to make a semi-informed choice of wine. You dont want to blow your guests/friends away with a big monster and you cant afford to experiment, you need to be pretty confident that your choice is a good one. What is the first thing your hand reaches for? That's my definition of a 'Go-To' wine? At our house, the 'Go-To' wine is the tried and true Wynns Coonawarra (Black Label) Cabernet Sauvignon.

The black label is deep purple in the glass, the nose providing luscious cherry and blackcurrant, chocolate and vanilla. On the palate the wine is quite restrained, it's not a fruit bomb but again carries the flavours of blackcurrant and cherry with very mild oak in the background. Very fine tannins supply this wine with a wonderfully smooth finish that lingers for quite a while.

I KNOW that if I'm stuck, and I dont have time to give my wine choice much thought, that if I grab a bottle of Wynns Black Label I will be very safe. It is a wine that will keep most red drinkers very happy indeed. It's exceptional value, high quality at a very reasonable price. SO...what's your "Go-To" wine?

Technorati tags - Wine, Wine Tasting, Wine Reviews, Australian Wine, Wynns, Cabernet Sauvignon , Coonawarra

Penley Estate Phoenix Cabernet Sauvingnon 2004

Tonight is a real quickie, I've opened a bottle of Penley Estate Phoenix Cab Sav 2004 while I cook and to help me get over the trauma of looking after my kids all weekend. I'm not a big one for following trophys but the list of awards for this wine is pretty surprising:

• Trophy - 2005 Limestone Coast Wine Show


• Gold - 2005 Limestone Coast Wine Show


• Silver - 2005 Sydney Royal Wine Show


• Silver - 2005 Royal Hobart Wine Show


• Bronze - National Cool Climate Wine Show 2005

Add to this list a pretty significant list of commendations and good reviews and our expectations really do start to build.

 The wine is a beautiful crimson to purple in the glass, very attractive. On the nose the Phoenix shows strong up front spicy fruit, oak and pepper. In the mouth this is a smooth rich wine with plums, black fruit and some noticeable oak back there as well. Grippy tannins and fruit flavours in the aftertaste linger in the mouth for ages.

Priced between $20 and $25 the Phoenix is a very nice wine to drink right now, very good in fact considering the price. I would be very interested in coming back to this wine in a few years as I think that it would be very impressive with some age to soften the tannins.

Technorati tags - Wine, Wine Tasting, Wine Reviews, Australian Wine, Penley Estate, Cabernet Sauvignon , Coonawarra

P.S. Yep, the label is for 2003, the review is for 2004. Its the only picture I could find.

Redoak Christmas Cheer

Yeah, OK, so I'm a sucker for specialty beers, I know; but I see these little buggers on the shelf and I cant help myself. If you've read some of my other beer reviews you will know by now that I usually end up kicking myself but this time I think I'm safe, no, I know I'm safe, truth to tell I’m actually one very happy little piggy.

On my recent trip to beer nirvana at Purvis' (see previous post) I found two beers from a brewer that I did not recognise, Redoak. Without regurgitating the "About Us" page on the corporate website (you can check that out yourself) it appears that Redoak is a small, relatively new concern based in Sydney that specialises in unique premium quality beers. I picked up a couple of different styles and tonight I'm drinking the Redoak "Christmas Cheer".

The first thing you notice is that this beer comes in a SMALL bottle (at 250ml). If I recall correctly this beer was actually a bit pricey so this in combination with the small bottle may well serve to steer some folk away from this beer. The Christmas Cheer is very much a dark beer in the glass, the head is quite coarse and fades very quickly only holding the very lightest lace. Once the head settles it looks for all the world like a glass of cola. Lovely aroma of cloves, cinnamon and drunken fruit, it really smells like Christmas. Tastes quite sweet and carries the fruit and spice flavours through but it is distinctly in the style of a dark beer with lovely dark/burnt malts. No real length in the finish. One finishing note, as the beer warms in the glass the fruit and spice smells and flavours become very pronounced; it's very pleasant and quite unique. At 6.2% alcohol the beer provides a very nice warming sensation.

This is far and away NOT a session beer and I really don’t think that this would have been the makers target anyway. Christmas Cheer is a specialty beer, its an experience for the drinker, something to be enjoyed in small doses on the right occasion (with the right food I guess). I don’t think you would want to sit down to a 6 pack of this beer. Now this may sound a tad negative but it shouldn’t, I really enjoyed the Christmas Cheer and I fully intend to grab some more, certainly there will be some on the table for Christmas. It's a wonderful beer.

Tags - Beer, Beer Tasting, Beer Reviews, Australian Beer
Christmas

Beer Nirvana

A short post with a review to follow. Recently I discovered "Beer Nirvana" when I dropped in on Purvis Wine Cellars in Surry Hills (Melbourne). I had never been in this bottleshop before and was totally floored by the wide range of beers that they had available. These guys stock the biggest range of local Australian brews that I have ever seen and an even wider selection of imported brews. In one trip I was able to get at least a dozen Australian micro brews that I had not tried before. I will sign off before I start to wax lyrical but if you are Melbourne, get along and see the great selection that these guys keep in stock.

Tags - Beer, Beer Tasting, Beer Reviews, Australian Beer
Hangover

Cork'd - Social bookmarking in the wine world

I was wasting time cruising the internet last week when I stumbled across a new (to me at least) website dedicated to user driven wine reviews. Cork'd is a free service that you use to catalog, rate and review the wines you own/drink. There is functionality to list 'buddies' to see what they are drinking & reviewing as well as allowing you to keep track of the wines you might like to buy in the future.

On the surface this all seems like a great idea, the site is certainly pretty well put together, it looks pretty slick, and while there are a few bugs the interface is smooth and easy to use. Users can, as advertised, capture the details about wines they have drunk, wines they want or wines they have at home pretty simply. On this level I think the creators can say that they have met their objectives. For me, there are a couple of small things that I'd like to see in the Cork'd world:

• The ability to breakdown my review by Look, Bouquet & Taste


• To be able to link out to external sites, I'd like to use Cork'd to link to my more detailed review at OBWT

On the downside I would suggest that Cork'ds' (shit thats awkward grammer) attempt on the Social Bookmarking/Blogging/RSS phenomenon may be a bit off target and on this site it feels forced and a bit over the top. FOR ME I look to a group of established sources for information, personally I'm interested in what a couple of 'Big Names' might say as well as a couple of bloggers that I have read over time; I'm not sure that I want to engage with a 'drinking buddy' with whom I dont necessarily drink. The more I think about it, the more I think its the terminology of 'drinking buddy' that leaves me cold. Unfortunately Cork'd comes off as 'MySpace for wine' and this is probably the root of my unease as I cant stand MySpace, however it might be great for the folk at Cork'd if they can cash in and convince Mr Murdoch to buy them for an obscene amount of money.

The biggest issue that I have though is more a personal one than any issue with Corkd. I love making my wine notes, handwritten in BOOKS, I love the act of sitting down and writing my notes, I love looking back over those books and seeing my notes from past sessions. For me it is the physical act of writing and reading my own writing that leads me to prefer a traditional bound wine journal. What I write on my blog is part review, part opinion and part humour but the difference being its written for an audience (as opposed to just for me) and the blog is a great tool for this sort of writing. Cork'd straddles the two schools of writing, writing for ones self and writing for an audience and perhaps this will appeal to some.

All said and done, the team at Cork'd have done a really good job implementing a system to enable 'Joe Anybody' to catalog and review wine. Its simple and easy and will build to a strong resouce over time. If you have a passing interest in keeping notes on your wine collection and your tastings and you want to share them around but without the overhead of maintaining a stupid Wine Blog (what sort of tool wants to do that) then I would really suggest that you have a good look at Cork'd.

I'm going to trial the service for a bit longer and see if my opinions change. If you use Cork'd, add me as a Drinking Buddy and I will reciprocate as I'd really like to try out the 'Social' elements of the service....perhaps this is the missing link that will switch me on to Corkd! Look for Threepwood.

Technorati tags - Wine, Wine Tasting, Wine Reviews,

Reschke Bos Cabernet Sauvignon 2002

Most of the time my luck sucks the big one, toast doesn't just fall butter side down, it falls butter side down onto my suit pants, I just don't flip a free card when I'm on 16 and I rarely pick great wine unless I've done a modicum of research. So imagine my surprise when I recently stumbled onto one of the most wonderful bottles of Cab Sav that I've had in a very very long time.

The Reschke Bos Cabernet Sauvignon pours a dark plum/purple colour with big fruity aromas of blackcurrent and plum with undertones of chocolate. The wine is silky smooth with very fine tannins and is incredibly well balanced, only very slightly acidic with lovely lingering spicy flavours of blackfruit, spice and cedar.

I found this wine on an amble though Nicks, it was $35. I am a huge fan of this wine and cannot sing its praises highly enough. If you follow up on other reviews of this wine you will have seen phrases like "a Coonawarra Classic" and "Coonawarra in a glass". I see no reason to argue with these sentiments.

Technorati tags - Wine, Wine Tasting, Wine Reviews, Australian Wine, Reschke, Cabernet Sauvignon , Coonawarra,