“Goon” wine – heh?

It has been a long while since I have gone out walking early on a Sunday morning.  I left our apartment about 7:30 am, walked down to the Darling Park wharf area, and was deciding if I should turn right and check out the progress on Barangaroo, or turn left and walk back towards the center of the city.  I made the mistake of turning left and was surrounded by four teenage boys who apparently were still a bit drunk since last night.  And if they weren’t drunk, then they were just being boisterous and obnoxious while acting drunk.

One kept trying to get ahead of me and read my vest (which is a Lindemans logo vest).  He asked what Lindemans was and I told him it was a winery.  He made mention he had never heard of them, but asked me what I thought of Goon wine.  I told him that I had never heard of Goon wine, but he assured me it was a type of wine and I should try it out if I liked wine.  I fortunately found a road to turn off onto, and was able to separate from the youngsters, as they shouted at me to make sure to try Goon wine!

In my recent post on “What authority do I have to write a wine blog – Part 1”, I made mention of having some little parcels of expertize that the ‘great’s such as Jancis Robinson, James Halliday and Campbell Mattinson do not have, such as some of the minutia I have learned about the Hunter Valley and some of their wineries.

Well, this morning on my walk, I was put in my place by learning that others knew some things about wine that I was not aware of – for example, Goon wine!  So I did a little research and found the following:

History
The Invention of GOON was in 1965. An Australia mate called Thomas Angove from South Australia was the first person, who patented wine in a Carton Box. He put one Gallon, which is 4.5 liters of wine into a box and sold it. This was the moment GOON has been created. Later on the Box and the container has been optimized and in nowadays GOON is in a Plastic Space-bag and that Space-bag is in the Carton Box. One of the reasons why GOON is so cheap is because obviously the Carton Box is way more economic than bottles.

It appears to be the drink of choice for backpackers as it can be consumed in volume and is cheap and cold.  I now know all I want to know about Goon wine and you never need fear that I may blog on it again!

I have been truly humbled and realize there is a large wine world out there that I am just never going to be familiar with!  Don’t tell Robinson, Halliday or Mattinson – it might depress them!

Overview of Australia’s Wine Regions – Part 4

Part 4 – Characteristics and Grapes of Australia’s Smaller Wine Regions

In Part 1, we discussed why Australia has become a renown wine producing country, and that all states and territories other than the Northern Territories and Queensland produce high quality wines.   In Part 2, we described where Australia’s prominent wine regions were located.

Discussing, even in simplest terms, each region, takes up some space, so I broke the wine regions up into the four large wine regions which I described in Part 3 (last  post):

  • Hunter Valley – about two hours north of Sydney, New South Wales
  • Barossa Valley – just north of Adelaide, South Australia with close-by regions of Clare and Eden Valley, and with McLaren Vale south of Adelaide
  • Yarra Valley – about an hour north of Melbourne, with close-by regions including Mornington Peninsula and Geelong, south of Melbourne, and Heathcote, Victoria northwest of Melbourne and on the way to Bendigo, Victoria
  • Margaret River – about 4 hours south of Perth, Western Australia

In Part 4 (this post), we will now describe what makes each smaller region so special and what grapes grow best in those regions:

  • Rutherglen – about half-way between Sydney and Melbourne, close to the New South Wales and Victorian border and the cities of Albury and Wodonga
  • Mudgee, NSW – about 4 hours northwest of Sydney, with some wineries relatively close by around Orange
  • Tasmania
  • Riverina – in southwest New South Wales

    Rutherglen:

    Rutherglen is one of the best wine regions in the world for Muscat.  They make a wide variety of great Muscats.  They also are known for their Durif wines.  Durif is a secondary grape, easy to confuse with other red grapes if you have not had it before.  They also make some spectacular Tokays, the Hungarian grape often used as a dessert wine.  See me blog entry on “What an Affogado!” for an overview on how special a Rutherglen Tokay can be!

    I have not been there yet myself, but friends tell me it is a very nice region to visit with a lot of good food events and sightseeing outside of just tasting wine.

    Rutherglen Top Wines:  Durif, Muscat, Tokay

    Mudgee:

    Mudgee is much higher up and inland than a lot of wine regions, making a perfect climate for cold weather grapes.  Robert Oakley has some of his best vineyards in Mudgee.  Mudgee vineyards also ship a lot of grapes to wineries around Australia.

    Some very good Cabernet Sauvignons come from Mudgee and a number of organic wines are made in Mudgee.

    But Mudgee is mostly known for its dessert wines and iced wines.  They have a lot of sweet late harvest and Botrytis Semillon dessert wines.

    While 4 hours outside of Sydney, it can make a nice weekend getaway.

    Mudgee Top Wines:  Cabernet Sauvignon, Botrytis Semillon and other Desert Wines

    Tasmania:

    Tasmania is a significant newer entrant to Australian wine regions.  With its cooler climate, it produces great Pinot Noir wines.

    Tasmania Top Wines:  Pinot Noir

    Riverina:

    Riverina is not known for its great wines, but rather as the largest producer of wines in Australia.  About half of all Australian grapes come from Riverina, and many of them find there way into cask (box) wines.  Decent enough and very cheap, but not the type of thing I like to drink or write about.

    Riverina Top Wines:  Cheap Cask Wines

    This concludes the very short four-part overview of Australia’s wine regions.  I will be following up with several blogs on where and how to buy wines in Australia and also with blogs in more detail on each of the major wine regions, including recommendations on some of the best and best-valued wines on the market.

    Stay tuned and keep drinking smartly and safely!