Tag Archives: organic wine

What wine to come off the wagon with?

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After three weeks of being sick, taking antibiotics and generally suffering, I am almost ready to have a bottle of wine again.  This puts some pressure on me!  Should I have one of the truly greatest wines in my cellar to celebrate?  Probably not, as I am not sure how well my taste buds are working yet and if my tasting palate is functioning at 100% or not.  I certainly do not want to waste a great wine if that is the case.

Should I have the wine with a meal and if so, should I be concerned about matching the wine to the food on offering?  That seems to be a bit restrictive .  And given I am coming off of illness, I should probably have a red instead of a white wine or sweet wine as there is documented evidence of the slightly further health benefits of red wine!  (Or at least I can use that as an excuse to drink a good red, not that I need any excuses!)  Should it be an organic wine to ensure I do not have any lingering reaction to sulphar dioxide or other additives in the wine?

I certainly do not want it to be one of my ‘last’ bottles of a particular vintage of limited stock as it is not that special an occasion.  I expect I will open the bottle before dinner, sometime in the afternoon and have my first sips while sitting in my reading chair, relaxing after a morning of errands.  Or if my bride is watching an afternoon movie, I may bring the glass of wine to our apartment unit library and read – that is always a special treat!

The common library in our apartment unit

Yes, I think that will be the venue – sitting in the common library with a good book on food writing “The Table Comes First” by Adam Gopnik.  And the wine will be an Australian Cabernet Sauvignon.  While I love my big tannin wines – especially Shiraz – I believe a slightly simpler and lower alcohol Cabernet Sauvignon is the way to go.  One possibility is the 2008 Stonefields Vineyards Arbitrage Cabernet Sauvignon from the Wrattonbully region in South Australia.  Wrattonbully has some of the best Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards in the world!  I have had numerous great bottles of Wrattonbully Cabernet Sauvignon for around $20 – $25 per bottle.  I have had a few bottles of this particular wine before, so I know it will be good.  (However, in reading the label on the bottle, I see the wine has a 14.5% alcohol content which is higher than I was expecting.)

I may also consider a bottle of the 1997 Lindeman’s St George, or the 2006 Coldstream Hills Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, but I would need to go the cellar to retrieve a bottle of those wines, while the Stonefields Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon  is right in front of me!

While I may consider a few other choices tomorrow, I believe the path has been set and it may take a bit more effort than I want to put into it to change course!  I will let you know my final decision and how it tasted in a few days.

Overview of Australia’s Wine Regions – Part 4

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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!