Vavasour Pinot Gris with Zucchini Soup

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Steve Shipley

As we move into the winter months Down Under (yes, mate, Australia is where I am writing this from!), my wife, DAZ in the Kitchen, and I enjoy making more soups for dinner. We try a variety of soup recipes and have had some spectacular soups from Sibel Hodge’s A Gluten Free Soup Opera which provides gluten-free soup recipes which are easy to make, flavorful and healthy. Sibel’s soup recipes are powerful and flavorful with chick peas, lentils and a lot of different spices.

We also like to make creamy vegetable soups such as pumpkin, broccoli, cauliflower and others. Recently, we were the benefactors of a 2.5 Kg zucchini and had to figure out what to do with it! We made a lot of zucchini bread muffins (see recipe in last DAZ in the Kitchen post) and a lot of zucchini soup (recipe has not yet, but will be, published soon in DAZ in the Kitchen). In fact, we had so much zucchini soup, we ended up freezing several servings. And tonight we are taking two servings out of the freezer for dinner.

I have tried Riesling with creamy vegetable soups and I have also tried Verdelho. Both work. However, many Verdelhos are too soft and tepid and many Rieslings are too acidic. I have found for my taste, I like a Pinot Gris with a creamy vegetable soup (other than tomato). A young Pinot Gris still has a bit of acid and slight metallic diesel and mild citrus edge to match up well with the vegetables, but also a soft mouth feel to go with the creaminess. The 2010 Vavasour Pinot Gris is such a wine.

This is a great wine for the money. We paid $15 per bottle for this. It is a New Zealand Pinot Gris from the Marlborough region. It has pear, apple and grapefruit flavors. The wine is surprisingly well balanced and integrated for such a young wine. I love the mouth feel and tannins that provide a puckering on the inside of my cheeks. I would call it off-dry or juicy dry.

This wine is great value for the money and it goes beautifully with creamy vegetables soups. It has consistently been rate 93/100 or 94/100. This wine will not cellar for more than a couple of years. It is drinkable immediately and drinking very well now. The 2011 is also rated very high and much more available than the 2010.

Some of the Italian Pinot Gris I have tried are a bit more elegant, but also much more expensive. They go well with a variety of food choices. But if you are making a simple creamy vegetable soup and possibly having a bread roll to go with it, a New Zealand Pinot Gris like the 2010 Vavasour will do the trick nicely.

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2013. Steve Shipley
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2005 Pepper Tree Grand Reserve Tannat – Top Notch? – Think Not!

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Steve Shipley

I bought a six-pack of the 2005 Pepper Tree Grand Reserve Tannat several years ago and set it in the cellar. I just opened my first bottle yesterday. I was making a chirizo and chickpea soup with lots of flavor including chili, paprika, smoked paprika, mushrooms, black olives, lentils and rocket lettuce. I just wasn’t sure what wine to serve with this soup. And knowing there would be some left over to go with lasagna this evening and having already matched up some nice Sangiovese and Cabernet Sauvignon wines to go with the lasagna previously, I decided to give this wine a try with both the soup and lasagna.

The 2005 Pepper Tree Grand Reserve Tannat comes from Wrattonbully, a great wine region for Cabernet Sauvignon and some other fine wines. When my wife first tried this wine at the cellar door several years ago, her reaction was “I can’t describe this wine, but I love what it does to my mouth!” Maybe that was all the description necessary.

When opening the bottle yesterday, and trying my first sip, I noticed the wine to be quite lively, almost fizzy, like a weak sparkling wine on my palate. It also had large tannins and was a bit gritty. I was expecting this wine to provide a ‘punch in the mouth’ in terms of flavors, but it did not. The fruit was lively enough and it tasted of berries, but more like raspberries and a bit weak overall. I searched hard for secondary flavors and only found the smallest trace of chocolate.

It has an interesting mouth feel, being high in tannins and with the fizzy feeling going on. This settled down the second day the bottle was open and while it was still gritty, it was smoother and less active on my palate. However, this wine is a disappointment overall. It just lacks any type of finesse or complexity. The berry taste is flat and the secondary characteristics (except for that trace of chocolate) missing. To self-categorize this wine as a ‘Grand Reserve’ seems almost deceptive. And coming from Wrattonbully, I was expecting better.

I have had a recent love affair with secondary red grapes, including my affection for Grenache, Tempranillo, and Malbec, but this wine does nothing to put a Tannat in that group. This is the only Tannat I have ever drank, so I am not sure if the limitations are in the grape itself or the wine making process for this particular brand and vintage. I need to try a few more Tannats to find out.

Looking back, I thought this might be an interesting and different wine to occasionally serve up, but I was wrong. Fortunately, I have a leftover glass of the 2007 McWilliams Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea Shiraz to go with my lasagna tonight and I just got the call for dinner, so will enjoy that instead of the Pepper Tree Tannat. It is not a perfect match, but will have to do.

Is there a better Semillon than the 1999 Tyrrell’s Vat 1? Possibly

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Steve Shipley

There may be and I will get to that in a minute. The 1999 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon is considered by some to be the best Semillon ever made. It is featured in the book 1001 Wines You Must Taste Before You Die. And 1999 was an iconic vintage for Hunter Valley Semillon.

I love the 1999 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 Semillon and am fortunate to have a little under a dozen left. I also love some of the older (especially the 1992) Waverley Estate Semillon. But let’s stick with the 1999 vintage for a while. This was a great vintage. Meerea Park makes great wines and along with Tyrrell’s and De Iuliis, are my three most favorite wineries in the Hunter Valley. Meerea Park has the 1999 Meerea Park Alexander Munro Semillon which is comparable to the 1999 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 in quality. It is slightly different in style, but both are classic Hunter Valley Semillons and I have faced these two off against each other previously with split results as to which one is better.

Yesterday, I opened a bottle of the 1999 Meerea Park Terracotta Semillon and what a treat that was! While cheaper than the Alexander Munro, this is a magnificent wine with quite a different style to the Alexander Munro or the Vat 1. It is slightly less acidic, tastes of honeyed flavored roasted nuts, caramelized pear with a touch of citrus, and could almost pass as a dessert wine (if it was sweeter still). This would make a great wine to pair up with quiche, fritatta, or anything else with eggs. (As if I really need a ‘breakfast’ wine!)

I had this wine last night with a mushroom risotto and it matched better with the risotto than the Nuits St George Burgundy which I also tried. (I wanted to try both to compare.) Most wine critics would recommend a Pinot Noir with a mushroom risotto, but the 1999 Meerea Park Terracotta Semillon was excellent (of course, I also used 100 ml of the Terracotta Semillon in the risotto!) and matched better than the Nuits St George Burgundy at three times the price!

I tend to like my white wines dryer – as in Riesling, and more acidic and on edge – as with aged Chardonnays, but when it comes to Semillons, I find the slightly sweeter and honeyed toasted flavor to be more to my liking. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the 1999 Tyrrell’s Vat 1 and the 1999 Meerea Park Alexander Munro Semillons, but the 1999 Meerea Park Terracotta Semillon has won my heart as the one to match up with a lot of different food dishes!

This is a great wine for the money and worth trying. Check with Meerea Park or on auction sites to see if you can find some – it is well worth the money.

Steve Shipley, author Wine Sense, out early 2014. Published by InkIT Publishing
© 2014. Steve Shipley
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Wine lifestyle – by choice

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Steve Shipley

This has been a great Saturday. With minor commitments and a relatively free reign, I could choose to do what I wanted, and much of that involved wine. I finished Roger Scruton’s great book on wine and philosophy entitled I drink, Therefore I am: A Philosopher’s Guide to Wine, and in the reading, generated a lot of different ideas, including a dozen different topics on which to blog over the next few weeks.

And then, looking for another book to add to my pile of books to read (I am currently reading about six), I elected another wine and philosophy book!

I also took the time to respond to four different people who sought me out for advice on different wine topics, including choice of decanters, good wine books to read, my thoughts on some selected Penfold’s wines, and to help review a wine list for the opening of a new restaurant. I spent several hours doing so that could have been used elsewhere, but it was a pleasure to be asked and provide advice on wine topics.

I then made a visit to my wine cellar to select a nice Burgundy (the 2007 La Belle Voisine Nuits St George Grand Cru) to go with a meal of pork belly and mash this evening. My wonderful wife, DAZ in the Kitchen, does a great pork belly and it deserves a great Pinot Noir to go with it.

I also picked out several bottles of wine for my bride’s birthday coming up next weekend. I always take the day off, and this year, we decided to take off two days from work to spend a four-day weekend at our place in The Hunter Valley. We will be eating at one of our favorite restaurants, Bistro Molines, and I have selected a 2007 Bouchard Pere & Fils Montrachet and a 1999 Penfolds St Henri (these are of course, two of my wife’s favorite wines) to bring along and enjoy with our 2.5 – 3 hour lunch this Friday! I also selected a few more bottles to bring along for the four-day Easter weekend coming up in three weeks.

There were plenty of choices of things to do today, including exercise, reading other material, going shopping, getting a massage, etc., but I spent most of it reading, thinking about, selecting and drinking wine.

Work has taken a lot of energy recently, and we have also had to focus on other life events of importance. I was great to have an unencumbered day and to spend most of it in the presence of wine-related activities. I believe that the virtuous drinking of wine provides a continuous form of redemption – it makes you feel great and makes you appreciative of what you have. (More on this interesting topic in an upcoming post!)

Drink safely, drink well, and enjoy the wine lifestyle – by choice!

Not feeling guilty drinking Montrachet after feeding the homeless today!

Posted on December 16, 2012 by Steve Shipley

I had the privilege of spending time and feeding Sydney’s homeless today. A few have recently been fortunate to get their own place, but all of them are doing it rough. My local church, St Philip’s York Street Anglican, puts on a great event to invite those doing it rough onto the church grounds every three months. The one today was amazing as a special Christmas lunch cooking steaks, salads, veggies and potatoes with ice cream sundaes, brownies, cookies for dessert.

St Philip’s and Senior Rector Justin Moffatt illustrating ‘Let There Be Light’

I originally thought the lunch was scheduled for Christmas day and we were going to be away, but I found out at church today that it was this afternoon. I had already made some other plans, but when a notice came out over Facebook asking for some immediate help, I walked over to the church to help out. Over 200 people had shown up!

I have regularly fed the homeless before and am comfortable and excited about the opportunity. They help me more than I can possibly help them. I leave the experience feeling blessed, and realizing except for the grace of God and the fortunate life I have had, I am not any different than they are. This group today was amazing. First off, there were a lot more woman who attended than in other gatherings I have helped with. Secondly, they were so appreciative! This was largely a group of kind spirited and warm hearted people.

I left the gathering to return home and discussed dinner plans with my wife. She is making her amazing chicken pot pie recipe. Tomorrow night we will finish off the amazing soup she made last night which is chicken, wild rice, bacon and creamy mushroom.

With two great meals of creamy chicken dishes coming up, it demanded I open a bottle of great Chardonnay and I thought the perfect drop would be the 2009 Bouchard Pere & Fils Puligny Montrachet. I have blogged about this great wine before and how well it goes with meals like we are having tonight and tomorrow night. But this bottle of wine cost me $75 and is now worth about $175. It was such as stark contrast to what the homeless eat on a daily basis. (Today being a real exception! Many claimed they have never had a better meal in their life!)

But the guilt did not last long. First of all, the homeless would not have liked this rich or good of wine (I don’t believe). They prefer coffee with lots of sugar in it for the drink of choice. Secondly, the money could be far better spent on other cheaper more nutritious drink and food and that was what today was all about.

I enjoy my wine and am not guilty about drinking good wine, and sharing it with others over good meals and discussion. I also enjoy serving my Lord and serving those doing it rough. After all, service is my love language! And today I was privileged to be able to do both. What a great day.

Those doing it rough at St Philip’s today felt blessed to be in the company of their peers and helpers from the church and be treated to such a great meal and some love and companionship. I felt privileged to part of that. And I feel privileged to now be sipping a most amazing Montrachet waiting for my wife’s great chicken pot pie to cook. I am blessed with a great job, a great wife, great friends and great opportunities to serve. Both spending time with those doing it rough, and drinking a great Montrachet make me appreciate that!

Given the tragedy in CT, USA and the grief and sorrow so many are going through coming into this holiday season, take some time to appreciate and enjoy the things that really means something to you!

And now, I just got the call for dinner and that great chicken pot pie! Bye!

Two very interesting bottles of wine

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Steve Shipley

The majority of my cellar consist of wines that I have bought, usually by the dozen or more. I enjoy the opportunity to have a repeatable experience of drinking an excellent wine (I only buy wines by the dozen or more when I have had the opportunity to taste the wine), and I love tasting how a wine develops over multiple years.

Yet, I am often gifted wine or have ended up with the ‘loose’ or odd bottle. Sometimes these bottles represent excellent wines and I am aware of the wines characteristics and how it will taste. Sometimes I have ended up with a crap bottle of wine, best used for cooking or to pass onto someone who is looking for the alcohol experience more than the wine tasting experience. But the most interesting bottles are the ones I know nothing about, but have some indication they may be an interesting wine.

In the past several days, I have pulled out two bottles of wine that I knew nothing about. The first one was a 2001 Courtney’s Post Pinot Noir from Marlborough, NZ and the second, a 1996 Carindale Chardonnay from the Hunter Valley. Both fortunately proved to be excellent bottles of wine!

Not knowing anything about these wines, I was uncertain what to expect. I also had the concern that both wines being past their best drinking periods as Pinot Noir does not last well to a decade or beyond and neither does Chardonnay for the most part. However, you are often blessed to find a bottle that defies the normal structure of the grape and the aging process. Both of these wines surpassed my expectations by a far mark.

I knew who had given me the Pinot Noir and I was concerned as I had some nice bottles from him previously that had not been cellared properly and had not stood up well. But the 2001 Courtney’s Post Pinot Noir was great. It was sweeter than most Pinot Noirs I have had and still retained a lot of fresh fruit with slight overtones of smoke. My loved one had cooked up a tremendous pasta, chicken, cheese and broccoli casserole where she refused to follow the recipe and added some hot chile sauce and bacon among other things. It was unbelievably good! While I would usually match a younger Chardonnay to go with it, I had the Pinot Noir and it worked fine. While not a perfect match, the wine and the food were both enjoyable. I would not consider a Shiraz or even a decent Cabernet Sauvignon with a chicken, cheesy pasta dish, but the Pinot Noir was suitable enough.

The next night, I finished the 2001 Courtney’s Post Pinot Noir with a serve of FAT (Feta, Avocado, Tomato on Toast) and that worked well also even though it was not a perfect match. I think a lot of white wines would have gone well with the FAT, including Pinot Gris and Semillon. But again, while not a perfect match, the Pinot Noir worked well enough with FAT. I then had a sip of the Pinot Noir with mango and that did not work! (I will be writing a separate post a bit later on what wines to drink with veggies and fruits.)

But the strange thing was that I could not find any references to Courtney Post wines, either through Wine-Searcher Pro or through Google. They may have gone out of business, but I was expecting to find something about them somewhere. (I must admit that while I did not try exceptionally hard to find a reference to them, I certainly thought it would be easier than it was!) This was an exceptional wine for which I can find no history. This is the reason I do not buy single bottles – I would have liked to repeat this experience, but sadly, it has become a ‘one-nighter!’

Tonight, we are having leftover chicken pasta with cheese, broccoli, bacon and chile and I really wanted a Chardonnay to go with it tonight. I had to scramble and only found two bottles of Chardonnay in my apartment. Since one was a 2007 La Belle Voisine Chassagne Montrachet, I decided to go with the other one, that being the 1996 Carindale Chardonnay from the Hunter Valley. When I checked Google this time, I did find a reference and found out it was a Hunter Valley winery that made aged Chardonnay among other wines. And they are just down the road from Waverley Estate on Palmers Lane who also specialize in aged Chardonnay and Semillon.

I have no recollection of who gave me this bottle or how I came in contact with it. But it is delicious! I cannot discern a specific fruit flavor to it – it tastes more like a finely blended fruit cocktail, but less sweet, in fact, a bit minerally. Yet, the texture is somewhat viscous which I really enjoy in a well-aged white wine, and it has a very long finish. This is a wine which fills and satisfies the senses! And look at the color of the wine! While not as golden and as complex as several of my ‘Top 5 whites ever,’ this is a great wine and still has some way to go. I expect it will be drinking even more beautifully in 3 – 5 years, and hope I can find a bottle to test my theory out!

Fortunately, they are still in business and just around the corner from our place in the Hunter Valley! I will be visitng them during my next visit to the Hunter Valley. While they are sold out of the 1996 (and 1998) Chardonnay, they still appear to have some of the 2000 Chardonnay left and if it is anything like the 2000 Waverley Estate Chardonnay (or their own 1996 Chardonnay), it will be a great drink!

I don’t always strive for the best food and wine match, even though I think it is usually worth the effort. Sometimes I just want to try a particular bottle of wine and will drink it with a meal. And while I don’t usually like single bottles of undiscernable heritage, I must admit that I got very lucky with these two bottles and they have provided a great drinking experience over the last few days. Some times it is worth taking a risk and going on a ‘blind date’ with a bottles. Even though it may not last a life time, it can still be a great one-nighter!

The wines of my 60th birthday were fine indeed!

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Steve Shipley

It was quite a birthday weekend overall, with guests flying in from the US and Melbourne to join those of us already based in Sydney. We started with a Friday evening pre-birthday dinner celebration at Fish at the Rocks (with our out-of-town visitors) with some great wines, including:

1992 Waverley Estate Semillon;
2007 La Belle Voisine Chassange Montrachet;
1996 Lindemans St George; and
2005 Chateau Haut Beregon Sauternes

This on its own was a great line-up! Then on Saturday, I tasted three wines while being a guest on Food in Focus with Natascha Moy. By the time I returned from the show, I had a bit of a buzz having consumed almost 750 ml by myself (one needs to make sure they are voicing the right opinions when one is serving the public like I was that day)!

By the time I arrived home, Jay Huxley, Masterchef, had arrived and was preparing dinner, and what a dinner it turned out to be. A number of our guests (including most who had attended Deanna’s 40th birthday several years ago) thought it was the finest meal they had ever had! They felt that the wine drinking for Deanna’s 40th was the best wine drinking experience they ever had and it came with a great meal, but my 60th was the reverse – the best meal they ever had with a great line-up of wine.

It was my intent to make my 60th birthday the second best wine tasting meal I ever had, but I admittedly fell short. There were two main reasons for this. The first that being my 60th birthday, it was really tough to get birth year wines (1952) that were truly outstanding compared to Deanna’s 40th which had a birth year of 1971 when we had:

1971 Lindemans Limestone Ridge;
1971 Penfolds Grange; and
1971 Chateau D’Yquem

each bottle easily being in the Top 10 bottles I have ever drank! But the most important reason was that Jay had developed such an awesome menu that it was actually difficult to match the very best wines with the food! For Deanna’s 40th birthday dinner, I presented the nine wines I wanted to drink to the chef and he did a magnificent job matching the food to the wine. But for my 60th birthday, I let Jay have total freedom and while he created a killer food line-up, it was difficult to match great wines to every course.

I had been working for a couple of months to pick a line-up of great wines for my 60th birthday, including thinking it was time to have our last bottle of the 1981 Penfolds Grange, and do that just after the 1991 Grant Burge Mesach (given to me for my 59th birthday BTW!) and the 1992 Henschke Hill of Grace. My original line-up of wines for my 60th, included:

1998 Pommeray Louis Champange
1990 Waverley Estate Semillon
2001 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling
2007 La Belle Voisine Chassagne Montrachet
2005 Chateau Brane-Cantenac
1991 Grant Burge Mesach
1992 Henschke Hill of Grace
1981 Penfolds Grange
1997 Chateau D’Yquem
1967 Lindemans Vintage Port

However, once I saw Jay’s menu, I knew I needed to back off the big reds (especially the Shiraz) and I also ‘downgraded’ some of my choices, including moving from the 1990 Waverley Estates Semillon to the 1992 Waverley Estate Semillon (which we had the night before at Fish at the Rocks), and I also decided to drink the 1980 Lindemans Vintage Port instead of the 1967. I only have two bottles of the 1990 Waverley Estate Semillon left and I needed a good bottle and a back-up bottle to share with my wife’s boss who I greatly admire and who is a Semillon fanatic, and I wanted to sip the 1967 Lindemans Vintage Port over several months instead of ‘gulping’ it down at the end of a boozy meal, which I have mistakenly done with some iconic Ports previously.

But the key thing about Jay’s menu is that it demanded more whites than reds and the reds had to be more refined than the big Shiraz’ that I had nominated for the evening. Therefore, I eliminated the:

2005 Chateau Brane-Cantenac
1991 Grant Burge Mesach
1992 Henschke Hill of Grace
1981 Penfolds Grange

I also decided upon seeing the desserts and having some guests who would never have the experience again to go with the 1975 Lindemans Porphry instead of the 1997 Chateau D’Yquem. I only ended up using two wines from my original list being the 1998 Pommeray Louise Champange and the 2008 Grosset Polish Hill.

So what was the menu and matching wines for the evening? It was as follows:

Upon arrival – Bollinger NV Champagne
Tian of Alaskan King Crab, black caviar and radish – 1998 Pommeray Louise Champagne
Sousvide Pork Fillet, red cabbage, cauliflower puree and lentil pear salad – 2008 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling and 2007 La Belle Voisine Nuits St George (Pinot Noir)
Tomato heart and gin shooter, in tomato tea and basil oil – finishing off the 1998 Pommeray Louise Champange and 2008 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling
Smoked eel, jamon croquette with beetroot and apple – Rose Vin de Pays du Vaucluse
Vichy Asparagus with citrus and olive crumb and sousvide duck egg yolk – 2009 Bouchard Perrin & Fils Puligny Montrachet
Charcoal octupus in romesco sauce and verde oil – 2007 McWilliams Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea Shiraz
Confit duck in mushroom sauce, abalone and star anise consume – (we continued to drink whatever wines we had going at the time!)
Canon of saltbush lamb in minted pea soup and taro – 2000 Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon
Spiced poached pear crispy wonton, salted caramel and double cream – 1975 Lindemans Porphry
Death by Chocolate – 1980 Lindemans Vintage Port and Bailey’s NV Rutherglen Muscat

As you can imagine, we were quite satiated by the end of the evening!

This post has become quite a bit longer than I had expected, so I will leave my review of the food and wine matching and descriptions to the next post. I just wanted to let you know that this was a very special meal – the best meal I have ever eaten thanks to Jay Huxley and his team, and among one of the best wine drinking experiences I have ever had. Not every meal is like this though. Tonight I am having a Chinese pork bun and drinking a 1997 Rosemount Show Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. But it is still great as I am sharing the evening with my loved one over good food and good wine. What could be better?

Seriously? A 1987 Lindemans Shiraz with pizza tonight?

Posted on November 17, 2012 by Steve Shipley

I have so many topics queued up to blog about. I love talking about (and drinking) wine. Today I was discussing a very interesting new wine education concept with a friend and he called me wine-centric. I kind of liked that! And it fit in well with the wine educational concept he is promoting. The guy I was talking with is Ben Hughes, who has a lifetime of experience in the wine industry as a seller, maker and educator. Deanna and I have taken a wine tasting class from him previously which was great fun and very educational. Ben is now starting his new and improved venture The Australian Wine and Beer School (AWBS). It looks like a great way to teach a wide variety of people on Australian wine and beer. Most importantly, it takes the mystique and intimidation out of learning about wine and makes it downright fun!

Perfect Cork

Because Ben was coming over and because I knew he would appreciate it, I opened my last bottle of the 1987 Lindemans Shiraz which I happened to come across when checking out the temperature in my Vintec. Plus I knew I needed to drink it soon as with each passing year, it was at risk of becoming more past due.

I had taken a bottle of this to the Hunter Valley last year, but had about five winter months when it was not stored in optimal conditions. That was a mistake for a 25 year old (and) fragile wine. I was excited to have that bottle one day at Bistro Molines, but upon opening and decanting it, I found it was not in great condition and had to pour it down the drain – a real shame! But the bottle I opened today to drink with Ben was much better. The cork was perfect (except it was dry on the top and did crumble when trying to open it), and the wine much better preserved and drinkable than the bottle I took to the Hunter and was stored outside of proper cellaring conditions.

Since the cork crumbled into the bottle, I had to filter it to ensure no cork fragments made their way into the wine. However, I was careful not to aerate it as it would have further harmed an already fragile (but still pretty good) structure. Opening any wine this old requires special care as I discussed in a previous post. This wine was not brownish (brownish being a sure sign of too much oxidation in the bottle) and clearly lasted better than the bottle I opened last year. While not having lively fruit flavors, it was still a remarkable wine, perfectly integrated and balanced, and your typical Hunter Shiraz.

Sharing a ‘last bottle’ bestows a great honor for all involved. As I get down to my remaining few bottles of a particular wine and vintage, I think carefully about who I want to drink that wine with. And knowing Ben would appreciate it and with a lifetime in the wine industry, he would enjoy this bottle of wine. That makes it a delight to share with others. When you have that special bottle and that last bottle, put some thought into who you want to share it with.

And notice the Temperature gauge on the bottle! This was a birthday present from a friend after reading that I do not use a temperature gauge when checking the temperature of bottles before serving. More on this in a future post!

And since Ben was driving, we have some wine left over to go with the pizza I am making tonight. And I am able to share that tonight with the most important person in my life, my wife and soul mate, Deanna, writer of DAZ in the Kitchen. This will be the most notable wine we have ever had with pizza. Usually a Chianti or Cabernet Sauvignon does the trick, but tonight it will be a 1987 Lindemans Shiraz! The spicy, peppery flavors should match up well with the chili and garlic I load onto the pizza. And if you want the recipe for the pizza, check out DAZ in the Kitchen blog post for our pizza recipe.

I hope the food and wine you have tonight will be as enjoyable as what we are doing! Enjoy!

A great wine, but disappointing wine drinking experience

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Steve Shipley

We spent Saturday the week past, traveling and visiting friends in the Blue Mountains and beyond. It was a great time and we had some great meals, even though it did make for a very long day. For once, I did not bring the wines and let it up to the hosts to provide the wine to accompany the meals.

During our Saturday lunch, we had some great food starting with three different soups samplers (tomato and carrot, pumpkin, and pea), followed by stir fired veggies and prawns, with a wonderful dessert of chocolate balls and berry ice cream. Each course had a decent wine to go with it from a white to red to sweet dessert wine. And as usual the best part of the meal and experience was sharing it with great friends.

We repeated the performance for dinner, but it was a heavier meal with more meat, including a marinated roast beef side, sausages, and stir fired veggies. Therefore, more red wines were served and the two choices of red were very nice choices. Unfortunately, the first problem was that the wines were drunk too early in their life.

The wine of the evening should have been a very nice 2007 Penfold’s St Henri. This is an excellent wine and has a 96 (out of 100) rating. Usually I would salivate over having a St Henri with dinner, but then we are currently drinking the 1999 vintage (I have about 6 bottle left and need to drink them in the next few years to get maximum enjoyment from them).

But I could tell from the first smell and the first sip of the 2007 that this wine was not ready for drinking! I asked the host how many bottles he had left and he mentioned he had six left. I told him to wait at least two more years if not up to five years before he drinks the next one.

This wine should be drunk between 2015 and 2024 for peak enjoyment and ideally in the 2019 – 2021 time frame. While he decanted and even aerated the wine, it did not have much of an effect as the wine structure was just too tight. And then, the wine was served in a white wine glass used for Riesling or Semillon. This did not allow the wine to breath and forced an already tight wine into a small area to breathe and drink from making it even tighter. There are reasons Riedel makes specific wine glasses for Shiraz and other grapes and drinking a Shiraz from a white wine glass is almost sinful!

This was a great wine, served too early and without giving it any advantage to shine. This was a $75 – $100 bottle of wine wasted. It still had (obviously) fresh fruit, but was too tight and the complexities of this great wine had not become fully integrated. I hope the host takes my advice and does not serve up another bottle for several more years. This will be a great wine over time, but certainly not at its best today when served up in a small glass.

Apologies in advance to Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc fans

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Steve Shipley

I enjoy drinking wine and drink it regularly. I try a variety of different grapes and styles from different regions around the world. I love my wine and am willing to try a lot of different wines. However, I also value knowing I will be drinking a good to great bottle almost every time I open one. Therefore, over the years, I have settled on a number of different grapes (or blends) in different styles and from different regions.

Upon moving to Australia almost 15 years ago, I became fixated on the Australian wines. There are a number of different wine regions, each well suited to various grapes and each region known for producing several great wines. To get an overview of the different regions, review my 4-series post on the Australian wine regions. Australia makes a lot of magnificent wines and at great price points. It is only recently that I have been experimenting and coming to enjoy a broader range of wines globally.

There are four primary red wine grapes and four primary white wine grapes:

Red wine grapes:

Merlot
Cabernet Sauvignon
Shiraz
Pinot Noir

White wine grapes:

Sauvignon Blanc
Chardonnay
Riesling
Semillon

A majority of the world’s wines are made with these grapes and that is why they are known as the ‘primary’ grapes. In the ‘secondary’ grape category, among the reds, we have Zinfandel, Grenache, Sangiovese, Tempranillo, etc. and among the whites, Marsanne, Verdelho, Gewürztraminer, and so on. Some of the world’s best wines are blends of several grapes to provide some unique characteristics and tastes.

Great wine always starts with great grapes, but the effects and magic of the wine maker can also make a large difference in the finished product, starting with the wine maker determining the best time to pick the grape to get the right characteristics (often sweetness or alcoholic content) from the grape. Then there are many other techniques the wine maker uses to craft the best wine he/she can make from the grapes.

Probably 60% – 65% of what I drink comes from the the primary red and white grape families – excluding Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc. The remaining third comes from secondary grapes. I drink very little Merlot or Sauvignon Blanc and simply do not enjoy the grapes or what the wine maker can possibly do with them as much as most of the other grapes. Occasionally, I may have a wine with some Sauvignon Blanc blended with Semillion, or some small percentage of Merlot in a red blend. A Merlot can be used to soften a red wine blend, for example.

I believe the main reason that I do not drink Merlot or Sauvignon Blanc is that there is little the wine maker can do with these grapes compared to most of the others. The impact of terroir and the influence of the wine maker is less influential on the Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc grape varietals. Pinot Noir, by comparison, is very highly influenced by the terroir and the wine maker’s craftsmanship, which is why the very best Pinot Noirs are very high in demand and almost hallowed. It is tough to make a bad Merlot or Sauvignon Blanc, but it is even tougher to make a very good, yet alone great one. (I know some of the very best French Sauvignon Blancs may be argued to be exceptions to this general rule.)

Sauvignon Blanc is often described as tasting like “stewed green tomatoes” or “cat’s pee!” When you start with a grape described like that, I don’t expect the wine maker can do much with it! Both Sauvignon Blanc and Merlot are safe grapes to grow (resistant to changes in conditions) and are often used as an insurance policy for any given vintage to make sure some wine is available in the region. But by definition, this is the reason the grapes cannot be influenced or crafted into truly great wines. These two grapes are very common and middle of the road in my mind.

So what do I do for food matching when it obviously calls for a Merlot or Sauvignon Blanc? For Merlot, it is easy as there are so many different red wine grapes and styles to be able to pick a perfect match to any food, even when Merlot is not considered.

And everyone knows that Sauvignon Blanc is a natural for fish and seafood, right? Wrong! If I am eating fish, and it is a gamier, thicker, or oilier fish, I will have a Pinot Noir, especially if it is served with a tomato sauce or topping. And if it is a lighter, flakier white fish, then I will opt for a Sauvignon Blanc / Semillon blend. The Semillon provides some structure and character to the Sauvignon Blanc and is a great match for this type of fish.

For crustaceans or lobster, I love a rich, aged Chardonnay, such as a Montrachet. And Semillon goes really well with scallops, and a Riesling with crab or prawns. Therefore, I feel I have it covered and do not need to ‘compromise’ by drinking a Sauvignon Blanc or Merlot.

This blog was inspired by a comment that Merlot would go really well with pizza, and it probably would, but given the choice, I am going to drink a Sangiovese or Cabernet Sauvignon (like the 1996 Lindemans St George I had with pizza the other night). I just cannot fancy desiring a Merlot or Sauvignon Blanc when I have so many other choices available.

If you are a regular Merlot or Sauvignon Blanc drinker, then I apologize if I have offended you, but I encourage you to try some other grapes instead. We have a great friend with a very good palate and she started drinking Merlot for her first wines, but quickly grew out of that and to a broader and richer spectrum of good wines.

Therefore, if you think Merlot or Sauvignon Blanc are your main and easy choice for wine, then you should experiment a bit and I expect you will be happy with the results.

SAZ in the Cellar

Wine appreciation and enjoyment

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