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!

Grenache was made for Sheperd’s Pie!

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Steve Shipley

A number of red wines work with Sheperd’s Pie. I have tried a few as my wife, DAZ in the Kitchen, makes a great Sheperd’s Pie! I have had Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz with Sheperd’s Pie, and both worked fine. More recently, I had the 2008 Glandore TPR Tempranillo with Sheperd’s Pie and thought it worked better than either a Cabernet Sauvignon or Shiraz. Tempranillo is a secondary and less popular red wine grape, but a beautiful drink.

Grenache is another secondary wine grape growing in popularity. I have been slow to coming to truly like Grenache as a grape, but really enjoying it more recently. I have been tasting more decent wines from Châteauneuf-du-Pape and have been able to discern the more pleasurable characteristics of Grenache. We also recently have a tremendous Australian Grenach (the 2006 Cirillo 1850 Grenache) which was wonderful with Korean BBQ.

The characteristics I love about Grenache (and Tempranillo) is that they make hearty, chewable wines that are still elegant and well-refined. It almost seems to be a contradiction in terms, and that is why some of the cheaper, younger Grenache wines don’t work. The compexities and balance are not there yet.

I had a single bottle of the 2006 Perrin & Fils Châteauneuf-du-Pape Les Sinards and remembering how good the 2006 Cirillo 1850 Grenache was from a few days before, I thought a Grenache would go very well with Sheperd’s Pie that evening. It ended up being a perfect match!

The 2006 Cirillo 1850 Grenache was 100% Grenache. But often the Grenache grape is blended with smaller quantities of other grapes. The 2006 Perrin & Fils Châteauneuf-du-Pape Les Sinards is such a blend being 70% Grenache, 15% Shiraz, and 15% Mourvedre. This blending is typical of a wines from Châteauneuf-du-Pape and why there can be such a wide variety of different tasting wines from that region.

Grenache (or a Grenache blend) works well with Sheperd’s Pie because both the texture of the wine and the taste compliment the food beautifully. This wine is ‘meaty’ on its own and mixes with the juice from the pie in a splendid sensation of flavours. Additionally, the leaner, elegant characteristics compliment the mash potato used in the pie.

I have not tried a Pinot Noir with Sheperd’s Pie and you may be asking why as it contains lamb mince. I think most Pinot Noirs would be too light in texture to work with the heartiness of Sheperd’s Pie.

If you have not tried Grenache before, you owe it to yourself to do so. And if you are going to cook up Sheperd’s Pie, then you definitely should be looking for a bottle of Grenache to go with it (or a bottle of a Tempranillo). For my palate, a Grenache is a far better match for Sheperd’s Pie than Cabernet Sauvignon or Shiraz.

Impressing or expressing? – a good night out with the guys!

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Steve Shipley

The five of us were all looking forward to a good night out. One in the group was returning to the US after two years living in Sydney, others reflecting on completing one of the greatest banking IT projects ever run anywhere in the world, which we all touched in one way or another over the last few years, but mostly we just wanted to get together to share some companionship and some great wine. And what a wine line-up we had!

Owen, David, Mark, Daniel, Steve

We had been planning the evening for about a month, but except for agreeing on the date, no one did any real planning at all! So we decided to meet at the Small Bar in Crows Nest and take it from there. Mark and I arrived first, drinking some 2012 David Hook Pinot Grigio from the Hunter Valley. After a glass each and some nibblies, we got another full bottle as the other guys were arriving.

After some good banter, we all started showing off the wine we had brought along for the evening. It was suppose to be a ‘big red’ night and it certainly turned out that way! As I mentioned, we all apparently wanted to impress, but not in that manly competitive way of “You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine!” It was more about being respectful of each being part of a friendship and wanting to share something special with each other. The other four in the group had been especially tight over the previous few years and I had only circled in and out a few times, so it was great to be part of the group that evening. We all knew and enjoyed our wines and made sure we each brought a very good bottle along!

I brought along a 1996 Waverley Estates Semillon to start us off with an iconic Australian white wine which I thought would go with whatever Asian food we decided to eat that evening. Since the evening was about the friendship and the wine, we weren’t sure where we would eat (so we went to the closest place which was the Vietnamese restaurant Phuong immediately next door to the Small Bar!). In fairness to my friend’s taste and Phuong, some of the guys had been there before and it was an outstanding choice.

I felt we should start with one bottle of white wine and I wanted to test and share what I knew would be a great Australian white in the 1996 Waverley Estates Semillon. Once we got the food ordered (Banquet Menu B, showing again how much effort we would be putting into non-wine related topics!), we got into the red wines. The line-up was a stunner:

2008 Trinity Hill Homage Gimblett Gravels Cabernet Sauvignon / Merlot blend (from Hawkes Bay, New Zealand)
1997 Penfolds 389 Shiraz / Cabernet Sauvignon blend
1994 Brokenwood Hermintage
2002 Penfolds St Henri Shiraz
2009 Tyrrell’s Johnno Shiraz
2003 Penfolds St Henri Shiraz
2007 McWilliams Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea Shiraz
2002 Wolf Blass Black Label Shiraz / Cabernet Sauvignon / Malbec
Some bottle of Pinot Noir that Mark bought at the bottle shop because for some reason he did not think we had enough wine for five guys!

Except for the 2002 Wolf Blass Black Label which was gifted to Andrew (the guy returning to the US), the 2009 Tyrrell’s Johnno Shiraz (which we deemed too young to drink), and the bottle Pinot Noir that Mark bought, we did drink all the wine with dinner. You can tell because of how careful we were with our plates and food (and this does not show the broken glass on the floor or the mess I made of Daniel’s shirt!).

Six of the reds we drank were Shiraz or Shiraz blends – that’s heavy lifting for one meal! We opened with the Trinity Hill Cabernet Sauvignon / Merlot blend and finished with dessert and the Pinot Noir, but everything else in between was Shiraz! I believe we all agreed that the wine of the evening was the 2002 Penfolds St Henri. The 1997 Penfolds 389 was absolutely splendid and lasted better than I thought it would. The 1994 Brokenwood Hermitage was a classic older Hunter Shiraz with great body and finish, but still maintaining the elegant style of an old world Hermitage. The 2009 Tyrrell’s Johnno Shiraz would have been a delight, but we passed on it as it will last another decade or more and improve with age. And the 2003 Penfolds St Henri was another wonderful wine. Each of these reds would usually be considered the featured wine to finish a meal with, but we had no problem over-indulging with all of them!

We then walked in the rain down to Bravo’s for some gelato and other desserts where we did finish off the bottle of Pinot Noir that Mark bought before finding our individual ways home.

Great friends, great food, great times and great wine all go together. We were not trying to impress in a competitive way – just expressing gratitude for each others friendship and respect for each others palate! It was a rare evening where everything worked – at least it seemed so with that much good wine!

Entering a wine writing competition

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Steve Shipley

I am very excited to be entering ‘Next Big Thing,’ the annual amateur wine writing competition of Bauer ACP Gourmet Traveler (GT) Wine magazine. This is the fourth year running for the competition. I am entering as a way to better focus on more serious wine writing than just blogging through SAZ in the Cellar. While I do not expect to win, I would not be entering if I did not think I had a chance to be competitive.

The entries must be in by 9 January, 2013 and the entry limited to 1,000 words. All the details and guidance are provided in the links above and here. You may wonder why I am alerting others to this as it will only increase the competition. The reason is that I want to be supportive of everyone increasing their enjoyment in the wine and its related lifestyle and by being part of and more knowledgeable of wine and wine-related experiences. I also want to be more encouraging to anyone who wants to write and share ideas and knowledge with others.

I do not consider my knowledge to be my own or sourced from within. We all learn from each other and are better for it. Plus it increases the community of people we can learn from and share with. My friend Blake Stevens, author of Still Stupid at Sixty wrote a blog post about the larger value of exchanging ideas than money which really struck home with me. I want to live and fulfill that idea which is why I encourage others to write, even if in direct competition to me. I do value the way I might interpret and articulate material and am therefore very much behind copyright protection and respecting peoples ability to monetize their efforts. But the main reason I write is to share and engage with others.

I have five weeks to finish and submit my entry. I am starting this weekend as I have an idea already and I want to see if it works. But there is a lot more to do in terms of positioning a winning entry. I need to ensure it is a fun topic in which the judges can engage and enjoy, I need to validate a lot of facts and make sure it is accurate (not something I always do with my blog posts, but I know them to be directionally correct and factual), and I need to really ensure the writing itself is of high quality, concise and well structured, and well edited and proofed. (This is something I also do to some extent, but not thoroughly, with my blog posts – if I did, they would take several more hours each instead of the typical 30 – 60 minutes to write.)

So wish me luck on my submission, and if you know anyone who may be interested to submit also, please share this information with them!

Why does the screw top controversy rage on?

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Steve Shipley

I have evolved my views on this over the last decade, and must say that I am in very strong favor of using screwtops. Almost everyone else in the industry globally is also. Yet, there are a few hold-outs, including the Chinese (who seem to value the cork tradition more at this point in time). However, I believe that a few influential Chinese ‘wine thought leaders’ will come around quickly to the use of screw tops and then the rest of the nation will follow.

Fortunately the Australia wine industry is almost entirely converted to the use of screw top and recently awarded the 2012 McWilliams Maurice O’Shea Award to the ‘Australian Screwcap Initiative.’ (My use of ‘screw top’ and their use of ‘screwcap’ is interchangeable.) Usually this prestigious award goes to a great wine, but occasionally it goes to a theme or initiative and awarding it to the use of screw tops was a very bold step by the Australian wine industry which clearly announces the use of screw tops is clearly the future.

Almost simultaneously, the Italian wine authorities have approved the use of screw tops and other synthetic sealers to be used for their higher quality DOC and DOCG wines for the first time. Even the Europeans are starting to come around!

The science and evidence around the use of a slightly porous cork allowing a good to great wine to reach its full potential is just not there. Quite conclusively, the marginal potential differences are extremely minor or likely non-existent. Screw tops provide the same path to maturity and complexity that corks do as what has been bottled inside the seal is sufficient to create to most from the wine. The quality of the grape, the wine maker and the little bit of air in the ullage is far more important than the minute amount of air that may seep in over the next 10 – 20 years. And if that air amount is ‘more than a very little,’ the wine will oxidize and turn to vinegar.

Cork has some major issues which can make for a most unpleasant tasting experience:

Cork failure rates are between 3% and 15% according to a variety of studies, even with cork quality control and checking – it is just the nature of the beast
Sometimes an entire batch of bad corks makes it way to the market and can ruin an entire great vintage of great wine
The variability of the exact same wine bottle to bottle is often visible and indicates that at least one of the bottles will be an unpleasant drinking experience!

One of the two undrinkable bottles of 2002 Wolf Blass Black Label

The greatest disappointments I have had in wine drinking to open what you know is or should be a great bottle of wine, only to find it has been ‘corked.’ This has happened to me several times and pouring a $50 – $100 bottle of wine down the drain feels like ‘wine euthanasia.’ I will try anything to save such as bottle from considering it for cooking to rationalizing that is is drinkable and I just need to reduce my finicky standards a bit! But if I am going to share the wine others, I will not let it pass and have to move onto the next bottle – if I have a back-up bottle (which I usually do, but this is not always convenient or possible).

I hate to be disappointed, especially when it is beyond my control to have the right outcome. It is my fault if I leave a vintage far too long and the wine has deadened, lost it fruit, or lost its structure. I can control that and avoid that happening. But there is nothing I can do about having received a bottle of wine with a bad cork in it. And even with a good cork, it is difficult to get 20 years of solid performance without it becoming saturated and starting to seep. This puts at risk most of your best bottles that require 20 years to age. That is why every two years, Penfolds offers free re-corking of Grange and other iconic Penfolds wines as some of them require 30 years or more to be optimally drinkable.

My view is that avoiding this disappointment (a corked bottle) far outweighs what extremely small possibility that for a limited few bottles of wine, that aging under cork ‘may’ yield a slightly better result than the same bottle under screw top. You are guaranteed that bottle after bottle will be at its best and consistent when under screw top. The only chance of the bottle going bad is if you have scorched it from storing it in too hot a condition.

The other problem with the variability of cork, is that if you have several dozen bottles, they are likely to age differently and the chance you will be drinking each bottle at its best is diminished. With screw top, you know they will age at the same pace and be consistently drinkable during an optimum period of time. The need to provide a ‘back-up’ bottle is no longer necessary.

“Yes,” I certainly enjoy the experience of taking out an old cork and will miss that experience more and more over time, but enjoying that sensation does come close to masquerading the the disappointment of a ‘corked’ bottle. Insist on buying under screw top from now on and don’t take the risk.

A little wine humor for the weekend

Posted on November 24, 2012 by Steve Shipley

I have started using Pinterest more for several things and will be expanding that even more in the future. I do enjoy collecting funny sayings and humorous cartoons regarding wine. Since it is the weekend, crack open a bottle, have a good sip and enjoy some of the wine humor I have collected and posted on Pinterest.

I will be doing that myself while getting into a little of the 1977 Dow Vintage Port this evening and comparing it to the 1980 Lindemans Vintage Port. I will let you know the results in a few days.

The generosity and great gift of friends

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Steve Shipley

We had a small and very private event for my 60th birthday. For a man who has everything (and many things twice!), I certainly did not need any presents. But I have found it impossible to convince others of that, so through my lovely wife, Deanna, I was able to have her help guide people to buy some small things that I did need or at least desire! The presents were great and I will cherish and use them with enthusiasm over many years. The collection is in the picture below.

I got a nice wine bottle thermometer to help check the temperature of my wine and when to drink it, a dozen serviettes with funny wine servings on them, a couple of Riedel Vinum Montrachet glasses, 4 Riedel ‘O’ series portable red wine glasses, a nice Riedel decanter, and a couple of wine cork picture boards to create great memories from the corks of the fantastic wines I have drank over the years. Additionally, I got a few good bottles of wine and a Nespresso coffee capsule holder which is very handy (my only non-wine gift).

I received great generosity from great friends, but most importantly, they all gave of their time to spend a wonderful evening with us. However, above and beyond these wonderful gifts, there were three gifts that emotionally moved me and which I will treasure forever:

Gift #1

One was from Nessa Doyle, who is not a long-term or close friend (but becoming much closer to Deanna and me with each passing week!). I have worked with Nessa over the last several years and we have respected each other being able to get things done in difficult situations. I had invited her to dinner about three weeks before my birthday with some other colleagues we have worked with previously.

It was another great meal cook by Jay Huxley, Masterchef and my regular go-to guy with anything to do with food. Jay also cooked my magnificent birthday dinner which I just blogged about and which all attendees claimed was the best meal they ever had!

We were about three hours into the dinner of three weeks before my birthday and discussing the joy and learnings we get from charitable work, especially feeding the homeless. Nessa is one of the most supportive people I know of great causes and and we mutually like giving of our time and funds to support these causes. Nessa was planning to attend a wonderful dinner and fundraiser for Cystic Fibrosis (CF) at the Sydney Opera House. Nessa offered to take and pay for Deanna and me to attend with her as a 60th birthday present for me. Nessa was not only being very generous to me with such a great gift, but also for one of her work mates who has a son with CF and hosting a table for the evening. Nessa made a large donation to the cause that evening by picking up three seats. Additionally, it is a gift that keeps on giving as it introduced Deanna and me to CF and the tragic impact it has on people’s lives, but also the wonderful miracles that are made possible through the funds raised. Nessa’s generosity will remain with me forever.

Nessa, Steve, Deanna – not often I am surrounded by so much beauty!

Thank you so much, Nessa Doyle for day-in, day-out being such a wonderful, generous and caring person! And for those of you who also want to support CF, you can do so by making a donation to Cystic Fibrosis in Australia, or to The Children’s Hospital at Westmead CF Department which was the fund-rasier we were at that evening. And if you can share this around to others who may be able to help, please do so.

Gift #2

Rob and Jude Tudor came up from Melbourne to share the special day with us. Rob is one of the few people I greatly enjoy sharing a good cigar with (Jim Covington being another, but he lives in New York state now). As a special treat, Bob was bringing up the last of the two very special cigars he had been gifted from his son, who is a masseuse to a very wealthy Arab sheik. The sheik gave Rob’s son (who then gave to Rob) two cigars made for Castro from the Cohiba factory in Cuba. When I do occasionally smoke and greatly enjoy a cigar, it is almost always a Cohiba. But this one was really special. It used the very best tobacco leaves from selected years and were intended to be for Castro’s special collection. These cigars cost a fortune but that is not what makes Rob’s gift so generous, it is the scarcity of being able to find or obtain these rare cigars.

Rob and I were going to share this cigar together and both enjoy it that evening. We smelled the cigar earlier in the evening and we were planning on sharing the cigar later that night with some very fine aged vintage port. Usually, we would each have our own cigar and avoid the “men exchanging spit thing.” However, this was a cigar worth savoring and sharing. I have had some very fine cigars in my life (seriously, as little as I smoke cigars, why go with a cheap one?), but I have never smelled a cigar as fine as the one Rob brought along for the evening. I looked forward to smoking that great cigar with Rob later that night, but it was not to be. After ten courses of the finest food anyone could want and 13 bottles of great wine, we had little left for enjoying a great cigar. It was at that point that Rob presented me with the cigar to have on my own when the time is right. What a friend and what a guy!

This cigar is a few millimeters longer and a little thicker than a Cohiba Robusto. And the smell is beyond awesome. A regular Cohiba (which many, if not most, consider the finest cigar you can buy) is tepid and flat compared to “Castro’s cigar.” If there is a cigar to smoke in heaven, this is the cigar! Unfortunately, after about 5 hours of eating and drinking, we were satiated. My estimate is that Castro’s cigar was a two hour smoke and after all we had to eat and drink that evening, it would have incapacitated us! Therefore, we did the smart thing and passed so we could wake up (late) once again on Sunday morning.

Castro’s Cigar

I will never smoke a better cigar in my life time. Rob has smoked one and knows the pleasure, and to give me his other one to enjoy is a gift beyond belief. I will find the right place and time to smoke this. I do not want to wait too long as I am concerned about the risk of anything happening to compromise the pristine quality of this cigar. While I have it stored in my humidor, it is always possible that it may pick up a fungus or dry out. I am watching it almost every day and ensuring it retains its pristine quality, and do not want to do anything to increase the risk of it going off. Therefore, it will be smoked soon and likely at our place in the Hunter Valley. This could be as early as next weekend, but I am going to ask Rob if it is possible for him and Jude to join us for a few days over Christmas in the Hunter Valley and if they can, then I will save it to share with him then.

Rob, thank you so much for providing me with what will certainly be the best cigar I ever smoke. I will honor you first and foremost with attempting to share it back with you, or at least pick the perfect setting and time to enjoy it over several hours without distraction!

Gift #3

Many, many years ago while still in graduate school, I started to learn about and drink some better wine. This mostly consisted of $3 – $5 bottles of Chilean reds. However, someone at Surdyk’s, one of the premier wine stores close to the University of Minnesota campus where I attended graduate school, convinced me to pick up two bottles of the 1977 Dow Port. I think I spent about $15 – $17 per bottle for it, but cannot really remember. However, I held onto it for a long, long time. When I arrived in Sydney, Australia in 2000, I gave a bottle to my (now) in-laws as a gift. My wife (just girlfriend at the time) told me that it was easiest to get along with her parents if you provided them with nice material things! So I gave them one of my two treasured bottles of the 1977 Dow Port about 14 years ago. I was hoping they would share it with me over time, but that has not happened. I am not sure what ever happened to that bottle and if they drank it or lost it in their cellar (I am at their house tomorrow so may look for it!) or gave it away. But I have never seen it since.

The second bottle of 1977 Dow Port was consumed in a state of drunkenness which I greatly regret. I lived next door to my wife’s cousins back in 2006 and they were having a BBQ. We had a lot of food and quite a bit to drink when someone suggested that some Port might be nice.. I quickly ran back to my house and got a bottle for us to drink. Instead of pulling out a bottle of some cheap tawny port, I decided to share my last bottle of the 1977 Dow Port. Well, it was gone within 20 minutes, having been consumed by 20 year olds who could not tell the difference! Yes, I had a glass and it was magnificent, but now realized of the two bottles of 1977 Dow Vintage Port that I had carried around for between 20 – 30 years, both were gone and I only had one damn small glass to make me realize how good it was and how it had gone to others who had not appreciated it.

Don’t get me wrong – I love sharing great wine and last bottles of special wine with others. However, I feel my generosity was wasted here. Giving up both bottles has been a great regret and both bottles went to my wife’s family. While I never blamed her nor blamed her family, I did feel regret in having these two great bottles being given up to others who could nor did not appreciate them.

My wife is not good at keeping secrets, especially when she wants to tell someone about something ‘good’ she has done. Therefore, it is amazing that she was able to keep this secret for over three years from me! I knew she had gotten me a bottle of wine for my birthday, but I just could not figure out what she bought me. I checked on if there was a bottle of 1952 Penfolds Grange and this was their first trial year. One half-bottle of the 1952 Penfolds Grange signed by Max Schubert could be had for $12,500 (it originally was given away as samples and then sold for $4.50!). I was pretty certain she would not spend that kind of money, nor take the risk on a 60 year old Grange. A 1952 Chateau D’Yquem would still be a great drink, but they did not make a vintage that year. I also did not figure she would risk a 60 year old Bordeaux. The only thing I could come up with is that she got me a bottle of the 1952 Sepplets Vintage Port, or some other birth-year Port. A Port would last a very long time and get better over time.

Never in a million years did I think about about her finding or replacing the two bottles of the 1977 Dow Port! What a special gift and and great surprise. This gift is like being given back life! Or like someone coming in and correcting a really stupid mistake I made (which I had). I love my wife greatly every day of the year, but never more than for the very special gift she gave me on my birthday. I was totally blown away.

These three gifts will all be consumed in due course. The fundraiser gift from Nessa was consumed a week ago, but will live forever in my memory. The gift of the cigar will be consumed and greatly enjoyed before the end of the year. And I am opening a bottle of the 1977 Dow Vintage Port this evening and will likely consume both bottles over the next year. (I also have about 15 bottles of the 2004 Dow Vintage Port and two bottles of the 2007 Dow Vintage Port – a spectacular vintage!)

While these gifts will be consumed, they will last as great memories forever, and for that I want to thank Nessa, Rob and Deanna for the impact they have made on my life by being so generous and considered in their gift giving.

[BTW, this post has taken me four hours to write, edit and take the pictures for! Wow!]

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.