Month: December 2012

Seghesio 2006 Old Vine Zinfandel

/ Alex Prichard Leave a comment

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I love this wine. And I probably love it for all the wrong reasons.

When I lived in Leeds I picked up a bottle from Latitude Wine. If I recall correctly, I believe it cost around £17 and, as my wine buying budget was always around the £15 mark, warranted a little bit of discussion. Wine was duly opened, tasted, with notes made and then drunk.

A few months later I was down in London to take the WSET‘s educator course. Because I was only taking the course to teach levels 1 and 2 I wasn’t expecting to have to do the guided tasting part of the assessment, so it was a surprise when I, too, had to pull a wine from a hat. My wine? The Seghesio Old Vine Zin. Even more miraculously, I actually had my tasting notes with me so I was able to refresh my memory in preparation. I suspect had I not passed the tasting exam I’d hate this wine, but I did so I have lots of happy memories associated with it.

I picked up two bottles at auction for just under $40 a bottle. The current release is the 2009 which the Seghesio website lists at $US38 so I think I got a pretty good deal here.

Zinfandel isn’t a wine that I personally associate with great ageing potential so I figured that I best crack open a bottle and see how it’s travelling.

In the glass the wine is very intense and sits somewhere between ruby and garnet.

Initially this wine was a little warm (remedied by 10 minutes in the fridge) and the whopping 15.5% alcohol was evident everywhere. However, once I’d cooled the wine down a touch, the nose was all about black fruit. Black currant, blackberry, black plum, black fruit jam, but all mixed in with a lot of spice and cedar.

On the palate, that black fruit was all there again, with some black pepper, fruit cake, chocolate and a licorice like finish with a hint of tar or tobacco. The tannins were very very soft and well integrated and there was just a touch of acidity (much needed to cut through all that rich fruit).

In educator mode, I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that all that luxurious ripe fruit (and the high alcohol) should be suggesting to you that this is a wine from a warm to hot climate. Also, don’t be fooled into thinking the wine is sweet – it does have a silly amount of ripe fruit and those flavours can trick you into finding sugar that’s just not there. This is a 100% dry wine.

The truckloads of fruit here suggest to me that I don’t need to rush out to drink the other bottle but, given the low levels of acidity and very soft tannins, I won’t be putting it away for another 6 years either. I drank this bottle on Christmas Eve and I’d envisage drinking the next one within the next year.

Wines like this make me very happy. It’s so disappointing that they’re tricky to come across in Australia.

This wine was purchased at auction from Wickmans, for $35 + 11% buyer’s premium.
Closure: cork.

Blue Pyrenees NV Luna

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Quite a while ago I was trawling the sparkling aisles of Dan Murphy’s (something I usually find pretty depressing as it’s a very predictable and both limiting and limited selection) when I saw the Blue Pyrenees Luna. This is a non vintage offering, but is still produced in a “méthode traditionelle” manner. Technically, this means that the secondary fermentation process takes place in the bottle, and is generally something to look out for when seeking out a potentially better than average sparkling.

The Luna retails around $16 and last time my family got together there was some vigorous debate about whether or not the extra $10 represents money well spent. As Andy pointed out the Midnight Cuvée (a popular go to wine in our family) is ⅔ more expensive but is it that much better than the Luna? Some of us were firmly in the camp that we liked the Midnight Cuvée more and, without analytically measuring the degree to which we liked it more, we were happy to spend the extra money.

Family debate aside, the wine is medium gold in colour and the nose is moderately pronounced: buttered toast, citrus with a hint of toasted pandoro too. On the palate, there is less of those yeasty, bready notes (these are all thanks to the méthode traditionelle production) and more straightforward citrus. There’s a touch of berry fruitiness too, which closes out the wine. This is a really nicely balanced wine, particularly in terms of flavour. It’s lacking in complexity and doesn’t have the acidity and length to get too excited about. But wait – we’re talking about a sparkling wine which sits well under $20 so we shouldn’t be too demanding, either.

I wouldn’t put this as my favourite sparkling at this price point (at the moment, that gong goes to the Deutz from Marlborough, which pains me as I’d rather buy Australian) but this wine definitely represents good value for money.

As to whether it’s dollar for dollar better value than the Midnight Cuvée, I suggest you buy a bottle of each and make your own mind up!

Zenith 2012 Sauvignon Blanc

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This wine was part of a mixed case we bought from some random on line deal. It was super cheap: I think it worked out at about $5 or $6 a bottle and the logic was that at least we’d have some wine kicking around the house for vinous emergencies.

It’s a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and was produced by New Zealand Wine Cellars. If you google that it won’t take you too long to figure out where we bought it from. Or just read to the bottom!

The nose was pronounced gooseberry with a hint of something vegetal – think asparagus or green pea, but don’t get too specific.

On the palate, the acidity wasn’t bad at all but it wasn’t very persistent. The palate was very green and wrapped up with a touch of passionfruit. The length was not great and for me the wine finished slightly hot, with a bitter edge which wasn’t that pleasant.

It was as though a lot of effort had been put into ensuring those typical primary fruit flavours were there, but not a lot of thought had gone into the wine as a whole.

This is a wine that absolutely delivers on typicity and I suspect that it does the job for die hard NZ Sav Blanc drinkers. I can’t utter any wise words about how it compares with other Savvy Bs available at this price point.

Clean, but boring and homogenous, and the finish really doesn’t work for me.

This wine was purchased from Cellarmasters, as part of a mixed dozen, average bottle price about $6.
Closure: screw cap.

Tscharke 2011 Girl Talk Savagnin

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Once upon a time, Australia’s white wine vineyards were planted to Riesling. Then to Chardonnay. And then everyone started looking for the next great white.

People got excited because it looked like Albariño, a white grape from Galicia in northern Spain, was going to be it. Interesting wines were being made. It was a distinctive name that was easy to pronounce.

And then it turned out it wasn’t Albariño at all. A French ampelographer (that’s someone who knows a LOT about vine leaves) spotted the problem and, in this day and age, a bit of forensics (OK, just DNA testing) revealed that Australia’s next big thing was actually Savagnin. Cue massive relabelling efforts and more than one out of pocket producer.

Today, Savagnin is grown almost exclusively in the Jura, in France – and Australia. Even though I know the story above well, it’s not a variety with which I’d call myself familiar. Tscharke has a good reputation and, at just under $20 a bottle, I was keen to dip my toe in the water.

A very pale gold wine in the glass, it had a pronounced nose: loads of stone fruit (particularly, I think, apricot), backed up with floral, chalky and citrus notes. Very very appealing. On the palate there was a big lemon/lime hit along with a ton of stone fruit (peach, this time). There was some good acidity, the length was not bad – accompanied by some flavour development, and the wine wrapped up with a slightly nutty, oily finish.

Andy’s comment that the wine was refreshing and “pretty nice”. “Pretty nice” is usually as effusive as he gets – so take that as a recommendation.

At the $20 price point I’d be more than happy to drink this wine again. I have no idea how, in the long term, producers will go with marketing Savagnin. I suspect for most consumers that the name is too close to Sauvignon, and the wine too different from Sauvignon Blanc, for it to make a big impact commercially without some serious effort. I find it interesting that producers have gone for the name Savagnin, because the UC Davis National Grape Registry lists many synonyms that might have had more marketing clout (Aida, for instance, would have been quite cool).

A wine, and a variety, to look out for.

The wine was purchased from Dan Murphy’s for $18.99.
Closure:  screw cap.