Wine Tasting

Marion and I have managed to do about 22 separate wine tastings of over 150 separate wines, mostly at what in Australia is called the cellar door. I'll write a little more on each of the wine tastings on other blogs.

Originally, I had intended to write up my tasting notes which I have religiously kept for all tastings, pretty much as I did for the Rustenberg post, in this Blog. However, looking at my notes they are boring and in many ways full of all the normal pretentious bs that you can read about in any wine in the wine books or wine columns and so what I will do is try to keep my wine tasting posts simple and pretty much just say what we liked about the wine(s) and the tasting(s).

As a sort of mid term report let me just say we haven't tasted a bad wine, and we have tasted some exceptional wines. You already will know of our Hentshke tasting when we tasted the Hill of Grace and Mount Edelstone wines. We have also tasted the Chardonnay from Leeuwin Estate and the Armagh from Jim Barry wines. These are world class wines and it would be invidious to choose between them.

It is easy to write about these iconic wines but not very profitable as I am only repeating what can be read in any wine magazine or book. What is better in many ways is coming across wines that I did not know before or perhaps only knew of one example from a winery. I am thinking now of the wines from Charles Cimicky and Charles Melton in the Barossa Valley, the excellent wines that I tasted only this afternoon from the Moorooduc Estate in the Mornington Peninsular, the very good Cabernet Sauvignon from Brookward in the Margaret River, and what I think will be a great Cabernet Franc from Rainbows End in Stellenbosch. It was also a little sad to taste at the winery whose wine had got me on to Barossa Shiraz style wines back in the mid '90s where the wines did not match up to my memories. Actually we then drank an older version of their wine in the restaurant the evening of the tasting and that was in no way disappointing.

We have one more tasting day down here in the Melbourne area and then one day in the Hunter Valley north of Sydney and then on to New Zealand. We are looking forward to these tastings, it is dirty work but some one has to do it, and I will write another summary report after that. In the meantime I will try to catch up on posting write ups on the individual tasting events.