Granges!

I should have become suspicious when Robert said he thought it an apropriate time to open the wine that Jamie had told him was quite good, a Penfolds wine. I recalled that Penfolds have several good wines so it could be any one of those, but no one would have said they were thinking of opening a good Penfolds when in fact they were going to open a bottle of that Aussie icon of a wine, Grange. No one, that is, unless you were unaware of Grange. Jamie was the clue here, a former colleague of both Robert and I, who really liked his wine.

I was there as Robert opened the box and took out the dusty bottle. It really is quite hard to mistake the rather plain label of a Grange but I held my breathe until I actually read the label.
Wow!, we were not going to just taste the Grange but to drink it with our Sunday dinner. Fabulous.

Robert opened the wine fairly quickly and put it on the side to breathe. Eventually dinner was served and the wine was poured at pretty much the optimal temperature. The wine wasa deep Shiraz red in colour, and smelt of fruit and something a little sharper, probably pepper. The taste was very fruity with a good hint of pepper, was very balanced and very full. You just knew you were drinking a really good Australian style Shiraz, It was a 1997 and unfortunately it was the only one.