Wednesday, 5 November 2008
Once breakfast had been demolished the first priority for the day involved meal arrangements for the next couple of days. The briefing we’d received on arrival indicated that supper requisites could be obtained from the highly rated Wild Saffron.
We’d also been told that lunch at Skillogalee was a must do so once I’d succeeded in booking us in for lunch on Thursday it was a case of setting out to locate Wild Saffron to check out the options for the next two days’ evening meals, which looked like being lasagne (highly recommended by our host) or Thai beef salad.
A quick conference resulted in a decision to head off on the tasting trail and return after lunch (which I’d pencilled in at Salt ‘n’ Vines), pick up dinner supplies, drop them in Auburn and then head off on a loop through Polish Hill River and Mintaro. Remembering we’d be flying home, the game plan was to try as many wineries as possible, add our details to the relevant mailing lists (preferably the electronic version) and then place orders once we returned to base.
We started at Knappstein, where the Riesling was predictably wonderful but the surprise package was Three, a blend of Gewurztraminer, Riesling and Pinot Gris which impressed Madam enough for her to invest in a bottle of the ‘05 from the bin ends special barrel. There’s also a brewery on the premises, so I tried the lager and promptly picked up a four pack, figuring that I’d be able to knock those over some time over the next couple of days.
The second stop was Leasingham, which I’d planned to approach through the back streets of Clare until we heard much easier directions turn left at the footy field). We arrived to find that the tasting options were limited to four - 2007 Riesling ($23), 2008 Individual Vineyard Release Watervale Riesling ($46, maximum of three bottles per person), 2006 Magnus Cabernet ($17) and 2006 Classic Clare Shiraz ($55) and while wines on offer were limited in number the quality was stellar.
We ended up staying in the Tasting Room much longer than you would have expected due to a wide-ranging conversation with the guy looking after the operation, covering everything from wine cellar construction and cellaring conditions to investment strategies in the current economic environment with side-tracks to cover each wine and a timely reference to the importance of taking notes when you’re going tasting.
Unfortunately Hughesy doesn’t get to wineries all that often, so while someone like the guy at the cellar door has a range of wineries within easy travelling distance and has the opportunity to develop a thorough note-taking system over time (I suspect he uses a notebook rather than scribbling notes on whatever publicity material happens to be lying around the premises) I hadn’t quite progressed that far at this point in proceedings.
Following his suggestion I tried to take notes at each of the places we visited from there on. Looking back over the accumulated materials as I type, the notes vary wildly and don’t necessarily give an accurate summary of my reaction to the winery.
From here on, where there’s a lengthy discussion it means that I’d ended up with plenty of notes (I’m typing this a fortnight later from written notes compiled a day or two after we visited the winery in question). In other cases I took notes which then somehow got lost in the shuffle between the visit and the write up in the journal.