Clare - East Side Story
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.
That said, my notes from Leasingham suggest my favourite of the four wines was the Individual Vineyard Riesling. However, Bin 7 Riesling is one I’ll be keeping my eye out for in bottle shops and on restaurant wine lists, as is the Magnus Cabernet which is as good as you’re likely to find at this price point. I thought it represented extremely good value for money.
Then, of course, there’s the 2006 Classic Clare Shiraz which made two wines in two days that we’d rated higher than the nameless but quite pleasant hundred-plus dollar wine previously mentioned which we tend to use as a $100-plus benchmark. Up to this moment the only other dry red in that price range we’ve been able to try was a Grange that’s just a little too good to be used as a punches above its weight benchmark.
Highly impressed as we left Leasingham and headed south in search of lunch. The next port of call was Kirrihill Wines, which houses Salt ‘n’ Vines, our preferred option though we hadn’t booked.
Kirrihill is an interesting operation, owned by the same interests as a company that manages a substantial chunk (1300 hectares) of South Australia’s vineyards which would, one suspects, have certain advantages when it comes to sourcing quality grapes for your wines.
The Kirrihill Cellar Door had an extremely informative attendant and, since we were her only customers for most of our stay there we benefited from detailed information about the wines on offer.
That was handy, since there were three ranges available for tasting, the $15 Companions (mostly blends of Clare Valley and Adelaide Hills fruit except for the 2008 Clare Valley Rose), the $20-$25 Single Vineyard Series and the $29 Kirrihill Estates 2004 Clare Valley Riesling, a five-star wine which appears in my notes with a single word (Buy) beside it.
So we did, and there were half a dozen waiting for us at the Post Office when we got home.
Of the Companions Range, the 2008 CV/AH Riesling Pinot Gris, the 2006 CV/AH Cabernet Merlot and the 2007 AH/CV Tempranillo Garnacha were particularly memorable, though everything on offer was much more than merely acceptable.
At the price point the Single Vineyard Series were, I thought, particularly outstanding with my preference going to the 2008 Pinot Noir Rose Brut, the 2008 Watervale Riesling and the 2006 Clare Valley Baile An Gharrai Shiraz.
Having tasted virtually the entire range on offer the prospect of a break over lunch was particularly appealing so we headed upstairs to Salt ‘n’ Vines where my Trio of Game Meats and Madam’s Smoked Atlantic Salmon may well have gone down very nicely with a glass of something other than water but She was driving and I was temporarily tasted out.
Which was an important consideration because our next two stops in the Polish Hill River sub-region were places I was particularly looking forward to visiting.
With lunch out of the way (and exceptionally delish it was too) the plan was to backtrack to Wild Saffron, pick up something for dinner for (hopefully) the next two nights followed by a flying visit to base camp to put the tucker in the fridge before setting out to taste some more.
Arriving at Wild Saffron we learnt that the highly recommended lasagne wasn’t available until after four and would feed four (which was probably two too many) so we opted for a couple of Thai beef salads from the fridge.
A couple of years ago a local bottle shop had substantial heavily discounted stocks of the Paulett Polish Hill River Riesling on offer, most of which found its way into the Little House of Concrete and renewed Hughesy’s interest in Riesling so I was looking forward to a visit and a taste.
Apart from a five star rating from Mr Halliday the note on the iPod mentioned wonderful views across the Polish Hill River region and, as we pulled into the car park and looked across the countryside words like gob-smacked sprang readily to mind.
The tasting notes I’d scribbled while I was there had mysteriously disappeared somewhere along the track, and while the publicity material that remained on hand might have provided an opportunity to cheat a bit and reconstruct from memory, and internet access could have fleshed that out into something resembling an authentic review, but an eight or nine day gap before I’d be able to use that line of inquiry it’s probably best to state that I was highly impressed (once again) and leave it at that.
In particular, visiting the two establishments leaves me again in awe of the people who are able to taste large numbers of wines in a sitting and still maintain the ability to distinguish the subtle differences between a number of high-class examples of the same style.
I’m sure that, given an array of Rieslings in one place and a fresh palate I’m sure I’d be able to work my way around to identifying one particular wine as the pick of the bunch, but it would take some time and once the task had been accomplished a degree of palate burnout would mean that it’d be difficult to repeat the exercise, even after a couple of hours’ break on, say, a range of Cabernets.
An overwhelmed and temporarily burnt out palate probably accounts for my relatively cool reaction to the wines we tasted at the day’s final stop, Reilly’s in Mintaro and, here again, I’m inclined to skip over the finer details after I’ve indicated that, yes, everything was very impressive indeed and that there were some great examples of dry-grown wines on offer.
From Mintaro we headed around the countryside for a non-tasting tour of the countryside, pausing for a stroll around Watervale before heading back to Auburn for a rest before what was expected to be a light dinner. Appearances are, however, deceptive, and when the packages we’d bought earlier had been placed in bowls, accompanied by a glass of the Knappstein ‘05 Three (an extremely good match, by the way), a $9.50 Thai beef salad from Wild Saffron proved to be a surprisingly filling meal.