May 2009 Tasting Pack
Old habits are hard to kill off, explains why it’s taken a couple of months to get around to sampling the contents of the 2009 Brook Eden May/Winter Tasting Pack. When we were setting up the post-retirement budget the plan was to work towards a $10/bottle average, and after two-and-a-half years with the average touching $9.50 it’s fair to suggest I’ve succeeded. Over the next couple of years that’s going to rise as we cut back on the el cheapo end of the spectrum, but there’ll have to be a bit of habit-breaking when it comes to grabbing something to go with dinner during the week. “No,” I find myself saying, “not tonight. Better save it in case someone like Warbo or Jimbo decides to drop by...”
But bullets need to be bitten, so I put a Chardonnay-friendly roast chicken on the table as an excuse to get into some of the Tasting Pack. Given two bottles of the 2008 Chardonnay and Pinot Noir and singles of their 2007 siblings, I ended up going for an older Chardonnay to go with the chook. With the wine taking out a silver medal at the 2007 National Cool Climate Wine Show, I was ready to be impressed. Tasmanian Chardonnays tend to be a fair distance from the buttery style I prefer, and this one was no exception, stone fruit and peaches rather than buttery oak, nicely creamy in the mouth with a finish that hung around after a fairly light floral nose and will probably fill out with bottle age. Pleasant enough (and went very well with the chook, by the way) but I tend to head in other directions when shopping for Chardonnay.
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