2 March 2010
It’s easy to make a mistake in complex calculations when the calculations involve the rate at which wine is consumed.
Given the fact that late January and early February seem to be prime touring time for overseas acts, and also happens to coincide with the brunt of a North Queensland summer/wet season I began to think the Little House of Concrete would be a good place to be away from in February 2010.
After all, had we been able to afford tickets, the same period a year earlier would have provided opportunities to catch Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and Jeff Beck. Uncertainties associated with the Global Financial Crunch meant that sort of extravagance was out of the question, even when free accommodation in Southport was taken into account.
Two concert tickets, transfers to and from Brisbane, a night's accommodation and sundry associated expenses wouldn't going to leave much change out of $600, but, I thought, there'll be a similar set of touring acts next year, and I'll be able to afford a little more extravagance then.
The suggestion that we might be able to head south in late January went down well with Madam, and the trip was pencilled into the itinerary back in April. Fortunately, as will be revealed, she decided that it would be appropriate to drive rather than fly.
Predictably, the anticipated influx of overseas acts failed to arrive, but I set about planning for the trip undeterred by disappointment.
As noted elsewhere there's a little problem when it comes to ordering wine. Too many wineries that deserve Hughesy's custom, and a restriction on the rate at which bottles can disappear from the wine rack.
In the end we'd decided that the trip south would involve around three dozen bottles in the boot, and that, combined with a few visitors over the Festive Season should mean the wine rack would be close to empty by the time we'd packed the three cases in the car. Predictably, the visitors failed to arrive, a couple of individuals who could have helped run the stocks down left town, and we ended up looking at four and a half cases for the boot.
That decision was made a day before I realised I'd left The Wine Society Best Value Selection out of the calculations.
Consequently we had to leave a small quantity of wine in the rack, but that'll be handy in the interval between orders being placed and the actual arrival of said stock.
Over the years the Best Value Selection has managed to deliver a number of very attractive everyday drinking wines, and my standard operating practice has been to get in early, and reorder any that particularly take my fancy.
Given the fact that the special reorder prices run out at the end of February around the time we'll be looking to head back, I doubt that we'll be queueing up for any of these, regardless of how much I happen to like them. There is, after all, every possibility anything that represents particularly good value for money will be sold out well before February 28.
I started by trying the Talinga Park 2009 Sauvignon Blanc (TWS $10.99 Reorder $9.34), mainly because I thought that it might go nicely with a chicken curry. While the rest of the country seems to be glugging down Kiwi Savvy Blanc like it's going out of style, I find myself constantly baffled by the fact that there are pretty good local versions at pretty attractive price points that seem to be more or less ignored.
At $9.34 the Talinga Park would, under other circumstances, be a reasonably attractive proposition. It mightn't be quite up there with the wines you're looking at paying fifteen to twenty dollars for, but as a refreshing style for summer drinking it has the requisite limey tropical fruit characters on the nose and on the palate. It's a wine that, under other circumstances, I might be interested in, but...
Drayton's 2009 Hunter Valley Semillon (TWS $12.99 Reorder $11.05), on the other hand, was an example of a wine that neither Madam or I "got". The wine was an attractive golden yellow in the glass, but the nose wasn't all that interesting and in the mouth, while it was pleasant with soft rounded flavours it wasn't the sort of style that makes your taste buds sit up and pay attention. Possibly, since the notes accompanying the pack suggest that it'll develop nicely until 2016 it's still young, but if that's the case limited space in the wine fridge means that buying and cellaring isn't a possible scenario either.
The final white, the cool climate Mastermind 2008 Chardonnay (TWS $10.99 Reorder $9.34) wasn't bad either. Very light yellow in the glass with a pleasant nose and a rounded mouthfeel.
There's obviously a fair quantity of surplus Chardonnay out there (there’s a fair quantity of surplus everything, in fact) and in other circumstances you'd probably be looking at paying more than $11 for something of this standard.
The wine might have come up better if I'd tried it with something other than a vindaloo, but it was a pretty reasonable example of the newer style of Australian Chardonnay without offering anything that was going to have me hurrying in to reorder.
Tiredness and insufficient local knowledge meant that dinner plans the night we returned from a side excursion to Stanthorpe didn't involve the pizza that had motivated my decision to open a bottle of the Yarraman Hell Raiser 2006 Cabernet Merlot (TWS $10.99 Reorder $9.34), though the chilli factor in my selection at Ichiban Bolsho would certainly have played hell with Madam's taste buds.
We'd opted for eat in rather than take away and when we returned to base the bottle had been breathing for close to an hour and three-quarters and needed to be sampled. Had I known what was going to ensue I wouldn't have opened it before I made a phone call to order a pizza from a place that isn't open on a Sunday, but there you go....
Chilli-hefty Chinese/ Japanese pork broth may not be the ideal match for a red wine, though the notes with the pack suggested a match with pepper steak, but I found the wine to be a pleasant enough little drop with subtle tannins and a rounded mouthfeel.
I thought it was a pretty good indication of what's possible through judicious blending of parcels of fruit within the ubiquitous Southeast Australia without hitting any great heights. Pleasant drinking, would have gone well with the pizza and was the sort of wine that I could have sat down to polish off over the next hour or two if extreme tiredness wasn't a significant factor.
Actually, it’s one of those wines that I'd probably have reordered a few years ago, good buying at that price point but while we were en route to Stanthorpe we ended up with a dozen Merlots from an unanticipated stop at Kooroomba, which fill the wine rack niche that the intended for export (but presumably order cancelled) Hell Raiser might have occupied.
You could say many of the same things about the Tyrone 2007 Merlot and the Circle Collection 2008 Shiraz (TWS $10.99 Reorder $9.34 in both cases).
Both originate from the same irrigated vineyards that provide the majority of wines at and below this price point. Well made, deeply coloured, the right elements on the nose without making you want to spend a lengthy period with your hooter rammed into the top of the glass, and soft tannins as the wine passes the palate, both are perfect examples of what's possible when you're operating in this environment. Really, in terms of barbeque, pasta or pizza reds you probably couldn't go wrong with either of these (or the Yarraman for that matter).
The problem, however, is that there are a swag of similar wines out there, most of them at similar price points. These three reds are as good as any of them, and better than most, but in an environment where I'm looking a bit above that price point as a general rule I'm more likely to pick up something on special from one of the wineries I buy directly from, rather than grabbing a dozen of one of these.
Unless, of course, I find something that really grabs my attention, which, fortunately or unfortunately, wasn't the case this time around.