Friday, 18 September 2009
A Definite Five Stars
On a day when you’ve made your way around half-a-dozen wineries rated five stars in Halliday it takes something special to make one place stand out from the pack.
The first Thursday in November 2008 was always going to be a challenge. I’d planned to start at Jim Barry, loop through Sevenhill, across to Neagles Rock then over to Mitchell before lunch at Skillogalee, on to Kilikanoon and Olssens and a stop at Crabtree on the way back to base if we had time. We weren’t as quick out of the blocks as I would have liked, and the Jim Barry tasting lasted longer than anticipated. Not that I was objecting under the circumstances. It was a nicely spaced tasting of more or less the entire range. Neagles Rock was very enjoyable as well, and when we pulled into the car park alongside the old stone apple shed on Hughes Park Road I was feeling more or less at one with the world. Around half an hour later we were walking back out with lunch in mind and shortly thereafter we encountered the party we’d seen ay Jim Barry earlier in the morning.
Having discovered this was the third day we’d been on the tasting trail around the valley they asked if there was anywhere we particularly recommended. They were booked in for the tour at Sevenhill Cellars and reckoned they could fit another one without overdoing it.
Our unanimous opinion was Go to Mitchell.
Ten months later, when the finances finally permitted and the new Mitchell website was up I was on the phone to order a selection that covered most of the range on offer.
And while the range isn’t extensive - two whites, four reds, a sparkling shiraz and a sticky - I thought it was arguably the most consistently excellent range we’d sampled in the valley, or, perhaps, anywhere else.
Those judgements are subjective, of course, but in Hughesy’s personal pantheon of high class wineries this one is well and truly up there with the very best of them.
Five stars? You betcha. Along with three gold stickers and several red ticks....