Monday, 28 September 2009
2008 Watervale Riesling
2007 Semillon
2005 Grenache Sangiovese Mourvedre
2004 Sevenhill Cabernet Sauvignon
In these days of ever-growing product ranges there’s something comforting about being able to cover a most of a winery’s offerings in a single box and have a couple of examples of each wine to sample. There’s limited room in the wine fridge, and I’m trying not to put too much pressure on the credit card, so I limited myself to a single bottle of the 2001 McNicol Shiraz ($40). With six other wines in the range on the order form it was a question of deciding which of them was a three- rather than a two-bottle order. Bit of a no-brainer, really. I went for the 2008 Watervale Riesling. Could have gone for any of the others since we thought everything was good when we visited the winery.
Unsurprisingly, the Riesling was the first wine sampled. A trip to one of the fish distributors down at the Duck Hole for the wherewithal for Friday night’s dinner and we were ready to go. Again, as was the case with the Grosset Springvale, dinner hit the table, glasses of wine were poured, Madam took a whiff and immediately departed to savour the fragrance away from competing food scents.
Like the best Clare Riesling, we’re talking intense aromatics, mainly floral and citrus/lime notes on the nose, and a fairly lively young style when it hits the taste buds. There’s plenty of crisp acid on the palate, which is nicely dry and built around a steely mineral core. The lime and citrus on the nose follows through on the palate, making it a wine that goes wonderfully with fairly straightforward fish dishes - if you’re out of lemon or lime to squeeze over the fish there’s plenty of those elements in the glass and it’d be a good match for Thai as well.
You’d expect it to develop nicely in the bottle, but I don’t think it’s going to get the chance. At least I’ve still got two bottles left....
There were other tasting priorities over the next couple of weeks, as well as a ten-day excursion to Southport built around an Elvis Costello concert, so it was a while before I sampled one of the other bottles. A post-funeral session with Foxy provided an excuse and given a presumed familiarity with Hunter Semillon I thought the Mitchell 2007 Semillon, dry-grown and hand-picked was a suitable way to start. Hunter Semillons are almost never exposed to oak, but here’s a wine fermented in oak and left to mature on the yeast sediments, adding a richness and complexity in the wines without losing the lemon notes present in the variety.
The rich savoury notes on the nose followed through in the mouth, with the pronounced lemon butter characters described on the back label coming through in spades. Quite delicious with a mouth feel that’s, to use Foxy’s terminology, a little different.
Later in proceedings I opened a bottle of the 2005 GSM as another interesting taste. An unoaked blend of Grenache, Sangiovese (rather than Shiraz) and Mourvedre sourced from dry-grown hand-pruned vineyards with the components fermented separately and blended to produce a fruity wine with nicely structured tannins.
As you’d expect most of what you’re getting comes from the seriously-underrated Grenache but the dash of tannin that the other two varieties bring to the party makes for a fruity wine that’s got plenty to offer as it passes over the palate.
I hadn’t tried a lot of the GSM blends before our trip to South Oz in November ‘08 but I’ve become a big fan of the style, and this, given the slightly different notes that the Sangiovese contributes, is a particular favourite.
With a few years bottle age the 2004 Sevenhill Cabernet Sauvignon has turned out to be a very nice wine indeed.
I'd hung off opening the two bottles in the dozen on the basis that we'd find an excuse to do that sometime and when we packed up the contents of the wine rack to head south in February '10 both bottles went with us. Given high expectations there was no way they were going to be left in a closed house to sweat through a Northern wet season.
As a result two bottles travelled all the way to Southport and all the way back as we found other food-wine matches. Having been back to base for a good three weeks, however, a batch of my favourite sugo needed a red to wash it down, so I bit the bullet and cracked a Sevenhill Cabernet.
And I'm glad I did. This one's a cracker.
Halliday tasted it two years ago, rated it 91 and pronounced it likely to be long lived. Given the fact that my stocks now consist of a single bottle I'm regretting the fact that I didn't order more.
Full flavoured with nice oaky overtones, it’s a soft rounded style, full flavoured and elegant with everything you'd want in an Australian Cabernet present in spades except for the minty character you find in a Coonawarra Cabernet.
All in all, if space in the wine fridge wasn't at a premium (and if the other bottle hadn't been so well travelled) I'd be inclined to see how it shaped up in about five years time.
But it is, and it has been, and there's every chance I’ll be ordering more than two bottles of the '05.