Monday, 7 September 2009
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.
The 2007 Pinot Noir is no stranger to these pages, and I’ve got half a dozen sitting quietly in the wine fridge so I can explore what happens to them between now and Mr Halliday’s suggested drink by date of 2014.
To repeat previous comments:
Deep red in the glass with a nicely perfumed nose and a soft balanced mouth feel and some length on the finish. It'll be interesting to see how this develops in the short to medium term.
Which brings us to the first of the bottles of 2008 Pinot Noir, which is very much along the same style and ticks the same boxes: vibrant red in the glass, perfume on the nose with a supple mouth-feel. Very nice, and a further step along the road away from Pinot-scepticism.
Given the bottles of the ‘07 maturing quietly in the wine fridge, the likelihood of a couple of bottles of the different Pinot permutations in each of the Brook Eden packs every year and Hughesy’s agenda of investigating other varietals along the way, however, it looks like we’re about right for Pinot at the moment.
While I could line up for a half-dozen of the ‘08 (don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the wine in any way) I suspect that’s only likely to happen if I discover a need for a similar quantity of the current version of the Pinot Rose. which is quite possible with summer looming on the horizon...
Given the fact that I write these notes after I’ve sampled each bottle, there’s always the possibility that reordering scenarios will be revised as we continue to work through the pack. That’s the way it worked out when I opened the first of the two 2008 Chardonnays on a Friday afternoon when Foxy and the Barra dropped by for a few drinks.
I’d started with a Kirrihill Riesling and followed it with a Sauvignon Blanc from the same source - both nice styles, and with the conversation flowing as the guests reminisced about their days on Hamilton Island I was faced with a difficult decision - the Sauvignon Blanc had become a blank and I needed to open another bottle.
Figuring it was too early on an almost-summer afternoon to head over to the red side of things I reached for the Brook Eden 2008 Chardonnay. Interesting.
Back lit from the window that looks out to the courtyard, the wine was a pleasant straw colour in the glass. The conversation had turned to the new Hamilton Island Yacht Club, there wasn’t much I could contribute and I was taking my time...
The nose was pleasant as well - floral notes in particular and once it hit the palate there was a pleasant balanced acidity and a lengthy finish that was good enough to cut into the conversation. By general consensus, this one was the wine of the afternoon so far, and bearing in mind that both of its predecessors are styles I rate highly, that’s a pretty fair rap.
A Saturday night visit to Coyotes provided a chance to sample the second bottle, and once again it did not disappoint. I suspect that if we’d ended up with a third bottle there’d be a slight revision to the current reorder scenario,
Current reorder scenario, if one becomes necessary - half a dozen Pinot Rose, three each of the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. A third favourable encounter with the Chardonnay would probably have changed that, possibly to the extent of dropping the Pinot if I didn’t want to go to an even three-way split.
Not much of a variation, but a change nevertheless.