Monday, 4 February 2008
Jansz Non-Vintage Cuvee
As we slowly get our act together here at the Little House of Concrete various issues raise their ugly heads and are dealt with once we’ve realised they’re there.
An emerging tradition of watching the Melbourne Cup while hoeing into a chicken and bubbly lunch has drawn my attention to the need to have a couple of suitable bottles of bubbles on hand, one to go with lunch and one or more in reserve should the need to celebrate arise.
In the past I’ve been inclined to drop in to the bottle shop the day beforehand for a couple of bottles to whack in the fridge overnight, but once we’d decided to head off to Tasmania early last December the pre-trip research suggested that it might be worth keeping an eye out for something appropriate along the way. I wasn’t overly hopeful, since I suspected that shipping costs from Tassie to the Deep North would be something of the order of an arm and a leg.
As noted in the Tassie Trip blog, as we headed on our way round the Wine Trail, proceedings started with the Bay of Fires Arras, which I’ve seen rated as one of Australia’s top sparkling wines, and it was quite magnificent.
But, at forty-something dollars per bottle it was way beyond what I had in mind for day to day low-level celebrations.
A little further down the track, however, we found exactly what we were looking for at Jansz - the Non Vintage Cuvee, a Chardonnay-dominant Brut style, 100% Tasmanian grapes with a nice pale straw colour, plenty of tiny bubbles, balanced, fairly complex after about two years on yeast lees and, in terms of the requirements outlined above just about exactly what the doctor ordered.
Orders from the Jansz Cellar Door are freight free within Australia though you may be slightly bemused when your wine arrives in a package indicating Angaston in Croweater Country as the point of origin. On the other hand, the vineyard’s affiliation with the Yalumba group means fairly comprehensive Australia-wide distribution.
And, should such ephemera be of interest, you can check the bottle to find a code (I found L7242) that apparently indicates the date on which your bottles was disgorged, in this case, from what I can gather the 242nd day of 2007, and while we’re looking at a non vintage wine, there is, apparently, considerable potential for bottle development, though I don’t think that’s going to be something we’ll be observing around these parts unless I start buying it by the dozen and consigning a substantial quota towards the cellar.