Wednesday, August 13 2008
Weekly Wined-Up
Only five? Am I getting old?
This week's wined-up includes some real finds and a few value-priced wines that really emphasise value. From left to right:
Conde Valdemar Crianza is a Rioja red. Usually such wines are a bit dusty and tired, due to the long ageing in big old barrels. This example was no such thing, with bright fruit, licorice-y notes and lush, ripe plummy character. It's a blend of Tempranillo and Mazuela (about 90/10) and at 19 bucks in BC it's a pretty darn good value.
Lindeman's Shiraz is a pretty typical South Australian red, very conservatively made with muted fruit and much less oak than in previous years. Not a bad value per se, but nobody felt like finishing the bottle and I wound up using the balance to make tomato sauce. It's just too generic in character to really blow my skirt up, but there's not a single technical flaw or mis-step in manufacture. At around thirteen-fifty it won't offend, but there are more interesting choices for the money.
Ah, Dolcetto d'Alba, my secret love. 'Dolcetto' means 'little sweet one' in Italian, but this refers to the grape, not the finished wine, which is dry but wonderfully fruity, with restrained tannins, excellent gulpability and a hint of almonds in the finish. I could drink buckets of this, especially with any stereotypical Italian fare (pizza, pasta with tomato sauces, especially Bolognese, but also Pomodoro) but at about $25 in the specialty wine stores, that bucket will be very small. If it came in around fifteen or less I'd grab a cupboard full.
Next up, the Weingüt Lorch (White Label) Riesling Bergzaberner Altenberg 2007, Pfalz, Germany is a $16 wunderkind. A '2' on the sweetness scale it's fresh, zippy with fruit and quenching. Fine with fresh fruit or nachos, it's a wine for the patio or the grilled prawns. German Riesling is probably the best value in white wine these days, bang-for-buck wise, and the apricot/lime/flowers aromas of this bottle left me giggling with the happy.
Finally, a real sleeper: New Zealand Spy Valley Gewürztraminer. Almost mulishly overwhelming in it's fruit and perfume it fairly reeked of pink rose petals and overripe lychee. The acids were too low for it to be a truly world-beating GZ, but that didn't keep us from draining the bottle. Unfortunately it's pricey (over $25 a bottle) and really could have used another gram or two of acid per litre to give it some taut sinews, but I really enjoyed the experience.
More drinking next week, although now that I'm back from vacation it'll more likely be five or six at a time rather than ten or thirty . . .
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