Two Hands, Two Days

I'm running out of storage space in my house for many things; shoes, kitchen gadgets and WINE. While it's hard to part with any of the three, if I don't start drinking, I'm afraid I'm going to have to start dumping.

Saturday I sat in front of my "cellar" (sounds more sophisticated than wine frig) and caressed bottles for about 20 minutes before deciding on the Two Hands, Max's Garden Heathcote Shiraz, 2005. I have never held on to Australian wine for any length of time so I was curious to see how this was.

According to Two Hands, the grapes grown in Heathcote this particular year were "rich and dense". When I first opened the bottle, I wondered if this was perhaps on it's way out. I got a nose full of acetone. I let it sit for about an hour and started to taste some raspberry and cherry, not as much pepper as I was expecting.

Day two, I took what was left to a party and sampled it again. I enjoyed it more the second day. It had smoothed out and opened up more instead of going south; even tasted some blueberry this time. What has your experience been with aging Aussie wines and Shiraz in particular? I have more.

French-"Down Under" Style

It was so nice after a long day of jury duty this week to be greeted by friends tasting a selection of wines from Torbreck. Torbreck is a forest in Scotland where David Powell worked as a Lumberjack before he started producing wine in Australia.

Powell is big on the Barossa Valley but also favors the traditional French winemaking practices of the Northern and Southern Rhône valleys. So here comes a great marriage of old world and new world!

The 2009 Saignee Rose resembles the bone dry Rosés of Provence. It is made from old vine Mataro grapes (you may know the grape better as its French counterpart, Mourvedre). This is another great Florida wine! Serve it chilled with seafood and you've got a hit! It will cost you around $20.

The same grape, Mataro, comes alive in an entirely different way in The Pict 2006! The grapes come from a single vineyard and have been aged to produce a wine that smells like leather and spice and tastes earthy, chocolaty, minerally and tannic. WOW! This wine will age nicely! It will cost you between $145-$160!

I wondered what the name meant so I got online and found The Picts were a tribe of fierce warriors and the first people to inhabit Scotland. The wine is made from Mataro, one of the founding varieties planted in the Barossa. Powell calls it, "A truly rich, wild and untamed wine, enough to satiate a Pictish warrior."

One more Torbreck wine not to miss is the '06 Run Rig. It is deliciously aromatic with lots of layers of flavor. For some reason I'm having trouble reading my tasting notes but there is no mistaking the giant star I put beside it!! This is a big boy! It will run you close to $200!

Blue Eyed Boy

Blue Eyed Boy, sounds like someone I'd like to date or at least mercilessly flirt with. Instead it is a fruit bomb from Molly Dooker, an Australian winery. The winemakers, Sarah and Sparky Marquis, named this Shiraz after their very own blue eyed boy, Luke. His picture is even on the label to the left.

The wine has a high alcohol content at 16% and is bursting with delicious black fruit and spice; a little smokey with smooth tannins. The 2006 got 96 points from Wine Advocate. It wasn't tagged in my modest cellar so I couldn't remember exactly how long it had been aging. I got online and found it could've sat in there for another ten years. At first I was a little disappointed that I was so impatient (once again) and opened it.

I've had Blue Eyed Boy a number of times and always enjoyed it. Then I read a quote from the winemakers calling the Blue Eyed Boy one of their three Party Wines that, "make an ordinary day extraordinary. They’ll make you the life of the party any where you take them!"  I smiled and thought, how perfect that I DID open it!