“Rain rain rain rain beautiful rain”

September 4, 2010

This is how a song line from South Africa goes. Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo made it famous in my circles. Now the drought in Victoria seems to have come to an end (after 13 years or so). It rains and rains in northern and central Victoria.

Of cause rain brings also destruction, landslides at Mount Buller for instance, flash floods, rivers rising, people had to be evacuated, in short chaos across the state of Victoria. In some places they had 150 millimetres.

But our dams at Two Hills Vineyard are full now. That’s the good news. I have not seen our big dam as full as now. ‘Brownies landing” is floating for the first time in years.

Dam at Two Hills Vineyard

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2008 Big Betty Shiraz, Mayer Vineyard, Yarra Valley

August 22, 2010

It is my birthday today and I am not in a blogging mood. But I had a great day starting with a birthday cake (Schwarzwaelder), some prosecco, followed by a meal prepared by my daughter Charlotte with red wine from my friend Timo Mayer from the Yarra Valley.

His ‘2008 Big Betty Shiraz’ is a ripper of a wine. The colour was an almost deep purple red. The fruit is big with lots of forest fruit. The wine has a great structure, good mid palate weight and a long finish (alc. vol. 14%).

You can read more about the Mayer Vineyard at James Halliday’s website ‘wine companion’. I also wrote about the South Pack, a group of young, funky wine-makers from Victoria to which Timo belongs.

Timo gave me this bottle to take home to Bangkok. My birthday was just the right occasion. Unfortunately, there was only one bottle. Well, that’s just tough luck.

2008 Big Betty Shiraz, Mayer Vineyard, Yarra Valley

What a beautiful colour

Since I had a ripper of a day (with lots of good music, for instance from the Sky hooks), here is some funky music for you: Spider Bait and Black Betty. Enjoy.

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Four Sisters 2006 Merlot

June 27, 2010

Four Sisters 2006 Merlot in an unorthodox glass

I am always drawn to Merlot which is not very surprising for a Merlot producer. I try to extend my experience here in order to better appreciate my own wines. Our own Two Hills Merlot is often like biting into ripe cherries. Some of our vintages were “umpf” wines with lots of alcohol, tannins and bite, others were elegant and subtle.

When I had the chance of buy a Merlot at Bacchus Corner in Saigon I could not say no. A ‘2006 Four Sisters Merlot’ seemed just the right stuff. Four Sisters Winery is a joint venture between Trevor Mast of Mount Langi Ghiran, and Alistair Purbrick of Chateau Tahbilk.

2006 Four Sisters Merlot

I selected the bottle mainly because of the label (and the price 380,000 Dong). In Australia the wine retails for about A$ 12 to 15. I found the silhouettes of the “Four Sisters” interesting.

What I did not like from the outset was, that the back label told me that the grapes for this wine (of course only the best were selected) were sourced from all over Australia. What a blend, I thought and blended it is also with some other red varieties (which the label does not say).

The back label

The wine is medium bodied. It’s colour is a ruby red and the alcohol content is big (with 14% vol.). Plum was the dominant fruit I tasted, and there was lots of it. I did not like the finish which was rough somehow. One should have the wine with food, I think, just straight is less desirable.

Afterthought: try to drink it from a proper wine glass. The hotel did not leave me a choice, there was no wine glass in my room.

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Chapel Hill 2009 Savagnin

June 25, 2010

While wandering aimlessly around in Ho Chi Minh City, I found a wine shop which caught my interest. It’s name was “Bacchus Corner”. Later I learned that there is also a Bacchus Corner wine shop in Hanoi. I browsed through their shelves and picked up an interesting bottle of wine. A ‘2009 Il Vescovo Savagnin’ by Chapel Hill Winery in McLaren Vale, South Australia.

2009 Savagnin by Chapel Hill in an unorthodox wine glass

When I bought the bottle I did not fully understand and appreciate what treasure I had acquired. I bought the wine because I had never before heard about the grape variety. What is Savagnin?

Well, Savagnin Blanc is a French grape variety grown mainly in the Jura region. However, Savagnin Blanc is also known as Traminer, grown around Tramin, a smlal Tyrolean town in Northern Italy. Experts think that the variety has “traveled” along the Alp mountains to the Jura region of France.

I also bought it because I found that most wines on offer were quite expensive. 340.000 Dong which is about US $ 17 is not small money for a bottle of white.

Chapel Hill Winery is of cause a well known producer of premium and award winning wines in McLaren Vale, South Australia. If you want to know more about this fascinating wine region, please visit the blog called “Lonely Grape” by Shane which makes an interesting read (it also contains interesting video clips).

2009 Savagnin

When researching this wine, I discovered that wine critics had awarded it 92 Parker point! Woh, I thought, what did I accidentally buy? The wine maker is Michael Fragos, and he has done an excellent job.

Alcohol is low (12.5%), and colour is a straw yellow. The wine is fresh and clean and shows fruity (lemon) and flowery aromas. It finishes rather abruptly but that does not take away anything from this exuberant and explosive white wine.

The crucial question you might ask is: Would I make it my house wine? Well, probably not. First of all it is not available in Bangkok were I live. Second, because of the price I most probably could not afford to drink it regularly. If you reside in Australia you belong to the lucky ones, I guess. My suggestion: indulge yourself.

Back label

If you are visiting Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City and you stay in the Rex Hotel, Bacchus is just around the corner in walking distance. Check it out.

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Long Row Cabernet Sauvignon, Angove Family, Winemakers from South Australia

June 17, 2010

2007 Long Row Cabernet Sauvignon

The Angove family is one of the oldest wine making families in South Australia. Five generations of wine-making tradition, that’s a lot given the youth of Australia as a country. Founded in 1886 in Adelaide, the Angove Family Company is one of the largest private wine producers in the country.

With a total area under vines of about 480 ha, Angove is not a small operation. It’s Nanya vineyard is located in the flats of Riverland, in South Australia. Endless rows of vines dominate the view. Some of them are 5 km in length, a frightening thought for a German like me. It must be tiresome to work in these vineyards. The grapes are, of course, machine harvested.

The 2007 Long Row Cabernet Sauvignon is a blend, made of fruit sourced from across various wine regions in South Australia. The Long Row brand was established in 2003. This wine was classified by the Australian wine critic Jeremy Oliver in “The Australian Wine Annual” as a wine of “Top Ten Bargain Range”.

In fact it is a very nice drink, fruity, solid with structure and a good finish. In Australia you can have it for about A$ 10 per bottle, in Thailand you have to pay three times that amount.

I like the colour. Since I do not drink much Cabernet Sauvignon, the experience with this Angove Family Long Row wine, was pleasantly surprising. I will have to find out if our supermarket carries it as well or I will ask my wine merchant to locate a couple of bottles for me.

If you are in South Australia you might visit the two cellar door facilities operated by Angove, one at the Renmark Winery, the second at the original winery at Tea Tree Gully. Please visit their website for instructions how to get there.

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Australian barbecue

May 24, 2010

What do you do if there is a curfew at night? You celebrate in the daytime and this is what we did. We invited two families with their children and the 13 of us had a great time last Saturday. Starting at 1 pm gives you plenty of time, and we love it if our table can be put to good use.

We can easily sit 12 persons, and I just sneaked in on the corner. As it is Australian custom, the man has to operate the barbecue, and that’s what I did. My Weber is doing a great job. The recipes came from Italy though. I had a large piece of pork which we prepared the Italian way as “majale al rosto”. Moreover, we had, Italian “spiedini”, skewers consisting of spicy sausages, beef, bacon and sage leaves between them. All delicious stuff.

Seven teenagers and six adults around one table

And what comes at the end of an Australian barbecue? Right a pavlova, the wonderful and delicious, classical Australian dessert, especially if it has 40 Celsius outside.

Pavlova

We drank mostly beer but had also a couple of bottles of ‘2008 Yering Chardonnay’ from the oldest vineyard in the Yarra Valley, which they “flog” in our local supermarket at the moment (but which still costs about 12 EURO/bottle).

What a jolly good time we had.

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Australia: WFA Vintage Report 2010

May 17, 2010

Two Hills Vineyard Merlot grapes 2010

The new figures are out. Today the Daily Wine News presented the Winemakers Federation of Australia (WFA) vintage report 2010. About 360 wineries participated in the survey, representing about 89% of total production.

The basic findings are well known to grape growers, vintners and wine makers. 2010 was a dreadful year especially for grape growers. The 2010 vintage of about 1.53 million tonnes (did they count my grapes as well?) was lower than 2009 (-12%) and 2008 (-5%).

The decline in white wine grapes was sharper (-14%) than the red ones (-8%), but I sold my white though almost nobody bought my Merlot and the Pinot Noir). My own experiences do not conform to the trend, I guess. Especially regarding my Pinot I must have missed something (+26% increase to 35,ooo tonnes). Or was it the other way round: because of the increased intake I could not sell my Pinot Noir?

Well the real reason is that my buyer walked out on me after a perfectly beautiful fruit which my buyer wanted to have some more days of sun was subsequently hit by rain and with it the destruction rain might bring at this time of the year.

Australia’s Sauvignon Blanc crush increased by 15%. OK, I sold all of mine. SB is still Australia’s third most important white variety after Chardonnay and Semillon.

Good that I ripped out my Cabernet (total production 213,000 tonnes), it further decreased in intake (by 14%) as did Merlot (total tonnage 109,000 tonnes), The big winner seems to be Shiraz which we unfortunately do not produce at Two Hills Vineyard. I love Australian Shiraz wines.

What does the enthusiastic Riesling drinker from the Mosel think of the Australia’s Riesling vintage: incredible, there is a 11% decrease in the crush of Riesling. Can you believe this? My most favoured wine available in much less quantity? I hope the quality shows just the opposite trend.

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Wine of the day: The Wanderer, Yarra Valley

May 16, 2010

2008 Pinot Noir The Wanderer, Yarra Valley

My wine tip of the day is the Pinot Noir made by wine maker Andrew Marks of Gembrook Hills in the Yarra Valley. The wine is very light in colour with 13% alcohol and has a lot of cherries on the nose. It has some oak and is made from grapes grown from a single vineyard near Tarrawarra in the Yarra Valley.

I know that you have to be in Australia to get hold of this wine. But never mind, visiting Victoria is a bonus anyway. Have a nice Sunday, wherever you are.

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At the winemakers home – Timo Mayer, Yarra Valley

April 30, 2010

Timo Mayer and his Mayer Vineyard are well known among the wine fraternity in Australia, Germany and the UK. Timo is wine maker at Gembrook Hills and he has his own vineyard in the Yarra Valley. The Mayer Vineyard is what is called a boutique vineyard. Timo is also member of The South Pack, a group of innovative and independent winemakers in Victoria.

We know each other since many years. In fact Timo made the second vintage of our Two Hills Sauvignon Blanc (2002), which won a bronze medal at the Singapore Wine Show. Since many years our two families have been together, usually for skiing on Mount Buller, eating and drinking, either at our vineyard in Glenburn or at Timo and Ronda’s place, the Mayer Vineyard.

Also this time Timo and Ronda invited us for a gourmet dinner after an afternoon of ice skating and a visit of the Victoria market in Melbourne. The latter program was only attended by our two daughters; the old folks were only in for the eating and drinking part. Needless to say, Timo is not just an excellent wine maker but also an excellent cook.

Timo Mayer in the kitchen

My pictures of the event were somehow heavily affected by the enthusiasm of our re-union, and maybe, maybe, the alcohol of the many wines we tasted. Anyway, I do not have excellent pictures to show you. The longer the evening went on, the more terrible my pictures became. Bear with me. It was a great evening.

But let us start with the food. Out of this fine piece of tuna below, Timo made a delicious sashimi (second picture below). After that we ha another entrée, garlic prawns. The fist main dish was mussels with chorizo sausage chunks followed by some fish (white-head for the kids, and tuna). We were not in the position to eat another main course, although there was beef and various other meats waiting for us. What a wonderful feast that was. Delicious stuff.

Tuna

Sashimi Timo style

Garlic prawns

Mussles with chorizo sausages and herbs

The wines we tasted before, during and after the meal were:

• 2006 Vintage Yarra Burn Sparkling, Yarra Valley

• 2009 Bloody Hill Chardonnay, Mayer Vineyard, Yarra Valley

• 2008 Bloody Hill Rose, Mayer Vineyard, Yarra Valley

• Grande Signature de Rapatel, Roussanne-Bourboulenc, by Gérard Eyraud, France

• 2008 Bloody Hill Pinot Noir, Mayer Vineyard (and we had the 2009 vintage as cleanskin)

• 2008 Les Griottes, Beaujolais, by Pierre-Marie Chermente, France

• 2007 Syrah, Domaine des Rapatel, Gérard Eyraud, France

• 2006 Big Betty Shiraz, Mayer Vineyard, Yarra Valley

• 1996 Cornas, by Thierry Allemand, France

I did not take tasting notes, this was a social event and not a formal wine tasting. Below you will find photos of some the bottles. The two bottles from Domaine de Rapatel are not represented. You can find reviews in my earlier blog entries.

Vintage Yarra Burn Sparkling

This Yarra Burn is a wonderful cool climate sparkling wine, a classical blend of Pinot Noir (58%), Chardonnay (35%) and Pinot Meunier (7%), from the Yarra Valley. The price is about A$ 22/bottle, great price-value relationship.

2009 Bloody Hill Chardonnay, Mayer Vineyard

Just released, this young white wine from the Mayer Vineyard, although low in alcohol, is an easy drinking but very fine and delicate specimen of a modern Yarra Valley Chardonnay. It has funk, is zesty and very harmonious.

2008 Bloody Hill Rose, Mayer Vineyard

Great wine for hot days and not so hot days. We compared the Bloody Hill Rose with the Grand Signature de Rapatel and found to our amazement that both wines, despite being of such different origins, go well with the garlic prawns.

2008 Les Griottes, Beaujolais, France

Ha, this fine wine from Beaujolais by Marcel Lapierre of Domaine du Vissoux, is just a very seductive drink. Made of Gamay grapes it represents the traditional style of a truly grand Beaujolais. It is not as fruity (among them strawberry) as the “nouveau” wines but has the structure and depth we treasure so much. The carbonic maceration gives it some banana flavours. It is low in alcohol but rich in flavour. Get a bottle of it, if you can. The wine is young and you can enjoy it for some time to come.

The 1996 Cornas by Thiery Allemand

This wine is very powerful and just amazing. Thierry Allemand, the son of a factory worker and not blessed with a family history of wine making, is producing two blends, Les Chaillots and Reynard both from Cornas. The wines are made from low yielding, old vines. Thierry is one of the “wine gods”, the masters and spin doctors, producing “cult” wines. It has the “burned rubber” taste which needs some time to get used to in the beginning.

The Shiraz pannel

From left to right, we drank the Syrah by Domaine de Rapatel, 2008 and 2009 Big Betty Shiraz by the Mayer Vineyard and the 1996 Cornas by Thierry Allemand. Whereas the Domaine de Rapatel Syrah is “raisin” wine, made from very ripe fruit, heavy and full of fruit flavour, the Mayer wines try to be less of that style.

Timo sees the Cornas as a benchmark for his own Shiraz wines. Both Big Betty Shiraz vintages follow the traditional wine making of Burgundy. The Cornas has the “burnt rubber” taste, which is rejected by many wine lovers and seen by some as a fault (which is nonsense). It is also full of stalks and tannins on the palate resulting from the whole bunch fermented grapes. The range of different tastes, just from one grape variety, is amazing. I ended loving the Thierry Allemand style wines best.

The morning after a successful battle with delicious wines

The evening ended with coffee and water. We stayed over. It was just a wonderful evening, a great re-union and the sharing of experiences. We had to get up the next morning fairly early because Lucy and Charlotte were going horse riding. Getting up was not the slightest problem, we were still enchanted by the magical evening. Thanks folks.

PS: The Bloody Hill Pinot Noir wines I have not mentioned above but will do so in a separate entry.

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Country meals with Rocky Passes Syrah 2005

April 24, 2010

Chicken, vegetables and cauliflower

Lunch in the vineyard is always a highlight, especially if the weather allows us to have it on the terrace outside with those spectacular valley views. Of course wine is an important ingredient in a successful lunch. We had another bottle of Rocky Passes Syrah, the 2006 vintage this time. It received 92/100 Parker Points by James Halliday.

2005 Rocky Passes Syrah

Later the same day we followed the 2006 vintage with a 2005 Syrah. I had just one bottle of the 2005 vintage left which had received a whopping 94/100 Parker Points. Vitto Oles is doing a great job on these stony slopes of Rocky Passes Estate. Good food and good wine, that’s what makes a great day. The other two ingredients are old friends and good music.

Hope you have a good Saturday yourself.

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