1 Small step for Pinot Noir, 1 Giant Leap for RWW

Had a good session last Wednesday.  We had three wines this evening and whilst Kev & Paula couldn’t make it Mike, Katrina & Cameron joined us for the evening.

Now, you’ve probably seen a theme through the previous RWW’s that we struggle to find good Pinot Noir.  Maybe we don’t drink enough and just haven’t developed a taste for it but we’ve been disappointed regularly by what we’ve tried…..Not tonight!

We started the evening with the Crater Rim 2007 Pinot Noir from Central Otago.  Very Good, very very good.  I’d like to try it again to make sure I’m sold on it but it was very light, a little bit sharp on the tongue but nice flavours of strawberry type fruit and a nice aroma.  Great – finally a good Pinot!, can look for the Crater Rim next time I’m at a good restaurant!

Second wine for the evening also hit the spot.  Newton Forest Estate 2006 Merlot.  A Hawkes Bay Gimblett Gravels drop.  Great Merlot, thick and soft, plenty of flavour, nice aromas.  So good Sarah & I bought half a doz more from Primo Vino.  It was a little bit oaky which is good and had a chocolatey flavour to it. 

Final wine was the Askerne 2005 Merlot/Cabernet.  Another Hawkes Bay drop – was probably fine on its own but just didn’t really register after the previous two.

Another good evening – two wines that I think will make the top list including our first Pinot Noir! Fantastic!

*Update! – the Newton Forest Estate was named top Merlot for the year in Cuisine Magazine this month.

 

Catching Up

Little Holly has been a bit sick for the past 2 weeks so I’ve gotten behind on posting.  We’ve had two RWW’s one at Ranger Kev’s which also included Mike & Katrina and their wee boy Cameron coming along.  I’ll have to wait for Kevin or Darren to post the wines tasted – we had four in total.  I think most of them were pretty good – none made the hit list but certainly all were quite quaffible. 

We then had a night at Toni & Darren’s.  As you can see from Toni’s post it was a Shiraz evening and I’d agree with Toni’s comments.  The Taylors was my fav out of the three actually and I’m pretty sure it was probably the cheapest.  Taylors do seem to have a knack at producing good quality wines at the mid to bottom end of the price range.

We had a friend over for dinner on Saturday Night actually who brought along a great bottle – it was the 1998 Matua Valley Ararimu Merlot Cab Sav which was very very good.  I’m not sure if our guest is much of a wine drinker but he brought one hell of a bottle with him!  It would make the list if it were part of RWW – I might have to see if I can source a bottle somewhere.

 

More expensive not always best…

So tonight we were going to try 3 of a kind – all Shiraz from Penfolds.  but since the most expensive on was on sale and ended up being nearly CHEAPER than a cheapy from the same brand – so we ended up having 3 South Australian Shirazes.

Our cheaper wines were the standard Taylors Shiraz and the Penfolds Koonanga Hill.

Our splash out of the Penfolds Bin 128 at retail price of $34 a bottle was decidedly average.  We all agreed we could probably have been happy just with the other bottles… but now we know.

 

Wine Snobs in the Making

Tonight we had a very ‘educational’ R dub-dub.  The purpose of the evening was to taste a Pinot, a Merlot and a Shiraz along side each other.  We had a glass of each poured in front of each of us and were able to compare colour, texture, smell and taste consecutively.  Wealso had small containers with pieces of chocolate pieces of licorice, vanilla, plums and black pepper.  When smelling and tasting we’d refer to the food samples to see which ones we could pick up.

All very interesting stuff!.  The highlight was looking at each one – a very obvious progression of deepness of red colour and texture.  On smelling the Pinot I could hardly get anything – it did smell light and sweet but it was very very subtle.  After smelling the Merlot and then the Shiraz and then going back to the Pinot the smell from the Pinot actually became the strongest smell of the three!, weird!!!

The differences became more and more obvious – we were picking up licorice, chocolate and pepper in the shiraz, chocolate i the Merlot and more berry fruity smells in the Pinot.

We are officially becoming wine snobbies! Great!!

As far as the actual wines go we had the Alex Gold 2006 Pinot Noir, the Beach-House Reserve Merlot 2006 and the Serafino Shiraz 2005.  Overall – nothing to write home about – Didn’t enjoy the Pinot – still yet to find a great Pinot Noir.  The Merlot was good not great as was the Shiraz – no one makes the best of the best list tonight.

 

3 Blind Mice!

The great blind tasting was great fun!.  Of course with anything like a blind tasting ones competitive spirit comes out so I was very focused for the evening – this was serious.  I think I’ve seen other blind tastings on tv and people always end up looking like tools.  One I saw involved the participants also being blindfolded and a couple couldn’t even pick between whites versus red – oh the shame.

But the RWW blind tasting was very professionally done.  You can all see the results from Darren so I won’t go into them but as far as the wines go we were very pleased to add another winner to RWW in the Casillero Diablo bad boy.  Funnily enough Sarah & I then went and bought half a dozen we were so impressed.  We had one the other night with dinner and it wasn’t quite as obviously good as we remembered from wednesday.  I actually think it was because of the piss weak Pinot we had before hand at RWW that the Diablo tasted soo much better.

Still a very good drop though.

We have a cunning plan for next RWW so stay tuned!

 

The Blind Tasting

RWW returned this week to the southern most corner of the Red Wine triangle for a “Blind Tasting”

The format went a little something like this…

3 Bottles of red, unknown to the consumers, served in a genuine Brown Paper Bag (Yeah , you know like the ones the Dero’s outside Stus office have).

Each of us had a score sheet with various questions, each worth a fixed number of points.

Hemisphere, Country of origin, Price Range, Vintage, Variety, Some sensory perceptions (no points for these otherwise everything would have got a five) and last but not least the official RWW-MCCWQA. Or for those not in the club: Your Most Creative and Comedic Wine Quaffer’s Assessment which was worth a totally mint 4 Points. All were encouraged to “freely make shit up, but make sure it’s funny”. No surprises that “Full and Flavorsome” scored a massive ZERO (Toni).

So on to the line-up:

The Line up in order left to Right

UNO

2003 Tegole Toscana (Italy)

We didn’t rate this one too high at all. Most thought it was a lot younger than it actually was. Half were spot on with it being Italian. Commentary varied from “a light summer drop” to a “Watery sweet rubbish but i bet I’d buy it if it had a bright  yellow sale sticker on it”. No wonder the supermarket tried to pass it off as Chianti.

DUE

2007 Crawford Farm Pinot Noir (New Zealand)

Most of us thought this was a dirty old Spaniard. Kev commented that it was a “Local best seller”. Everyone picked up on the “fizzyness”. Personally I think someone went crazy with the Fanta during the bottling phase. Sarah labelled it as a “Dirty Foreigner”. Sadly in fact was an example of a cheap and chearful Pinot Noir from Godzone. Perfect for those summer BBQs for the guy that asks for his Eye Fillet to be “well done”. Alternatively, the kids in Manurewa will love this one.

TRE

2006 Casillero del Diablo Carmenere (Chile)

Well, this long lost Carmenere from Chile turned out to be my saving grace for the night. Everyone picked this as being from the southern half of the globe and 3/4 said it was definitly an Aussie. We all thought is was older than it was by a couple of years and rated it further up the chain in the dollars per bottle stakes. Some pinned it as being a Shiraz or Merlot Cab Sav. I think Sarah summed it up with “Like drining an Oak Barrel”. This is now being added to the RWW Best of the Best.

Scores

At the time of writing no bribes have been received by the author. The scores went something like this:

Stu (20 points)

Toni (14 Points)

Kev (13 Points)

Sarah (12 Points)

A fun night. Was good to mix things up a bit.

 

Virgin Wines

No – not the never been touched virgin – Virgin as in the music, the airline and apparently now the wine!

You can buy a case online reasonably cheaply with apparently free delivery.  I can’t see a disclaimer that says that NZ is not included in the free delivery but anyway I thought it was a pretty cool way to find new wines that you haven’t tried before.  Apparently if you don’t like them they will refund you and if you do like them they will help you find more you like!  Sounds good to me!

Funny – one of the first wines in the mixed case on special was a kiwi one I had never heard of!  Have a look and see what you think but I thought there was certainly potential there.  And imagine the excitement of getting home to find a case of wine on your doorstep and then getting to try ALL of them – probably not all at once, but knowing the track record of most readers of this post – in a very short amount of time

 

Salter’s Cafe – not a good start

Well last night was a GREAT rww!  I enjoyed it heaps.  Will let Darren post about the wines.

However, today I am going to use the RWW site to have a little rant…

Today we headed to Grey St – about a 40 min return drive from our house – to try the new Salter’s cafe.  We walked in – great location, nice setting – so far so good.  We were looking forward to enjoying a new setting.  It’s a real shame that none of the staff bothered to acknowledge our presence – even though we were the only people standing at the counter the whole time we were there.  The woman standing on the other side of the counter directly opposite us had much too important tasks to bother to say hello – like play with her til.

So we walked out.  Last we heard cafes came under BOTH the service and hospitality industries.  hmmm…

Luckily Grey St already has 2 fantastic cafes that we love going to.  It doesn’t need a third – clearly shown by the fact the Robert Harris lasted less than a year in the exact same location as Salter’s.

We like food.  Good food.  We will pay a decent amount of money – for good food.  We are loyal to good eating establishments.  Like Domain – our favourite.  And we have somewhat of a coffee habit – that we feed on a daily basis – sometimes more than once (I am talking about the real deal espresso here not the plunger stuff Darren makes or the frothed milk with a tablespoon of instant in it like we got when we ordered a latte in London).

Brand new cafes like Salter’s seriously need to get their act together if they want to compete with the superb cafes on either side of them – Rocket – which we have been going to for our coffee fix for nearly 10 years now, and Grey St Kitchen where we regularly can’t get a table due to the overwhelming success of this relatively new cafe – both cafes have GREAT food and GREAT service.  Why would you bother going anywhere less?

Thank you for letting me rant!  That is all!

 

We’re Back!

Red Wine Wednesday is back!.  We welcomed back Toni & Darren from their 6 week trip through Europe last night and were also joined by Kevin & Paula for a big night of wine.

Naturally most of the night revolved around catching up and hearing about T & D’s trip through Europe – sounds like they had a blast and also managed to sample plenty of quality wine and food throughout – but I’ll let them fill you in on those details.

We also discovered a gem of a wine last night – so good we actually talked about it!.  Our first wine was an Aussie Blend from McHenry Hohnen Vinters.  It went by the name of 3 Amigos! and contained a blend of Shiraz, Grenache and Mataro varietals.

It was pretty good - subtle but smooth, some nice flavours a bit of sweetness, not a lot on the nose but cetainly very drinkable.  A little bit oaky and a nice finish.

We followed this up with a 2005 Grant Burge Shiraz – Filsell, Old Vine Shiraz.  Wow!, fantastic, lots of character and layers, lots of nose, lots of depth, smooth as silk and just lots of fun!, we loved it – it gets added to the list of success stories from RWW – the Scarpentoni, the Climbers Ladder and now the Filsell!.  It went down really quickly!.  We followed it up with another Shiraz – no point in even mentioning it as it just didn’t even register following the Filsell.  It was probably quite robust but following immediately on from the Filsell it just tasted weak.

So…another good find, more good company and good food and good conversation.  RWW is back!

 

Bon Voyage!!

Toni & Darren we’re due to fly out on Thursday morning for their big Europe trip, so we kind of thought R-dub dub would be finished until their return…but no!, the committed couple decided it would be good to de-stress by having a couple of wines before the morning departure.  So onto the wines!…

and wouldn’t you know it, I’ve completely forgotten all of them.  I’m going to go down to Henry at Primo and jot them down.  If my memory serves me right it was 2 Shiraz and a Cab Sav, I don’t recall rating any of them spectacularly so maybe nothing to report.  But it was good to see the travellers before they go.  I’m sure they will enjoy a few tasty European Reds!.  So no more R-dub dub for a few weeks, but we will be back when the travellers return in mid June!.  Till then…