What a stunning wine this is; a real crowd pleaser with fresh, vibrant citrus flavours leaping out of the glass at you. Riesling has been grown in the Great Western region of Victoria since the 1860s with the diurnal variations ideal for the variety. That said, few recent new releases have shone as brightly in their youth as this, which combines both power and finesse. It's the pure, crystaline fruit that shines with floral, zesty lemon and lime aromas and flavours, excellent minerality and delightfully zingy acidity, along with a couple of grams of residual sugar to add interest, and sensible alcohol levels at 11.5%. A brilliant buy for the price. $24. www.bestswines.com.
Glaymond is a second label for Barossa Valley "alternative" varieties specialist Damien Tscharke. While shiraz is king in the Barossa, this rather bolshy cabernet impressed me as the best of the new Glaymond releases. It's extremely concentrated with a range of dark berry and currant flavours on the palate, violets, hints of mint, soft, almost plush, tannins and an extremely long, mouthfilling finish. Big, but very stylish and not to be trifled with, if this wine were an actress it would be Christina Hendricks from Mad Men. $32. www.tscharke.com.au
There is a wide variation in both style and quality among Australian pinot gris/grigio. This Mornington Peninsula wine is undoubtedly one of the best with plenty of stone-fruit flavours to the fore, pears and white peaches, but also impressive textural complexity as a result of barrel fermentation. There’s a good balance between savoury notes and fresh fruit, and a refreshing acid finish. Winemaker Mike Aylward recently won the 2011 Young Guns of Wine award. $38. www.oceaneight.com.au.
Hunter vigneron Andrew Margan has an afinity with the Italian grape variety barbera, even though it comprises only a tiny proportion of his total output. This was made from the first barbera vines planted in the region; from Italian root stock. It's a very aromatic and savoury red, medium-bodied with fine tannins and lots of acid. Very food friendly, I'd pair it with a rich rabbit casserole. $30. www.margan.com.au
Josh Clementsen handcrafts some very good estate-grown wines in tiny quantities using fruit from the Skimstone vineyard at Apple Tree Flat, just outside Mudgee. He has a definite bias towards Italian varieties and this sangiovese rosé is outstanding. Very much made in the new-wave style, it is bright pink and bone dry with with impressive savoury notes along with some assertive cranberry, strawberry and red cherry characters and impressive linear acidity. This outshone several bigger name rosés in a reecent tasting. A terrific food wine and great value for $22. www.skimstone.com.au.
This is the budget shiraz from renowned Grampians winery Mount Langi Ghiran and it gets a capital V for value from me even if the fruit is drawn from three different regions; home soil, Bendigo and Swan Hill. The whole cool-climate shiraz thing is going on here with plenty of pepper and spice on the medium-weight palate with some fine tannin action, but there's also plenty of sweet dark fruit flavours (and 14.5% alcohol). A terrific wine for affordable everyday drinking pleasure.$18. www.langi.com.au.
The aromatic white wines of Alsace are often sadly overlooked but when they shine, like one, they are absolutely outstanding. Mind you, Dopff au Moulin has been making wines in the fairytale village of Riquewihr since 1574 and is still a family business, so they've had a fair bit of practice. Made from fruit grown on a grand cru hillside site, this is a pleasant enough wine on its own, but it blossoms with food (in our case a Thai green chicken curry). It has a lovely floral bouquet and the palate is dry, flinty and minerally with beautiful balance and structure. And the good news is it is bottled under screw cap for the Australian market. Available at Dan Murphy's stores. $30.
The Portuguese grape verdelho has found a home away from home in the warmth of the Hunter Valley, where it produces wines that are undoubted crowd-pleasers if not much loved by aficionados. Made from fruit grown in the Broke-Fordwich sub-region, this is an early-release, early-drinking style of wine that is unashamedly fruit driven with hints of pineapple, guava and tropical lime on the palate. It's a lifted, uncomplicated quaffer with lashings of sweet fruit but it finishes quite dry with some nice zingy acid. Unoaked, it is a crisp, clean wine designed for serving well chilled. Pair it with Thai stir-fries, or perhaps crab with avocado. $17.
There are certain small producers whose wines have the X-Factor that makes them stand out from the crowd. Cullen, Clonakilla and Grosset are among those that come to mind and to that list I am tempted to add Majella, whose Coonawarra range, right from its budget The Musician release to the high-end Malleea blend, are beautifully constructed wines, always a pleasure to drink. This has plenty of ripe, juicy berry fruit characters but it is also beautifully knitted together with complexity and elegance. Despite being a young wine it has some very attractive softness on the long. lingering palate with French oak very much in the background. It's a bargain for the price and I'd be ashamed to admit just how quickly this bottle was emptied. www.majellawines.com.au. $36.
Curly Flat winemaker Philip Moraghan is an avid pinotphile - a student of the grape variety in all its many guises and styles. So when he says he considers this to be the best pinot noir he has produced that's a pretty bold statement. This is certainly a wonderful wine; indisputably varietal, with impressive length and textural elements on the palate. It's surprisingly complex, too, for a wine made from fruit grown on vines in the Macedon Ranges that only have an average age of 12 years. The vineyard is treated biodynamically, which might explain the quality. You'll find cherry/plum characters on the nose and palate, spice, forest floor earthiness, hints of stalks but most of all terrific balance given the low alcohol levels (12.6%). Delightful drinking. www.curlyflat.com. $54.
Dean Hewitson always makes wines that perk interest, whether they be fresh-as-a-daisy sauvignons blanc, or far more serious wines like this extraordinary mourvedre (or mataro) made from grapevines planted in 1853 - the oldest mourvedre vines in the world. Where you might expect some density and concentration, this is a medium-bodied wine, lithe and athletic. There are dark fruit notes, hints of chocolate and earthiness, more than a hint of assertive oak but the finish is silky and long with plenty of potential for ageing. An elegant, graceful wine, even in its youth; if this were an actress it would probably be a classic beauty like Catherine Deneuve. www.hewitson.com.au. $120.
If you love wines with that sweet/savoury combination that Jurancon does so well, you'll enjoy this classy little number that offers sensational value for money. The balance between sugar and acid is spot on here, so that while the initial impression is of ripe pineapple, the finish offers some surprising dryness, roundness and length. A blend of petit manseng and gros manseng, this would be superb paired with calves' liver, pates and terrines or blue cheeses, as an aperitif or as a dessert wine. Imported by www.discovervin.com.au. $10.99 for 375mls.
Zar Brooks is one of the wine industry's leading marketers and his wife Elena is a talented winemaker. Their Dandelion Vineyards wines, produced in conjunction with several partners, tend to offer something a little out of the ordinary, as is the case with this unusual blend of shiraz and riesling. The good news is that it works, with the riesling lifting the shiraz fruit much as viognier does, without intruding as much as viognier can. Hand-plunging, basket pressing and maturation in older French barriques has resulted in a very stylish wine that even has some delicacy and elegance; a rare thing in McLaren Vale reds. Imagine a fruit salad of red berries, cherries and currants, spicy oak and a soft, supple finish and you'll have some idea of this wine's attributes.
$30. www.dandelionvineyards.com.au.
This is leading Californian winemaker and funster Randall Grahm's homage to the great red blends of the Southern Rhone - the name is a reference to the fact that a local ordinance bans UFOs from landing in Chateauneuf du Pape. It's a stunning wine, too, funky, earthy, complex, intriguing and a lttle bewildering in its many layers of flavours. It's gamey and little tannic - but I loved it. It's a blend of shiraz, grenache, cinsault, mourvedre and carignan and, unlike many Californian reds, it is bottled under a screwcap. Serve this one blind and you'll have a whole lot of fun as your guests try to guess what it is and where it came from. $79. Imported by Brad Wehr. brad@winebybrad.com.au
I was recently a guest of Mount Riley at a very special dinner where I was impresssed by the wines in their "reserve" tier Seventeen Valley range. But as good as these wines are, the major focus of the family-owned Marlborough winery is its standard sauvignon blanc - a very tempting wine for the price and very nicely put together with plenty of flavour but without some of the overtly herbaceous characters that can be offputting in Kiwi savvy blancs. There are some delightful citrus and passionfruit notes on the bouquet and a purity on the palate that sets it apart. Racy, zingy and very dry, this is a lovely drink. Good value, too. $16. www.mountriley.co.nz
There are certain labels that are reliably good vintage after vintage. If those labels also offer value for money, so much the better. The entry-level, fruit-driven Stonier chardonnay from the Mornington Peninsula ticks both boxes. Often overshadowed by the Reserve and KBS Vineyard releases, this is a darn good drink for the price with impressive stone fruit and citrus flavours, toasty notes and a bright, clean acid finish. There's just enough complexity to make it interesting and there is no doubt it is beautifully balanced. Anyone looking for a good cool-climate chardy to take to a BYO or dinner party should mark this one in their notebook. $25. www.stoniers.com.au.
The team at Hahndorf Hill in the Adelaide Hills can be relied upon to be unconventional and intriguing; whether it be varietals made from blaufrankisch and gruner veltliner, or a cellar door where table wines are matched with chocolate. Their very impressive rosé is a blend of blaufrankisch and trollinger grapes; aromatic and dry with apple orchard and vibrant red berry notes. This would be great with sushi, sashimi, spicy Thai dishes or simply as an after-work pick-me-up. Lovely stuff! $22. www.hahndorfhillwinery.com.au
Shiraz does not have to be in-your-face; all macho and snarling. It can also be soft, silky and amenable, as is this case with this old favourite from Bendigo winery Water Wheel. Estate grown, this has a ripeness and softness to it that makes it irresistible; a veritable Lolita. There are also some savoury, earthy notes but it is the vibrant dark berry fruit that leads the way. A real bargain and a great choice for a weekend barbecue. $18. www.waterwheelwine.com.
Savagnin is the grape variety that everyone who had planted it in Australia thought was albarino, a Spanish grape of considerable merit. Owing to an inexplicable mix-up it turned out that the vines had been planted were actually savagnin, a grape from the Jura region of France that has seldom risen to great heights. This, however, shows that savagnin can work well in Australia. Winemaker Matt Caldersmith has crafted an aromatic, crisp, clean and fresh white wine with zingy green apple and pear notes. A wine for enjoying in its youth, it has good acid and nice length and should be served well chilled. www.hollick.com. $21.
Zette is the second label of Domaine de Lagrézette, one of the leading producers in Cahors, south-west France, where malbec is king. This is an attractive and mature malbec and a considerable bargain. It's a plush, ripe red made in a New World style and fermented in stainless steel tanks. The forward dark fruit is matched by some supple tannins, hints of spice and softness on the palate. This medium-bodied wine is from a particularly good vintage and is drinking very well, particularly when paired with red meat dishes. Great buying at $14.99. Imported by www.discovervin.com.au who have an impressive range of regional French wines.
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