Happy Hour Wine Tasting featuring Australian and New Zealand Wines

“his lips drink water
but his heart drinks wine”

E.E. Cummings

Australia has been making wines for 200 years, but it was not until the decade of the 1990’s that wine drinkers in the USA started to take notice of their wines.  There was an explosion of small producers that burst on the scene in the late 1990’s here and although interest waned after the recession of 2008 today it seems our thirst for Aussie wines is back. 

New Zealand has taken the wine world by storm with their redefining style of the Sauvignon Blanc grape.  They make a fresh and fruity wine that is so appealing you can drink it like soda pop at the pool in the afternoon.  But besides this fun and whimsical wine they also have some great Pinot Noir as well as a few areas that can produce world class Syrah and Bordeaux varietals.
Every year we try to take the family someplace new in the wine world and in the summer of 2017 it was New Zealand.  I have included some notes and pictures from our trip at the end of this e-mail.

Join us as we experience some of the best wines from these two Southern Hemisphere wine producing countries.  This is a walk around tasting and is limited to 35 tasters.  The fee for this event is $95 + tax for reservations call 954-523-9463 or e-mail andy@winewatch.com.

Happy Hour Tasting featuring Australian and New Zealand Wine
Thursday, August 4th
6:00 PM

Unfined Unfiltered

2016 JASPER HILL GEORGIA'S PADDOCK SHIRAZ HEATHCOTE
Price: $92.25       Your Price: $81.18            Quantity in Stock: 6
Time of release- From a low yielding vintage, giving a weighty version of this wine with typical dark magenta colour and aromas of plum, ripe red berries and spice that follow through on to the full palate, finishing with a concentration of earthy, chalky tannins balanced with lots of natural acidity. Great longevity. 15.5% alc/vol
Tasting notes by Andrew Caillard, MW – 8th August 2017 Medium deep crimson. Intense elderberry, blackberry aromas with praline, espresso notes and hints of roasted chestnuts. Well concentrated blackberry pastille, praline flavours, fine chocolaty tannins and underlying roasted chestnut, savoury oak complexity. Finishes chocolatey with attractive bitter mineral length. Elemental with some liquorice notes. 15.5% Alc 94 points – 2020-2035

2019 JASPER HILL GEORGIA'S PADDOCK SHIRAZ HEATHCOTE
Price: $92.25       Your Price: $81.18            Quantity in Stock: 6
Very typical depth of bright crimson to the edge. Immediate, powerful nose of red and black berry fruits that follow through into the palate, with mixed spice highlights complemented by the usual ripe, sweet dark cherry and plum flavours and a cola / chinotto finish, so typical of Georgia’s Paddock Shiraz. Fabulous tannin / acid balance conferring longevity, but imminently approachable now, particularly with a rare steak. Alcohol 15.5%

2021 BROKENWOOD SEMILLON HUNTER VALLEY
Price: $23.50       Your Price: $20.68
Plenty of pale green tints. Lifted grassy citrus characters on the aromas. Sweet fruit flavors intially on the palate with some Bickford lime cordial notes. Excellent acid structure, importantly balanced with the fruit, long carry on the finish as well. Perfect in its youth, will bottle age gracefully for those that want a mature style.

2021 D'ARENBERG HERMIT CRAB VIOGNIER MARSANNE
Price: $18.75       Your Price: $16.50
This wine showcases both the sweet, generous berry fruit and the darker, earthier notes that well crafted McLaren Vale Grenache can offer. He secret is in the old vines and the minimal input approach to the grape-growing and winemaking that allows the fruit to express itself. The cooler 2017 vintage has also added a further white pepper like spice note to the mix. The cooler conditions have similarly produced a more refined palate than normal, leaning more to medium bodied silky although with a bit of air the wine certainly grows in opulence. With lots of upfront appeal this wine is drinking well as we speak but may also reward careful cellaring for a handful of years.
Small batches of grapes are crushed gently and transferred to stainless steel basket presses. Fermentation is long and moderately cool to retain fresh fruit characters. About 4% underwent wild fermentation for extra complexity. 14% of the Viognier is fermented in aged French Oak to add mouth feel and support the subtle Viognier tannins. The Marsanne component received similar treatment, but was not blended until the final stages of the winemaking process.
Many of McLaren Vale's vineyards are on free-draining soils underlain with limestone, formed by the calcareous remains of the local marine fauna. One such creature was the Hermit Crab, a reclusive little crustacean that inhabits the cast-off shells of others. The Osborn family thought the name appropriate for this, McLaren Vale's first ever blend of Viognier and Marsanne. "Hermit" is also an abbreviation for the French appellation of Hermitage, where the Marsanne grape variety dominates.

2019 D'ARENBERG FOOTBOLT SHIRAZ MCLAREN VALE
Price: $21.75       Your Price: $19.14
A consistently great McLaren Vale Shiraz. Generously rich with amazing fruit weight and balanced, chewy tanins. Brimming with ripe red fruits and an underlying layer of subtle oak, as well as a hint of pepper. This wine represents great value, and has a long life ahead of it... If you can resist!

2017 D'ARENBERG D'ARRYS ORIGINAL GRENACHE SHIRAZ MCLAREN VALE
Price: $19.50       Your Price: $17.16
This wine is highly aromatic, with pretty red fruits and exotic spice. The palate is medium bodied and delicious, showing wild strawberry, dried cranberry and rhubarb flavours. There's some nice dried herb and baking spice nuances to this wine, supported by decent amounts of acidity and tannin. It's fresh and vibrant now, however, this wine will mellow further with some age.
Blend: 50% Grenache, 50% Shiraz

2017 D'ARENBERG DEAD ARM SHIRAZ MCLAREN VALE
Price: $72.75       Your Price: $64.02.
(92 pts) Locked up tight and ungiving on the nose, d'Arenberg's 2017 The Dead Arm Shiraz is nonetheless formidably dense and concentrated on the palate. Notes of charred wood join plums, raspberries and black olives in this full-bodied effort. With its current surly disposition, it appears to require decanting or several years' sleep in a cool cellar. Giving it air helped bring out purple raspberries and softened the considerable tannins, so I'm optimistic about its future evolution. -Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

2021 GREYWACKE SAUVIGNON BLANC MARLBOROUGH NEW ZEALAND
Price: $27.00       Your Price: $23.76
A delightful fusion of ripe summer fruit and delicate floral perfume – Golden Queen peaches and poached yellow pears; baked apples, mango and rock melon; mingled with apple blossom fragrance and a twist of lemon sherbet. Succulent and crisp, with a delicate fennel-like herbal quality and a dry, textural palate. Quintessentially Marlborough, but a deliciously subtle, ripe interpretation of the classic style.

2019 GREYWACKE PINOT NOIR MARLBOROUGH NEW ZEALAND
Price: $44.25       Your Price: $38.94
A deliciously fragrant Marlborough pinot – juicy blackberries, blueberries
and the sweet aroma of homemade strawberry jam, intermingled with more savoury suggestions of black olives, cedar and a hint of lavender. The the real but finely structured palate has
concentrated varietal character that combines red and black fruit with earthy, smoky nuances.

2019 PENLEY ESTATE PHOENIX CABERENT SAUVIGNON COONAWARRA
Price: $23.25       Your Price: $20.46
(92 Points) This has terrific concentration, with generous black licorice, Earl Grey, allspice and dark chocolate notes that mingle with cassis, spiced stewed plum and toasted herb details. Shows plenty of harmony on the long, expressive finish, with velvety tannins. Drink now through 2035.  Wine Spectator

2019 PENLEY ESTATE TOLMER CABERNET SAUVIGNON COONAWARRA
Price: $28.50       Your Price: $25.08
The Tolmer is a modern expression of Coonawarra cabernet showcasing intense blackcurrants and savoury notes of French oak. It's medium-bodied without being heavy and has a generous core of juicy fruits with well-integrated chalky tannins. The seamless finish rounds off a bright, fragrant wine that can be enjoyed now or cellared for a few more years.

2020 PENLEY ESTATE FRANCIS CABERNET FRANC COONAWARRA
Price: $24.00       Your Price: $21.12
Youthful, vibrant and bursting with juicy violet fruits, this unoaked cabernet franc brings notes of Turkish Delight and spice with supportive tannins holding it all together. Drink it now while the fruit is fresh, vibrant and guaranteed to leave you licking your lips.

Republic National

2021 CRAGGY RANGE SAUVIGNON BLANC TE MUNA ROAD VINEYARD NEW ZEALAND
Price: $21.75       Your Price: $19.14
From the lower terrace of our Te Muna Road Vineyard in Martinborough, this wine is sourced exclusively from several parcels of vines growing on stony, limestone influenced soils.

2019 CRAGGY RANGE TE KAHU HAWKES BAY NEW ZEALAND
Price: $21.75       Your Price: $19.14
A blend of predominatley Merlot with Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec blend. A bordeaux like bouquet, fresh plowed earth, cigar box spice, dark chocolate and a good amount of currant and dark cherry fruit also like an old world meets new world style Bordeaux crossed with a California Cabernet. A good amount of juicy fruit with a nice freshness to the finish along with a host of that tobacco spice and earth, fine herbs and coco notes through the finsih, lovely balance with everything in proportion. Finish 40+ Excellent

2019 CRAGGY RANGE PINOT NOIR ROAD MARTINBOROUGH
Price: $25.00       Your Price: $22.00
Beautiful nose of oriental spice red cherry pie like fruit, very appealing nose, rose petal. Bright and high tones red cherry berry fruit on the palate with a silky smooth texture very well balanced with lovely spice and floral notes through the finish. Finish 40+ EXCELLENT

Breakthru Beverage

2019 PENFOLDS CHARDONNAY BIN 311 ADELAIDE HILLS TASMANIA TUMBARUMBA AUSTRALIA
Price: $42.00       Your Price: $36.96
Bin 311 Chardonnay truly reflects the winemakers’ mantra ‘we always go where the fruit grows best and where it best suits style’. The fruit sourcing has moved to cool-climate multi-regional; Adelaide Hills, Tasmania, Tumbarumba. In true Bin 311 style, it exhibits lemon/lime aromas and a mineral acid backbone, complemented by barrel fermentation and maturation in French oak.

2018 PENFOLDS SHIRAZ BIN 28 KALIMNA AUSTRALIA
Price: $30.00       Your Price: $26.40
Kalimna® Bin 28 offers a showcase of warm climate Australian shiraz – ripe, robust and generously flavoured. First made in 1959, Bin 28 is named after the famous Barossa Valley Kalimna vineyard purchased by Penfolds in 1945 and from which the wine was originally sourced. Today, Kalimna® Bin 28 is a multi-region, multi-vineyard blend, with the Barossa Valley always well represented.

2017 PENFOLDS CABERNET SHIRAZ BIN 389 AUSTRALIA
Price: $75.00       Your Price: $66.00            Quantity in Stock: 43
Bin 389 was often referred to as ‘Baby Grange’, in part because components of the wine are matured in the same barrels that held the previous vintage of Grange. First made in 1960 by the legendary Max Schubert, this was the wine that helped forge Penfolds reputation with red wine drinkers by combining the structure of cabernet sauvignon with the richness of shiraz. Exemplifying the judicious balance of fruit and oak, Bin 389 highlights the generous mid-palate Penfolds in known for.

2018 PENFOLDS BIN 407 CABERNET SAUVIGNON SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Price: $75.00       Your Price: $66.00
Winery Notes Launched with the 1990 vintage in 1993, Bin 407 was developed in response to the increasing availability of high quality cabernet sauvignon fruit. Inspired by Bin 707, Bin 407 offers varietal definition and approachability, yet still with structure and depth of flavour. Textbook cabernet sauvignon, the varietally expressive Bin 407 highlights the rewards of Penfolds multi-region, multi-vineyard blending, with a core of ripe fruit supported by sensitive use of French and American oak.

NV PENFOLDS CLUB TAWNY
Price: $17.00       Your Price: $14.96
Australia's most popular fortified wine is a tawny noted for it's mellowness and consistency. A blend of vintages oak matured at Penfolds' Kalimna cellars, in the Barrossa Valley. The palate is rich and vibrant displaying ripe spicy fruit, toffee and walnuts framed by smokey oak with a lifted cleansing finish.

2015 KUMEU RIVER CODDINGTON CHARDONNAY NEW ZEALAND
Price: $45.00   Your Price: $39.60
This wine is produced from a vineyard owned by Tim and Angela Coddington whose grapes have contributed to the blend of Kumeu River Estate Chardonnay since 1998. It is a vineyard that produces very rich and unctuous Chardonnay that we have long believed could make an excellent single vineyard wine. In 2006 we decided to give Coddington single vineyard status to reflect this vineyard’s unique character. Usually the most flamboyant wine when young, the 2015 Coddington is rich, opulent and generous. Silky and concentrated, the character of the 2015 vintage really comes through on the palate. Refreshing acidity with a long and intense finish.

Twenty One Wines

2020 JULES TAYLOR PINOT NOIR MARLBOROUGH
Price: $24.00       Sale Price: $19.75
This Pinot Noir is very generous on the nose, showing vibrant aromas of dark cherry, raspberry and plum combined with spicy oak notes. It has an impressive concentration of flavor and a nice acid backbone. The finish is dry with a nice touch of dark chocolate and subtle French oak coming through.

2019 RIPPON RIESLING MATURE VINE LAKE WANAKA
Price: $37.50       Your Price: $33.00
A warm & productive summer put plenty of flesh on this wine. The fruit is issued from Rippon’s mature vines, whose root hairs have invaded the schist rock below. Lurking towards the end of the first mouthful is substantial phenolic power and it soon starts to take charge of the wine… and give it its sense of place

2019 RIPPON PINOT NOIR EMMA'S BLOCK MATURE VINE LAKE WANAKA
Price: $75.00       Your Price: $66.00
A unique parcel within Rippon, Emma’s Block faces eastward on the lakefront where ancient clay reefs run laterally through fine schist gravels. Emma’s Block is named after the great-great-great grandmother of the current generation of the Mills family, through whom the name entered into the family.

2016 AUNTSFIELD ESTATE PINOT NOIR SINGLE VINEYARD MARLBOROUGH
List Price: $40.00               Your Price: $35.20
Deep ruby in color. Ripe dark raspberry and plum fruit is subtly lifted by layers of dark red florals and complex savoury aromas of dark chocolate, cigar box, barbequed meat and olive tapenade.The palate of this wine shows a rich silky texture, which is full and concentrated. Flavours of ripe raspberry and dark plumbs fill the pallet. This fruit is supported by powerful yet fine grained tannins giving a plush yet silky texture to the pallet with seamless length.
WINEMAKER NOTES: This wine was made with a minimalist philosophy, designed to enable the characteristics of the grapes and the vineyard to be revealed. The fruit was hand-harvested, hand-sorted, gently destemmed and gravity-fed to tank. Fermented with a combination of indigenous and cultured yeasts, careful hand plunging was utilised to gently extract flavours and tannins from the skins. Maturation occurred in French oak barriques for approximately 10 months.

2021 JOSH SCOTT SAUVIGNON BLANC YEAH COOL MARLBOROUGH
Price: $23.50       Your Price: $20.68

2017 SEIFRIED PINOT NOIR OLD COACH ROAD NELSON NEW ZEALAND
Price: $19.75       Your Price: $17.38

Menu
Crispy Salmon & Chive Wontons served with sweet soy syrup
Roasted Kumara –Jumbo Roasted Sweet Potato Croutons with Balsamic Glaze
Curried Carrot & Turnip Soup Shots with Coriander Scented Toast Crisps
Sunday Meat Pie Filled Phyllo Cups with Melted Sharp Cheddar
Roasted Pork Belly Bites with Chili-Coconut Dipping Sauce
Pavlova-Strawberry Preserve & Cream filled Thumb Cookies

This is a walk around tasting and is limited to 35 tasters.  The fee for this event is $95 + tax for reservations call 954-523-9463 or e-mail andy@winewatch.com.

Notes on our recent Trip to New Zealand:

Every summer I take the family somewhere new in the world and I try to combine business with pleasure.  Being that my business is quite pleasurable it is not a hard task to accomplish in the Wine business because anywhere that produces excellent wines also makes for an interesting vacation…even for the kids at the age of 12.  I only heard “not another winery” a few times on this trip and the kids are now at an age where we can just leave them at the hotel if they don’t want to play winery games.

In 2017 New Zealand was our destination, I have been making my way to all the summer destinations that offers top level snowboard accommodations and this is the last stop in the southern hemisphere for us as we have been to both Chile and Argentina already.  There may be other places in the Southern Hemisphere that have mountains and snow but none that are worth going to after you have been to these three. 

Both Islands offer Ski fields and we decided to settle on the South Island because it is a bit more consistent and of course being further south a bit colder so more snow.  We lucked out again this year and timed our trip just right as it showed just before we arrived and we got a bit of snow every night we were in Wanaka.  A big thank you to Ben from Auntsfield for suggesting that we take a flight from Auckland to Christchurch and rent a car from there to drive down to Wanaka to the resort where we spent a week in ski country or I mean wine country.  We originally planned to rent a car in Auckland and drive all the way down which would have taken two days.

New Zealand was the last major land mass to be colonized and because of this the road system here is sparse at best with only 4 million inhabitants in total for both Islands and over ¼ of them reside in or around Auckland.  Ben saved us a day the flight from Auckland to Christchurch is only an hour and the drive there would have been 9 hours to reach Wellington, 4 hours on the ferry to the South Island and then another 10 hours to Wanaka!  So, after traveling 24+ hours to get to New Zealand we would be traveling another straight 24 hours to get to the first bed!!

Actually, most people that do a lot of traveling in this country take commuter flights not only is it quicker but the roads are the most dangerous thing in this country.  They have very few dangerous animals or insects here unlike their closest neighbor Australia where they have some of the deadliest creatures on earth almost nothing in New Zealand that can hurt you, but the roads.  They have this thing called black here but ice which in the winter months occurs on the roads in the mountains and in places where the temperature reaches below zero and they have rain or snow.

The south contains the country’s most famous wine region Marlborough and one of the most up and coming regions for Pinot Noir Central Otago.  Since we were only about 30 minutes from Otago I had to see a few wineries here and just happened upon one of the top sparkling wine producers in Quartz reef as my host at Burn Cottage recommended them and the tasting room was only 1 minute away and although I always bring bubbles with me the lure of tasting the local stuff that doesn’t make it to the US is why I made the journey.

New Zealand’s wine industry goes back to the first European settlers almost 200 years ago but they like the US had a temperance movement in the early part of the last century and only one winery survived this the famous Mission Winery and you can guess what they claimed to stay in business for during that period of time.  When wineries started to appear again in the 1940’s and 1950’s most of the wines where fortified wines and they were not very high quality, it was not until the 1980’s that they discovered this white varietal named Sauvignon Blanc and not until the 1990’s that the Pinot Noir varietal started to appear on the scene so the fine wine business is one of the newest in the world with just over 30 years of experience for the oldest producers, actually a bit more for Kumeu River but not much as they produced Merlot, Cabernet and sweet sparkling wine under the San Martino label before finding their niche with Chardonnay.