The Granite Belt was another region that didn’t escape the wet conditions that confronted a lot of South East Australia in 2011. There are some green tinges here and some odd citrus characters that don’t quite mesh flavour-wise for me.
Otherwise we’ve got red fruits, plums, sarsaparilla, spice and horse stables. That stinky funk isn’t particularly attractive to me either. The palate is soft and genial with minimal oak interference and some varietal blocky/chewy tannin. Tomato paste adds to the over-arching savoury nature of the wine. It doesn’t really drive through the back palate and it feels a touch dilute. Drink sooner rather than later I’d suggest. Average
Region: Granite Belt
Alcohol: 12.5%
Closure: Screwcap
Price: ?
Tasted: August 2012
Jeremy, are you calling Brett on this one?
Peter – I am of the opinion that laboratories should call Brett etc and reviewers should mostly stick to descriptions. That is certainly open to debate though. Having said all that, if someone put a gun to my head and asked me to guess (and I do hope that’s unlikely) I would guess Brett.
OK, thanks for that. Peter, I have noticed, is usually pretty active on the net, but I’ll give him a call about this tomorrow anyway. What I noticed is this:
“There was something quite interesting about the bouquet of this wine. When we drove along the front boundary of the property and also approaching the CD there was a distinct smell – hard to describe kinda like a mixture of foliage/earth & maybe organic fertilizer. Anyway, I detected the same smell coming from the wine. It was still there when I re-opened the bottle on Wednesday night back in Brisbane but was pretty much gone when we finished the wine on Thursday night. My wife described it as asparagus but I got lots more.”
Of course could be some kind of microbe problem and certainly does fit the barnyard funk descriptors. However you describe something much stronger than my experience, but mine was under very cold conditions. All in all I found it interesting but not unpleasant and I usually don’t like brett … could be bottle & environment variation? Even including the funk the wine itself was, at least for myself & my wife, better than average. I may post again after talking with Peter.
hi guys
wine sure does create conversation, jeremy i really dont see brett in this wine we have never had brett at the winery or wine, with all that said this wine does have some points of difference and some enjoy and some dont. i agree that the only people that should call brett is a registered lab, at the moment this wine looks alittle clumpsy and still to find its feet after bottling only a few months age. i will send it to be tested to clear up the debate but i would happly pull the trigger with the nug pointed at my own head to say the negative to the “B”.
thankyou both for the comments about the wine and would love to send the when again jeremy in 12 months time to see what has happened with developement.
Thanks Peter. As I said, I don’t like “calling” Brett and it’s not something you’ll ever see in one of my reviews unless I’m bloody certain about it.
I hope and think that I qualified my response to PeterP clearly. The key word was “guess”, and only if I had to. Then there are other issues such as which type of brettanomyces and does it have a significant effect on the wine. I saw no stripping of the back-palate here.
For the reader’s out there, here’s a link to a handy piece on brett by Jamie Goode:
http://www.wineanorak.com/brettanomyces.htm
Don’t know how long you spent with this wine Jeremy and of course when you are reviewing lots of wines you usually don’t have the luxury of spending a long time with the wine. Peter opened the one we had for an initial tasting on a Monday afternoon at his CD, we reopened the bottle on Wednesday night back in Brisbane and finished it on Thursday evening with dinner. By Thursday we were both really enjoying this wine and the funk was pretty much gone from the bouquet. Interested in your descriptor of citrus, if it’s still in memory, can you give me some more info about that and also did you mean fruit or peel?
PeterP – I tasted the wine over three days. On the second day the funky character was more restrained but it came back on day three. As for the citrus, it’s more associated with the ‘taste’ of the acid. It is, to an extent, poetic licence. Words can never truly capture wine but without them we can’t even hope to communicate our experiences.
Anyway, I’m glad you enjoyed the wine. My descriptions and ratings can never be totally objective. I don’t believe anyone’s can. It’s part of the beauty and attraction of all things vinous. If the wine works for you then that’s what matters most.