$22; 14% alcohol;
screw cap; 93+++ points
Vicki and Peter Manning moved to the High Barossa a dozen
years ago to grow and make wine. When it became obvious the ground they chose
wouldn't spare them a drip of underground water they chose to buy grapes from
elsewhere around the Valley, and with the help of the friendly and most enthusiastic
neighbour, Dominic Torzi, make the sorts of wines they loved the most. This
fruit came from the young alluvial ground called The Moppa, which stretches
east from the ancient rocks of Greenock across nearly to Nuriootpa. The
Grenache and Mataro were co-fermented and finished in old French oak; the
Shiraz deserved a little new French as much as old stuff, so was handled
separately until blending. So whatter we got? It's a bit stand-offish for the
first few hours, but then we've got something that smells about $40 more as far
as your consideration goes. It's tight with black tea tin and bitter cooking
chocolate reeks, and gives no hint that it could be up around fourteen
alcohols. If you need fruits you could think along the lines of semi dried date
and fig as much as the old mulberry tree, and that bit's as much bark and leaf
as your actual berries. In the laughing gear division it takes the silly grin
away and sets you marvelling and pondering until you once again remember that
price. I'm about to share it with some osso bucco, and yes, I've sacrilegiously
put some kalamatas in my sauce, with a great handful of fresh basil leaves from
the garden. Yum, as they say, o! As the day
turns into night, it becomes more visceral, viscous and fleshy. Even more perfumed. The exhalation becomes musky. 420 cases made.
Véronique Barossa
Foundation Shiraz 2012
$22; 14.5% alcohol;
screw cap; 90+++ points
Immediately as dark and salty-smelling as Linke's blood
pudding and a leg of black Iberian ham with some hair still round its hoof,
this moody brute seems to deconstruct from that point and clomps backwards out
the butcher's smokehouse door to reassemble itself into a real live snorting wild
boar. Like it's got tusks. It's bristly and meaty and sweaty, and not at all happy about what the
butcher just did to it. Its breath leaves quite a lot to be desired: It smells
like it's been eating oily old railway sleepers, tussocks and potato peels, and
its byre ain't all that sanitary. I wouldn't ever suggest the greatest Stone rolling
has swine-like manners, but like Keef, this bugger's one that could drink nails
and piss rust. It offers a brief illusion of sweetness when you chew it, like
really ripe Juniper berries mashed up with the lolly bowl from the Star Wars
Bar. And it is salty in a swampish manner, which merely serves to make you thirsty, and against all
the above-learned knowledge and the smell of your own rank fear et cetera, you
greedily reach out for more snoutwork. Which is exactly what I'd drink it with:
the whole steaming head of the re-deconstructed boar, cooked in red wine barrel
lees with nettles, juniper and beetroots, delivered intact to the table with
the cold blue butcher's hand poked backwards down his throat, so the fingers hang out like garnish with a wedding ring. By Bacchus I can already taste the tongue, and
the cheeks, and that lovely gristly little bit at the top of his nose ... the
ears! Awwww, Lordy! Where's Dr Max Lake when you need him? Crusty bread and
butter would be good, too. 580 cases made. We're in trouble! Next day: The boar
just got ten years younger. Cleaner, softer, maybe even prettier. After this
opportunity to reconsider, I'd stuff him with boned ducks and chooks, whole
bunches of garlic and ginger roots, stitch him up, and have him dribbling on a
spit. The butcher's hand tastes like chicken feet now. 92+
Véronique Barossa
Cabernet Sauvignon 2012
$22; 14.7% alcohol;
screw cap; 91++ points
Pure Eden Valley Cabernet, this reminds me of a vivacious
indigenous friend who when commenting on the Garden of Eden yarn, sniggered
about Adam and Eve having navels, then cackled brilliantly when she said
"Apple? Bloody apple? Us mob woulda
et the snake!" Here we have a glass containing quite a lot more snake than
apple. Although it does have a little of the forbidden fruit, after the mealier ancient cider-specific types, like perhaps a Kingston Black. And that dusty dry smell of goanna. It's more bones than flesh, and triggers
recollections of the sort of Cabernet Hamiltons made in that rocky spookhouse
out east of Eden in the 'seventies. Being a colourblind synaesthete,
snakes to me imply the flavours of British Racing Green and much darker aromas,
right through the greens I cannot see and the dark mysterious Tawny Frogmouth bark of Pinus radiata to black
snake and the sort of slide Ry Cooder added to movies like Southern Comfort (moist) and Paris
Texas (dry). Now you've got your head around that, let me add the bitter,
very dark green flavours of the nightshades, from tabac through Deadly to Lycopersicon lycopersicum, the
spellbinding Black Russian tomato, and I mean its leaves as much as its fruit.
This is a tight, lean wine, which may grow a little flesh, but it'll never be
fat. That bloke in Rocky Horror. Was he Brad or Brett? Have it with dribbling
pink lamb. 220 cases made. Next day: velvet, and waxy pink flesh growing on those
sinews and bones. A bit urky. Pretty good in the cup John Ullinger made from the dirt under the Roussanne vineyard outside my back door and across the flat where the machines are harvesting beautiful Shiraz tonight. Give it three years, then take it to the sacrificial lamb
with your pepper grinder and a lemon in every pocket. Or just tip it in a jug
and waste it now with pecorino Romana, grana. Grazie.
.
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