Fox Gordon The
Sicilian Adelaide Hills Nero D'Avola 2012
$25; 14%alcohol;
screw cap; 94 points
Here's a confronting bastard of a drink. First sniff's as
raw and brutal as Russell Crowe's Hando in Romper
Stomper, mainly because you probably haven't smelled anything quite like it
before. Give yourself a coupla acclimatisers, and Hando transforms into Earl
Driscoll, Rusty's horsetraining character in Hammers Over The Anvil, eyeing off the ravishing Charlotte Rampling
in the stable and riding horses naked in the dam. You want vegetal reflections?
Think fresh lightning in the pines: all those split trunks and singed needles.
Think soft licorice, prunes, dried apple and kalamata. But that's nowhere near
portraying its intense angular palate, its brash, raw edginess. While you're
hoping it puts the gun down before its nerves squeeze the trigger you'll have a
flash of regret that you didn't already drink lots of it with someone you
shouldna been seen with. This is a stunning explosion of a wine from the canny Tash
Mooney, using fruit from Caj Amadio's front-running vineyard on the cool banks
of the South Para Reservoir ... alarming in its savage beauty: drink it before
it shaves.
Bernadina Ceretto
Nebbiolo D'Alba 2011
$50; 14.5% alcohol;
cork; 92+ points
Nebbiolo from Alba is considered by wine trade people
with haircuts to be what they call "entry level" - nursery wine - for
those newcomers with dangerous Barolo aspirations; i.e. drinking above their
station. This nasty dark thing has not quite the finesse of the finer Barolos,
but it's a damn fine borderline posh drink, especially when stood against a
savage brute like that Nero D'Avola. When the man comes with the leather gloves
and the shotgun to punish me for daring to make the comparison he'll be from
Alba, not Sicily, if you get my drift. Apart from having darker, more licorice
fruit than the more Pinot-like raspberry I like in Barolo, this one's got a
pretty hint of meadow flowers and musk, and tannins that seem a little more
conventional. I love the way really good Nebbiolo carries its tannin like a
cloud hovering above the wine; it's the opposite of, say, Shiraz, where the
tannin is in the gearbox and the chassis and it occupies all the territory in
the bottom of your mouth. Well, this Bernadina has tannins that are about half
way between those extremes, which reinforces my allegations of convention. But
don't be put off. This is a wine for apprentice Sopranos and serious beef.
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