When you visit the Wirra Wirra cellars to taste these bonnie wines, you can also buy a copy of Trott's View, the big picture book a group of us made to celebrate the man. It's a collection of beautiful photographs Trott commissioned, to leave us with visions of his favourite aspects of his beloved Vales ... there's also confronting stuff relative to the intrusion of urban sprawl, which tireless local MP Leon Bignell helped us bring to a halt with the passage of the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale Protection Acts ... It was a sad thing that Trott didn't live to see that marvel occur. He'd be delighted ... photo Philip White
Wirra Wirra
Original Blend McLaren Vale Grenache Shiraz 2012
$24; 14.5% alcohol;
screw cap; 92+ points
In 1972, Greg Trott made a wine like this and called it Wirra
Wirra Church Block. It took off. Bordeaux evangelista Brian Croser gets the
blame for convincing Trott to change the Church Block blend to Cabernet, Shiraz
and Merlot. This Original Blend is truer to Trott's form. It's cool to see winemakers Paul Smith and Paul
Carpenter making it the old way. The wine reminds me of dear Trott, who I sit
with now and then where he lies in the Strout Road cemetery. We talk. He'd love
this wine, even though there's no chook feathers stuck to the bottle. It's
sweet-smelling, and soulful, and warm. It's all syrupy cherries and ripe
raspberries, with a neat rise of spice-box/coffee-grinder oak adding some edge
on one side, and some old-fashioned lollyshop confectionary on the other. That
pleases the remnants of the schoolboy that still hides in me, just as Trott
never really grew too far past his. It is altogether a pretty and comforting
smell. The palate's smooth and polished, with that lovely silky Grenache sheen
chroming up the slightly more tannic and blackberry Shiraz - the heart and
gentle soul of McLaren Vale at its simple honest best. It is a wholesome thing:
just right for sittin' and drinkin' - reminding me that I'd better take a
bottle of this vintage down there to the quiet little boneyard in the trees and
tell my old friend all about it. I'll bet I'll find Joe Petrucci there, telling
him about his stuff, and how much we miss him. Trott's an even more reliable
confidant now that he can't hide from us. He was always a sweetheart as a
confidant, but sometimes he'd hide, so he could think, and love women. He
doesn't hide anymore. He's all over McLaren Vale. I can feel him in this glass. You know.
The good old days: Jim Irvine, Andrew Wigan, Greg Trott and Stephen John after a regional tasting at The Barn in the early 'eighties ... photo Philip White
Wirra Wirra The
Absconder McLaren Vale Grenache 2012
$70; 14.5% alcohol;
screw cap; 94 points
Posh stuff, this. Top French oak barrels must come as
surprise to the 1920s McLaren Flat Grenache that goes into it - that fruit used
to go into Bob Strangways Wigley's port, away back in the formative days of
Wirra. Bob was a crazy bugger who hated wind. He'd stay in bed when the sea
breezes blew, and complain about all the barbs on his fence wires blowing up
against the posts. Bob was the first absconder; his reasons for hiding were different
to Trott's. This wine doesn't hide, I tell you. It's sweet and heady and
sophisticated, and somehow bridges the decades between the old days of huge oak
tanks and the posh little Frenchies that give this love its smarm. That touch
of French forest teases the Grenache out to a long dry taper which draws the
blood so close to surface of the thin skin behind your lips that you can taste
it. It draws the life juice from your very body. So while the Original Blend
gives, this one takes, and leaves one a little dissatisfied, twitching for
tucker. Like juicy mandarin duck. Which is not to say it'll always do that:
with a few years, it'll swoon you off to sleep, duck or no duck. But I'd rather
drink it like this, and twitch, and marvel. Opulent at one end; teasing at the
other. Pecorino grana pardana pepato is the go. So it'll be a big lump of that
in the hunting bag, a bottle of each of these wines, and off down to meet
Petrooch and Trotty at Strout Road. Then everything'll be alright. Ooooh yeah.
Wirra Wirra winemaker Paul Carpenter pondering a mouthful ... photo Philip White
1 comment:
@whiteswine What a cracker of a read. That photo of Jim Irvine, Andrew Wigan, Greg Trott and Stephen John? Bloody special.
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