Forrester Estate Margaret River Alicante 2010
17 July 2014
LONGHOP TO CHARLOTTE IN PAMPLONA
Forrester Estate Margaret River Alicante 2010
$40; 15% alcohol;
screw cap; 90+ points
Like the Caucasus red, Saperavi, the Spanish Alicante
bouschet is one of the few red grapes which actually have red juice. While most
reds have white juice and take all their colour from their skins in the
fermenter, Alicante is all red already, so is usually used to make simple
gulping rosé, where the vigneron can get all the desired colour and flavour
without pressing or long skin contact, which would see the fruit's significant
tannins intrude. But this is a serious alcoholic black red with smooth aromas
of plum and prune, even beetroot and borscht, complete with the yoghurt swirl.
Somebody's given it a fine dusting of white pepper. There's a hint of the dark
beetroot leaf, too. It's simple of flavour, and isn't the sort of red that
would make the whole table go quiet - as the label says, it's charming. But if
you were sitting there with chorizos, black Spanish ham and warm black olives,
watching those poor bulls squashing savage idiots in Pamplona, I could think of
nothing more suitable and satisfying. After a glass, the tannins seem to
soften. After another, the alcohol seems to decline to harmlessness. Once the
bottle's done, which happens fast, you sorta hope some other idiot gets the
horn up him as you fumble around for another. Then you discover you're speaking
in very short sentences, like Hemingway.
Longhop Mt Lofty
Ranges Rosé 2014
$18; 13.5% alcohol,
screw cap, 94 points
This rosé is pale and gently burnished to that autumnal
russet hue of brown onion and pheasant eye. It's made by the dreaded
Torzi-Freeland duo of the Barossa tops and the Adelaide Plains. They've used high country Grenache, but
rather than let it ooze out simple raspberry, like most dumb rosés exude, they
appear to have given it the business in the shed, with some serious time on
wild yeasty lees to let its fatty acids chub up. It has that curdled turn of
isovaleric acid, the calming pheromone of mother's milk which will make grown
men turn savage and kill each other if they get too much of it ... the
frightened bullshit and sweat smell of the Pamplona lanes, or the hairoil in
the beret shop where the bullrunning committee meets and Helmut Newton
photographed the naked Charlotte Rampling on the ancient oak table in the
backroom. Sorry, I'm off the track. This is a very pretty and seductive rosé
with elegance, complexity and texture. Without all its blackness, it's more
complex and profound than the Alicante above. And a much more grown-up drink
than that other famous local lollypop called Alicante. This one's tannic. It
has as much oak as that table ... see, dammit there I go again ... like pink
Krug is two or three hundred dollars and it's majestically the best with
bubbles and here you have one without the little round CO₂ cavities drifting up
and it's $18? $18! Santa Maria! Play that bit back will you Sancho? Santa
friggin Maria!
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2 comments:
LOOK AT THIS TREACHEROUS SHIT WOOLWORTHS WANTS ME TO POST:
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Respectfully, it should never be intimated that any wine is as hot as Charlotte Rampling photographed nude on an oak table.
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