Eccolo Barossa Valley Garganega 2012
$25; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 91+ points
While Mark Day has worked 25 vintages over the ridge from
me in the sand and ironstone of Blewett Springs, he's also a fanatic for the
wines of Italy, where he's worked six more. Squeezed 'em in, shall we say. This
fruit was grown by former Orlando winemaker Robin Day (no relation) on a very
high shoulder of Mt Crawford in the Barossa Ranges. Garganega is the major
premium white of the high country around Verona and Lake Garda in north-east
Italy, where the wines are called Soave. This one includes a dribble of
Chardonnay. It smells very much like a ripe Williams' pear, which is also
called Stair's pear, Bon Chrétian, Bartlett and Duchess, depending on where you
buy them. It also has a comforting buttery component, making me think of a
blazing crêpe suzette. In other words, it smells really bloody ravishing. It
feels comforting and fluffy in the mouth, and if you tried it at normal red
wine temperature from a black glass, I reckon you'd think it was a lovely soft
red. It has a flavour like the sum total of all the above, and would perfectly
match fattier weed-eating fish, like carp, chicken cacciatore, or a bowl of
steaming spaghetti con le vongole with fresh Italian parsley, which provides
the perfect excuse to visit the fabulous Bombora Café on the cockle beach at
Goolwa. Vegetarian? replace the cockles with morels or some other particularly
aromatic mushroom. So you win in every direction. Praise Bacchus and Pan!
The Bombora Café on the Cockle Beach at Goolwa: my favourite Australian seafood restaurant ... photo Philip White
Eccolo Adelaide Hills Sangiovese 2012
$25; 14% alcogol; screw cap; 92++ points
Grown in the Bottin vineyard above Balhanna, this heady
perfumed delight pushes Mark Day's terminal Italian tendencies a lot further. It
smells like properly ripe Lambert cherries, or like the pickling juice from a
jar of Marellos. It's a really plush and fleshy smell, like a milk-soused baby.
I know I'm mexing my mitaphors, but it makes me coo. "Get the baby out of
the cherry pot, there's a dear." I don't know any other Australian
Sangiovese which approaches this delightful aroma for comfort: as long as the
baby's not drowning, I'd leave it in there. Must be having fun. I'd get in
there if I was small enough. It's thinner than all that when you drink it: it
tapers off quickly to a long gently tannic dryness which brings a proper
saltimbocca to the front of the brain. Amalfi, here we come.
Eccolo Adelaide Hills Sagratino 2012
$35; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94 points
This is where Mark Day climbs onto his beautifully scary
scarlet Moto Guzzi to push the Italian thing into the nether regions way beyond
the speed limits. It's like a two-wheeler Ferarri. This is intense, polished black
stuff. It reminds me of the raven-haired beauty who polished the Irish lawyers'
shoes in Harry's New York Bar in the Rue Danou. I was there the night she
polished her last black Church's brogue: one of the regulars, a banker, had
given her a very powerful job in his office. Grown men stood and cried straight
into their whiskies. She told me how much she loved R. M. Williams' leather
unctions, and how she had to use an acetone to get the terrible modern shoe
polishes off good leather, so she could rebuild it and breathe and massage life
back into it with that magical cream from Adelaide. I remember the amazing
muscles on her forearms. They were like Martina Navratilova's. All that
polishing. Anyway, that's Paris and I'll bet she's a millionaire now and the
muscles are there from counting money and I'm in Kangarilla with a nine
Richter hangover talking about Italy and coveting Mark Day's motorbike, so I'd
better get back to it. This is a challenge for the synæsthete: all the colour
and smell and music tumble together like a black Mafiosi windscreen shattering
and melting down the front of my superfine woollen suit. Miles Davis. Bitches
Brew. The shoeshine girl. Val du Rhona cooking chocolate. The leather seats of
the Maserati. It's lean but immensly rewarding, with tannin that makes me
dribble for veal liver cooked ultra-lightly with morels in cream and black
pepper. That'll do for now. Back to my charcoal blue 1000 count Egyptian cotton
sheets. Grrrrr.
Winewheels for an Italy nut: Mark Day's Moto Guzzi takes a rare rest ... photo Philip White
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