Aunties who'd been nurses at the front. Sorry. Fronts. Australia fought everywhere.
14 July 2016
I'LL HAVE THE SAVVY-B PLEASE
Hardys Rare Liqueur
Sauvignon Blanc
($100; 500ml; 18%
alcohol; cork)
Down in the deep black alluvium of McLaren Flat there's a
gnarly old block of Sauvignon blanc. It was old even before anyone round these
parts really knew what it was for; long before anybody thought of making a dry
white wine from it. It was old before all the blokes came home from World War
II. At that time a great proportion of the Australian male population suffered
post traumatic stress while the women and children they'd returned to suffered
the weirdness of life with victims of that horrid illness: Dads, husbands,
brothers and uncles who came home all different.
Aunties who'd been nurses at the front. Sorry. Fronts. Australia fought everywhere.
Aunties who'd been nurses at the front. Sorry. Fronts. Australia fought everywhere.
The major national medicine for this was fortified wine:
port and sherry.
They made these strong sweet wines out of everything they
could get their hands on. They even made what was basically a tawny-style port
from this freak block. Let that age for many years in oak - probably because the flavour was a tad too
freaky for most and it didn't take off - and the lime-and-lemony citrus edge of
the Sauvignon takes over, turning something fairly nondescript into what was
called port until somebody thought it had become a wine of such venerable age
and distinction it deserved a name of its own.
In recent decades we saw various owners and managers of
Thomas Hardy perform a textbook traincrash: a horrid, slow, exhausting trashing
of what was a great family company. Now, under the hands-on global management
of Keith Todd, we see the great old leviathan undergoing a gradual, determined chassis-up
rebuild and trim, best manifest in the upgrading and renovation of the
remarkable old ironstone buildings of Hardys Tintara in the main street of
McLaren Vale.
They've also got real out the back: opening that amazing
modern fermentation room up with a visitors' viewing gallery. They've also got
to work further back in the fortified cellars and have relaunched a string of
beautiful old fortified wines, including this true rarity.
Aged a mimimum seventeen years in old oak, this is a
gorgeous luxury, and a very good use indeed for McLaren Vale Sauvignon blanc.
Initially, I smell those rindy citrus bits. They remind
me of a dark old marmalade of lemon, lime and ginger. Then a layer of dried
figs lines up, as if somebody'd simply soaked them in a liqueur of their own.
The grape spirit used to fortify the juice must have been a beautiful thing in
itself: the overall effect is one that sets up that endlessly entertaining
counterpoint of luscious harmony set with little protruding jewels, like that
rind and ginger.
Then comes the texture. This is a delight in itself: it's
liqueur, sure, with all the associated stickiness, but it has a fluffiness
about it: a sort of goose down/fairy floss softness that adds cushion to the
wine's considerable acidity and alcohol.
As that bright and beautiful aftertaste kicks its carpet
slippers off and settles in for the evening it reminds me of a negroni made
with vodka in place of gin, with the addition of just a tweak of Kahlua.
But it's much more than that. Here, the pleasure is even
more intense, and made more entertaining by the fact that it's all grapes in
this glass, and it has nothing at all to do with New Zealand.
Next time you head south, take a stroll around the
restored and rejuvenated garden and winery buildings there in the main street
of the Vale, have a taste of the current Reynella and Tintara premiums, and see
if you can escape without buying yourself a bottle of this remarkable rare
wonder.
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1 comment:
Sounds delish...price??
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