($28; 13% alcohol; screw cap)
Spring is all rosés at
Casa Blanca. There is no more felicitous a range of drinks, the rosey name
being a style or a colour or even a mood; an evocation more than a variety. I
prefer the paler ones: those more the russetty colour of brown onion skins or
the evil glimmer the Europeans call, in a swillion dialects, pheasant eye.
Which being colourblind, I should never dare to mention, although I admit to
peering deeply into nearly enough. Rosés, I mean.
I'm scared of the ones that look like raspberry
cordial: they usually taste like that, with a bucket of sugar. Ew. Generally a
waste of good Grenache.
This one seems the pale autumnal colour of the best
ones of Provence, where they spoil them with dodgy cork. None of that here:
that screwcap gives you a drink as fresh as a daisy, and as dry as an
everlasting one. From biodynamic vineyards on the slopes of Mount Barker - the
mountain, not the villa rash - it smells like those sunbaked shoulders in
summer, or a barn there stacked with hessian sacks of grain.
Drink. It is a sinuous thing of perfect
viscosity: its texture dances a dainty minuet with its flavour: neither
dominates. It does not taste like raspberry cordial. So we're nearly there and
rosé is not the sort of drink we should be talking about as if we were
taxonomers. Which the world needs, just by the way, taxonomers. Plenty of work
down that bright alley. Off you go.
Don't serve it too cold. Fifteen minutes in a well-stacked icebucket will do,
then recline and let it stack you. Being a sardine tragic, trust me to suggest
a thin slice of lightly-toasted ciabatta with a Sardine Pollastrini Di Anzio
Piccanti all' Olio d'Olivia, which I found in the excellent new Romeo's IGA
supermarket in McLaren Vale. Best sardine around, that bugger. Sardines. Toast.
Veranda. Dappled light. Conversation. Talk politics and religion.
Ngeringa Single Vineyard Adelaide Hills Sangiovese
2015
($35; 12.5% alcohol; screw cap)
Really good Sangiovese
reminds me of the summer, too. Getting off the crammed schoolbus with all its
pimpled sweatbags on a dead-still sunbaked afternoon in Kanmantoo to discover
Mum in the kitchen with water boiling on the woodfire stove and chook feathers
and gizzards everywhere, preparing the week's meat for the mob. Big welcoming smile
on her bonnie face; wiping her hands on her pinnie and pushing her hair back so
there's just a wee smudge of chook blood on her forehead when she leans over for
that wet motherly kiss. What I'd do for one more of those.
Sange has that very peasanty
in-your-face aroma, which brings comfort to an old hillbilly with an empty
stomach, no money and no Mum. But such thoughts seem to deter everybody who's
never smelled such stuff or been kissed by a mother with bits of raw chook and
wet feathers all over her so pretend you never read any of that.
This glass
also exudes lovely fresh licorice and something along the lines of Bickford's
Essence of Coffee and Chicory with an appetising edge of fine ground white
pepper. Maybe blackberries, but with the dark British Racing Green hue of their
leaves as much as the delectable fruit. It drinks like an asp sliding down the
throat: let it go, miss the last grab of its tail, and it's in you, looking for
the best bit to bite. Which it does with deadly accuracy, and you don't feel a
thing. It's a slick, slippery trick of a wine. It's what people who once knew called a delicacy. Bring out the spaghetti vongole with the the
fresh-chopped Italian parsley and have it after the sardines. Now we can talk.
Ngeringa Single Vineyard Adelaide Hills Syrah 2013
($50; 14% alcohol; screw cap)
Friggin' talk? Can we
talk? Too late to ask, now we're into such deep, dark water. Not waving, taking
a selfie. Press send. Then down we go. I reckon I can smell the midnight brine,
the moder dy, in this wine. A still,
moody moonlit night with no herrings catching in the north Atlantic. So you can
put your feet up on the gunnel with a whisky and smoke. And dream of land life
while the withered norseman skipper sucks his briar, stares you in the eye and
says "I am some of the best sea captains in the world." One dreams of
croft bliss, soft nuts and raisins, nutmeg and cinnamon, citrus rind and suet.
It has semi-dried figs, too, which my tattered organoleptics seem to appreciate
more as the years fall off and sink.
Many of these fragrances remind me of the
best wines from the oldest rocks around Greenock, but here they're followed by
the sort of whippet-slim palate that only a higher, cooler, Mount Barkerly sort
of a site can slide into one. And this slides, believe me. When they invent
black quicksilver, it'll be like this.
There are a lot of
so-called 'natural' wines about, many of
which enjoy the shelf life of unpasteurised milk. These beautiful biodynamic
zingers are not like that. These are like wine should be.
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