“Sod the wine, I want to suck on the writing. This man White is an instinctive writer, bloody rare to find one who actually pulls it off, as in still gets a meaning across with concision. Sharp arbitrage of speed and risk, closest thing I can think of to Cicero’s ‘motus continuum animi.’

Probably takes a drink or two to connect like that: he literally paints his senses on the page.”


DBC Pierre (Vernon God Little, Ludmila’s Broken English, Lights Out In Wonderland ... Winner: Booker prize; Whitbread prize; Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman prize; James Joyce Award from the Literary & Historical Society of University College Dublin)


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08 May 2017

GRENACHE SERIES: SUMMARY TO DATE

Before vintage I began work on my Grenache series, which remains very popular. Soon after this tasting the black gizzards out-of-the-blue hoist themselves on their very own petard; further unrelated misdaventure subsequently set the reconstruction period back. So while there's been plenty of Grenache stuff to read here I've had a spell from the topic, just as I missed a lot of my planned reportage of vintage 2017. Damn! Anyway, with the Grenache stories, we're only a quarter of the way through, folks! I have several makers' accounts of the variety ready to go when I get their  photographs, and I'm working through my notes from the above two-day tasting. So stay around: here's what I've published; there's plenty more to come!

1 Intro: McLaren Vale Grenache: A Study 
2 Out my back door: picking the High Sands 
3 Grenache: Drew Noon's love story 
4 Grenache: the Italian Connection 
5 Out my back door: finishing High Sands


2 comments:

Rusty said...

Great work Whitey ! Love this.

Richard Warland said...

When I was winemaking in "the Vale" the '70's Grenache was the workhorse variety. Flagon dry red, cheap port base, expensive port base and because of its high sugar, brandy spirit base.

My only real claim to fame as a winemaker was 1973 Hardy's Mill Rosé - made in late vintage from Barossa Grenache. It won the Australian Championship Trophy at the Adelaide wine show - despite having a then illegal alcohol of 15.6% A handy wine for dates in those days....