IS THIS THE BARGAIN OF THE YEAR?

Two Tims Up End Vineyard Sections 
5 & 6 McLaren Vale Shiraz 2016  
($100/doz at the farm gate; $150 delivered; 14.6 % alcohol; screw cap) 

For some years Leith Hunt had been wisely using the winemaking expertise of Tim Geddes of Seldom Inn Winery to make a dead serious Shiraz from Tim Hunt's vineyard on the piedmont near Sellicks Hill. 

This was always sold through a direct order mob in Melbourne or somewhere like that. 

This year some genius with a haircut let the deal go whoof.

Bad for the Two Tims, but lucky for those who've found Leith selling the wines from his ute at his farm on Aldinga Road, between Aldinga and Willunga. He's there most weekends. He sells it for a smacking $100 a dozen. Now he promises to put up a website which should be functioning later, after some technical hiccup or another. These folks need to be paid for what they've done. You'll be able to order it there on the cobweb and have it delivered for $150, which is still less than half its true worth in my personal crosshairs. 

Which are pretty sharp.

Bargains like this are scarce I fucking promise you with my blood.

Like other beauties grown in the Kurrajong rubble along that faultline, it's McLaren Vale Shiraz at its brooding, sultry best: right down the line of previous Up Enders. It has dark hewn oak tickling up a fragrance like panforte, the spicey honeyed nut cake of Siena. Smokey stove. This Nonna's put some diced dried figs in the mix. And the odd juniper berry. And it's dusted with musky confectioner's sugar. That bouquet's a delightful gastronomic adventure in itself. 

Drink. Land sakes! Satin and velvet and svelte syrup with real neat and tidy acidity drawing the tail out in a taper ... lipsmacking and savoury with never a hint of the gloopy over-ripe style of too much modern Shiraz ... a chip of bitter cooking chocolate in the finish ... this baby's the business! The flavours are neatly spicy and tight after the dry-ish nature of the panforte; the afterbreath pretty well purrs. What more could you want? The same wine in ten years? 

Grand idea, but I'll bet you can't stretch your case out that long. 

Catch a bird, take a drive at the weekend, find Leith, and spend your spare fifty at The Victory. Or at Geddes, back in Blewett Springs.

This is the winemaking Tim. Tim Geddes. Unlike winemakers who frock up in hard hats, hi-vis weskits and steelcap kickers to order visitors around their tasting benches, this Tim haunts his winery. He knows how to pick his place in cellar and geology and loves the calm slow shadows of real big oak ... some of these agements take decades ... photos Philip White