Yalumba Viognier

2006
The Y Series
South Australia

Will drink again.

I think it is safe to say that I have become a fan of Yalumba Winery's Y Series wines in general.
I love their Barossa Valley Shiraz, and I now am also a big fan of their Viognier (which they are responsible for my interest in as a result of tasting their Barossa Valley Shiraz-Viognier. The Shiraz-Viognier blend I had only contained 5% Viognier, but after drinking their complete Viognier tonight, I can appreciate that 5%.) I am very eager to try the 2003 Yalumba Octavius Shiraz someday - I feel good things happening just thinking about it. However, I believe it is somewhere in the price range of $75 - $100 a bottle. So, not exactly a "budget wine".

I enjoyed this Viognier with grilled salmon, roasted green beans and baby potatoes with rosemary. The fruit of the wine became more herb-like following the rosemary in the potatoes. I first smelled pear which I love in a white wine. Next was sort of an herby-apricot and then a vanilla-citrus. It tasted good on its own but its unique flavors were accentuated with the meal, especially following the rosemary potatoes.

It is a screw cap. That, apparently, is a problem for some of the more pretentious wine drinkers out there. My brother-in-law was horrified that I had purchased a screw-cap white wine for his visit (the Dashwood Sauvignon Blanc reviewed the other night was, alas, a screw-cap). I found myself getting pretty angry at his afrontage. I told him that screw-caps are the way of the future and in no way represent a "cheap" wine. (He had made some comment about how I must have "pulled all the stops" buying the wine seeing that it was a screw-cap! Oh I am so mad even now thinking about it. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Life is good. Everything will work out. OK I'm recovered.)

I offer the following adaptation from Yalumba.com's site:

Screw-cap eliminates the possibility of wine taint from cork and, as there is not a lot of the sealing polymer in contact with the wine, flavour absorption from the closure is not an issue. Screw-cap is a wonderful seal for ensuring great bottle ageing of appropriate white wines . . . Screw-cap removes all the problems associated with using closures that are “stuffed” into a bottle neck. The internal bore of a bottle is not a controlled surface during the bottle making process, whereas the outside surface of a bottle is. As the seal does not allow any air into the bottle at all, the wine undergoes a slow, but perfect bottle ageing process.

Yalumba has watched the markets adoption of the screw-cap closure with interest. "Acceptance of the screw-cap has grown significantly, and continues to grow, amongst the wine industry and its consumers, particularly at the top end of the market", says Robert Hill Smith.

Yalumba has extended its portfolio of wines sealed with a screw-cap closure even further, in particular, to Viognier. “Viognier, which seems particularly prone to flavour modification by cork, no doubt benefits from a screw-cap seal,” says Winemaker Louisa Rose.

It was on a visit to Condrieu, the home of Viognier in France's Rhône Valley, that Yalumba's Peter Wall first encountered Viognier. Once grown extensively south of Lyon, Viognier is now virtually confined to the tiny Condrieu and Côte Rôtie regions, with the best wines form Château-Grillet, a tiny appellation of Condrieu.

"Viognier is incredibly challenging and demands handling with kid gloves," says Yalumba winemaker, Louisa Rose. "It's unpredictable, difficult to grow and the yields are low. The variety always has the ability to surprise you - one day the grapes on the vine are dull and flavourless yet the very next day there'll be the explosion of musky apricot characters that make it so appealing."

Therefore trust to thy heart, and to what the world calls illusions.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

8 out of 10
$12.99 / 750 ml
13.5% alc. by vol.
http://www.yalumba.com/