Reynolds Shiraz

2004
South Australia

Will drink again. Bonzer Mate.

First, an aside:
Funny thing - I know this woman, who just so happens to be my mother, and she called me up recently to tell me she tried The Holy Trinity (more like drank the whole bottle in one sitting), also care of The Bro, and yet, I never saw any commented posted from her. Hmmm.

Now, onto the most recent tasting:
Ok, ok, ok. It was supposed to really snow last night and I so love the snow and impending storms (some storm that turned out to be - facetiously spoken) and I made a fire in the fireplace and just wanted a glass of wine, in spite of my diet. So, here I am reviewing a wine before I intended to.

As I am SO lucky thanks to Christmas purchases, gifts and trades to have mostly wines above $20 in my home at the moment, I chose the only cheaper wine we had (though, as it was a gift, I didn't know its pricing until I looked it up). I made a pork loin for dinner and chose this Shiraz. I opened the bottle and poured a glass and brought it into The Guy and told him to tell me what he was drinking. His first reaction, right off the bat was, "Shiraz." Then he let it settle and he changed to a "Cabernet." Then he said, "It must be a blend because it's not quite a Cabernet." Not too bad - I'm impressed. It's actually 93% Shiraz and 7% Cabernet. He also believed it to be an "under $20 more than $15 wine."

I was slightly impressed with this wine - I don't know if it's because I took a wine break for awhile and can really taste well, or if it's just because I haven't had any in awhile and any wine is good! The scent was of black cherry and pepper. The taste was exactly as it smelled with a slight heat finish that was fairly smooth. It was good with the pork loin and good on its own. However, the wine bottle recommends (and I love this next sentence!): "It's bonzer with tri-tip steak, sausages, ribs or any food fit for the Barbie."

I think this is a good value for the money. The Guy and I figured, based on initial taste, its price range to be $15-17. It's $9.99.

She gets up and pours herself a strong one
And stares out at the stars up in the sky
Another night, it's gonna be a long one
She draws the shade and hangs her head to cry

She wonders how it ever got this crazy
She thinks about a boy she knew in school
Did she get tired or did she just get lazy?
She's so far gone she feels just like a fool

My, oh my, you sure know how to arrange things
You set it up so well, so carefully
Ain't it funny how your new life didn't change things
You're still the same old girl you used to be

-------The Eagles

8.0 out of 10
$9.99 / 750 ml bottle
13.5% alc. by vol
http://www.reynoldsvineyards.com/

The Dead Arm (It needs no other introduction)

2004
McLaren Vale
Shiraz

Would most definitely drink again (on someone else’s tab).

The Gal: I traded Thanksgiving pies for this wine - normally we would not spend the amount this cost on a bottle of wine. My brother recommended The Dead Arm to me last spring and I “fell in love” with the whole “dead arm” story: Dead Arm is a vine disease caused by the fungus Eutypa lata. One half of the vine's arm becomes dead wood. But the grapes on the other side are used to make this wine. As my brother told me, the diseased area actually forces all of the flavor to the other side that remains healthy – the side used to make the wine.

So, I kept it in the back of my mind and would look for it wherever I found myself wine shopping. I found it recently and it was $60. I couldn’t buy it, I just couldn’t bring myself to spend that much for a bottle of wine I hadn’t had before. A short time later, a friend of mine was complaining that he couldn’t find any “new” good wines to taste.
Nothing was grabbing him. I told him about The Dead Arm that my brother had told me about. He ended up buying it and he agreed to give me a bottle if I made a couple of pies in exchange. It was a deal.

I decided to try it when my brother was home for Thanksgiving. I sat in my great, great grandmother’s cherry Shaker rocker by our first fire of the season at around 11:30 p.m. and savored The Dead Arm. It was very, very good – excellent. It’s dark inky color was followed in scent by a slight earthy smokiness (or maybe light creosote). It’s taste was black cherry and "hotness", then my favorite, “minerality”, settled in and was followed by a long slightly smokey finish.I loved this wine. It was very reminiscent of two of my previous favorites: Yangarra Vineyard Shiraz and “Bogle’s” Phantom. That said, those (2) favorite wines were about a third of the price. So, I must conclude that, for the price, The Dead Arm was a bit much, at least for our budget. I truly believe that Phantom and Yangarra, at approximately $20-something, are better buys. But, if money is no object to you, I do recommend the taste of The Dead Arm. I had it without any food pairing.

If you don’t make a move without Robert Parker’s permission, this wine received a “95” rating by him.

"Cold hearted orb that rules the night,

removes the colours from our sight,

red is gray and yellow white,

but we decide which is right and which is an illusion."

Justin Hayward and The Moody Blues

(My brother and I recited this in unison over Thanksgiving - this was from my all time favorite "album" "Days of Future Passed" by the "Moody Blues"and "The London Symphony Orchestra" - thank you to my parents for turning me on to really fine music at a young age )

9.0 out of 10

14.5% alc. by vol.

$55.99 - $68.99 / 750 ml. bottle

http://www.darenberg.com.au/

http://www.darenberg.com.au/files/2004%20The%20Dead%20Arm%20Shiraz.pdf

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/