Nice wines I have drunk recently - Red or White

Keeping with this week’s theme a couple more VIC wines. Again same producer, same vintage and even same grape but two VERY different wines.

The W-WB means Windmill - Whole Bunch. Took more than 3 hours to finally open up. The nose, the taste, smoky, powerful, intoxicating. I had some complex Pinots before and this one is definitely up there, seriously challenging the senses. Reached it’s peak IMO, can’t imagine getting any better.

The Windmill is blend of 6 vineyards in 3 VIC regions. In contrast to W-WB which was dark in colour the Windmill was bright, perfumed, elegant nose, taste of cherries, strawberries and other red fruits. Classic Pinot with further cellaring potential.

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Well I haven’t had any Krug since early March so I can understand CE being prepared to lower his standards at home now that he has been denied the sky drinks.
 
got up at 5:00am this morning to open these up,didn’t expect to be this warm around lunch time, end up drinking indoor.

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2011 Passopisciaro Etna rosso, my first volcano wine back in the days, very good cork, light creamy sweet red fruit on the nose, Cherry and then the acidity hits me very quick, sour cherries maybe? a little stone/mud flavour in between,I like this Italian Pinot style.

2013 Poderi aldo conterno Bussia, I don’t know anything about this producer before I won this in auction,it was half of what it is selling now right, this is dark and rough at the beginning , very young indeed, we came back to this 4 hours later. aromatic black tea, dried herbs ,something else that smells like rose but lighter ,this is a full bodied barolo, one of the guys said he got dark cherries , yeh , i take his word.

2016 olek starderi, a barbaresco , I had the roncagliette earlier this year, or last year, this is just as good ,light weight red sweet fruits but big tannins , first we thought it was still the poderi aldo but no, this will slowly melts in your mouth, a little spicy ,alcohol also a little high at 14% or is it the new standard now?
 
This weekend is a Tassie Dornfelder weekend.A German varietal for big red wines from co;d climates.Tonight the first I found-White Rock vineyard from the Mersey valley.
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Really dark red/purple with lots of body.I should put a couple down and see how it ages.This one though is 2015.

On Thursday/Friday I tried a different one-Hughes and Hughes.However although their vineyard is at Flowerpot south of Hobart their dornfelder grapes come from the White Rock vineyard but treated a little differently.
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Their pinot on the left dornfelder on the right.2017 vintage.I really liked this one.
 
Cracked the Digby that I picked up at Dan's for $36 down from $5x. Was slightly concerned as I twisted the cork to remove it and it twisted rather easily. As I removed it, there was no sparkling pfffff sound. Sure enough the cork hadn't sealed properly and it had less effeverence that a Moscato d'Asti. Quite oxidised on the nose. Down the sink it went and I'll get a replacement from Dan's at sone point. Grabbed the Puffeney from the cellar and into the wine chiller. Much better. England 0 - France 1.

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  • pinot noir: possibly preferred Eastern Peake over Rouleur
  • pinot shiraz: Andevine on this occasion didn't show as well as previously, unlike others recently
  • shiraz/syrah: this Innocent Bystander was one of my first Winefront-induced buys, developing well with age
  • grenache: Archie > Rouleur

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  • pinot noir: benchmarking the new 2019 Hoddles against a couple of 2017 favourites - perhaps due to some unfortunately hypersensitive teeth at the time, I wasn't as enamoured with the 2019 as might have been expected, so unlike 2017, I won't be buying a case or two at this stage, though probably mainly given my current stock levels, but maybe another bottle to check (could be a similar situation to Gembrook Hill, of which I prefer the 2015 over 2017, but my second bottle of the latter was better than the first - and cheaper - such that I have now ended up with a few) - Pooley was also good, a rare cellar door purchase
  • sangiovese: enjoyed the La Prova, but not as much as Coulter C2


Yes, famously used by Ponsot, I first came across them with Heresztyn-Mazzini - they're apparently the best and most expensive synthetic corks, costing $6 each I've been told - wonder if that was a reason for Mac Forbes to stop using them?


Nicely aged. Drinking well.

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Good to hear after the poor 2010, though could that have been a Dan's storage issue?


got up at 5:00am this morning to open these up,didn’t expect to be this warm around lunch time, end up drinking indoor.

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Again, the background box backdrops interest me as much as the bottles tasted :)


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Here’s my favourite blend, shiraz Pinot , the first vintage that I discover this blend , very likeable and I still do,probably the only reds that I like with oak in the hunter,very aromatic, creamy and cherries ,sweet plums, medium bodied. Yarra is trying to make this blend too, I can’t wait to try.

I'm a pinot shiraz fan as well, but pardon my ignorance - what unoaked Hunter reds are there and that you like?
 
I'm a pinot shiraz fan as well, but pardon my ignorance - what unoaked Hunter reds are there and that you like?

what i mean was new oak,specially new french oak, i didn't go into any further to found out if any hunter reds uses american oak.
I prefer reds that uses the fruit to do the talking rather than the oak, so the less new oak there is the better i like the wine in general, there are exceptions,some.

The only hunter reds that i know of that doesn't use or stay in oak in very short time are from tyrrells and harkham wines, there's 2 box in that picture of mine are from tyrrells 2019 reds(only the old patch uses more french oak), they pick in feb 2019 and bottled in early jan/feb this year, less than 1 year in big old cask.

Harkham wine you can look it up in the wine front reviews, not much info. on their own website.

other than that, semillons and some chardonnary, tyrrells semllion picked early in feb? then release in the same year around spring time.
 

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