Thymiopoulos Earth & Sky

 Xinomavro is an interesting variety, sitting right in trend. It is indigenous to Greece, and expresses itself particularly well in the hilly area of Naousa in Northern Greece. It is often compared to Nebbiolo due to its acidity and tannin structure, but the fruit profile is lighter. I find some similarities with Sicilian varieties. The aromatics have some similarity with Pinot Noir as well.

Thymiopoulos is a major producer of this variety. His portfolio is structured in layers of quality. The Earth & Sky sits at the premium end. Yesterday I tried the 2021 Thymiopoulos Earth & Sky.

The ruby colour of the wine shows medium density. The wine has an appealing rose aroma.

On the palate, red cherry and some herbacious flavours, not green, deliver a bright and lively feel in the mouth. The wine has good concentration and balance. There are smoky notes on the back palate. The acidity shines through, and the finish is medium plus.

This is an interesting and attractive wine, well made and quite serious. This is an ideal drink for the warmer months.

Score: 95/+++  

Château Margaux

 In a recent tasting of high quality French and Australian wines from 2010, one wine shone above the rest; the 2010 Château Margaux.

The wine first impressed with its aromatic and perfumed aromas, so typical of the Margaux subregion. In this case, they were caressing the nose with seamless fragrances.

The main impression is that this is such a complete wine. Nothing sticks out; no acidity, no particular flavour. The mouthfeel is one of intensity and opulence. The wine is elegant and in perfect harmony. It almost detracts to discuss fruit flavours, but if you must, blackcurrant and blueberry would be dominant in this 90% Cabernet Sauvignon. The wine is very youthful and will go on for decades. The finish is incredibly long and silky. I tasted this wine some years ago, and even as a young wine, it was very harmonious and drinkable. Doing this early in life, and carrying it through for maybe 20-40 years is remarkable.

Score: 100/+++ 

I am acutely aware that a famous label can influence wine notes significantly. I believe I would have given this review to a no label wine.  

Elio Grasso Casa Maté Barolo

 I enjoyed the 2015 Sordo (reviewed below) quite a lot. I thought let's see how this compares with the 2015 Elio Grasso Casa Maté.

Wow! What a wine this is. It is only just getting ready to drink at 10 years. This wine is very tannic, but finely grained. The red cherry fruit is mellowing. Mocca flavours and licorice make the palate quite complex. This wine is piercing through the palate. The finish is ultra long. This wine is not for everybody, but I love this.

Elio Grasso has been one of my favorite producers, even more so since I visited a couple of years ago, and saw the special vineyard area of this estate. The strong focus on two premium Barolos is clearly paying off.

Score: 96/+++

Sordo Rocche Di Castiglione Barolo

 The 2021 Barolos are coming onto the market. While in some countries the latest vintage is always proclaimed the best, the Piedmontese  have a slightly different approach. Of course, the new vintage is always good, but the emphasis is on comparing the vintage with a similar one of the past.

The key features of this vintage were a warm and dry summer. It followed a snow cover in spring, which is better than rain, as rain is drained very quickly in the Barolo soils. As a result many wine makers describe it as delivering wines with good structure and approachable fruit. The comparison is the 2015 vintage.

2015 is regarded as good, but not stellar. In order to have a window in what 2021 might be like, I opened a bottle of the 2015 Sordo Rocche di Castiglione Barolo.

I would say that Sordo is in the second division of Barolo producers, but it has a strong focus on single vineyard wines. The wine opens up with typical rose petal aromas. On the palate, red cherry flavours and tar deliver quite a complex and pleasant mouthfeel. The tannins are well integrated and long. Despite this, this wine is quite smooth. For a ten year old wine it has good energy and is drinking really well now.

So, if 2021 is like this, it would be a buy for me.

Score: 95/+++

Swinney Farvie Syrah

 Normally, I do not like new wines coming onto the market as the next big thing, with a big price tag. However, Swinney has been around for quite some time, the property for 100 years. It has a large high quality vineyard at Frankland River, planted in 1998, and has supplied Margaret River royalty ever since. Highly regarded winemaker Rob Mann came on board in 2018, and the Swinney label was created.

Farvie is the premium label. This 2019 Swinney Farvie Syrah is the second vintage of this wine - and what a triumph it is! The colour is a deep intense purple.

The wine is named Syrah, and what follows is what is expected of a wine with this name - to a degree. Yes, the wine has cool climate characteristics of blueberry and blackberry fruits, black pepper, olive and licorice. At the same time, the wine is very concentrated. Great purity of fruit and a tension in the mouth created by firm, piercing tannins.

The mouthfeel is powerful, but the wine has some elegance as well, and a long finish. This is quite a profound wine. It could rate even higher, if it had a bit more charm.

Score: 96/+++

Peay Ama Pinot Noir

 I quite enjoy US Pinot Noir from time to time. It needs to come from one of the better producers in Sonoma or Willamette Valley. Given the dramatic price increases of premium Australian Pinot Noir (e.g. Bindi, by Farr, Place of Changing Winds), the US wines are not too expensive now. What I enjoy about these wines in comparison to Burgundy is the somewhat dialed-up fruit flavours, as long as the structure is still good. 

I was looking forward to this 2019 Peay Ama Pinot Noir, given I liked the 'standard' blended Pinot Noir quite a lot. This wine comes from the West Sonoma Coast, the new hot bed of Pinot Noir in the US, as the ocean and frequent frog provide cooler temperatures and humidity as well. The owners are quite meticulous, splitting the vineyards in 25 blocks, and also growing a number of different clones.

However, what often happens, the best, i.e. ripest grapes are reserved for the single vineyard wine, whereas the rest goes into the blended wine. In this case, the wine is more concentrated, but also quite fruity and ripe. The red cherry and strawberry flavours are nice, but the overall mouthfeel is a bit flabby. The wine is not very acidic. The tannins are silky, but very light.

Score: 90/-

Bindi Darshan Pinoit Noir

 I have never done this before, that is to start with a description from the winery website, but it works in this case. The wine is new and relatively unknown, and the description quite simple and forward.

 Darshan vineyard is a tribute to Bindi founder Bill Darshan Singh Dhillon, who passed in early 2013. The vineyard preparations began a few months afterwards with planting taking place in 2014. Darshan faces west on quartz riddled soils similar to the Original Vineyard and is planted at 11,300 vines per hectare with 20% of the vines being a Crazy section at 22,600 vines per hectare featuring four clones. Over the first seven vintages, to 2023, we have seen this site produce ethereal wine showing exquisite perfume and spice with a lacey, sinewy, flowing long palate. Darshan , like Original Vineyard, is about perfume and finesse whereas Block 8 and Block 5 share fruit depth and structure in common.

Michael Dhillon, the current winemaker, has a strong sense of family tradition and history. Hence this naming. I drank the 2017 Bindi Darshan Pinot Noir. So, the vines are three (!) years old, but what unfolds in the mouth is astonishing. The wine is not too concentrated, but the strawberry flavours and silky tannins deliver a superbly elegant and ethereal mouthfeel. It is just so beautiful. Heaven in the mouth! I can't wait for this vineyard to mature.

Score: 96/+++

Henschke Mount Edelstone

 The Henschke Mount Edelstone has always been a very popular wine on my blog. I am continuing to explore the 2018 vintage with this wine.

Nice to see a traditional and well trusted label

Wow! The 2018 Henschke Mount Edelstone is not what I expected. Therefore, I had a look at some other reviews. They reported what you would expect of this wine. But I experienced something different. A different bottle or lazy reporting by others? Anyway, this is my take on what I drank.

This wine is different. It is predominantly red fruited, red cherry, pomegranate. It is lighter on its feet than the previously reviewed Yarra Yering. There are purple flower notes. It is clearly lighter than the typical Mount Edelstone profile, no mocca here, either. This wine is a delight to drink. The mineral laden acidity, and the very fine tannins deliver a great structure.

This wine is tightly wound right now, a racy wine waiting to burst out of the glass.

Score: 97/+++

Yarra Yering No1 Cabernet Blend

 I am digging into a number of wines from the 2018 vintage. It is regarded as a very good one with a hot summer early on, but then an Indian summer towards vintage. Today's tasting is of the 2018 Yarra Yering No1 Cabernet Blend. Cabernet Sauvignon, the leading variety in this wine, has always been the flagship of Yarra Yering. How is this vintage shaping up?

I am blown over by my first taste. This is a big wine. Redcurrant and ripe raspberry flavours deliver a big fruit profile. Different in flavour, but similar in fruit weight to the Cirillo I reviewed just before. Despite the fruit concentration, the wine has good energy, and is balanced with fine grained tannins. The savoury characters need to come through to deliver complexity. This is another example where the screw cap slows down development (as I see particularly in Felton Road and Tyrells wines).

This wine has the potential to be great, but if you have it, do not drink before 2028.

Score: 95/++

 

Cirillo 1850 Ancestor Grenache

 The Cirillo Ancestor Grenache is one of the few wines I buy on an annual basis. The latest release is the 2018 Cirillo 1850 Ancestor Grenache. One of the things I like about this wine is that it gets released at six years of age.

This wine is more fruited than in the previous two years. Blueberry and mulberry flavours are quite ripe. There is an unusual mint character as well, not unpleasant. The wine to me is borderline on confected, but it has the pleasant characteristics of concentration and strong aromatics, and it lifts towards the long finish.

Cirillo does not represent the sophisticated winemaking that Yangarra does, for example. But what Marco Cirillo creates is what the French call a vin d'emotion, a wine which evokes an emotional response. In this way, this wine is a wine of beauty.

Score: 94/+++ 

Pooley Pinot Noir

 Sorry for the long break, but there is not much wine to report from Muslim Indonesia. Now back in Australia, we are faced with what to drink during warm summer nights. I still have a preference for red wine in the evening. And I want it to be more than a quaffer, but not too heavy obviously, and not too complicated. Enters the 2021 Pooley Pinot Noir.

I have been critical about the single vineyard Pinot, and to some extent, the story is repeated here. This is a fruit dominated wine, red and black fruit, quite big in the mouth. The fruit weight does not allow much complexity. There is an underlying structure to the wine, but the lack of drive makes this wine a bit of a fruit bomb, not dissimilar to some Central Otago wines.

Score: 88/0

What Did We Drink Over Christmas?

 It is common in many families to pull out nice wines and champagne over Christmas. I was on a plane this year, really over two days. So there was only some average French Champagne.

I am in a remote area of Indonesia. Therefore this post is also a bit late.

So what did you drink over Christmas? In the past we had some nice reports.