Friday, January 30, 2009

Henschke Mt. Edelstone

I was looking forward to settle into last night with an excellent steak and the Federer Roddick match. So I thought I needed to pick a special wine, too. I chose the 2002 Mt. Edelstone Shiraz. This is the first bottle of this wine I opened. It had had excellent reviews and after some disappointments of the late 90s I was looking forward to this.

I decanted the wine and couldn't believe the aroma. I was smelling the fruit from a metre away! There were a number of surprises in this wine. The first was how young it was. It felt I was drinking from barrel. The fruit was very young and raw. At 15%, the wine felt slightly alcoholic. I couldn't detect much of the usual mocca and chocolate flavours and oak was very much in the background.

Obviously, this is a big wine. It will need quite a bit more time before it comes together, but once it has mellowed a bit, it should be a very good drink. I will put my remaining bottles away for at least five years.

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