Aussie Wines!

I spent a day with Kym Teusner and the team (special thanks to Dave Brookes) a couple of weekends ago. It was a miserable old day but jesus we tasted some good wines, including some barrel samples of some upcoming bits and pieces too. I’ll write more about those hopefully sometime this week.

This wine is their entry-level red, coming from the Riebke family vineyards up in the northern part of the Barossa. It used to be called the Ebenezer Road Shiraz, but Constellation Wines (used to be Hardy’s) have started to kick up a stink since Barossa Valley Estate uses that term on their labels and is trying to claim a copyright… which, of course, is just a whole bunch of high-priced lawyers trying to justify their high-pricedness. To be diplomatic, Kym has changed the label to read Northern Barossa Shiraz instead.

For a $20ish Shiraz, this one is one of the best around. Great fruit from a family-owned vineyard results in a rich plummy red, with an incredibly dark purple colour. Sure, you can drink it now if you like, but you might like to buy up and give it a bit of time to open up. 92 points.

Kym puts the quality of this wine down to the quality of the fruit, which is a pretty simple formula, but many winemakers go on about minimalist winemaking techniques and letting the fruit do the talking, which is exactly what he does here. A great buy.