Aussie Wines!

Ah Noble One. Ask anyone what the most famous Australian dessert wine is and they’ll almost always tell you it’s Noble One. For those who don’t know, it’s called a Noble wine because the grapes are affected by a fungus called Noble Rot (Botrytis Cinerea), which sucks the water out of the grapes, resulting in a higher sugar content in the grapes prior to fermentation. This means that you can ferment that sugar into a nice amount of alcohol and still have some left over to give you a sweeter style. These wines also are a bit more viscous or thick. Add viscosity and sugar together and you realise why dessert wines are called “stickies”.

So, Noble One comes from grapes in the Riverina area of NSW, which is down south. Generally, this region produces relatively poor wine, often going into casks. It’s not often you see Riverina on a label and go “ooh, better buy that one, this’ll be GOOD!” In fact, it’s not often you see Riverina on a label at all.

However, this wine is proof that decent wine can come from regions that might otherwise be seen as ordinary. Made from Semillon, the wine has a lovely golden colour, with loads of tropical fruits on the nose, passionfruit, pineapple, etc. A nice sweetness to it and perhaps some marmaladey characters, this isn’t as sweet as you’d expect. It’s not sickly sweet anyway, everything seems nicely restrained and well balanced. Great with dessert.

It was originally labelled as a Sauternes when it was released in 1982. They can’t use that terminology any more because the French got a little bit pissed off about using their regional names. However, that’s what a Sauternes is, it’s a dessert wine made in the same way from that particular region of France.

Every single vintage of this wine has won at least one trophy and who knows how many gold medals. It will age well and develop a darker colour, resulting in much more intense fruit flavours, getting closer to muscat in flavour and intensity. In fact, when Kevin Rudd chose to give Pope Benedict the Billionth some Australian wine on his visit recently, he chose this wine. Surely that says something. 94 points for the 2006 vintage. A half bottle will set you back about $35ish.