Aussie Wines!

So for those of you who don’t know, Clonakilla is the winery that put Canberra on the map as a wine region in Australia. Tim Kirk, the bloke behind the label, is famous for his Shiraz Viognier, which generally goes for around $90 and is seen as one of Australia’s best.

2007 was a crappy year for the Canberra region, with nasty frosts (which isn’t great for grapes). He lost a lot of his crop and therefore there was very little of his precious Shiraz Viognier available for his loyal, sometimes manic, customers. He just didn’t think that most of the fruit was good enough and didn’t want to sully the good name he’d spent years cultivating. Some was released, but very little.

To fill the gap, here’s a brand new label, born out of a desire to give his customers what they want in a very difficult year. Now, generally a splash of Viognier is added to Shiraz that is youthful, tight and vibrant to take the edge off it, and that’s exactly what this is. It’s youthful like you wouldn’t believe, the vibrant purple colour will give that away. It smells as refreshing as a Shiraz can be… it almost smells like freshly fermented juice being pumped into barrels, rather than a Shiraz that is from two years ago, but there isn’t a hint of unripeness (yay for new words!) and it certainly is ready to drink, but of course you can give it a few years if you like. At around $45, it’s a great wine from a cool climate (and cool vintage) that is something different to the big Barossa ballbusters out there.

A lot of people are into food and wine matching (in this case, a nice BBQ would be great), but I’m getting into food and music matching, for something different. So, listen to this with something vibrant and funky… my pick, Butterfly Dub (Protassov and Kinksi remix) by Protassov.

I imagine that, even after a crappy vintage, Tim tasted this and was satisfied that he got through it just fine. 94 points