Well is 2008 Penley Estate Phoenix Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon a long enough name for a wine. I guess there were a lot of letters left over after the scrabble game. This Australian wine is a deep purple color and you smell a lot of dark fruit. Moderate tannins and nice dark fruit flavors. It does have a fair amount of oak but not overwhelming. A nice flavorful wine but not especially memorable.
We enjoy wine, food and travel. Pull That Cork is a chronicle of our wine adventures, the food and wine pairings we create and our travels which are increasingly organized around wine.
Folks – if you’re keen to explore the artisanal side of Australia, our porfolio is here to serve! We import around 20 labels, all of which are family owned and operated, often 3rd generation winemakers crafting the wines – people who really care about expressing their unique little patch of dirt.
Some Australian reds can be excessively fruit-driven and oak-dominated, but then so can Californian, Argentinean and South African examples. Australia’s also a very large country comprising many different regions and climates (a similar land mass to the US), so you’ll find cool climate Shiraz that channels the spiciness of a northern Rhone Syrah, Cabernet from Margaret River’s maritime climate that looks hauntingly like a gravelly Bordeaux, and aromatic Riesling from Mount Barker that is simply magic alongside raw oysters.
The variety is immense, and it really comes down to getting to know your regions, then finding and trusting the producer, or if that’s too challenging, finding an importer you can count on! Look us up – http://www.oldbridgecellars.com
Thanks for the information. You are right, It isn’t just Australia where some wine are big and oakey. And we do tend to forget how big Australia is. We usually think of Australia as hot since most of the TV shows we see are about the deserts. We have to turn our thinking around and realize as you go south it gets cooler.
In the future I need to pay attention to what part of Australia a wine comes from rather than just saying it is from Australia.
Shae does bring out some very good and valid points concerning wine regions. I hadn’t really thought of it that way. Guess I’ll pay more attention to the region than the country it’s from. Funny, now that I’m writing this I realized I check the wine region from wines in other countries such as the Piedmont, Rhone, Russian River Valley, Mendoza, etc. I’ll have to keep better notes and conduct more research on the Australian wines.
We are going to do the same. We will be collecting some more Australian wines to taste and write about soon. I’ll make sure I note each region the wines come from.
I have mixed feelings about Australian wines. They have a lot of nice reds but also a lot of over the top fruit and oak reds. I haven’t had enough to determine who’s got the ones I like. I tend to have more wines from Argentina and Chile.
How do you like the Australian wines in general? I haven’t really warmed up to them, although I’m partial to Italian, French, and California wines so maybe that’s my problem. I’ve tried some of the golfer’s wines and thought they were way overpriced for what I was getting. Guess I need to get a bit more familiar with the Australian wines.
I’m much happier with the South African wines though my experience with their wines is limited but what I’ve tried so far I like. Then again, I need to expand my palate to the wines of Spain, Chile, Argentina, and Portugal to name a few. Are you sure I have to work for a living?