I had the opportunity during the week to try a couple of new vintages of extremely high-quality, interesting South Australian reds from Bremerton, in South Australia’s Langhorne Creek district.
Rebecca Willson, winemaker at Bremerton … has come up with the goods at the top end of the market.
The Bremerton 2013 Walter’s Cabernet Sauvignon and Bremerton 2014 Old Adam Shiraz each carries the pretty hefty price tag of $56 so they are definitely special-occasion wines.
Thankfully, winemaker Rebecca Willson has come up with the goods, delivering a couple of fine, rich, multi-layered dry reds that would grace any dining table on any occasion.
What really surprised me, though, was that they had been sealed with cork and sent me scurrying through my top drawer searching for a little-any-longer-used corkscrew — and inevitably on the search also for a hint of cork taint or some sign of random oxidation.
I certainly found no sign of the former, but the latter is a pretty insidious beast at low levels and, unless you’ve been privy to the wine in tank and barrel, you’re always a bit unsure about whether you’re drinking the wine in exactly the condition that the winemaker intended.
To me, the closures represented a retrograde step that harked of the notion that screwcaps were fine for your average wine, but that cork should be set aside for the very best wines.
That belief, I think, is nonsense.
WINE REVIEWS
Robert Stein 2017 Semillon Riesling Gewurztraminer ($18): Gewurztraminer was included in one of the winery’s traditional blends to add some zip, and the move has worked for winemaker Jacob Stein. The wine is crisp and refreshing, and great for Asian-style food, but still retains plenty of complex texture from wild-yeast fermentation of unclarified juice.
Robert Stein 2017 Shiraz Nouveau ($30): When a Mudgee producer talks about producing a slightly lighter style of red, do remember that he or she is starting from a heftier baseline than most. I do like the way that the traditional tannins have been softened, though, while retaining much of the variety’s charming flavour.
WINE OF THE WEEK
Bremerton 2014 Old Adam Shiraz ($56): Langhorne Creek, near the mouth of the once-great Murray River, continues to often fly under the radar when it comes to considering South Australian red wine, but as Wolf Blass discovered many years ago, the area can produce some very handy stuff indeed. This has everything you’d expect for the price — rich concentrated fruit flavours, classy oak and, above all, balance. Reserve it for some very good beef.
