The giants here & he want a cuddle.

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moikel

Master of the Pit
Original poster
OTBS Member
Jul 26, 2011
3,198
218
Sydney &Greenwell Point Australia
I dropped into Leah's thread with some stuff about what we call durif & you guys call petit syrah.

Having seen Chef JJs post I decided to open a bottle tonight.

I wanted some venison or hare but it was frozen so I went with good old T-bone steak.

I will make a mushroom sauce,roast some royal blue potatoes then make a simple fennel & orange salad.

Durif was planted here because its resistant to powdery mildew,its tough ,doesn't mind the hot weather.It was used in fortifieds ,ports etc mostly out of Rutherglen about 2 hours south of where I grew up.

It became table wine some years back but it leans towards or perhaps careers towards high alcohol. 

It will cellar for years. 

The Master of the Massive is the guy at Warrabilla who is skilled ,uncompromising & a 3rd or 4th generation winemaker. If you don't like the style fine go elsewhere he sells out each year from cellar door or mail-order with no middlemen.

I dug around & found a 2004 its 17.5 % alcohol. 


I put a fair bit in Leah's thread but don't know how to transfer it to this so I will repost some of my earlier stuff.

First thing first is the colour.


Its sort of a purple /black. I will give it 2 hours in the decanter to open up.Hope it doesn't bust right out of the decanter
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"Its about the black phase fruits that develop late in the season" " rows are 4 metres apart ..gives us plenty of light & air to colour,ripen fully ..looking for black/red fruit characters  without shrivel or sunburn" So said the guy who grows the grapes & makes the wine.

Wine writers here struggle with it,hippo in a tutu, impossible to judge by conventional standards etc.

If its balanced its balanced & people should be marvelling at the winemaking & grape growing skill .

Rutherglen isn't the most fashionable place ,I personally love it
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. But I am a country kid at heart from about 2 hours away. They make the countries best fortifieds ,no contest.Tokay,muscat, port. Robert Parker says best in the world. Date back to 1800s.

Table wines are bold ,big no nonsense ,hearty style. We don't need a discussion group we need  glasses ,its a drink lets drink it.

Great shiraz.

The durif is all about black fruit flavours,morello cherry,dark plum,liquorice dark chocolate ,vanilla ,cedar & spice.

I havent tasted it yet. Its about the balance.

T bones an old school cast iron pan,mushroom sauce.Mushrooms,swiss & porcini,garlic,butter,lemon zest,mustard,sherry,cbp ,EVO,thyme.
 
A big part of this is the history. First vines 1850s first Durif 1908 .
This district had phylloxera in the 1890s then it was replanting on American rootstock once upon a time they made 25% of Australia's wine before it became about table wine.
Linda & I will go for a road trip sometime soon. In theory we could drive the 7 hours spend a few days then drive 3 hours put the 4x4 on the ship & go to Tasmania for a few days .
 

Gee thats dark! It was balanced ,it wasn't hot. Linda said "I get really ripe raspberry & plum,like your picking berries & you eat one thats really soft & ripe to late to take home but to good to leave on the bush" No prompting from me.

Thats 10 years old,it could go for years more.Years.

It didn't taste overdone I got those dark chocolate & cherry touches with a bit of spice.The critics say,"alcohol is an anaesthetic & it puts the fruit to sleep" ,kiss my arse
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 this was great. Its a change from our usual but thats a good thing

I had to go with what I  could grab on the way home before the rain started again .


I may have over thought it ,T bone was fine. I could see it with a game dish all day every day but game is a bit different here. Hare or venison or roo. No elk  or moose . 

I will get some water buffalo soon & reload. Water buff shipped here from the tropics, very popular with Nepalese people for starters.

They are wild but started as domestic animals. I will do a pot roast.
 
Holy God Mick, when you do it, you do it!

I am still, mind you, "kvelling" about your ribs (up in the carrousel of the home page's photos, for anyone who hasn't seen this quite salivating art) and am just amazed with your wines and what you just do, with food and flavor and so forth!

The color, is magnificent! And the flavor and structure must also be!

It all looks terrific and your meal does as well! I still ask all around for a bone in rib eye or 'cattleman's cutlet" as to even sample your majestic chopping and serving of food! So far, no dice on that or on Wynn's wines and yet I'm not giving up.

BUT, this was so beautiful! Such a fantastic post! The color even, of the wine, does make me smile!

I learn so much from you and from all here!

Case in point, this is the first time in my life that I have grasped some other "Aussie" wines (this season) other than commercial and mass marketing garbage that is over saturated here. Thank you for introducing me to such better standards from your land! I love this group!

Cheer and happy weekend!!!!!!!!!!!! - Leah
 
The colour was really something & its from 2004! The thing is you get used to drinking/buying the same wines.Shiraz,cabernet & blends based around them. 

You forget there are great grape varieties out there like malbec & durif that have been here for years .

Rutherglen is the place for those sweet fortified wines.

I was at a wine show years back & met the Buller family .Turns out I knew some of their relatives that country town stuff.

They had been on the front cover of the Wine Advocate a few months prior..Robert Parker had featured muscats,tokays etc & called them the top of the heap. 

Well this was a good & bad thing! Before websites so every wine agent in the USA is ringing,faxing & pleading for stock. To the point where these good old boys would disconnect their phone line went they sat down for dinner & reconnect it after breakfast
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.

They had to go to the bank & borrow $ for the extra fancy packaging because thats what was on the cover of magazine & it had to be that. "I told one bloke from New York he would have to wait a month before we could ship & he started to cry! " Mind you even then it was over $ 50 for the premium. "Family been making it since 1921 all of a sudden we are overnight success stories"

This is the second level.

 
Funny what you remember all these years later! Good product is good product regardless of fashion . Those tokay & muscats are great with desert . The low end stuff is predictably terrible rot gut but you get what you pay for.
Winemakers an interesting & diverse group of people bit like the crew here!
 
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