A subscriber wrote and asked if we’d come across this wine, which we haven’t. John wondered if we’d come across this wine, which he’d already bought a 6-pack of at Graysonline, on the basis of a strong review in Winestate. ‘Well made wine,’ John wrote. ‘Mouth puckering fruit bomb, OK if you like that style. I’ll stay with the Sicilian jobs which are food friendly.’
I was curious to see what other reviewers said about the wine, because Tash Mooney the winemaker built a huge following with her E&E Black Pepper Shiraz at Barossa Valley Estate years ago. So I had a look around, and here’s what I found:
From Tony Love, Adelaide Advertiser
The front-end power here suggests you might be in for a Klitschko-Leapai-like taste test from this Sicilian red, but it’s all bluff, with a mountain of dark, sweet spices adding top notes to rich, blackskinned plums and cherries, their juices mingling with blackcurrant syrup for a sweet core kept solid with a structured yet supple backbone. Big meats will benefit immensely. 4.5 out of 5 stars ‘A cut above’. Value: Fantastic. Wine of the Week.
Here’s a confronting bastard of a drink. First sniff’s as raw and brutal as Russell Crowe’s Hando in Romper Stomper, mainly because you probably haven’t smelled anything quite like it before. Give yourself a coupla acclimatisers, and Hando transforms into Earl Driscoll, Rusty’s horsetraining character in Hammers Over The Anvil, eyeing off the ravishing Charlotte Rampling in the stable and riding horses naked in the dam.
You want vegetal reflections? Think fresh lightning in the pines: all those split trunks and singed needles. Think soft licorice, prunes, dried apple and kalamata. But that’s nowhere near portraying its intense angular palate, its brash, raw edginess.
While you’re hoping it puts the gun down before its nerves squeeze the trigger you’ll have a flash of regret that you didn’t already drink lots of it with someone you shouldna been seen with. This is a stunning explosion of a wine from the canny Tash Mooney, using fruit from Caj Amadio’s front-running vineyard on the cool banks of the South Para Reservoir … alarming in its savage beauty: drink it before it shaves. 94 points.
From Gary Walsh, Winefront:
Sweet black jellybean, in fact, a whole bucket of them, then a bit of cherry syrup. Medium bodied, again, jubey cough-syrup like blackcurrant and cherry with a little molasses. Despite all that, acidity and fine grippy tannin keeps it all fairly trim and ship shape. Good juicy fun. 89 points.
I sent John the review from Philip White, which he called amusing. I thought it read like a sketch for a movie script, but then Philip is without question the dramatist of the Australian wine business. John’s next email was a bit more down to earth:
Had another taste with the evening meal. It’s ham-fisted, overstated, vulgar, lolly-candied like bad Barossa Grenache. Once you get past the scented fruit, smelling like cheap perfume on a cheap tart, there’s nothing there. It’s all bangs and whistles. Sorry I bought 6 bottles. I am going back to my Mafia plonk from Palermo.
That’s wine for you. There’s the poetry, the drama, and then there’s the reality of someone who’s bought a front row ticket for the show. For what it’s worth, I’m immensely entertained by Philip White’s musings, but Gary Walsh is the reviewer I find myself in agreement with almost all of the time. In his own words, I think he says pretty much what John says: It’s a fruit bomb with lipstick and perfume.
Kim