Branding is a funny thing. Or should I say, my mind is a strange place? After seven and a half years I find that I still need to follow some form of rules to help me select a wine of the week. I doubt anyone has read much of this blog and indeed being read was never its primary purpose. Its primary purpose was to be written in order to give me an incentive to keep trying and considering different wines, from as many places and producers as is reasonable. I know from experience, and as evidenced by the sometimes very lengthy gaps between posts, that if I let this discipline slide and I get out of routine then I lose touch with why I started in the first place.
Week J (2021) Jip Jip Rocks Shirzaz. Padthaway 2019. Waitrose £11.99
What is the significance of this selection, given this week's opening paragraph, I hear no-one other than me ask? It is because that I went out expecting to buy a bottle of Julienas (I did once know how to insert the acute accent), the Beajoulais Cru made from Gamay, but couldn't find any. I like to rely on a formal appellation name on those occasions when I can't find a wine made from a grape whose name begins with the week's letter. It was as I scanned the www (that's Waitrose Wine Wall, not the other thing) feeling slightly disappointed that mentally I caught sight of myself in my internal mirror. What a strange man, I thought.
If J can be for Julienas, why not Jip Jip Rocks? Julieans is after all just a French village and Jip Jip Rocks, according to the back label on the bottle, are 'a striking outcrop of 350 million year old pink-red granite, which are sacred in Aboriginal beliefs', which feels rather more worthy. In any case (despite Waitrose offering 25% discount on purchases of six or more bottles costing more than £5, I didn't buy a case), whatever tenuous connection there may be between the letter of the week and the wine of the week it is not important. The final selection of the bottle is of less significance than the search for it, and it is that is the purpose I set myself. Village names are brands, based on location amongst other things, and this wine is branded with a location. One that I suspect has little to do with the wine itself, but it has helped me choose a wine from Padthaway and I have not done that before. So well done me.
Having got all of that nonsense of my chest, let's find out what this wine is actually like. There are several regions in South Australia that have a reputation for producing great wines based on particular grapes: Clare Valley Riesling, Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon, Barossa Shiraz, all being famous examples. Padthaway is a reasonably close neighbour to Coonawarra, in the Limestone Coast region which is further south of Adelaide than many of the well-known vineyards, and like it's neighbour has a reputation for both reds from Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz and also great whites from Chardonnay. More than half of the vineyards in Padthaway are given over to red grapes and there is about 50% more Shiraz than Cabernet, making it about a third of all the fruit grown.
I don't claim to have particularly strong blind tasting skills, but if you had asked me to taste this and then told me it was a Shiraz from South Australia I would not have fallen off my chair in surprise. It is intensely flavoured with black fruits and peppery spices, has enough acidity to stop the fruit being jammy, smooth but noticeable tannin and well-integrated alcohol even at 14.5%. It is packaged in a big heavy bottle, which is something of questionable merit in these more eco-sensitive days, that gives the impression that the wine could reasonably spend a few years allowing the fruit, alcohol, tannin and acid to work some magic. I'll never know if that is a correct assumption as half of it has already gone and the other half would be well advised to get its affairs in order.
Would I buy again? Yes, because this gives the impression that the winemaker knows exactly how it will end up and if the occasion calls for a big well-priced Shiraz I would trust that's what I would get.
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