Zinfandel

Two weeks ago I mentioned that my daughter recently told me that I had begun to repeat stories within a short space of time. Sorry to repeat that so soon. On the theme of repetition, I try to avoid choosing wines each week that I have chosen before and, therefore, I was reluctant to pick a Zinfandel for Week Z. I haven't had this Zinfandel before, but I have had a couple of them previously, more if you count the Primitivos which I have repeatedly explained are the same grape. I think my daughter has a point. As stories are the focus for the week we have:

Week Z (2021) 1000 Stories Zinfandel, 2018. £15 Tesco

On opening this bottle my first impression was that the colour was slightly less dense than I had expected, being mostly ruby with a few garnet hints. It smelled of rich fruits, somewhere between blackberry and black cherry and there was something herbal there, too.

On tasting it, I was again surprised that it wasn't as heavy or full as I expected, but more easily drinkable with a medium body. The alcohol, labeled at 14.5%, was not obvious and the tannins came out most in the finish when they showed their grip.

The producer says that old bourbon barrels are used for the maturation as when he began making wine French oak was had to come by, probably because it is made in California. He has stuck to this approach and credits those barrels with giving the wine some caramel, vanilla and herbal flavours. I thought I detected some tobacco, herbs (thyme?) and licorice on first tasting and, as I still have half a bottle waiting for tonight's Wimbledon / Euro 2020 editions, I will be interested to see what I think on the second lap.

I doubt you will be.

On that note, as I have said before (see the theme?), I doubt you are even reading this, however, recently I have been mildly surprised and a little bemused by the addition of readers' comments against a post I wrote in November 2015 on Merlot.  There are six of them, five of which have appeared in the last month, nearly six years after publication. I suspect they are either written by bots, or by otherwise unemployed students attempting to direct traffic to other blogs and websites (all the comments have links), or by aspirant influencers. Readership, according to Blogger stats, also appears to come from unexpected places: Russia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, for example. Perhaps someone thinks I could help to rig an election? Whatever the reason, you are welcome.

Buy again? Probably.

Yenda

Yenda is a town in The Riverina, a large irrigated agricultural area in New South Wales close to the confluence of the Murray and Murrmbidgee rivers, of only 1,503 people (as of the census in 2011). It is notable as the location of the headquarters of Australia's largest family-owned wine company which produces an almost unimaginable quantity of wine, sold under a number of well-known brands; Casella Family Brands.

Yellow Tail claims to be the 'most loved brand in the world' for the third year in a a row and has been producing wine since 2001. By 2013 they had bottled 1 billion bottles, using the bottling plant installed in 2006 that is capable of filling 36,000 bottles per hour! Yellow Tail is available in over 50 countries and represents the biggest wine export from Australia.

Week Y (2021) Yellow Tail Pinot Grigio 2020. £7 Tesco 

We know from the statistics above that this is a wine deliberately aimed at the mass market. It is cheap. I paid £7, but had I had a Tesco Clubcard I could have saved another £1. No loyalty card required to pay the same at Asda.

But is it any good?

I have typed before that I try to keep an open mind and I admit to having been a bit sniffy about Yellow Tail in the past. So this week I am again testing my prejudices.

One of the attractions of wine, according to many of the people who comment on such things, is that the consumer somehow enjoys the 'sense of place' that you get from drinking a good wine. Some would even say that it is this sense of place that makes a wine good. 

I have never been entirely comfortable that I know what a sense of place could possibly taste like. I have come to understand it as an abstract notion meaning the wine / beer / cheese / pork pie in question has something about it that similar products from elsewhere don't have. With beer, cheese and pork pies, all of which I enjoy very much, it is a much simpler decision to make; I like / I don't like this particular pie, piece of cheese, pint of beer. But with wine, because of the potentially extended lifespan of the product throughout which the characteristics of the product may change, it becomes a little trickier. A whole world of analysis and subsequent opinion has grown up across the world of wine. Magazines, books, websites, TV shows and even a plethora of partly informed blogs such as this one lend support to the notion that simply opening and drinking a bottle of wine the consumer isn't putting in enough effort to decide on its merits. S/he should be looking for more.

In this instance it could be argued that the wine doesn't have a sense of place. There are no faults in the wine. It is easy to drink, tastes clean and fruity, is lively and acidic without being tart or sharp, has an obvious sweetness and is inexpensive. It is rather one-dimensional, having no complexity, it is quite light and doesn't leave a lasting impression. If you put in the analytical effort to discover its hidden depths you will most likely be disappointed, as there aren't any.

But. Wait a minute. What is the place this wine comes from like? It is a vast, irrigated region producing very high volumes of acceptable quality foods a drinks. It has been made in a factory-style winery capable of producing more wine than it is feasible to imagine and that, in my opinion, is exactly what it tastes of.

My conclusion is this. I must be honest in my assessment and consider the merits of every wine I try in the context of what it claims to be. There is no point at all in declaring this wine is not as good as the Chablis I recently drank, costing £19.99 a bottle, because it isn't trying to convince me that it is! The Yellow Tail marketing says it is '...a wine brand that is easy to drink and delivers consistent quality, taste and value' and I think it does that. I don't particularly like it, but if I buy it again I am sure I will know what to expect. 

Any way you choose to look at it Casella Family Brands is a success story. If you don't like Yellow Tail, try Peter Lehmann from the Barossa Valley, Morris of Rutherglen or Bailey's of Glenrowan in Victoria as they, and others, are all now in the family. Not bad for a a Sicilian couple who emigrated to Australia in 1957, bought a farm in 1965 and started making wine in 1969. That's a little over 50 years to become Australia's largest wine exporter, so they must be doing something right.

X - Too Hard

I did look but, as I have already had a Xinomavro and couldn't think of another X, this week I am indulging a little nostalgia as I stumbled across a tenuous souvenir of our honeymoon.

We didn't, as far as I can recall, have this week's wine whilst we were there but we did visit the vinery where it was made. So:

Week X (2021) Spier Cabernet Sauvignon. Waitrose £8.99 

We recently greatly enjoyed a visit from our first grandchild who was, as you might expect, accompanied by his mother. During her visit she commented that I had started to do what grandparents do and tell the same story more than once within a short space of time. I am aware that I have mentioned previously that our honeymoon took us to South Africa although I can't remember when I did that. Another sign of impending age-related decline, I suppose.

It matters not. You aren't reading this anyway. 

Our visit to Spier came towards the end of our trip, on our way back to Cape Town and the long flight home. It was one of the best days of a holiday that included many such best days, this one memorable for the food, the entertainment and particularly the time spent in the cheetah sanctuary. This was all 14 years ago and I have read that the sanctuary has moved to a farm some twenty miles away. I don't know why, although I am glad that the work we saw going on to help this threatened species continues. 

With or without the big cats I am sure that the Spier estate would still be worth a visit. They have been making wine for over 300 years and this Cabernet Sauvignon is from their 'Signature' range.

To start at the end, I really enjoyed drinking this. It had body, structure and flavour in a nice balance and delivered black fruits with a bit of spice. There was some complexity and enough acid to match the noticeable tannin.

The vines from which the fruit was picked are between 9 and 20 years old and grown on the farm which is about 40 miles from the Atlantic coast, from where the colder air moderates the hot inland temperatures giving ideal ripening conditions. Around 20% of the wine has gone through malolactic fermentation in 'neutral' French oak and the other 80% treated in stainless steel with French oak staves. I imagine this is partly cost-driven and partly to achieve a balance of freshness and oak-influenced flavour. I may be wrong about that, but the important point is that I like the result.

Buy again? Yes.

As time progresses I may mention Spier again. Just to amuse my daughter, who will never read this.

O'Leary Walker

In 2010 I took my first exam in wines and spirits that had a tasting element. I had read the text books, several times, and made details notes. It was a big step up from level two to level three, but I had put in the work. The thing that bothered me was the tasting exam. Did I have enough experience to correctly describe the sample that would be presented to me? The exam didn't require the candidate to identify the wine by name, but to describe it accurately according to the standard approach to tasting. I think I was lucky. It could have been anything from the syllabus but the examiner had, I think, been kind. One taste, a deep sense of relief; 'Clare Valley Riesling!' Woohoo! It had a big hit of lime flavour and the unmistakable background of Riesling. If you want a wine that shouts its identity then you could scarcely do better than a Riesling from the Clare Valley in South Australia. So this week we have:

Week W (2021) O'Leary Walker Polish Hill River Riesling, 2019. £12.99 Waitrose.

This is pretty much exactly as expected, although my two tasting companions had very differing views. One didn't like it at all, having previously declared a dislike for Riesling, and the other described it as 'delicious' but disagreed with my assertion that the dominant flavour was of lime.

Being a gentleman I didn't argue the point, but my own opinion was that it most definitely tasted strongly of that particular citrus fruit. In fact, to be critical, I don't think it tasted of much else and that is a little disappointing. Unlike the first of my co-tasters, who was very pleased with her glass of Pinot Grigio (see Week I (2021)), I do like Riesling and had hoped for a little more of the defining flavours from the grape than appeared in the glass. On the nose, as wine bores and horsey people often say but for different reasons, there were signs of Riesling but they were not detectable to my probably tired and ageing palate.

Having said that, it wasn't bland and had bags of flavour. It's just the bags were all full of lime. It makes a welcome change from all of those white wines that can best be described as tasting like white wine, but it isn't something I will buy very often as I quite like a slightly more restrained and less acidic fruit in my salad.