The City of Oxford was a paddle steamer that plied its trade up and down the Murray River until one day during a storm that raged across South Australia, it came to grief. One piece of wreckage was washed up on the banks of the river near to the site where vines for wine grapes were recently planted. This week's wine is named in honour of that unfortunate vessel:
I have tasted this wine before as I included it in my selection of wines to illustrate the range of styles that are produced across South Australia, and the little introduction above reflects the blather I delivered to cover the silence between tasting and evaluation on that occasion. That was seven years ago this month and, apart from the label, nothing much has changed. It is a well flavoured wine with a blend of stone fruits, tropical fruits and a bit of citrus. It doesn't pretend to be competing with white burgundy, Chablis, or any other classic Chardonnays but it remains good value, easy to drink and enjoyable.
Compared to the 2014 tasting, which was of the 2013 vintage, this wine is a tad more acidic in terms of pH value, but has marginally less total acid per litre. Curious that, and I can't explain that little paradox. Both wines were 13% abv and both the weather conditions and winemaking processes are described similarly in the maker's technical notes.
This all fits the profile of a wine that is made to be consistent, year-on-year, as it is aimed at a market that expects Oxford Landing Chardonnay to taste like Oxford Landing Chardonnay and has little interest in the potential variations that wine geeks choose to find fascinating.
I find myself short of much more to say about it so I will jump to the end. Would I buy it again? Yes, mostly because it is very good value if what is required is a white wine for slurping with friends, probably in a casual party kind of way.
Seven years ago I paid £7.99 for a bottle at Majestic. I expect I bought it with other wines to get the 'mix six' price. This year I bought the same wine for £1.30 less. Inflation has been low in the time between the two transactions, but there has been some. Wine Duty has increased, too, so a 16% reduction seems like a bargain. The Aussie dollar was worth about 54p in 2014 and is the same today and so the difference isn't about currency fluctuations. I shall, therefore, simply be grateful.
It also makes me think that this would be a good time to go back down under, which would be nice, assuming that the pandemic doesn't kick off again. How can that be made to happen? Hmmm,....
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