BoozeMonkey – Page 2 – Cabernet, Riesling, Pinot or Shiraz… more great wine than you can shake a stick at!

2013 Logan Shiraz

If you’re fond of a good Shiraz, grab yourself a bottle of the 2013 Logan from Orange in the NSW Central Ranges – 2013 was a great year for Shiraz out there, and this one from Peter Logan is a particular stand-out.

Medium-bodied and full of cool-climate, red-berry flavours and spice, it’s a great example of what can come out of high-altitude regions like Orange, and particularly so in the hands of winemakers like Peter who is a more than dab hand with this particular variety.

“It’s exactly what I want from our Shiraz,” he says, adding that the variety all but makes itself in the vineyard.

“It requires minimal intervention in the winery, and is fairly consistent year-in-year-out,” he says.

“The optimal result is a wine like this one that’s a straight-up delivery of the succulent, red fruits and the spice of cold-climate, high-country Shiraz.”

This wine has a lovely, soft, mouth-filling texture and makes for a great companion at this time of year with a hearty beef pie.

McGuigan Bin Series 9000 Semillon

We’ve long sung the praises of Neil McGuigan as the Master of Semillon in the Hunter Valley, a region itself renowned as amongst the world’s finest for production of this easy-drinking varietal.

And while he’s done it again with his 2014 McGuigan Bin Series 9000 Semillon, it wasn’t all plain-sailing: dry and cool conditions began the growing season, followed by an extreme heatwave as harvest started, and then regular rain.

Despite it all, Neil came through with a great Semillon which is suitable for cellaring, but if you can’t wait, pull the cork now and enjoy with a grilled seafood platter.

Katnook Prodigy Shiraz 2010

It’s $100 a bottle now, and its best recommended drinking time is 40 years away in 2055, yet it has already garnered enough local and international awards and accolades to fill all of this column, leaving us no space to talk about the wine itself.

We’re writing of the from a vintage lauded as one of the finest on record in Coonawarra, and with the wine made from small selections of vines renowned for consistently producing fruit of outstanding depth of flavour, exceptional colour and firm tannin structures.

Senior Viticulturist, Chris Brodie used hand-pruning, bunch-thinning and shoot-removal techniques to get the very best fruit off these already low-yielding vines, with Winemaker, Wayne Stehbens then employing small-batch vinification in open fermenters, basket-pressing, and maturation in French and American oak barriques for just over two years.

All this resulted in a wine of intense raspberry and plum aromas, marvellous pure-fruit flavours, and with underlying licorice spice and finely-grained tannins. There’s no way we could hold off for 40 years, and reckon any time will be right to enjoy this one simply on its own with close family or good friends – in front of a winter’s fire now, or maybe in the sun on the balcony come Spring.