As lovers of all things Syrah, we have to admit that our access to good bottles from Australia often feels limited. So when we had a chance to pick up a bottle of Penfolds Bin 28 Shiraz, with grapes sourced from all over the country (with a Barossa Valley dominance), we had to give it a try.
A hot climate Shiraz with characteristic flavors of the region? We're in for that.
Whenever we have dessert Muscats, they're often quite young, fresh, and vibrant.
Yalumba in Australia makes one that is a bit different as it comes with a great deal of age on it (at least 10 years, per the label). While this bottle itself is non-vintage such that we do not know its exact age, what it does come with is an impressive complexity of flavors that age provides.
Paired with a robust dessert, like miso cheesecake, and we enjoyed the bottle even more.
19 Crimes is a large wine brand from Australia known for producing large volumes of wine and unique collaborations.
The name 19 Crimes comes from the list of crimes that would get you exiled from Britain and sent to Australia, and most of the core line features one of the crimes on its label.
We picked up a bottle of 19 Crimes Cabernet Sauvignon to see what it was all about and found it to be an easy-drinking wine, albeit a bit too heavy on the oak notes for our personal taste.
We always have a soft spot to try orange wines as they typically offer a unique flavor profile that is a bit unlike anything else you can find. Throw in the fact that they can often be made of grapes (or blends of grapes) that are a bit more unusual to see and in some cases even fermented naturally, there really is a lot to love.
Smallfry's Tangerine Dream is one such bottle as it is a skin contacted white wine from the Barossa Valley of Australia made with Semillon, Pedro Ximenez, Riesling, Rousillon, and Muscat and offered some delightful flavors.
Normally when you think of Australian Shiraz, you think of big, bold reds with intense flavors.
Shaw + Smith took a bit of a different approach with their Adelaide Hills Shiraz as the cooler climate in this region produced a much more delicate wine that was reminiscent more like a Pinot Noir and Grenache over its bolder Shiraz counterpart.
So if you are into something just a bit different for this grape (particularly lighter characteristics), this one is for you.
If you've ever looked at our wine map and thought our sampling of Australian wine was limited, well there is a reason for that- finding interesting Australian wine in the USA is, in our local stores at least, not so great.
But we still pursue these wines all the same, and every so often we find a gem that makes us really want to explore Australia more. Ashbrook Estate's Verdelho from the Margaret River was one such wine, and as soon as we finished this bottle we really wished we had another to open right away.
When we normally think of Semillon, we often think of the botrytized wine it produces in regions like Sauternes in France.
But this grape is also known to make some pretty stellar conventional dry white wines, especially from regions like Hunter Valley in Australia. Naturally, we had to pick up a bottle of Silkman's blackberry Vineyard Semillon to try just that and thought it made for a rather interesting glass!
If any easy-drinking Cabernet Sauvignon is what you seek, look no further than the Howard Park Cabernet from Australia. This fruit-forward, low-tannin Cab will likely go down quick!
Normally when we try a Shiraz, we expect a full-body, fairly tannic wine. But the Torbreck Woodcutter's Shiraz 2018 from Australia was actually a bit less intense in both of those categories and actually caught us by surprise!