Burge Family Winemakers Mourvedre Grenache 2010

Let's be clear here, we are talking about wine made by the Barossan Burge who still makes all his own wine, and his name is Rick. The other Burge winemaker is Grant, they are cousins and their wineries are close, but their wines have far less in common than the winery name might lead you to erroneously assume.

Rick makes his wines in a quite refined somewhat old world style. Of course he's making them with good Aussie new world fruit, so we get the best of both worlds.

There's a lovely balance and poise to this wine. It's one of those slurpers that you try to roll around on the back of your tongue for a few milliseconds more, just to make sure you've got all the good stuff coating yer buds. And then you suck on the insides of your cheeks because you don't have any taste buds there. After that you lick yer gums, for obvious reasons.

As a bit of a Mourvedre fan, I'm rather pleased to say it's a little different to every other Mataro I've met, but in an interesting way. Perhaps it's mis-labelled and it's got Monastrell in it instead?

As not much of a Grenache fan, I'm also very pleased to say there ain't no raspberries in here. This Rick fellow seems to know his vines.

Savoury yet fruit driven, voluptuously slinky, balanced and with a long future should the cork gods be on your side. Roughly 60/40 dry grown Mourv and Grenache, that lived in old oak for 22 months.
Highly Recommended++ and *****



Slight rant on the cork, I hate them, a lot. However, Rick is one of the few who at least attempt to replace wines with the same vintage should you suffer cork problems, which is extremely rare - replacing with same vintage I mean, cork problems are by nature unpredictable. They do keep a decent amount of museum stock, which is not a bad way to buy some well aged wines, especially their Draycott Shiraz.