Marius 2018 Harvest

A bit earlier this, last day of harvest was 3/3/18. Yields down on last year, which was fairly high, but this year was around average overall. Weather was perfect. Right, that covers it all I think. Oh, the grapes, well my expert opinion is they are very good, but they are always very good.

Discarded grapes with bunch stem necrosis, this is another reason why hand harvesting results in better wine. Just one of the services we pickers offer you drinkers - we don't do it for free though, see below.

We tasted many great wines. Unfortunately my notes are lacking detail and they are really just to give my first impressions.

 2016 Simpatico Shiraz

The nose on this was tremendous, plums, chocolate, and that unique Marius perfume. Lovely tannin structure and great overall mouthfeel, muscular with perfect balance. This wine shows the excellent growing conditions that year but needs a year or two more I think. Possibly my favourite Simpatico since 2012.

 2016 Symphony Shiraz

A spicier nose than the Simpatico, but a bit more closed overall. This is a tomorrow wine at the moment, open it today but drink it tomorrow. I'd like to spend 48 hours with the wine before making any meaningful claims but my initial guess is this may rank with 2012 as well.

2016 Symposium Shiraz Mourvedre

Happy, happy days! After many years it has returned. The Mataro is from a different vineyard than previous releases, but that was through choice. Roger was wanting to maximize that really earthy, spicey, dried herb character that Mataro can have, and this has it in spades. You'd almost think there is more Mataro than Shiraz in this, despite the label. A stunning wine, as all the 2016's are. This got the same oak treatment as the Symphony, which I expect helps accentuate the spice even more. This special wine even further highlights what a masterful winemaker Roger is. Sorry, it's sold out, I bought it all.







The 2016 wines are not yet released and won't be until around Sept 2018.

Koltz Pagan Shiraz 2014

Suspense be damned, I rated it Excellent+++

I'm always a little hesitant to rate a wine that highly, it leaves no room if I think a future vintage/wine is better. What I can say, with less hesitation, is that the 2014 Pagan leaves me unable to imagine how a wine could actually be any better.

Apart from coming in a Methuselah, and being in my hands, of course.

I tried this over 3 days. If you don't know how the Pagan is made, perhaps refer to here.

Initially, in Pagan terms, I thought the fruit was perhaps a wee bit lighter, and with more noticeable mouth watering delicious morello like acidity, than previous incarnations. This was just during the brief tuning period, where a few hours of air allowed what was already a high quality instrument, to come into complete harmonic resonance and really start to sing.

The really impressive part of the performance for me, is how you taste this wine with your entire chemo-sensory system. I could taste it with the back of my throat, and smell it with the back of my nose. Not an uncommon thing with a single malt scotch, but this is not a monster wine, and in fact it's quite refined with the flavour coming in waves. Not shore break waves either, deep ocean waves that slowly fade to the distance minutes later.

Ironstone, cedar, star anise and a hint of cloves by day 3. A wonderful earthy savoury character around a balanced complex fruit core, the morello acid is still there but blending in so well you really only find it bobbing up occasionally in those big flavour waves.

If I didn't know it was Amarone style I'm not sure I would have picked it as such, it's just so impeccably balanced that nothing stands out. It's actually a hard wine to describe well, yes it's big, and yes it's a sipping wine, but it just gently rocks you, and reminds you life is very, very good.

Rated Excellent+++
$50 RRP (and, genuinely, worth it)

Oh, a few notes on the production for the curious. Dried for 6 weeks in the winery, 100% estate Bewitt Springs fruit, then 21 days ferment, finally aged in 2nd and 3rd use French oak for 22 months.

Koltz DogDay Shiraz 2015

Some people equate the saying "Dog Day" to mean a hot and sultry summer's day. However that's only because it's historically coincidental with summer in the northern hemisphere having the constellation of Canis Major aka Orion's Dog with it's main star Sirius, aka the Dog Star, barely above the horizon at sunrise, thus heralding the Dog Day to come.

The label thus says on Dog Days to expect the unexpected. Dog star or not, I expect that during the summer days of 2015 the signs were this was going to be the Siriusly good wine that it is.

The grapes are mainly from Blewitt Springs, with the remainder from a sand block in McLaren Flat. Open fermented for a coupla weeks and then near a year in mostly old oak, with 10% new oak for some complexity.

A crimson to purple edge, otherwise completely opaque. A nose initially of black cherries, dark chocolate, nutmeg and a hint of sandalwood. There is real power in this wine, even with a sensible 14.5% alc/v, it has simply oodles of fruit flavour that lingers for a long time. A solid backbone of satisfying rustic tannins, the antithesis of so many factory made wines these days. Very slurpable and satisfying indeed.

I tried this bottle over 3 days, and yes that took both willpower and substitution to accomplish. By day 3 the tannins were softening nicely, suggesting perhaps a year to three more cellaring would be of benefit. The power of the wine did not fade either, but the aromas evolved, and by day three I was getting a nice Moroccan tagine overtone.

Rated Highly Recommend++ and ***** value at $22 RRP

Sellicks Hill Wines Valletta Shiraz (Grenache Mataro) 2010

Tell me this doesn't inspire you to visit Paul at the winery ladies!

This is a new release. Well, it was when I started this review. Yes, it's a 2010, and yes, that was nearly 6 years ago. Did it get lost on the way to the cellar door? Well, I'm sure there's a number of reasons but the main one is that it's now ready.

Paul was previously a fan of the way cork ages his wines, but he was not a fan of the associated problems with taint, random oxidation and their general unreliability. His eventual solution was to leave the wine to age in barrel much longer, which is an economically risky and difficult plan. It's something the big wineries simply cannot even contemplate, since whilst it results in a more developed wine it's costly to store wine and in the meantime you're not getting paid for it. However, for us consumers it means we get a wine far more developed than usual, and in the case of blended wines they can be more perfectly balanced.

This is predominantly Shiraz at 85%, with about 10% Grenache and 5% Mataro blended in for that better balance. Tasting it, I suspect most people would not pick it as anything but Shiraz. Full bodied, savoury and plush, with more complexity and sexiness than the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders explaining quantum mechanics. It's only real fault is it comes in a measly 750ml bottle, when clearly a magnum is the minimum required.

It doesn't need aging, but will reward it, and give it some air before drinking in the short term.

Rated: I love it / 96++ / Excellent
VFM *****

Koltz 2014 Estate Shiraz

I opened this just after the Pagan. A bit unfair probably, but then again it's far from out of place alongside it's older brother. I'd like to think I can taste the same vineyard, albeit different years and styles, in these wines. I'll never be sure until someone tests me with an options game, though I'm usually sitting out early anyway.

I'm actually writing this on day 2, it's not so much that the wine needed to breathe a day, but I was sure it wasn't going to hurt it, and indeed the opposite is true.

Quintessential McVale Shiraz but with a fair bit of Koltz terroir for interest. Sexy nose, cacao powdery tannin, plummy rich fruit, black olives, shiitake, and a lick of ironstone all in one glass. The length is very good, and the balance rock solid. It could use a wee bit more time in the bottle for those tannins to soften a bit more, probably 2-3 years, but the why-wait generation will find it drinkable now, and the why-hurry crew will be rewarded in 10 years.

Like The Pagan and The Wizard these Koltz Shiraz are high on the genuine VFM chart. I could easily drink it by the case load.

Rated: Highly Recommended++ / 94
Value: *****

28/09/2015 There is a current The Pagan 2013 release special which includes this wine, those slow to find this page will have missed out.

Koltz Pagan Shiraz 2013

I had a pretty much perfect introduction to the Koltz Pagan, with my first tasting being a decadent vertical, culminating in the impressive 2012. My wine enlightenment journey continues with the new 2013 release.

I do admit to initially having a little trouble getting my taste buds to understand the Amarone style. It tricks the palate, there's overtones of late picked but it's not cloyingly sweet. That's because it's actually picked a fair bit earlier than most Shiraz would be and then the grapes are dried before fermenting. This method concentrates the fruit flavours, but also captures the natural acid at the correct level.

If you were to pick more normally ripened Shiraz and use that technique, then the wine is going to lack the acid to be balanced. It's a temptation, but a mistake, to let grapes become over-ripe and shrivel on the vine,  the resultant wine so often initially starts out pretending to be rich and opulent, but actually ends up being cloyingly sweet after a while because they have very little acid left. The mistake is sometimes compounded in some wine factories when they add a few buckets of tartaric acid to counter the sweetness.

The acid in this Pagan is succulent, natural, and exceptionally well balanced with the fruit power.

There is a theory that the grapes will continue to develop and ripen even after they've been picked, and during the drying. I assume that they do not develop in the same way that they would if the vine were feeding them, and no doubt there are a lot of complex changes going on besides just drying out. Regardless of the science involved, the result is a wonderfully complex and individual wine.

There are very few wines I make mine mind up on after just a couple of small sips, but after sip #1 I felt an audible "oh wow" was required, and with sip #2 I've made the huge call that this is the best Pagan yet.

Black cherries, leather (also probably black), cedar, nutmeg, and a bunch of other good McVale stuff  combining to give a hard-to-put-the-glass-down mouth filling flavour bomb that reminds you that you've even got taste buds in the back of the throat. Full bodied yet impressively lithe and harmonious. It's only a baby but already clearly a gifted child, who will go on to become exceptional. If you can let it.

Rating: Excellent+++ / 96
Value: *****

PS. Sealed with Diam, which is far more reliable than cork.

Massena Twilight Path 2014

I was a bit unsure exactly what I should expect from a blend of Primitivo (aka Zinfandel), Mataro and Graciano. I know Zin and Shiraz are good mates, and Mataro and Shiraz are good mates, so a friend of my friend is also my friend. Graciano? Well she's Spanish, usually brings tappas to parties, and has flowers in her hair.

Quite a powerful nose of black cherries, a slice of raw ripe strawberry, fresh shiitake mushroom, a scattering of violets, all served on a Bottlebrush wood platter.

It's surprising how easily it can be to get a bottle brush platter. Firstly, you need the water company to come unblock their drain, and whilst doing that also crash into the Bottlebrush tree in front of your house. After they've fled the scene and the tree has indicated by leaning over at 45 degrees, with a split trunk, that it may fall on someone's head or car, you call the council. Three times over 3 days. They eventually send out some poor guy on a Sunday with his chainsaw to fix things. In chatting with the aforementioned chainsaw wielder you notice that Bottlebrush wood is both wonderfully aromatic and quite pretty.

A palate of intense flavours that increased the longer it was open. Vibrant flavours but not acid driven, fruits follow the nose. Silky tannins slide off the tongue and then hang around in the chops, succulent acid leads to a long but more-ish finish. There's good complexity here, the three amigos are melded but you can also taste each one, giving a layered flavour profile, which is not seamless but then that's what makes it an interesting vino.

A sipping wine this, the floral aromatics revisit from the back of your throat and the flavours linger long. Apparently it's designed to be drink now, and whilst yes you can, I have a suspicion it's only going to get better.


Recommended, 92+, price matches quality at $28 RRP

I had with Butter Chicken, which matched very well.

Bought from: Different Drop