Your weekly wine update by David Ellis from vintnews
Cabernet Merlot is one of the world’s classic red wine blends, the two varieties coming together perfectly as a match for a diversity of meat dishes, as well as with many pastas and good cheese platters.
Forester Estate in Western Australia’s Margaret River currently has a moreish 2012 blend whose 54% gutsier, tannic Cabernet Sauvignon is nicely softened by a 36% softer and more-supple Merlot, and a 6% touch of Petit Verdot, 2% Malbec and 2% Cabernet Franc. It’s resulted in a wine that gives a rewarding palate of currants, blackberries and red berry fruits, together with notes of chocolate (cocoa,) coffee crème and underlying cedar oak from 18 months in small French oak barriques.
An ideal buy-now-drink-now red, this one will develop nicely over the next three to five years; if you can’t wait that long, pay $24 and enjoy with most meat dishes – our favourite being with a roast leg of lamb as we loyally did on Australia Day - or with well-sauced pastas or a cheese platter.
Watch this one: The Clare Valley’s Tim Adams has released a mouth-filling 2014 Riesling that’s got ‘seafood’ written all over it with wonderfully Clare lime and lemon flavours that dominate the palate, and coupled with nicely balanced acidity.
Tim included fruit in this one from a couple of vineyards new to the label – one is Skilly Ridge that Tim and wife Pam bought in January 2014 after the death of Clarke Ingham who ran the vineyard and a cellar door with his wife Bev for many years, earning themselves in that time a well-deserved reputation for their Riesling.
The other is at Penwortham some 500m up in the Clare and run by the Morrison family who have also been producing stand-out Riesling fruit for many years, and whom Tim’s contracted to supply him into the foreseeable future. Pay $20 and enjoy this 2014 Tim Adams Riesling with all forms of hot or cold seafoods, or if not into seafood with barbecued pork or chicken.
