Almost an apology to Australia - Jacob's Creek Reserve Cab

Just last month I was somewhat unkind to the Australian wine industry in my post about Parson's Paddock Cabernet Sauvignon . I denigrated the quality of the Ozzie reds in the $15 range and swore not to darken their door with my dollars in the future, however this month I must recant, although only on a technicality.

For the month of October the BCLDB is discounting, by $2 per bottle, both the Reserve Shiraz, from Barossa, and the Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, Coonawarra, from Jacob's Creek Winery and with the discount that makes the selling price of both these wines $14.99. I will buy these wines, I buy them at their regular price, so I must grudgingly admit that for this month at least Australia are once again playahs in the "under $15" range. In fact I probably owe it to Jacob's Creek to retaste their entry level wines again, they have an abundance of wines in the $10-$13 range that may be worth drinking on a regular basis, but focusing on the Reserve wines let me assure you these are very good wines and at $14.99 represent excellent value and something to buy now for the Christmas season.

I recently had a bottle of the Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, 2009 vintage, from the Coonawarra Valley and it was everything Australian Cabernet should be. Coonawarra is a 24 square kilometre strip on Australia's Limestone Coast situated near the Victoria border, the region is characterized by it's distinctive terra rossa soils and with a cooler harvest season and a climate not dissimilar to Bordeaux, with the ocean only 60km away Coonawarra has long been Australia's premiere site for Cabernet Sauvignon.

The 2009 Reserve Cabernet Cabernet from Jacob's Creek is a deep crimson red in the glass, with hints of purple around the edges, the nose is rich with minty spices, a touch of mocha and plummy, blackberry notes. In the mouth there are more blackberry cassis flavours, some white pepper and a distinctive backnote of black olives, the mouthfill is excellent and the finish is long. The wine is not a typical Oz fruit bomb, there is a healthy level on tannin which means it works well with food and will last another year or two in the bottle. I recall this wine retailing in the $20 range not that long ago so even at it's regular price of $16.99 it represents good value and the discounted price is an absolute steal.

Buy it, the supply isn't great, less than 70 cases available in the province, but you should be able to find some .

So at least for this month ............I'm sorry Australia, you can produce quality wines under $15 retail.

Parson's Paddock Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 - another disappointing Australian Red

I really should know better by now, after being almost consistently disappointed in "entry level" Australian red wines for the past five years I have pretty much stopped trying but hope springs eternal so last week I grabbed a bottle of Parson's Paddock Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 to give it a go with some flank steak. My rationale was that the spice and aromatics in the flank rub would marry well with what I assumed would be a fruity, full flavoured red wine and maybe get the Ausssies off the schneid in the under $15 wine value category that they used to dominate.

For over a decade from the early 1990s on Australia could be counted on for full throttle, big fruit, big flavour reds that could be had in the $11-$13 range, it was easy but then the Aussies started to have too much juice on their hands and the wine world began to be corrupted by the "all fruit all the time" palate of Robert Parker and the penny dropped in Oz. All of a sudden we were deluged with sweet fruit, no acid, unmatchable with food wines often named after animals, a pretty sure method for not selecting a wine I might add . At the same time the vignerons in Chile started to pick up their game and add some complexity to their inexpensive reds. The Argentinians started stocking the international shelves with muscular Malbecs that kicked the crap out of the Aussie fruit bombs, toss in a welcome modernization of the Spanish wine industry and I pretty much stopped buying Australian reds in the $15 range, a policy I'm probably going back to after this most recent disappointment.

The Parson's Paddock is dark purple in colour, with just a hint of crimson around the rim, the nose is full of blackfruits, sweet vanilla and mocha and the mocha-berry combo continues in the taste, which is fine for Cabernet but then it just stops. There is virtually no acidity to balance the wine and so the overall sensation is one of sweet fruit with no counterpoint, so the wine has no chance against the bold flavour of grilled meat, which should be the perfect foil for young Cabernet Sauvignon.

The bottom line is a generic Australian red, with lots of fruit but virtually nothing else to recommend it, there are much better alternatives from Spain, Argentina and Chile in this price range, or lower, so I simply cannot recommend this wine.

Two Argentinean Reds

I hit it lucky the past week with a pair of good value red wines from Argentina. Both wines are currently on sale at the BCLDB, meaning that for a 4 week period their retail price has been reduced, in each case by $2 per bottle. This is a practice, known as LTOs for Limited Time Offering, is used by agents to create interest in their wines, sometimes just to get the brand noticed, sometimes in order to reach sales quotas required to keep the brand listed. Often this practice seems futile to me, I mean is a $1 discount on a $25 bottle going to make me buy it ? Unlikely.

In the case of these two wines the discounts did drive my purchase, for different reasons. In one case it brought a known quantity into everyday drinking range, and in the other case it dropped the wine into I'll take a chance range. The first wine is the Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon from the Don David range of wines, the third of five tiers of wines Bodegas El Esteco in the Cafayette region of Argentina, way up high. This wine is a consistent value at it's regular retail of $15.99 but when placed on sale becomes perfectly affordable for everyday quaffing.

The wine is robust and typically Cabernet with black fruits and cocoa in the nose and a distinct note of smoked meat and peppers, the flavours are rich, this is new world fruit driven cab, but there is enough tannin to keep things in check and complement red meats. I opened this 30 minutes before dinner and served it with a roasted striploin of beef, it was a delicious combination. I will likely buy a half dozen bottles of this before the sale price ends to keep on hand for better dinners, and hope it goes back on sale when grill season arrives, it is perfect burger wine.

 

Next up was the I'll take a chance wine, the Reserva Syrah from Santa Julia. Santa Julia is one of the ranges of the massive Familia Zuccardi winery, Argentina's third largest, and is produced in the dry, lower altitude area of Mendoza. Generally I'm not likely to spend $15 on a "Reserva" from a big box winery but the $2 discount swayed me and we tried this with pizza with happy results, the wine is full bodied with lots of herbs, pepper and red fruits in the profile. There is a fresh acidity to it that would limit it's ageability but made it a nice match with the tomato, cheese, mushroom, salami combo on the pizza.  

Unfortunately this wine is in limited supply, less than 400 bottles in the province, so I fear the discount may be for the purpose of removing any stocks prior to delisting. If you see it on a shelf at the current retail of $12.99 I'd recommend grabbing a bottle or two.

So, in summation, I had good fortune with a couple of discounted wines, one new and one already a fave. I generally use the discounts to buy wines I'm already familiar with but looking back over past tasting notes I've discovered that a number of wines that are currently in rotation on our table got their start as LTOs so I guess the discounting works. I guess the lesson is to pay attention to those sale tags when you're shopping in government stores and you may be pleasantly surprised.