Monthly Report - April 2015

A Philippine Eagle – An extremely rare bird now, snapped while in Davao, Philippines

 

Teroldego Tales…

 

Okay folks it is nearly here, the release of our third Teroldego, the 2012.  I am super excited as this may be our best example of the wine and we sort of did everything right that year.  Clive Otto who made the wine feels it provides possibly the best expression of the grape that he has seen from our wines and that is a solid endorsement to the quality.

 

I did have a bit of a discussion on the region where Teroldego is sourced from way way back in 2010 and I will provide the link HERE and from that it is quite apparent that this alpine variety creates quite a different wine in little old Margaret River, but it still seems to keep some of the Italian character.  Due to this mixed “parentage” you cannot expect simple flavors when drinking our Teroldego, it is a mover (and groover as my Uncle Graeme would say), in the glass and you have to love a wine that shapeshifts over time.

 

And with the release due, wines were forwarded to a few wine critics and we have had a fantastic response from a very select bunch!  Here are the two tasting notes that have been published, and in addition Max Allen informed us it is also to be featured in the Gourmet Traveler magazine in May.

 

Wine Front Review - Gary Walsh

I’m pretty tired. It’s pretty late. Yet, there’s nothing quite like a Teroldego to revive the spirits. Amazing to see this grape do so well in coastal climes, but there you have it.

Those nobbly blue ones you find in a box of liquorice all sorts, that’s the main smell, along with meat, hazelnuts, dark chocolate, dark cherries and other manly drawing room kinds of things. Medium to full bodied, all toasted hazelnut rolled in bitter chocolate, shale-like furry tannin and fresh acidity. It’s distinctly Italianate, regardless of it coming from about as far away as you can get from Italy, but never mind: the spirit is true. Finish is rugged, yet precise and ‘minerally’. It’s chunkier, bolder and fleshier than Italian styles, yet delivers the character and charisma of the grape to equal effect. It’s very good. I recommend it unconditionally.

 

Rated : 93 Points
Tasted : Mar15
Alcohol : 14%
Drink : 2014 - 2022+

 

A really good score from Gary, and later in the month Philip White wrote an extremely expressive review which highlights the nature of wine.  I will let you read it below, and I will see you on your return:

 

Blue Poles Margaret River Teroldego 2012;  - Philip White $30; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ pts

 

Having worried this bottle for three days, I think I am beginning to listen to it.

 

Until vigneron/geologist Mark Gifford shyly sent it with a lovely hand-written letter, I had never heard of the variety. Upon opening, it was a tightwad Presbyterian spinster of a thing, exuding not much more than parsimony, sanctimony and piety. Not white and laced and powdered, but black and tanned. What rendered that confusion worse, perversely, was the fact that over those few short days, the Prezzies have gone to the Devil and approved open marriages and the wine seems to have followed them in.

 

Praised be his precious and healing name!

 

After three days it's got the sort of smell that makes one's nostril's twitch, as if coming home to one's wife to detect that wicked fleeting whiff of Zorro having just escaped through the casement. The curtains are still moving; the lass is sitting at the hearth, a little flushed. Patting the dress down.

 

Fanning herself.

 

It's all black satin and grosgrain and boots of Spanish leather. Moustache wax. Black cigar; licorice. Gun blue. Essence of olive leaf. What was that bastard doing in here? Thrashing the missus with a kalamata branch?

 

Reminding myself that it's a drink more than than the paranoid dream of the cuckold, I tip some in there. It's a rapacious, slender, wicked sort of thing, intense and slinky, with the sheen of a black panther, the cat not the cats, with tannin like the lick of its big pink tongue. Never had anything like it.

 

Teroldego, of course, comes from the Tyrol. The Alto Adige, Trentino part of alpine north-eastern Italy, where one can smell the Austrians over the hill. In fact, it smells a little like their Bläufrankisch red wine, with its beetroot and borscht replaced by that rakish whiff of friggin' Zorro.

 

The extent of these mexing of my mitaphors is a good enough indicator of how the damn thing leaves me twitching, wondering whether to say anything or not.

 

I would drink it with grilled cacciatore sausage made from the Tyrolean bear larded with the sparse fat of the wild alpine boar. And then I would get down on my knees and grovel to her. I don't want to smell of that. I want to smell like Zorro.

 

All this confusion comes leavened by the thought that Blue Poles is geologically and vino-spiritually as close as Australia gets to Pomerol and St. Emilion, where I'm sure one can be cuckolded, but I've never smelt Zorro there, yearned for sizzling bear sausage there, or even had the faintest hint of a dream of a drink like this. 

 

Blue Poles makes Merlot and Cabernet Franc and stuff. Probably the best examples in Australia. This red makes them blue-bi-polar. North pole or south? Where's Jackson Pollock when you need him? Oh, of course. He's screaming up and down the Springs-Fireplace Road in the Olds full of liquor with the top down and a coupla lasses. But look at this fine mess he's left us. Right. Yeah. Nah.

 

Does that help?

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