Roam

Well once again I've been sucked in... This time by a name with obvious nods towards one of my favourite regions.


2005 Goats do Roam Red Blend, South Africa

None to subtle. But in this goat-eat-goat world of wine marketing, this time it did it's trick. I picked it up, took it home and drank it - and now I'm writing about it. So someone's doing something right out there. But what of the name? Is this South African wine true to it's French aspirations?

Well it's got a nice dark red colour out of the bottle, mid weight, so all seems in order so far.

Moccha, chocolate, pepper, stewed berries, Christmas cake, vanillan oak. OK, not quite typical Cotes du Rhone (lets just say CdR from now), but close enough. Hold on, there's a hint of herbaceousness in there too. Herbaceous? Definitely not CdR teritory. Is the façade crumbling? Time to ask Google I think.

Unsurprisingly I'm not the only one to go down this path. The French did so a few years ago. Questioning the CdR links that is, not asking google.

For me though, it's pretty close to the CdR style, even if it's not exact. The pallet is just as agreeable, with more Christmas cake, stewed berry fruit, chocolate, tobacco, complex herbaceous, forest floor tones. True to style or not, it's still rather nice.

The only drawback would be it being slightly thin and warm on the finish, probably due to the %14 alcohol. Nothing to detract from the enjoyment really, especially if you're enjoying with food.

So at a whisker over $16, I'd be happy to spend $20-$25 for this one. Well done goat people.



Note.
I was a little surprised at the herbaceous and forest floor characters, so after a bit of research I found that this blend has %20 Pinotage. South Africa's flagship grape, Pinotage is a cross between Pinot Noir and Cinsaut, which could explain these characters. I'm also pretty sure that no Pinotage is used in the South of France...

Distance Equals Rate Times Time

Good to see a bit of age creeping into the cheap-seat category. Or perhaps that's why it's cheap - dump and run.

If it's the former, we may be the winners here. One of the quotes gleaned about from other internet sites is "Spain's answer to Châteauneuf-du-Pape" which goes a long way towards explaining why I was so taken by it initially - and as we all know; if it's on the internet, it must be true.

I wrote down quite a bit about this wine. Lot's of good wine descriptors like dark chocolate, plumb, stewy fruit, christmas cake, dusty, cherry, coconut, cigar, cedar - I was clearly enjoying the 'nose'.


2004 Equis Red Blend, Vinos de la Tierra de Castilla, Spain

But I was let down in the palate division: tanic, astringent, sweet cherry berry (that's the good bit), clingy finish, high tannins but short finish. In my notes I've got in capital letters at the bottom:

"PROMISED SO MUCH, FINISH LET IT DOWN".

So with that I'm going to go with the dump and run prognosis. Perhaps this was a great wine a few years ago - the nose would certainly attest to that. But it's fallen on hard times and at $17, I think it's on the money.

Badfish

We've tried a lot of Pinot Grigios over the past few months. I guess because they offer an opportunity for good quality at a low price because it's not really an 'in demand' trendy gape, and it doesn't require a lot of difficult & expensive winemaking treatments to make it a nice drop.

But it can also expose some lazy winemaking. The Fisheye Pinot Grigio is a good example here. The best thing about it I think is my photo (I quite like it!).


2007 Fish Eye Pinot Grigio, California, USA.

Light on the nose, with a hint of lemon, it was thin with a slight herbaciousness. A slight spritzyness either meant it was a bad bottle or a bad wine. It had a decent acid finish, but not much else going for it. So I'm going to revisit this wine.

Stay tuned for a re-test.

Ends

I guess this one bucks the trend somewhat. Or does it?

It's a $21 red. So not bargain basement cheap, but I used to quaff 15 year old reds with pizza on a Tuesday night, so I'm entitled to upping the budget a little every now and then, aren't I? Anyway, this was intended to be drunk at a friends place, but the new year wellness issues meant we drank it at home one night.

So with that it's an appropriate wine to open up the dialogue again - it was one of the wines we had (but didn't drink) when we were sick, and it's called "THE PROCRASTINATOR", and I haven't posted for some weeks now (of course I have very good reasons).

Anyway, enough preamble, what are we up for?

As I said, it's a $20 plus bottle of red from one of my favourite regions, McLaren Vale. A Cab Franc/Cab Sauv blend we're looking at a veritable summer fruit-bowl of berry, cherry and raspberry bonded with earthy herbaceous tones, chocolate, tobacco, desiccated coconut. It's one of those wines that is easy to write about - so many flavours popping out of the glass.

After taking the first mouthful I was thinking "is this good because I've been tasting cheap(er) wine for so long, or because it's just darn good?" Smooth, integrated flavours, toasty oak, berries, spicy, white pepper, as I said it makes writing about it easy. With tannins s o smooth I couldn't believe that this was a 2007 red. I'm starting to question this cheap-wine philosophy - is this wine an anomaly or can $5-$10 really make such a difference? I guess you can look at it a different way: It's 40% more expensive than a $15 bottle, but the flavour is many times more. Investment = wise, when you can afford it.


2007 Wits End "The Procrastinator" Cabernet Franc Cabernet Sauvignon, McLaren Vale, Australia

To cap it off, If you want to have a great night, not just a good night, it's worth spending that extra $5 or so - wisely of course. My vote is I'd be happy to hand over $30 for this $21 bottle.

Bingo!

Just a Test

Hi all. Once again I'm here to apologise.

I've been rather ill for the past few weeks - what timing, I was in bed at 8pm on New Years Eve, and that was only because I had to stay up to put my son to bed...
Anyway, fully on the road to recovery now, so you will see a few more reviews up over the coming weeks as I work through my backlog of notes. As such, no glowing reviews of stellar champagnes supped to bring in the new year unfortunately. That's one wine genre you really don't want to skimp on though, but that's a whole new entry there.

A few reports have been trickling back to me that people are having difficulty viewing the blog after the last post, so I'm hoping this may 'reset' things and all will be viewable again. Send me a comment if you're still having trouble viewing the entries. Hold on, that's not going to work.

Oh, we've also had a disagreement with our ISP as well and as such are in the process of changing. We'll be off the air until Tuesday, so it will be at least then until the next review. I'm sure we'll be a lot more content with our internet service as a result though.

A belated happy new year to all!