Taste of WA

This week I had the pleasure of tasting some of the best wines from WA at the Taste of Western Australia run by the Wine Industry Association of WA at the Sofitel hotel, Sydney.

The evening began with a bit of an expo of 17 of WA's best wineries from around the region, followed by a Cabernet master class with host and wine writer, Mike Bennie.

My partner in crime and I made our way around the room, tasting as many of the wines as we could while nibbling on some lovely cheese and crackers. As we were sampling prior to a Cabernet master class, I chose to stick with whites for most of the tastings.

Favourites of the evening for me were the 2010 Forest Hill Estate Chardonnay; 2008 Plantagenet Chardonnay (a wine I first tried and fell in love with at the Chardonnay Day dinner); and the 2010 Jamie&Charli's Choice Fusion Blanc. What I found interesting about the last wine was not just the fact that they had seemlessly blended five white varietals to create this exciting wine (Riesling, Chardonnay, Sav Blanc, Chenin Blanc and Viognier), but also the very cool and hip branding that really caught my eye (see picture), featuring mug shot-style images of the Danish owners.

After the tastings we stepped into a side room for a WA Cabernet masterclass with Mike Bennie. What I liked most about Mike's style of teaching was that it was very informal and he took the time to ask everyone in the room their thoughts on each wine, no matter how basic or different to his point of view.

Being a big SA Cabernet drinker, I was surprised at how different these WA wines were. I found a lot of the eight wines that we tasted (four Cab Merlot, four Cab Sav) to be a lot drier and 'greener' tasting than the rich, full bodied wines that I'm used to drinking.

Mike explained that the very dry soil of WA, in particular the Margaret River region, and the big differences between night and day temperatures combined with a proximity to the ocean, led to an almost cool climate development of the grapes. All of these factors lead to a very different style of Cabernet.

Of the eight wines that we tasted, the two that really stood out for me were the 2007 Fonty's Pool Cabernet Merlot from Pemberton that had a rounded palette and slightly oaky taste and the 2008 Xabregas Cabernet Sauvignon from Mount Barker which was oaky, full bodied and very easy to drink. Winemaker for Xabregas, Martin Cooper, was also in the room to talk us through his wine, which was a nice addition to the class.

All in all, I was intrigued to learn about a completly different style of Cabernet to that which I have previously experienced and will be broadening my horizons away from just SA from now on!

Helen

Save it for a rainy day?

I was at dinner recently and as the restaurant was BYO, decided to take a bottle of 2007 Saint Clementin Chateauneuf du Pape that I'd had sitting in my wine rack for the last couple of years gathering dust.

It wasn't an expensive bottle, not as much as it would have cost in Australia at any rate, as I bought it on a trip to Brittany, France a few years ago in a local supermarket for something like $30. A bargain really for what I consider to be a great wine.

The bottle had been sitting in my wine rack since then as I wanted to wait for a 'special occassion' to drink it. But the thing is that whenever I go out for a special meal, its usually not BYO, and I didn't want to just drink it in the house on a Wednesday night. So I made the decision to take it out for a nice dinner on a Saturday night and finally crack it open.

When the waitress came over to open the wine, she looked at me and the fella with a cheeky grin and said: "Ooh, what's the special occassion?" I said that there wasn't one, apart from the fact that we were going to have a nice bottle of French with our dinner. She then asked us several times throughout the meal what the wine tasted like and at the end asked me if I wanted to take the empty bottle home!

Now don't get me wrong, she was a lovely waitress who was just very interested in what we were drinking, but it made me think...should I have kept this wine for a better occassion, like a birthday or anniversary, or was I right to just crack it open and enjoy it when I felt like it?

Is there any point in keeping something nice waiting for a rainy day?

H