Tasting : Hanging Rock Rich Reef Shiraz 2012

I've visited Hanging Rock at their cellar door once before out in the cool climes of the beautiful Macedon Ranges region and loved their sparkling so was pretty keen to try this Shiraz of theirs outside of the shadow cast by its more famed and top performing effervescent cousin.

It is in no way a "cool climate" wine with the fruit coming from their much warmer Heathcote vineyards and in turn providing a generous and honest Victorian Shiraz with still enough interest for the easily distracted oenophiles out there. 

The wine shows us a nose of ripe dark plum, stewed dark cherry, licks of vanilla oak characters and faint white pepper and I may be clutching here but as I dig deeper I do pick up some faint christmas cake. 

Yummy and fairly bold in the mouth, characters of plum again but this time with mulberry too and some more savoury characters with touches of black pepper. Drying and somewhat chewy tannins help round it out but aren't in anyway overbearing. Top stuff, especially so for around the $20 mark.

You can find Hanging Rock wines in many good bottle shops in Melbourne and for more hit their website here:
http://www.hangingrock.com.au/

Wine of the Week : Cobaw Ridge Syrah 2010

A few months ago now I went out to Macedon to sample the wares and do a bit of exploring (you can read my full run down on the trip here), and one of the special bottles I took home with me was this lovely Syrah (Shiraz). It's surprisingly taken me this long to open, I don't usually have patience for this kind of thing, hence my cyclic almost non existent cellar.

This cool climate wine from the certified organic Macedon producer shows a restrained nose of dark plum and mulberry with some dried herbs and more purple fruit and prune like characters come out from hiding as the wine opens up with time.

A similar story on the palate with mulberry in the mouth again with a medium body and more savoury earthy characters, that you would expect from a cool climate Shiraz, with some white pepper and dried Chinese herbs. Nicely integrated fine tannin and a good length close the curtain on this lovely performer.

I got this beauty from the cellar door but I have seen it sold in Melbourne at the Organic Wholefoods supermarket on Lygon Street, Brunswick East as well as Aunt Maggies in Fitzroy/Collingwood (with the possibility of it being sold at all their stores).

Cobaw Ridge's website: http://www.cobawridge.com.au/