WINE / TRAVEL
A strange thing happened at the tasting table the other day. A few bottles of various single varietal reds failed to excite my more critical faculties so I poured a 50:50 mix – in this instance of pinot noir and shiraz – to see what might be.
Once they began their pas de deux, a little magic began to happen: the pinot’s perfume, there from the start, raised the nose of the shiraz which had been, by itself, somewhat flat-footed.
The palate drive of the shiraz alone was all that it should have been without great excitement, but as the bass line in this duet it added a welterweight punch to the blend.
As a bit of fun, my pinot shiraz turned out to be the best wine of the tasting.
It was most likely a very different set of circumstances when the legendary Maurice O’Shea put together his famed earliest Hunter Valley Mount Pleasant “Burgundies” often blending shiraz and pinot noir.
As a tribute to those extraordinary 1940s wines, some of which remain and are seen on the rarest of occasions when extracted from the country’s best-kept cellars, Mount Pleasant Wines, with Jim Chatto at the helm, still offers current release Mount Henry Shiraz Pinot Noir (2014; $45), which reveals that berry/floral/ spice fragrance with a superbly tapered and brightly fruited palate that lingers favourably for ages.
Another stunning example comes out of the Yarra Valley, from a similarly revered Yarra Yering winery, where Sarah Crowe has brought back a Yarra Yering Light Dry Red style that in its 2016 iteration ($86) is a 50:50 mix of pinot and shiraz that also successfully marries the freshness and fragrance of the pinot with the mid-palate structure of the shiraz.
The blend has a history out of this winery since the ’70s, Crowe says, but she has brought a decidedly modern thrust to it with whole berry pinot and whole bunch shiraz now included in the winemaking.
If those are out of your price bracket, then playing with the same ideology is crazy bargain Pete’s Pure 2016 Rosso ($10), which ties a 90:10 shiraz/pinot blend out of the unlikely non-cool-climate Murray Darling region.
Its lightly spiced crimson fruited style with touchy-feely tannins works well in a dining setting – it is mostly found in restaurants and suggests this historic Aussie idiosyncrasy still has something to say as we continue our adventure into the wine world.