Saturday, June 19, 2010

The Teeth of the Lion*


Last night we tried my two new purchases from Dandelion Vineyards what I got in the SQ NewWorld wine sale, which started on Thursday. As you can see above I got a couple of the Shiraz Rieslings and a Pinot Grigio.

We had the Pinot Grigio with some alarmingly expensive Monkfish, also from SQ. €20 for enough fish for 2 adults and a child? And even BBQ'd we thought it wasn't great, although Little Bill (tm) loved it, from now on I'll stick with Hake. Herself didn't really care for the white, I rather liked it. It had lots of crisp acidity and some restrained fruit. I think she missed the Sauvignon Blancs of the couple of weeks.

The Shiraz Riesling was an interesting beast. I guess I wasn't expecting a fruit bomb, for some reason, but this wine was very jammy. Given that the Riesling represents only 5% of the total I supposed I shouldn't be surprised. It was certainly beyond the ability of my neophyte taste buds to discern any Riesling influence, but I did like it. As I am (obviously not - Ed.) tired of saying I like something else apart from bags of fruit in my Shiraz; some elegance, some structure, and this delivered. Not as big as a Bin 389 but with a hint of velvety tannins. I'll be curious to see what this will cost at full price. I will "cellar" the other bottle and see what happens, the label says it has the potential to age.

Lastly, we sampled some more NZ Sauvignon Blanc last night, a Rockpool 2009 from O'Briens. Not bad, another one from the Astrolabe stable, €11-95 reduced to €8-99. At full price I'd go for the Durvillea first, but as always, your mileage may vary.

* The word dandelion is a corruption of the French "dent de lion"

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