An overview of the 2010 Penfolds releases and 2008 Grange

Regular contributor and former sommelier Donald Edwards tastes his way through the latest Penfolds' releases and is blown away by a cabernet.

"In early modern Australia people used to speak of the tyranny of distance; even within the same state two neighbouring cattle stations could be a couple of weeks ride from each other. The distance was unlike anything the settlers had ever known; vast swathes of red dirt, whole oceans of subtly differentiated sand and dust.

I occasionally wonder whether Penfolds' chief wine maker Peter Gago feels something similar, only relating to choice. Oceans of the very best grape juice; plot after plot of ancient vines, legions of the country's best grape growers all lining up to have their best efforts considered for a spot in Penfolds' top blends. The tyranny of choice? I sometimes wonder.

I’d missed out on meeting Gago when I visited the Magill estate that is Penfolds' home base (he was in America giving the Kings of Leon a private masterclass) so I jumped at the chance to join him for a tasting of Penfolds newly released 2010s and 2008s.

If you don’t already know the story of Penfolds' Grange and its origins as Max Schubert's experimental blend, its underground years and eventual ascent to the very pinnacle of Australian wine then it’s well worth a read.

Suffice it to say, Grange is always a multi-region blend of mostly (occasionally 100%) Shiraz with a small blending component of Cabernet Sauvignon. One of the great advantages that Penfolds has is a huge array of choice in blending components.

Take the 2008 for example: it’s 89% Barossa fruit, 9% Clare Valley (for the first time in a while) with 2% of their old vine Magill Estate fruit. For the 2008 wine only 2% Cabernet Sauvignon was used. By way of comparison the 1978 that we tasted alongside boasted 10% (and a noticeable herbal tinge with it too).

Anyway, the afternoon started with a tasting of Penfolds newly released 2010 vintage (followed by the Granges). Penfolds has attracted some criticism recently for their pricing, the new Grange topping £400 a bottle on release. However the more Peter Gago described the issues they face as a company - i.e. not having anywhere near enough stock to satisfy international demand - it became clear that they’re merely reacting to market forces (and in a less manipulative way than the Bordelais).

To put it bluntly, they’ve a lot of exceptional wines, they work hard to ensure that the wines they release are top quality and many of the wines have great track records when it comes to ageing gracefully. To wit: why would they not raise their prices to what they deem is acceptable for what amounts to a slice of Australia’s viticultural history? Oh, and finally, they often don’t release wines if they feel the quality isn’t right in any given year.

The tasting opened with Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay 2010. Yattarna Chardonnay for me is like a microcosm of Australian white wine making. It was first conceived as being a white Grange, but looking through the blends and the styles that have graced the bottles through the years it is obvious that it’s a mirror for the way that Australian chardonnay has changed as a style.

No longer a byword for obvious cellar techniques and big oak, the 2010 is 96% Tasmanian fruit (Australia’s coolest region) and it’s obvious why. The extra ripening time has allowed great natural acidity to coexist with lean oatmeal leasiness, a nice pebbly minerality and some taut stone fruit characters. I was mildly annoyed I only had a tasting measure.

On to the reds; old Shiraz and Grenache vines are to my mind one of Australia’s greatest treasures. Penfolds are lucky in that they have the Magill estate, ancient ungrafted vines right in the outskirts of Adelaide, St Henri and a number of other choice plots to call upon. This means that along with their flagship Grange and RWT (red winemaking trial, basically Grange with French oak) wines, they can offer several single vineyard wines. These are collectors’ items in their own right. St Henri Shiraz from a good vintage can often outpace the same year's Grange at auction.

Marananga Shiraz, a sub-regional blend from the Barossa made with a mixture of French and American oak, was lightly spiced with surprisingly fresh fruit characters and a delightfully smooth and silken set of tannins. The St Henri Shiraz was far less forthcoming; a tight mineral core and an interesting (non oak-related) tannic structure; as always a keeper. The Penfolds home estate Magill Shiraz, textured, slightly dusty, again complex and lengthy.

Bin 707, Penfolds' top Cabernet, is again always a blend (and their quickest wine to sell out every year), however for me the standout cabernet from the tasting was the Bin 169 single plot Coonawarra cabernet. (I’ve been feeling a better vineyard practices-related renaissance coming from Coonawarra cab for a while now, but that’s another matter).

This was just about the finest young Australian cabernet I’ve tasted in a very long time. Subtly perfumed, not just blackcurrant leaf and mint, but a finer, much more delicate floral herbal character, backed up with taut muscular tannins and not a jot of fat in the wrong place.

A four-decade vertical of Grange stretching from the misty past of 1978 (before I was born), through 1988, 1998 and finishing at the hallowed 100-point-garnering 2008 took us neatly to a short lunch.

I mentioned the tyranny of choice earlier. There is simply so much quality in the Penfolds' catalogue that trying to pick a single wine as a favourite from the tasting ends up being almost as trying as making the quality decisions must be for Gago and his team.

Donald Edwards is a former sommelier, barfly and blogger at St Claire and notes from the dregs. He tweets as @donalde

Pairing Indian wine with Indian cheese

Chef Shaun Kenworthy reports on what he believes to be a unique tasting of Indian wine and Indian cheese.

Shaun writes: "There is a rumble of change in almost every facet of life in today’s India. If we go back not too many years the idea of drinking wine as opposed to whisky and any other cheese than the processed stuff that the whole country has a fascination for made by enormous companies such as Amul and Britannia were little known anomalies.

That said, India does have an artisanal tradition of cheese and wine making that goes back a couple of hundred or so years to the Portuguese and British. A scant few traditional cheeses are still made in the mountainous regions of northern India and I’ve personally taken some around the world demonstrating with them and showing them off but how much longer they have left, being made in such small quantities is sadly anyone’s guess.

India’s wines have traditionally been produced along the hilly ridges of southern India, which run through Maharashtra and Karnataka but by the 1950s whatever little interest there was in wine, dwindled once India became independent and it wasn’t until the 90s, that a whole new generation of winemakers started to come through using modern wine making techniques.

There has been much talk about Indian wines in India recently, so much so that sales have been doubling each year, with all the 5 star hotel chains and higher end restaurants in the major Indian cities putting home-grown wines on their lists.

A sommelier friend of mine, Keith Edgar and I were recently asked by the Calcutta Wine Club to do a cheese and wine tasting. It was such a great opportunity that we decided to do a completely blind tasting of four wines and six cheeses so that we could keep secret the fact that they were all Indian.

I’m not quite sure what the members were really expecting but more than likely some domestic and imported wines and imported cheeses?! Of which there are few that find their way into the supermarkets other than the likely suspects such as ricotta, mozzarella, gouda, parmesan, cheddar, Danish blue and brie although as hoteliers with access to wholesale suppliers we do get much more to choose from.

The local cheeses I chose were fresh and smoked Bandel, both a little salty and crumbly in texture, round and small in size, still produced in a small Portuguese settlement town, around 60km from the city, Kalimpong cheese which is still made in 12kg and 1kg wheels by a few different cheesemakers, the texture being like a rustic Caerphilly: white and crumbly in the centre and yellowy inside the rind with a bit of a tang. It’s made in Kalimpong, a small hill station around 200km from Calcutta.

The other three, relatively new cheeses made by La Ferme, Auroville, in the old French city of Pondicherry, close to Chennai (formerly Madras): a good strong tangy Cheddar, their Auroblochon (but don’t let the name seduce you into thinking otherwise - this cheese is similar to an intensely ripe Pecorino) and their delicious semi-soft Gorgonzola.

Thankfully it’s easier to introduce our wines for the evening as you’d know what to expect from the grape varieties but again they were all Indian: a Sula Sauvignon Blanc 2012*, Fratelli Sangiovese 2011, Four Seasons Cabernet Sauvignon 2011and finally, India’s only dessert wine, Sula’s late harvest Chenin Blanc 2012.

We started off, as you would expect, with the milder cheeses and lighter wines, not wanting to make this too challenging a test for the wine club. After much discussion and many ooo’s and aaah’s, we ended up with very few hits but at least we’d conducted what was probably the first completely Indian cheese and wine tasting in the world to date!

Our top Indian wine and cheese pairings:

Sula Sauvignon Blanc 2012

I think we both expected this to go better with the salty fresh Bandel but it wasn’t unpalatable and maybe a little extra fattiness in the cheese would have helped

Fratelli, Sangiovese 2011

A good pairing with the fresh and smoked Bandel and Kalinpong

Four Seasons, Cabernet Sauvignon 2011

The smoked, Kalimpong and the hefty cheddar worked best

Sula late harvest Chenin Blanc 2012

And I don’t think anything could take away from this star of the show with the Auroblochon and the Gorgonzola."

For more information about Indian cheese read this article in the Telegraph, Calcutta.

UK-born and bred, chef Shaun Kenworthy began his career in Yorkshire but worked for some of London’s best known restaurants including Bibendum, The Atlantic Bar, Coast, Air, Mash and Quaglino’s. Since he arrived in India in 2000 he has worked as an executive chef and consultant in Kolkata, New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad. In whatever little spare time he has left he writes about his love of good food.

* which seems to be available in the UK if you'd like to try it.

Does great wine need to be aged?

It’s been an article of faith as long as I’ve been writing about wine that you need to age the best wines in your cellar. We sniff at consumers who buy and crack open a first growth as unsophisticated but maybe they’re the ones who know best?

The event that prompted this thought was a Chateau d’Yquem lunch at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal this week where we were served the 2011 vintages of their dry white ‘Y’ and Yquem itself. One follower on Twitter dismissed it as ‘embryonic’ but I was bowled over. The 2011 'Y' had a luxuriant taste of white peaches, far more seductive than the tricky, slightly oily 1996 we were served with the main course. And as for the 2011 Yquem (right) - it was like drinking a plate of the most perfectly ripe apricots and tropical fruit. Sheer nectar.

The sip of 2011 Le Pin I tasted from the barrel last November was equally delicious - soft, velvety and caressing. Who is to say that’s ‘too young’? Many of its purchasers will drink it the moment it comes onto the market.

Increasingly I enjoy the bright fruit flavours of exuberant young Rioja rather than the wood-dominated character of many gran reservas, and the ‘live’ character of many young organic and biodynamic reds. Age may bring complexity but not necessarily charm.

And there’s something so pure and pristine about a new release of Loire Sauvignon, Chablis or Grüner Veltliner that inevitably gets lost a couple of years down the line.

True it doesn’t always work. The leanness of a young red burgundy can take years to turn into silky sweetness, tannic young Bordeaux can be very unforgiving, and young riesling challengingly sharp and one-dimensional. But there’s a middle way between age and extreme youth. The off-dry Grosset riesling I flagged up the other day as the perfect match for Sichuan food was fantastic 3 years on.

The truth is that a lot of consumers don’t necessarily want complex flavours, a fact that ‘new world’ producers - redundant description but you know what I mean - have been quicker to latch on to than many of those from the classic wine producing regions. Fellow wine lovers will be familiar with the anxiety about bringing out a treasured old bottle for friends who are not as obsessed about wine as they are in case they find the flavours weird rather than wonderful.

The truth is there’s no right or wrong about it. You should drink your wine when you like depending on your palate, the food, the occasion and your bank balance - the ideal solution being to have a case of the same wine to dip into and enjoy at various moments over the years. Unfortunately in my case - and that of most of you, I suspect - that’s not going to be Yquem . . .

What do you think - should great wines be drunk young or should you hang on to them?

German wine and Scandi food - natural born partners

Scandinavian food is becoming increasingly popular but what type of wine should you drink with it? Lucy Bridgers reports on how German wine fares.

With their clean, pure, precise flavours and geographical proximity, German wine and Scandinavian cuisine sounds like an obvious partnership, but until recently, one I hadn’t had the chance to try. That was until earlier this week when I was invited to do just that by Wines of Germany at their Scandinavian supperclub led by cook, food anthropologist and author Signe Johansen of Scandilicious.

We kicked off the evening with some tasty canapés: spiced Norwegian veal and lamb meatballs, mini toast Skagen topped with prawns, caviar and lemon mayonnaise and with goats cheese, pomegranate and vanilla salt. Two Mosel Rieslings and a Pfalz Pinot Noir were served with these: Dr Loosen Urziger Würzgarten Kabinett 2011, Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt Riesling Trocken 2011 and Palataia 2011.

The versatile Von Kesselstatt worked with all the canapés, especially the mini toasts and made a mouthwateringly fresh, zesty aperitif. The Urziger Würzgarten (‘Spice Garden’) was more fleshy, spicy and honeyed which chimed nicely with the sweetness of the prawns. The Palataia Pinot Noir selected to accompany the meatballs was a good match, but lacked the appetizing zip of the Rieslings at this stage of the meal.

The starter of cured salmon with wild dill pollen, Peter’s Yard sourdough crispbread, Scandinavian pickles and horseradish crème fraîche was served with Weingut Winter Riesling Trocken 2009 (Rheinhessen) and Balthasar Ress Hattenheimer Schutzenhaus Riesling Kabinett 2011 (Rheingau). The Rheinhessen, deeply coloured with lush peachy fruit, yet dry, stood up magnificently to the spicy horseradish and pickles and had enough weight on the palate to balance the richly textured sashimi-grade fish (the ABV was a full-strength 13%). In contrast, the lighter and more traditional Rheingau (10% ABV) was overwhelmed by the dish.

The main course, a wintery spread of braised finnbiff (Norwegian venison) with mushrooms and pearled spelt, salt-baked celeriac, beetroot salad with fruit vinegar and seasonal greens was served with two Pinot Noirs, Peter & Peter 2011 (Pfalz) from Zimmermann-Graeff & Muller and Meyer-Näkel Spätburgunder Blauschiefer 2010 (Ahr). Both showed well with the earthy flavours of the dish, but the complex, Burgundian Meyer-Näkel was a more memorable partner than the easy-drinking and juicy Peter & Peter.

After a refreshing palate cleanser of blood orange sorbet, we were served a two-part dessert of rhubarb and almond torte and freshly baked citrus and nutmeg madeleines with Studert Prüm’s Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese 2009 (Mosel) and Schloss Johannisberger Riesling Spätlese 2011 (Rheingau). Neither wine was obviously sweet, but they worked brilliantly with the desserts which were far from sugary themselves. The vibrant, almost tropical Schloss Johannisberger was a particular treat with the torte, its tingling acidity beautifully highlighting the rhubarb.

With such a range of styles now being produced in Germany – drier whites and an increasing proportion of reds – it was fascinating to experience their renewed versatility with food. (Historically in the UK German wines were more highly prized than French).

And, as expected, there is a great synergy between Scandinavian cuisine and German wine. It’s perhaps not surprising that Germany’s most important export markets include Sweden and especially Norway where they are market leaders.

Lucy Bridgers attended the event as guest of Wines of Germany