VINEgeek

Tuesday night I opened a bottle of Stickleback Red 2008 from the Aussie winery Heartland. It was a Costco grab that intrigued me with it’s mix of grapes: the back label says it’s a blend of 47% Cabernet Sauvignon, 44% Shiraz, 5% Lagrein and 4% Dolcetto. Tastes more like 100% Smuckers. This is a major dark [...]

I am long overdue to review these wines from Cleavage Creek, kindly provided as samples by the winery. I had been waiting to do some sort of tie-in with Breast Cancer Awareness Month or something like that (Cleavage Creek donates 10% of gross sales to various breast cancer research organizations.) When I heard the awful [...]

Aussie Shiraz is approaching Merlot-backlash territory in terms of becoming a wine style that some people wouldn’t be caught dead drinking (à la Sideways). Maybe that’s just in wine geek circles (not sure I have the most objective perspective on these things), but that’s where it starts, right? But there’s usually a reason a wine style [...]

Producer: Sylvan Springs Grapes: Shiraz (presumably 100%, but it doesn’t say so on the tech sheet) Appellation: McLaren Vale (Australia) Vineyard: Soils are “grey sand over ironstone gravel layer over orange permeable clay.” At least some of the fruit comes from the Blewitt Springs sub-region. Winemaking: No new oak – the wine spent 12 months [...]