Wine review: Kangaroo Ridge 2002 shiraz
Sep. 13th, 2005 05:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoMmmm, tasty. Some of you know that I have a fondness for Australian and other southern hemisphere wines. I've sampled enough of the Australian vintages to have definite ideas and preferences about them... for one thing, the ones from the southeastern part of the continent are much better than the western ones. ;P
Anyway, a new discovery. I was in the local wine purveyor's shop over the weekend and while picking out a bottle of shiraz I noticed a label that was new to me: Kangaroo Ridge? Never heard of it. The price was absurdly low, you can't get even cheap rotgut stuff here for $4 a bottle. But it was Australian so I had to try it.
This was 2002 vintage, so it had already had some time to mellow out a bit. One of the things I like about southern hemisphere wines (that includes the produce of Chile and South Africa too, but Australian is easier to find here) is that you get an extra six months of cellarage for the same year. Anyway, the 2002 Kangaroo Ridge shiraz is delightful, and especially so for this price. I need to go back and get some more while they still have it. It lacks the tannic bite that has been appearing in some of the younger merlots and shirazes lately, and is rich with the berry and spice flavors and fragrances that characterize shiraz.
I'm getting worried. Years ago I discovered merlot before the yuppies were even drinking wine. Very few vintners offered merlot by itself. Mostly they used it to mix with cabernet grapes to tone them down. Then the merlot craze hit and suddenly there were hundreds (probably thousands) of labels and vineyards offering it. The price tripled. And the quality dropped by way too much. Yuppies don't know anything much about wine, I'm sorry to say. They just buy whatever someone else tells them to. Merlot is a soft wine. It can be drunk when only a year or two old, and actually declines in quality if kept for eight or ten years. Well, the yuppers wanted to buy cases of it to "put down" in the cellar, so the vintners started increasing the tannins. The result: bitey, nasty stuff that you can't drink until you've kept it for five years. Merlot has been ruined, but shiraz is still good. Someone save the shiraz from the yuppie marketplace? Please?
Now the NZ question: Why do we never see New Zealand wines here in the midwestern US? I know NZ has a wine industry. Are you kiwis keeping it all to yourselves?
Anyway, a new discovery. I was in the local wine purveyor's shop over the weekend and while picking out a bottle of shiraz I noticed a label that was new to me: Kangaroo Ridge? Never heard of it. The price was absurdly low, you can't get even cheap rotgut stuff here for $4 a bottle. But it was Australian so I had to try it.
This was 2002 vintage, so it had already had some time to mellow out a bit. One of the things I like about southern hemisphere wines (that includes the produce of Chile and South Africa too, but Australian is easier to find here) is that you get an extra six months of cellarage for the same year. Anyway, the 2002 Kangaroo Ridge shiraz is delightful, and especially so for this price. I need to go back and get some more while they still have it. It lacks the tannic bite that has been appearing in some of the younger merlots and shirazes lately, and is rich with the berry and spice flavors and fragrances that characterize shiraz.
I'm getting worried. Years ago I discovered merlot before the yuppies were even drinking wine. Very few vintners offered merlot by itself. Mostly they used it to mix with cabernet grapes to tone them down. Then the merlot craze hit and suddenly there were hundreds (probably thousands) of labels and vineyards offering it. The price tripled. And the quality dropped by way too much. Yuppies don't know anything much about wine, I'm sorry to say. They just buy whatever someone else tells them to. Merlot is a soft wine. It can be drunk when only a year or two old, and actually declines in quality if kept for eight or ten years. Well, the yuppers wanted to buy cases of it to "put down" in the cellar, so the vintners started increasing the tannins. The result: bitey, nasty stuff that you can't drink until you've kept it for five years. Merlot has been ruined, but shiraz is still good. Someone save the shiraz from the yuppie marketplace? Please?
Now the NZ question: Why do we never see New Zealand wines here in the midwestern US? I know NZ has a wine industry. Are you kiwis keeping it all to yourselves?
