Welcome to Wine Without BS. Sick of reading wine reviews that fail to sell me on the product itself, my aim is to breathe some much needed normality to an industry neck deep in bullshit speak and wine wank terminology.
'Imagine the smell of a living room if Zoro jumped through the window.'
- Philip White on Coates Wines 2009 Touriga Nacional'
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Today I have launched the Wine without BS YouTube Channel after working with the great team at Unthinkable Media over the past few months.
Due to my extensive time in the United States this year I thought it would be very fitting to honour this memorable time by launching with a Halloween Special!
I hope you enjoy the clip and I would love to hear any and all feedback as well as see any pictures of Halloween parties next week that may borrow ideas from the video.
Happy Halloween!
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Keen to show that Mount Barker is capable of producing very high quality cool climate shiraz that would rival the likes of the highly prized and scored examples coming out of areas like Canberra Districts, I was contacted by the Xabregas (pronounced ZAR-BREE-GAS) Vigneron, Paul Hogan, to check out their new release. This is the second vintage of the Xabregas Mount Barker Shiraz I have tried, yet this time around Xabregas have a new winemaker, Martin Cooper, who said he had a new found appreciation of wine bloggers after comments I made on the winery's 2007 vintage back in 2010.
The 2009 release is a very deep, rich purple colour that is almost the 'classic' colour for young, cool climate shiraz. The aroma was one I had trouble pinning down. The label suggests half the kitchen sink will be in there somewhere but, with a bit of time and more persistence on the nose than I suggest many will bother with, I can report that I picked up on the sweet plum fruit and at times could smell faint white pepper.
It is a lovely, balanced wine to drink with elements of fruit, spice, pepper and oak on the palate with no single element over powering the others. It is a totally different wine in all the ways I'd hoped over the 2007 and goes to show that you can never judge a winery on just one wine.
Xabregas Wines 2009 Mount Barker Shiraz
Price - $23 from Xabregas online
Region - Mount Barker, WA
Final Sip - A great wine and from what I hear, just the beginning, as I believe the Xabregas line up will soon include 4 Shiraz wines at different price points. I certainly look forward to trying them all but i'm more than happy with this drop for its price!
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