2022 Agricola Vintners Flaxman Valley
Community Tasting Note
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Friday, December 1, 2023 - This wine inspires me to go all Byzantine on yo ass boy.
Much about this wine reminds me of Basil II Boulgaroktonos, the austere yet burly religious fanatic and brutal military emperor of the 10th and 11th Century AD. Basil II, of course was a descendant of the wonderfully named Romanos Lekapenos - the school-boy humorist never really dies.
This is a wine made from the Flaxman Valley, 'soaring' a full few hundred meters above the Barossa Valley floor. This does actually make a difference, though it is relative - when it is 40 degrees Celsius on the Barossa Valley floor, Flaxman may be a balmy 37-38 degrees Celsius.
Flaxman, I note has a population of some 285 people, yet has an exactly even distribution of gender; however do they manage that? More pleasing is that over half described themselves as having no religion in the recent census. As an atheist every bit as intolerant as Basil II was as a Christian (it is the religion of peace and love, as history has shown), I am excited by the prospect of dealing with the recalcitrant minority.
Deep of hue, this wine promises to deliver like the scowling Basil and his triumphant cataphracts, mowing down the Bulgars.
Like Basil, this wine delivers on its threats/promises. The nose and palate are dominated by smokey, charcuterie stuff, there is some black pepper and loam and a whole lotta love in the form of dark plums and blackberry. There is, to me, a distinct sour aspect that works because it stops this from being one of those Barossa mouth coating obscenities, worse even than Monophysites, recalcitrant Bulgars, Georgians, Khazars, Turks and those troublesome Anatolian magnates.
I believe that I would hate this wine if I had it from a warmer year, but a cooler one like 2022, or 2023, does the trick.
Intensity and length are akin to the visage of Basil - "He had light-blue eyes, strongly arched eyebrows, luxuriant side whiskers—which he had a habit of rolling between his fingers when deep in thought or angry". Don't we all.
I have to say that I think you get a lot of wine and good stuff for your dollars here. Even in a cooler year and from a higher elevation it is still very Barossa and I do think there is a question can be asked about all the (probably oak derived) charcuterie - the oak really rolls its luxuriant side whiskers between its fingers.
It does not really describe this wine, but it does describe me, when JJ Norwich wrote of Basil II, one of history's real genocidal heroes, "No lonelier man ever occupied the Byzantine throne. And it is hardly surprising: Basil was ugly, dirty, coarse, boorish, philistine and almost pathologically mean. He was in short deeply un-Byzantine. He cared only for the greatness of his Empire. No wonder that in his hands it reached its apogee." Finally, I am home.
Lest there be any misunderstanding, I find Basil II one of those characters that rather brings history alive, but I do not think he was a 'great man'. Even for a species that delights in cruelty and attempts to extirpate 'out groups', Basil is up there with the great shits of history. This wine is surely not of that type.
Musical accompaniment for this wine, like Basil II, must be Manowar's 'Power of Thy Sword', whose sentiments are like mother's milk to any heroic Agricola Vintners drinker and serial misanthrope:
Fierce is my blade, fierce is my hate
Born to die in battle, I laugh at my fate
Now pay in bond when your blood has been spilled
You're never forgiven death is fulfilled
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