2011 Sydney Royal Wine Show - Trophy Wines lunch

The 2011 Royal Sydney Wine Show lunch was held at the Darling Harbour Convention Centre. 350 folks enjoyed lunch with the Trophy winning wines, and short speeches from various VIPs. Everything we ate was also award-winning produce from the Royal Agricultural Society Sydney Show.

Wandering around the foyer beforehand we munched on:
Stokes Point smoked cheddar panna cotta with Cargill Angus Beef tartare and Glenora Grove olive oil
Seared Tasmanian scallop on mustard oil skordalia

• 2004 Starvedog Lane Chardonnay Pinot Noir Pinot Meunier

  Australia, South Australia, Mount Lofty Ranges, Adelaide Hills

  Trophy – Best Sparkling {cork} Smoky oyster-shell nose with some development apparent. A chardonnay-dominant palate with quite fine bubbles, dry, and fairly powerful in its presence. A bit four-square and lacking in charm; decent enough aperitif wine but rather clean and anonymous. Inoffensive but not memorable.

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The white wine trophy winners were a classy bunch. You could stick these on a dinner table anywhere in the world and not have to make any excuses. These accompanied:
- Mirrool Creek lamb loin involtini with rosemary scented apple compote
- Daintree Saltwater Barramundi confit parcel with green papaya and mango
- Spice cured duck breast with organic beetroot and Cuttaway Creek raspberry vinegar ceviche

• 2010 Chapman Grove Sauvignon Blanc

  Australia, Western Australia, South West Australia, Margaret River

  Trophy – Best Sauvignon {screwcap, 13.4%} Clean gooseberry aromas with a sherbert-like tang. Sharp palate of focussed gooseberries and tropical fruits. Dry, cracking acidity on the palate, light-medium bodied, weighted just a little towards the front of the tongue, with a medium-long finish. A worthy rival/alternative to Marlborough-type wines.

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• 2005 Peter Lehmann Sémillon Margaret

  Australia, South Australia, Barossa

  Trophy – Best Wine of Show {screwcap, 11.5%} Just as impressive as this morning’s bottle. A aging smoke on toast nose, which collect honeyed flavours with grass and hay on the trip along the tongue. Bone dry and savoury, but still with rich semillon fruit, medium-bodied weight and with a long even finish. Marvellous wine, and aought to drink well for another 5 years easily. Andrew Wigan collected the trophy for Lehmanns, and acknowledged their debt to the Hunter style, along with half apologising for winning the Sydney Show trophy with a South Australian semillon!

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• 2005 Leo Buring Riesling Maturation Reserve Clare Valley

  Australia, South Australia, Mount Lofty Ranges, Clare Valley

  Trophy – Best Show Wine of last 12 months {screwcap, 12%} Bearing the 'Bin' number DW118. Developing aromas of green apples (stewed apples, I guess) laced with lemon juice. Distinctly zesty palate, powerfully medium-bodied, and even rather blocky, which is not to say it’s unattractive at this age. A top Clare riesling which powers right to the back of the palate. Probably only really starting to develop, so still has a handsome ten years cellaring left, but is still good to drink now.

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• 2009 Penfolds Chardonnay Reserve Bin 09A

  Australia, South Australia, Mount Lofty Ranges, Adelaide Hills

  Trophy – Best 2+ year old Premium White {screwcap} Nuts and cashews and grapefruit. Instantly chardonnay, and instantly french oak. Very much Penfolds, too, if it comes to that. Polished palate, worked fruit; there’s a leesy character here too, along with the full spectrum of white-fleshed fruit flavours. Intense, medium-bodied and not without some elegance; it’s not a big thudding buttery/malo-driven palate, that’s for sure. (I think the Reserve Bin A wines are every bit a match for Yattarna, if not exceeding it from time to time.) Medium length finish. A decent wine, though will doubtless carry an aspirational price-tag when released. For the record, it's Bin 09A.

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Sadly, the red trophy winners – at least the first group – seemed to me a pretty undistinguished lot. To accompany:
Slow roasted Cape Grim beef tenderloin with horseradish mousseline, butter-poached asparagus and balsamic pumpkin tart

• 2009 Tamar Ridge Pinot Noir Kayena Vineyard

  Australia, Tasmania

  Trophy – Best Pinot {screwcap, 13%} Perfectly balanced youthful aromas; sour cherries, a dash of stalk and a touch of oak all intertwine seductively. The palate is savoury and a touch bitter/sour, although it’s not without soft new-world pinot fruit. Light-medium bodied, with gentle chalky tannins, although there’s a tightness to the texture that promises a few years potential aging. Medium-length, decently even finish. Good wine; doubt there were many real contenders for the trophy, somehow…

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• 2009 Chapman Grove Wines Shiraz Dreaming Dog

  Australia, Western Australia, South West Australia, Margaret River

  Trophy – Best Small Producer Named Vineyard Wine {screwcap, 13.5%} Young-smelling, purple-looking shiraz. Perfume and liquorice. Friendly red flavours, spice, gentle but gritty tannins. Ripe and not too sweet. Terminably fashionable label. Mainstream bistro wine, competant but bland, inoffensive as wine but not comforting as a concept. A trophy? Surely you jest?

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• 2009 Philip Shaw Shiraz The Idiot Koomooloo Vineyard

  Australia, New South Wales, Central Ranges, Orange

  Trophies – Best Red of Show, Best Shiraz, Best NSW wine {screwcap, 13.7%} Youthful and rich plummy fruit aromas triumph over their cool-climate origins. Subtle vanilla oak contributes. There are ripe red shiraz flavours clustered around an iron spine of a palate, dusty with fine tannin. Medium-bodied, and with a medium-length finish, it’s just a bit soft on the back palate. Its best feature is its balance; the fruit, tannin & acid all come together nicely, it’s not over-oaked, or spoofulated, and probably shows all the best aspects of a warm year in a cool climate. Now, it’s a decent wine for $20, heck, might even justify asking $35 or $40, but three trophies? Best red? Big call…

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• 2009 Third Wheel Cabernet Merlot Shiraz

  Australia, Western Australia, South West Australia, Margaret River

  Trophy – Best Value Red {screwcap, 13.5%} Dark, briary red charcoal fruits. A flavour-stuffed red on the palate, a touch burnt perhaps, not oaky, which gives plenty of flavours. Medium-bodied, with moderate chalky tannins, not too hot – another trophy red weight in at less than 14% alcohol. Dry finish, all front and mid-palate; it might soften out for a few years but can’t see the depth here to expect much complexity. Don’t know what the furmula for ‘Value’ is. This is a solid bistro red, no more.

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Of all the things that the WCA organising committee could have asked visiting international judge Stephen Brooks to talk about, the impact of social media – a subject about which he freely admitted to knowing very little – was surely among the least interesting. It was really just a transparent attempt to co-opt him to spruik their forthcoming series of seminars with some American Twitter guru. That’ll be the hand of the new CEO at work, then. Perhaps Brooks’ perspective on the wines he judged might have been of more interest? Well, it would to me. At least he liked the way the show was run, even if we never really found out what he thought about the wines.
And then three more trophy wines were drunk with the cheese platter of
Woodside McLaren Camembert
Tasmanian Heritage Red Square
Berrys Creek Tarwin Blue
Heidi Farm Raclette

• 2009 Rosemount Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Show Reserve

  Australia, South Australia, Limestone Coast, Coonawarra

  Trophy – Best Red in Commercial Classes {screwcap, 14.5%} Since WCA themselves sponsor the trophy, you can always expect this on the menu at lunch. This is the old Show Reserve wine under its latest name, and back in a cylindrical bottle again. Youthful, mainstream Coonawarra cabernet nose; cassis, herbs, soft vanilla oak. Authentic palate, just a little on the lean side, medium-bodied, with slightly grainy tannins. Twiggy, currant flavours are lifted by a touch of warmth; it dips a little in presence on the mid-palate, has a medium-length finish. Solid effort – the winemakers haven’t really dropped the ball, whatever the marketers were doing – but it is very much a commercial wine, with all the good and bad that implies. Eh.

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• 2006 Wolf Blass Black Label

  Australia, South Australia

  Trophy – Best Aged Red {scrwecap, 15%} The ultimate buffet wine; cabernet, shiraz & malbec sourced from Barossa, McLaren Vale & Langhorne Creek. Classically plush, unholstered nose of luxury ripe red & black jam fruits – developing, not really aged – that you bury your nose in and then sink down, like some kind of nasal beanbag. Big, full-bodied palate of quince paste, liquorice, fruit-cake, somewhat compromised by warmth, finely tannic but not quite so oaky as traditional. Does rather put you in the mind of some bodybuilder bursting out of his lycra suit. Reasonable length finish, but it’s all still very young to me and really needs some time to settle down a bit. Starting to look a little out of the stylistic mainstream these days; and I bet more recent vintages have dropped the alcohol too. Good crowd pleaser.

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• 2009 Yalumba Viognier FSW Botrytis

  Australia, South Australia, Limestone Coast, Wrattonbully

  Trophy – Best Sweet White {375ml, screwcap, 11%} Labelled FSW88. A remarkably pale yellow-green colour hints at the nose to come; surprisingly light and delicate nose of lightly-botrytised apricots & lychee. The palate is consistent in flavour, has a luscious sweetness (about medium-dry, as they say), with a medium cut of acid. I don’t think it’ll ever be a greatly complex wine, but it’s very nicely balanced and doesn’t sag on the palate.

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I think there was brandy somewhere, too, but that was all quite enough for me. Obviously trophy winners are only chosen from wines entered in the show, but I think the results here support a subversive little theory I’ve held for some time; that it’s easier to find high quality, destinctive wines among Australia’s whites than its reds…