Dudley Brown scares me
with Viognier. I saw him crushing some years ago. I'm colourblind, but I reckon
it was blue like whitebait. Moulds after moisture. He usually makes a pretty
good Viognier. Then he comes out, or at least round, with this 2015 one that he
tells pirate stories about while his partner, Dr Irina Santiago Brown, presented
her famous 27 bottle batch of murky orange hippy wine out of a bucket of the
2016. I liked that bucket wine. It stayed fresh and staunch for months in the
fridge.
Everybody in the know
knows how I give orange wines hell. The Doc's was a bewdy.
The bridal Waltz: the marriage of Dudley and
Irina ... photos©Philip White
I still think the best
Viognier I had came from the last little bit the French got down to in the 'seventies,
when there was something like 30 ha of it left in Condrieau. Which was all
there was on Earth. It was no big deal. A curio they wished they could sell. It
always had good acid, but more importantly, the phenolic tannins of a red. In fact its tannins were strong
enough to fix and darken the hue of unripe north Rhône Shiraz.
As a neat varietal, which
was rare, the wines were stiff with fresh ginger and horse radish root and a
threatening layer of something that seemed too close to the cyanic acid you get
in apricot kernels. That's where we get nerve gas and blue food colouring. When
I was a kid, Italian men used to chew these kernels when they "gotta the
cance."
I was never certain which of these threats eventually did them in.
Anyway, as far as the
Viognier politics go round at Casa Brun, I reckon a wine that's somewhere
between these two will do the best business. In the meantime, this Inkwell Blonde on Blonde McLaren Vale
Viognier 2015 ($30; 12.9% alcohol;
screw cap; 1596 bottles) has all the above in very polite missionary measures.
And it's got the right sort of alcohol for Viognier. Thirteen should be max.
It's not russet or rusty
or orange or anything: it's clear and bright. It's not like stone fruits, which
they say Viognier should resemble. It's more like honeydew melon. It's
perfectly, elegantly slimy. It has some butter and honey and then the sort of
tannin that's so fine it's like a crushed-up mortar and pestle.
There's a warm
south-of-France bean stew with pork belly and artichoke hearts that would set a
dangerous tectonic wave going if like fifty people ate it with this wine all at
once.
Inkwell Reckoner McLaren Vale Cabernet Shiraz 2013 ($30 ; 13.7%
alcohol; screw cap; 1200 bottles) is from the loam on the Pirramimma
Sandstone in this bold vineyard down there a few kays from the beach on
California Road. Fig, black briar berries, juniper, Deadly Nightshade - many of
those gunblue peppery aspects of cress and basil - are all here in an acid
shell lacquer, an essence. With musk and crème de groseille, the raspberry version of crème de cassis.
This wine has a lovely determined logic about it. It shows firstly what
you can grow and make if you think first and then it begins to show how stupid
it's been mechanically making McLaren Vale reds at 15 to 17% alcohol, year in,
year out.
Sass, silk'n'velvet, slickness and sin.
Doing
the Rorschach test at the wedding ...
photos©Philip White
Inkwell I & I McLaren
Vale Shiraz 2013 ($30 ; 13.7% alcohol; screw cap; 1596 bottles)
Is more complex and sinister. Martial. There's a lot of highly polished, very
soft black dress leather. These are all black horses in here Ma'am. That one's
got his tail braided. They musta done his hooves with coal tar.
This has all those blacksmithed essences and lacquer of the Reckoner,
but with more currants, carbon and licorice/anise. To think Dudley and Doc
skwoze all that intensity into this little glass at such a happy alcohol is a
wonderful thing to see. We don't need all that alcohol. Not with flavour like
this.
This is a really glamorous and vibrant strap of a wine. Blue steak in a
creamy black peppercorn sauce. Dammit, you could even put some ripe Roqueforte
in that cream. And more fresh pepper please.
No need to cut yourself short of turpenes.
These wines are about understanding the rocks beneath one's feet and
the flavour of the breeze in one's teeth before even setting forth in
winemaking. They are very cool. And that I & I Shiraz, that's really out
there. That's a very fine wine indeed.
Getting the
breeze in their teeth: wedding guests ... photos©Philip White
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