Advantages: Hugely polished, svelte, warms you up on a cold evening Disadvantages: Could be a bit OTT in flavour for some
Australian reds wines often have the reputation of being flavoursome and muscular on the palate and on the whole I would say that this is true. If this is indeed your style of wine and you like to take this kind of experience to extremes then you do worse than investing your time in drinking an Aussie classic from Marks and Spencer. This is particular beast is M&S's Barossa Valley Shiraz available at £7.99 a bottle (sometimes it is on offer too) and is made for M&S by the winemakers, St Hallett, who have been known to produce some monster Shiraz in their time. The Barossa in South Australia, near Adelaide, is a premium region for the production of massively flavoured red wines made from the Shiraz grape and this wine encapsulates this perfectly. However, if you find intensely flavoured and full bodied reds a bit too much for drinking ...
Advantages: Inexpensive but a decent wine Disadvantages: None
LINDEMANS BIN 50 SHIRAZ 2007
Lindemans is one of South Eastern Australia's oldest and largest winemakers. For a couple of decades now it has been just about my favorite budget brand in the world. For as cheaply and readily available its basic products are, their wines are remarkably consistent. The base price of their standard line of wines is around £7, but they are usually on offer at one of the supermarkets for around £4.
That's what I paid for this bottle, the 2007 Bin 50 Shiraz from Sainsburys.
Like a lot of Australian producers that produce wines in mass quantities, Lindemans wines are probably as much a work of science as they are of art. The wine making process is fairly standardized and there is a lot of effort made to do things track the temperature of the vineyards where the grapes are growing in order to ...
Advantages: Luxurious taste, Good for special occassion, nice classy label Disadvantages: Expensive !
Sometimes I crave a rich and hugely flavoured red wine to wash me away on a luxurious wave of pleasure. One of my favourite ways of doing this is to treat my expectant palate to a bottle of Penfold?s Kalimna Bin 28 Shiraz from South Australia. Penfold?s are a very well known Australian wine maker who produce a full range of wines from the moderately priced (the Rawson?s Retreat range at around £4-5 for example) to the monstrously expensive which is represented by The Grange wine which is a famous Shiraz that retails for well over £100. Fortunately the Bin 28 is priced considerably lower at the £10-11 mark. This makes it in my opinion a special occasion or treat wine rather than a casual everyday glugger. It also tends to be widely available and I have seen it in Tesco, the Co-op and Somerfield.
The wine that I drank was from the very ...
