THE BRIEF I have $500 to spend on wines which need to cover me for December and January. As well as all the usual special occasions during that time, I also eat a lot of take-away which I quite like to team up with a glass of wine. I mainly have Thai and Japanese for dinner when I take away and when I make my pitiful attempts to cook, it’s usually just pasta of some sort. My boyfriend’s dad is a wine nut and I’d quite like to shove one up the old geezer and turn up on Christmas day with something a little special. I don’t know what they’re eating but it’s usually everything – you know, chicken, ham, pudding – the full kit. I like both red and white wines. Oh, and can you include something that I can put away for a while? I just might be getting into this wine-collecting hobby. I don’t have anywhere special to store it, just a wine rack in my loungeroom. JONATHON STOBBS Stobbsy, as he is affectionately known, is a suit at a wine company that specialises in selling boutique wines to restaurants. His passion for wine started when he was just a grommet growing up in England where, every summer, he was dragged through the vineyards of Europe. Poor kid. Jonathon has lived in Australia for the last 12 years. I’d rather offer some suggestions of which styles to buy and drink rather than specific wines. This way, it’s easier for you to go into any wine shop and ask for them. December and January are certainly hot so I would recommend mainly white wines with a small selection of reds for those specific occasions such as Christmas lunch with the olds. Seeing you have a penchant for Asian cuisine, you should be looking for the more delicate and aromatic whites to complement the finer flavours of these styles of food and keep a wide berth of the heavier oaked wines that will overpower. SPARKLING WINES Recommended: RIESLINGS Recommended: GEWURZTRAMINER Recommended: VERDELHO Recommended: ROSE (LIKE OLAY NOT THE FLOWER) Recommended: SAUVIGNON BLANC Recommended: When you mix semillon with sauvignon blanc, such as the classic dry white style from Margaret River in WA you have another classic wine for summer. The semillon helps the sauvignon blanc lengthen the palate and gives the wine an extra dimension of flavour that they never seem to obtain on their own. Recommended: CHARDONNAY Recommended: SPARKLING RED Recommended: RED WINES Pinot noir though is a great wine to put up against many of the summer dishes and is a great drink on its own too. Recommended: SOMETHING TO LIE DOWN Recommended: MATT SKINNER Matt’s been sniffing and hucking wine since he started in wine retail five years ago … and he only did that because noone in a bar would employ him. He now manages the Prince Wine store in St Kilda and blows in as a Wine X tasting panel member. Here’s his pick. Make sure you consider a number of things before shopping, such as your daily drinking habits, the big special occasions like Christmas Day and New Years Eve, something special for yourself and of course, the budget. With $500 and the needs in the profile, here’s what you should do. EVERYDAY DRINKING Recommended: EVERYDAY DRINKING WHEN IT’S JUST YOU (AND MAYBE SOMEONE SPECIAL) Rieslings make great partners to most Asian influenced dishes and south Oz’s Clare Valley is home to some of my favourites. Sixteen of the Clare’s top riesling producers will for the first time release wines from the 2000 vintage with a stelvin closure (screw top metal lid) instead of a cork. This allows them to remain fresher and obviously eliminates the chance of cork tainted wine (for an explanation of cork taint, flick to page 86). Snap ’em up. Recommended: Marlborough on New Zealand’s South Island Coast makes some great examples of sauvignon blanc that are affordable and very food friendly. Great with fish and seafood dishes or just to drink on their own with not too much to think about. Recommended: Italy had an awesome vintage in 1998. Apart from representing incredibly good value for money, most of Tuscany’s sangiovese (native red grape of Tuscany) based wines are delicious and ready to drink now. Due to their characteristic chalky, drying tannins, most sangiovese-based wines are best suited to oilier foods like pizza or pasta. Recommended: Like Tuscany, the Southern Rhone Region of France had a tip top vintage in 1998 and most examples I’ve seen so far are ready to drink now. The wines tend to be a mix of grenache, shiraz and mourvedre and have a spicy edge that makes them great matches to most meat dishes. Once again they are very good value. Recommended: I’ve included a bottle of dry sherry from Sanlucar de Barrameda in Spain. This is something a little bit different and makes a refreshing alternative to beer or spirits. Great pre-dinner with olives or nuts and another one of those great wine bargains. Recommended: SOMETHING TO STICK IN THE CELLAR Recommended: FOR CHRISTMAS DAY Recommended: FOR NEW YEAR’S EVE Recommended: LYNETTE HASZARD Lynette’s the wine buyer for Bistro Moncur and the Woollahra Hotel in Sydney’s east. On top of selecting and buying all the wine, spirit and beer for the hotel and bistro, Lynette also writes the wine lists, educates the staff, runs wine tastings and seminars and writes a wine newsletter. And if that’s not qualification enough, Lynette completed, as Dux of Course, Roseworthy’s Wine Production and Marketing Course. You know you’re in safe hands here. As many of us have holidays or at least a ‘low key attitude’ to work over December/January, there are usually lots of occasions requiring wines of varying calibres. So our female wine buyer will need to plan her wine needs, at least roughly, in order to fit within her $500.00 budget. The emphasis, entertainment wise, is usually on casual dinners, picnics, barbeques and parties over this period. However, some higher profile bottles of wine will be required for presents and more formal events. CHRISTMAS DAY Recommended: FOR THE OLD GUY Recommended: NEW YEAR’S EVE Recommended: THE REST OF THE FESTIVE SEASON SUGGESTED WINES Our Summer Season Mixed Dozens Enjoy. PUNTERS CORNERS Ten for ten Richard Peters is a wine expert through experience. He doesn’t work in the wine industry and probably never will. He doesn’t claim any wine expertise except that he reckons he could hook us up with a list of ten wines for ten bucks a pop. We agreed to the challenge and hereby present you with a list of top wines, for the people, by the people. The wines are available through the usual retail suspects – supermarket liquor stores, bulk wine chains and the corner pub. Richard targets the $8 – $12 bottle so these wines have a median of $10 each. His Pick |
