Tony Love shares his Crush Festival must-try wines
THE Crush Festival weekend offers a great opportunity to catch up with some of the winners from the recent Adelaide Hills Wine Show.
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THE ins and outs of regional food and wine festivals make for a fascinating potted history of how we relate to our world of wine.
There have been the serious masterclasses and education events, gourmet fests that turned to ticketed events, music on the greens, and now a focus on modern lifestyle.
The long weekend’s Adelaide Hills Crush Festival is typical: plenty of relaxed music, party atmosphere, street artists, Shakespeare, Alice in Wonderland and even an equestrian show – all with servings of host winery refreshments.
But at the heart of such an event there’s always the wine, and the weekend is a good opportunity to catch up with some of the winners from the recent Adelaide Hills Wine Show, held late last year.
You can get to taste the best sparkling of the show, the Somerled 2014 Methode Champenoise Pinot Noir ($46) at the shared Gelati Party between the Somerled crew and Scott & La Prova.
The sparkling is an all pinot noir affair from the second highest vineyard in SA at Summertown, bottle fermented and rested on its yeast solids for between two to three years, developing quite intense bready characters early on.
The pinot offers a strawberry flummery like flavour as well, and the bubble is fine yet still very lively.
The big winner of the regional show was Pike & Joyce, whose 2017 Descente SauvignonBlanc($26) topped its varietal class with a trophy. It’s a great summer refresher and full on in its herbaceously pungent aromatics, with yellow grapefruit highlights in its citrus backbone.
The Pike & Joyce crew went on to also take out three trophies including wine of show with its Pike & Joyce ‘The Kay’ Reserve 2016 Chardonnay($55).
You can see its vineyard source from the spectacular Lenswood cellar door, and this wine is all about celebrating the purity of that white stone fruit flavour profile, with faint oak influences in a lovely nutty palate creaminess, the wine crisp with lively acidity to balance a natural richness.
You may have to beg for the Pike & Joyce crew to serve it, as it’s due for release next month, but try your hardest. It’ll confirm that the best Hills wines are world class.
Program at crushfestival.com.au
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