Perfect reds for the classic Christmas roast
Each of these four reds imported by Eurocentric Wine Imports would partner perfectly with classic Christmas roasts.
One “name behind the names” you must note in your little black cellar book is Eurocentric Wine Imports, a name found on the back of bottles on many of Australia’s best restaurant wine lists. Owner Neville Yates started importing in 2008 and his feet must barely have touched the ground since if the breadth of his portfolio is anything to go by: France, Italy, Spain, South Africa, New Zealand, Germany. Every red below would partner perfectly with the classic Christmas roast. Pop any of them in my stocking please, Santa. And speaking of Santa: may all your festive bottles be free from cork taint and premox, not be orange, and sparkling only if they’re meant to be.
2015 Beaujolais Villages Les Vignes de Thulon
Jean-Marc Burgaud, $32
Absolute Christmas cracker. This was another stellar vintage for the region following on from the superb 2014. My early impression is that the 2015 is slightly riper and more generous, which I suspect will result in the Beaujolais and Beaujolais-Villages tout court excelling with more generosity and weight than usual. This wine features a dark, ripe, black cherry colour with aromas reminiscent of freshly baked cherry clafoutis with a hint of liqueur-like lift in the background. The medium-length palate is simply sumptuous in its plushness. Twelve bottles ordered.
2013 Mate Rosso Di Montalcino, $50
The thing I love about the best Italian wines is the big O, as in Barolo, Barbaresco and Brunello. This rosso of Montalcino delivers a lot of the pleasure of its more illustrious and expensive relative at an (almost) everyday price. The colour is a brilliant garnet red of light to medium depth, the aromas feature bitter cherry notes with a pleasing background note of culinary herbs (as distinct from herbaceous). The palate has a juicy bubble of warm (14 per cent alcohol) black cherry and plum fruits on entry, flowing through the medium-bodied palate to a well rounded finish. Sneakily satisfying. Want this badly with roast porchetta.
2014 Blank Canvas Hawkes Bay Syrah, $65
New Zealand Hawkes Bay Syrah is co-fermented with 7.5 per cent skins of Marlborough gruner veltliner (the noble Austrian white variety). The colour is impenetrably purple — 60 per cent whole bunch fermentation — and has a real lustre to it. The aromas are plentiful: dark red fruits, boysenberries, plums, with hints of bacon, black pepper and olive. Then, somehow, there’s another spectrum of white pepper, orange rind and tang. The generously proportioned palate remains ridiculously lithe with a mid-palate jam-packed with dark fruit characters, savouriness, minerality and with a notable piquancy to finish. Try it.
2013 Michel Gay et Fils Chorey-les-Beaune Vieilles Vignes, $70
This is a ripping Cotes de Beaune-Villages wine, from one of the lesser-known communes. Bright medium red with slight lightening at rim. Lovely generous elegant bouquet of silky strawberry confiture characters with background spice and mineral notes. The palate is really lively and suave in its sexy new world fruit-positive style. The satisfying flavours are a melange of red berries with spicy notes, medium length and pleasantly firm tannins to close. Would touch up a lot of big-name new world pinots and burgundies at much higher prices.
Wine: All Saints Estate Muscadelles
The All Saints story began in 1864 with two Scottish engineers, George Sutherland Smith and John Banks.
The bubbly butcher
The Krug champagne business was eight years old when the shingle went up in the east of a nascent city called Adelaide.