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30th May 2014

An elderly Aussie and other musings.

 Well, hello! Firstly, I'd like to extend a great deal of thanks to lots of friends who read my post on Facebook yesterday about the launch of the Riviera Wine Academy, and liked, shared, forwarded and promoted it on Facebook and Twitter and all that. More of this please! Particularly if you are based in the Riviera area! I am genuinely touched, and it has helped ease some of the inevitable anxiety that goes with starting a venture for yourself (or, perhaps more accurately, quitting a job!). It's possible that more people will read this than any of my other blog entries which means both that I will proof read it more thoroughly, and try to keep it interesting!

Last night anyway I felt the need to open a special bottle to celebrate the above - it's one month to go before I'm RWA full time.

I had a lot of wine stored in a friend's cellar in London, a collection of delights and oddities largely gathered together from my days at Oddbins and Seagram in London in the 1990s. My friend got a new job and had to leave his flat, so my wine did too. It's now down here, and making an inventory of it is less interesting than drinking some, and the inventory-making becomes both quicker and more fun the less of the wine there is...

So I opened a bottle of Mitchelton Print Label Shiraz 1990. This must have come from Oddbins, and was possibly the first wine I had tried that had won the prestigious Jimmy Watson Trophy (probably Australia's top wine prize, although it is specifically for the best one year old red). I've no idea how much it cost then, nor is worth now. Well, it's worth nothing now, because I've opened it and drunk most!

The wine tasted so youthful, that had it been something (even) more celebrated, and had I not bought it myself and stored it since, I might have suspected some skulduggery à la Rudy Kurniawan (google that). The Mitchelton, with a balanced 13.5% alcohol, was big and juicy with lots of fresh fruit, and the only real indication of its age being the smoothness and slightly beeswax-polish quality to the tannins and acidity that is the hallmark of an aged wine. What really stuck out was the very distinctive liquorice flavour - perhaps this is what becomes of the eucalyptus flavours in young Aussie Shiraz. Anyway, the wine was delicious, and of sufficiently high quality to be a sipper rather than a gulper. I vacuvin-ed the rest and will look forward to seeing how it develops over the weekend.
Best thing is that it is one of several bottles, and representative of the age of most of the contents of the 'stash'.

I might share some of them with people who sign up for a wine course with RWA. Tempted?

Meanwhile, a big Thank You again to everyone who sent me such supportive messages yesterday. Means a lot, and helps even more.

I have commissioned a comments section for this blog, now that there might be some people reading it! So, I look forward to hearing from you too.

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