Pan fried fillet steak -  rare – sliced thinly

oven roasted chips

salad of butter lettuce and sliced tomato – covered with fresh salsa verde and fresh goat’s cheese.

Topped off with a lovly French Cotes de Blayne from Chateau les Millards.

This wine is one of many under $8 that I’m drinking at the moment.  The reason for the “affordable” price tag is that I can only buy wines that fit a niche, and as I have plenty of more expensive “special” wines, the only niche that needs filling is the everyday drinking wine (Read: Kate won’t allow me to stockpile like I usually do, but I’ve found a loophole in her argument!). 

This wine is nice and solid, not wishy-washy as you would normally come to expect from mass produced cheaper wine.  It has a nice plum taste with berries (although I can’t taste the berries).  The red label range is the second cheapest from Wolf Blass (the cheapest being the Eaglehawk, then red, then yellow, gold, grey, black and platinum).  I find it very affordable at $7.50, and from memory the Cab Merlot was nicer than the Cab Shiraz.  It’s a sure fire thing if you need to buy something from the affordable shelf.

FYI if you are in BC, BC liquor has red label wines for $15.50.  I wouldn’t bother for this money as they also have the yellow labels for $17.  The yellow labels are single verities from SE Australia and are a far superior wine to the reds.  They also have the Eaglehawk range for about $13.  I’m picking up some tomorrow night (for $6.60 on special) so I’ll let you know what I think!As always enjoy in moderation!!

Those of you who know me (not meaning to get philosophical) know that I tend to be a wine snob (I can hear Dan saying “and a coffee snob, and a tea snob, and a ….”)

HOWEVER, as I’m winding up my cellar, I’ve started buying table wines to drink now – oh the horror!!  I have therefore started tasting Aussie wines below $10.  I think our market for wines under $10 is very impressive. I’ve heard from Julian (the partner of a co-worker) that he predicts that due to the drought our lower end market will not be as affordable in the coming years.  Julian is using this as an excuse to justify a world-war-three like buy-up.  Good for him! I on the other hand am trying to decrease the size of my cellar in the off chance that someone from a foreign country will employ me.

Enough of that!  Back to the wine! I decided to try – for the first time – a bottle of Cockatoo Ridge Cab/Merlot tonight.  It was very well priced at $8.90.  They (the wine makers) suggest a “vibrant nose displaying dark chocolate…”.  Personally I found a smooth nose displaying drinkable characteristics.  So drink it I will.  It’s a nice heavy wine (14.5%) with really smooth pallet.  This one was the 2005 vintage – I expected it to be full of tannins, but was quite surprised – and happy – to find a wine that is crafted for drinking. Now.  Checking out their website I found that this company specializes in table wines, including the Andrew Garret range which is primarily produced for export (Chris, this is available in the UK for reasonable prices).  I’ve come across the Garret range before as failed export (read: cheap) offers.  I’d almost suggest that all of their wines would probably be drinkable.  This does surprise me given their blatant attempt at “Aussie” advertising – a trait that normally puts me off wines, as I expect them to be sweet hollow for export wines. So, I rate this wine as “drinkable!”  – with one happy mark.

Enjoy!

BUT both Dave and James had to try it.

I agreed, thinking that I could now drink more wines for “research” purposes.  Can’t argue with that eh?

So the idea of this category is to review wines – as quick as I can drink em!  Hopefully this will be helpful for those of you who want to buy Australian wines, but don’t want to buy that cheap crap that we make/export (yellow tail ring a bell??).  In stead, I hope to review good wine, cheap and expensive!

Tonights drop was Rouge Homme 2004 Linestone Coast Cabernet Merlot.

Nice and smooth.  I usually find that Cab/Merlots are easy drinking though, so it’s not particularly surprising!  This bottle will go well with pretty much anything with a reasonable strong flavor.  It says it’s spent time in American and French Oak – which screams to me “made cheap” – we didn’t have enough of either so we mixed it!  But people who know say that this sort of mixing brings out a variety of flavors… you make the decision!

For $9.50 it’s a good everyday drinker.  It’s also under a screw cap so you can take it anywhere.

Enjoy!

(Sorry Chris, can’t find it in the UK – says it’s not available)