Twelve of australia's finest wines
to ENHANCE YOUR ENJOYMENT OF THE ASHES
just £99.00 - delivered to your door
Grant Burge is a family owned winery (owned by Grant & Helen Burge): Grant makes the wines, whilst Helen designs the labels. The family’s roots in Barrossa go back 150 years or so and they have a large selection of vineyards planted with a bewildering amount of grape varieties.
To European palates, the refreshing point of difference with Grant Burge’s wines are that these are not sweet, over-the-top, over-oaked monsters, but a more restrained, traditional Australian style where one can almost start to envisage the hot, dusty interior of the Barossa Valley.
That is not to say that these wines are not typical of Australia – these are still fuller bodied than European wines, naturally – but these wines combine the typical fullness of Australia with well balanced fruit, tannins, oak and acidity. These are classic wine examples of a new classic country.
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THE CASE CONTAINS ONE BOTTLE OF EACH OF THE WINES DETAILED BELOW. |
To order please call on 01737 21
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| 2005 Benchmark Chardonnay |
2004 Benchmark Shiraz The classic Australian red grape, originating from Syrah vine cuttings brought to Australia from France’s Rhône Valley in the 1860’s. Australian Shiraz is always a black, dense, soft wine with a lot of underlying power and toothsome bramble fruit. This is a good entry-level example of this style, easy drinking by itself but capable of matching up to red meats and barbecues. |
| 2004 Barossa Vines Eden Valley Riesling Barossa Valley has a distinct sub-region in the Eden Valley, a slightly higher altitude, cooler area of the Barossa. The cooler temperatures mean that white grapes thrive here, in particular Riesling, where this small valley is recognised in Australia as being the source for the majority of the countries best Rieslings. Australian Rieslings are bone-dry too: no Germanic styles here. A powerful, crisp, lime-fruit and refreshing wine, perfect with spiced fish or chicken. |
2002 Barossa Vines Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot The classic combination of Bordeaux grape varieties but done with Australian, ripe fruit – this is not a Cabernet/Merlot that the Bordelais would recognise immediately, being a blacker, richer, more berry-fruited style than Bordeaux. None the less, this has all the hallmarks that one wants in Cab/Merlot: plenty of cassis fruit, a rounded mouthfeel and some chewy tannins and acidity that match steak and grilled meat perfectly. |
| 2005 Barossa Vines Semillon/Sauvignon Blanc Another combination of grapes with Bordeaux origins, but using two classic white grapes. However, this is a dry style of wine (rather than the mainly late harvest, sweet Semillon/Sauvignon found in Bordeaux) where the Australian tropical, lemon and grapefruit-style flavours are allowed to shine. Perfect for white wine fans in search of a refreshing antidote to mainstream single varietal wines and the type of assertive white wine that will stand up to a roast chicken. |
2005 Barossa Vines Chardonnay (UNOAKED) A classic style of unoaked Australian Chardonnay where winemaking techniques using the fermentation yeast produce a rounded, creamy texture and flavour. The wine is completely fermented and matured in stainless steel tanks, so absolutely no oak masks the typical Chardonnay character of white stone-fruit, pear and apricot. |
| 2003 Barossa Vines Shiraz A richer style of Shiraz, made from older vines, than the “Benchmark” Shiraz above. This has a dense, blackcurrant and bramble fruit with a long length and typically ripe, soft Australian tannins. The wine shows all the elements that made Australian reds famous, Barossa Valley Shiraz in particular. |
2004 Barossa Vines Semillon Semillon is a classic grape to grow in Australia, mainly made in an unoaked style as it is here, and giving a full, lemon-fruited, clean white wine. For white drinkers wanting an escape from Chardonnay, this is often an excellent recommendation. The wine is clean, crisp and intense and will match up to white meats and chicken in cream sauces easily. |
| 2004 Lily Farm Muscat A rare and unusual find here: Muscat, like Semillon, remains a traditional, classic Australian grape but one that has largely made way for other grapes recently. Whilst most Muscat in Australia is made in very sweet styles, this is a slightly off-dry style with a wealth of very crisp, lime-cordial style fruit. One of the most unusual, interesting and intensely flavoured wines that Grant Burge makes, this is a perfect white for Riesling lovers or to match intensely spiced dishes such as Thai or curries. Very much a favourite wine for its sheer unusual and delicious style. |
2005 Kraft Sauvignon Blanc Whilst Sauvignon Blanc is best known from Sancerre or New Zealand, Australia has recently started to make much more convincing styles of Sauvignon. The key to Australian Sauvignon is having access to cool climate areas and Grant Burge uses Sauvignon Blanc from the cooler Eden Valley area of Barossa and Adelaide Hills, just outside Adelaide, to produce this wine. This gives the classic grassy, citrus and pungent style so beloved of Sauvignon fans everywhere, whilst retaining a nod to Australia’s bright and intense fruit flavours. |
| 2003 Hillcot Merlot Merlot can often be staggeringly good or staggeringly dull as it often doesn’t have as distinct a character as say, Cabernet Sauvignon. However, Mr Burge’s Merlot retains the one true Merlot character that blind tasting fanatics can spot, in that it has a definite caramel-scented nose, followed by a soft, mouth filling palate of red fruit with rounded tannins and a real balance to the wines. A very good example of what Merlot from Australia should taste like. |
2001 Cameron Vale Cabernet Sauvignon All the Cabernet Sauvignon essentials are here: black colour, aromas of blackcurrant leaves, intense cassis fruit palate with a powerful grip of tannin and acidity and lightly balanced oak. Always a “food wine”, this is ideal with several slices of rare roast beef or charcuterie. And typically for Cabernet Sauvignon, this could be tucked away in the cellar for a couple of years... |
Notes on these wines by: Any of their mouth-watering array of wines are available from Golf Par Excellence. |
Despite perceptions of Australia’s arid interior, the sheer size of the country gives remarkable climatic diversity, meaning that there are many warm to temperate areas where high quality wine grapes can be grown with remarkable success. So much so that Australia in wine terms is now considered an established classic country. Not as classic as the hallowed soils of Bordeaux, Burgundy or Champagne, perhaps, but the actual history of growing grapes for wine in Australia goes back over 200 years. One of the most established and diverse regions growing grapes within Australia is Barossa Valley. The region was first settled by German colonists and the German legacy remains strong in the valley with family names having a European familiarity to them, despite the non-European nature of the wines. Barossa is one of the warmer, inland areas of South Australia, north of Adelaide, and remains the traditional heartland of the Australian wine industry, a region particularly noted for its stocks of old Shiraz vines but also noted for superb white wines in Semillon, Chardonnay and Riesling. The established nature of the wine industry within the Barossa Valley goes a long way to explain the excellence of the region’s wines: no eighteen month old vines here, but more typically vines as old as 100 years are still used with fantastic results, giving low yielding, concentrated, flavoursome fruit.
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To order please call on 01737 21
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Copyright © 2002 Golf Par Excellence. Tel: 01737 21 18 18 ( + 44 17 37 21 18 18 from outside the UK)