Colour me orange and black
A bone-dry wine from McLaren Vale with the nostalgic autumnal reek of the old fruit grange, and a cracker Saperavi from King Valley whose flavour is as intense as the colour of the black berries it’s made from.
Lino Ramble Ludo McLaren Vale Roussanne Marsanne Viognier 2012
$28; 12.6% alcohol; screw cap; 85+ points
Lino Ramble is the after-hours work of two veteran Valers from Kay Brothers, winemaker Andy Coppard and slap bassist bosslady Angela Townsend. Without going too tawny, they’ve jumped on the tailgate of the Orangist Movement, by which I mean the nature of this wine. It’s nothing to do with the dreaded Rajneeshees of the ’70s, although the more I think about it, I reckon really orange orange wines are a faddy thing that will last no longer than that horrid Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh did while he peeled millions from his spaced-out followers and assembled a most unholy fleet of Rolls-Royces.
Anyway, this wine, made from fruit grown on the piedmont at Willunga, is not really orange but simply leaning in that direction in the sense that it was made in the rustic manner with no sulphur until bottling, no CO2 and no fining. So while it’s not as oxidised as that long-deceased Bhagwan, it IS oxidised. Which is not to say it’s not a good drink at the right time and in the right company with the right tucker. It has the nostalgic autumnal reek of the old fruit grange at the end of the picking season, when the unsold apples, pears and quinces are beginning to soften in their hessian sacks. It’s a very wholesome and reassuring smell for those of us who can remember such things, and maybe a new adventure for those who can’t. You know the wholesome and earthy point at which the fruit begins to subside contentedly through the burlap into the wooden bench?
The flavour is bone-dry and quincy, with very firm natural acid and dusty hessian/burlap/hemp tannins. It’d be great with rabbit rillettes and a mash of potato and parsnip with spinache almost caramelised on the side. Nostalgia, see? As for oxidative winemaking, Krug Champagne is made with maximum oxidation until bottling, but it never tastes nostalgic or rustic. Or, for that matter, oxidised. So. We’ll see.
King River Estate King Valley Saperavi 2011
$35; 14.4% alcohol; Diam cork; 95+++ points
Saperavi is one of the oldest varieties from the Caucasus, where the Georgians have been making wine in pretty much the same manner for 7000 years. The word saperavi means paint. Which is fitting, as this is one of the blackest berries in the business. It’s a rare thing in the sense that it’s one of the very few red grapes with red juice. When you prune it, even the sap’s the colour of beetroot juice. Australia’s first plantings were in the King Valley, where, phylloxera notwithstanding, it thrives in the high humid cool of that northern side of the Australian Alps.
This model’s a cracker. It smells like beetroot and gun blue. Sure, there may be faint hints of blackberry and mulberry and whatever, but they’re meek and mild compared to the tight dense darkness of this aroma. It’ll suck all the water out of your eyes, suck all the light from the room and then start sucking the volts outa your wires. The flavour is as intense and absorbing as that black hole colour. I know of no other wine flavour like it. Or fruit, for that matter. Because the juice is black, the sensitive winemaker can get all the flavour and colour required without hard pressing or extended skin contact, so we end up with this impenetrable black drink which is still fluid and slender and juicy, even tender, with hardly any tannin. It has a little spice in the mace direction, the slightly bitter flavour of juniper without its tannin, and some leaf after the nightshade style, but mainly it’s just clean slippery silky delicious blackness that goes on and on and on.
This is the best one I’ve ever had from anywhere. Only Satan knows how long it will live. In the meantime, what on Earth would I drink it with? I reckon Mike Tyson and I should get our knees under a table and have it with beetroot, black onions and haunch of woolly mammoth ladled straight from a bubbling iron pot. Mike’ll be welcome to eat my ears raw for dessert: the wine will have sucked all the sound from the sky by the time we’re through three or four bottles. And besides, his chew will feel motherly.
