Two Tims Up End Vineyard Sections 5 & 6 McLaren Vale Shiraz 2016
$100/doz at the gate; $150 delivered; 14.6 % alcohol; screw cap

For some years Leith Hunt had been wisely using the winemaking expertise of Tim Geddes of Seldom Inn Winery to make a dead serious Shiraz from Tim Hunt’s vineyard on the piedmont near Sellicks Hill.

This was always sold through a direct order mob in Melbourne, but this year the deal fell through. Bad for the Two Tims, but lucky for those of us who’ve found Leith selling the wines from his ute at his farm on Aldinga Road, between Aldinga and Willunga.

He’s there most weekends. He sells it for a smacking $100 a dozen.

Now he promises to put up a website, which should be functioning later today. You’ll be able to order it and have it delivered for $150, which is still only about half its true worth. Bargains like this are rare!

Like other beauties grown in the rubble along the faultline, it’s sultry and smoky McLaren Vale Shiraz at its brooding best, right down the line of previous Up Enders. It has dark hewn oak tickling up a fragrance like panforte, the spicy honeyed nut cake of Siena.

This nonna has put some diced dried figs in the mix. And the odd juniper berry. And it’s dusted with musky confectioner’s sugar. That bouquet’s a delightful gastronomic adventure in itself.

Drink. Wow. Satin and velvet and svelte syrup with real neat and tidy acidity drawing the tail out in a taper, lipsmacking and savoury with never a hint of the gloopy over-ripe style of too much modern Shiraz. A chip of bitter cooking chocolate in the finish … this baby’s the business!

The flavours are neatly spicy and tight after the dry-ish nature of the panforte; the afterbreath pretty well purrs. What more could you want? The same wine in ten years? Grand idea, but I’ll bet you can’t make it last that long.

Take a drive on the weekend, find Leith and spend your spare fifty at The Victory on Old Sellicks Hill Road.

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