Wine with Meg + Mel
The fun + frank podcast which helps you navigate the world of wine. Hosted by Australia's first female Master of Wine Meg Brodtmann, and self-titled Master of Sabrage Mel Gilcrist.
Wine with Meg + Mel
The Science of Wine Evolution
Hi and welcome to Wine, with Megan Malway here to help you navigate the world of wine. I'm Megan O'Kirsten, I'm my Master of Wine, Meg Brotman. We are doing Museum today.
Speaker 2:We are doing Museum, which you've kind of organised in the background all very slyly, because you just want to taste Museum wines. But it's actually there's a lot of education that you can get out of older wines. So I see your method and your madness, but I still think it's driven by the desire just to taste something really delicious.
Speaker 1:Have I ever really hid the fact that half of this podcast is just like wanting to taste the shit? True?
Speaker 2:I did listen to the mousse episode and you know we were so excited by that age for four years. How good was it. And that glass. We were a little bit excited by the glass.
Speaker 1:It's so beautiful, so many people messaging. I saw it on Instagram, yeah.
Speaker 2:Where did?
Speaker 1:you get it, but you can't get it, can you? No, you can get it, it's just expensive, it's $125.
Speaker 2:For one.
Speaker 1:For one, so it's $250 for a two-pack.
Speaker 2:And that will be the one that you knock over as soon as you know?
Speaker 1:do you know what I mean? Oh, 100%. And it's hand-blown, so it's so.
Speaker 2:That's a beautiful gift for someone, though. Yeah, like a nice wedding present or something. Maybe that's what we'll get. We've got a wedding in November and they're very rich.
Speaker 1:Hopefully they don't listen to these, no, anyway. So look, museum wines we are going to get into, but first, meg, what have you been drinking?
Speaker 2:I have been drinking quite a lot. I've just got back from the China Roadshow.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:So Wine, australia, china Roadshow, four cities, I did five in as many days, it seemed, and I went around.
Speaker 1:Did you go with Wine, yarra Valley or Rob Dolan.
Speaker 2:I went with Rob Dolan Right. So there were 24 wineries selected. There was two Yarra Valley wineries, there was Rob Dolan Wines and Sontere.
Speaker 1:Yes, yep, yep, yep.
Speaker 2:So I do actually want to talk about the Sontere Wines. It's a small project. It's been going on in the background. It's a businessman who just loves Bordeaux, and so he's planted a vineyard, 10,000 plants per hectare, which is really, really narrow and focusing on Cabernet. So Dag City, but my God, there was a 20, I think there was a 2018 and a 19 Yarra Valley Cabernet. They were just superb.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:And last night at the Wine Yarra Valley Awards Sontere actually they rank who the most successful exhibitor and they came fifth. So their average score was 91.5, which is really high given they don't have many wines.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So just revisiting Yarra Valley Cabernet again and people just please drink it. I know you think it's overrated, but these wines I think particularly no. I think it's rated just fine. Yes, that's right. I think the 18 really struck out to me. It's just beautifully handled. It has that lovely bay leaf character. These will be very long-lived wines.
Speaker 1:No, we tasted those on the pod, didn't we? We did taste. They were really nice.
Speaker 2:We did taste them, but I can't remember what vintage. I think we tried the current release, which I think might have been our mistake. I think they need a few years on them to show them because they are high-end, sort of ultra-premium Cabernets. But interestingly, the wine of provenance that won at the Yarra Valley one show last night was Squitchy Lane's Cabernet, what's?
Speaker 1:that.
Speaker 2:There you go. Cabernet wine of provenance beat Chardonnay, so I was very happy about that. If anyone's watching the video, I'm doing a Donald Trump hand movement. We were just laughing before I forgot to stop doing it because I do not want to look like him at all. So, yeah, yarra Valley Cabernet, oh, but just Australian wine in general. My God, we have some amazing wines Just walking around Yarra Valley does.
Speaker 1:No the whole of Australia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Barossa and you know, langholm Creek. The big wines I didn't really taste because I kind of know what they taste like, but the Grenache that was in the room, there was some Marsans that were there, there was some Rieslings, Pennegrigios from King Valley. It's just, we are such a great wine-producing country, oh, that is nice, and I think we've sort of just really found a niche at the moment.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a nice way for us to kick us off there.
Speaker 2:You got a fun fact. Fun fact, oh, oh, my God, warwick. Yes, you're right. So Warwick was your student at WSET. He's currently travelling around Spain. He's got a year of sabbatical basically oh yeah, he's having his dinner.
Speaker 2:So I told him I would do the fun fact when you drink wine, you activate 18 muscles. Did you know? 14 muscles 14 muscles activated when opening a bottle of wine. Fitness is my passion, oh, I like that. And I said oh, now that is a fun fact for the podcast. And he said you're welcome. So was he, if you're listening to us in Spain. Fun fact 14 muscles activated when you open a bottle of wine. I thought he did good too. He did.
Speaker 1:He did. He's a smart boy and he's very competitive.
Speaker 2:There's no way he would have not done well.
Speaker 1:No, he knew everything.
Speaker 2:But he's not going to be level three because he's a wuss.
Speaker 1:Everyone gets scared by the tasting.
Speaker 2:I know it's because their egos are attached to it.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that tasting is easier than the theory. You don't have to identify it. That's the thing, anyway, what are we doing? We're going to museum. So what we're going to do is we're going to do it in two parts. So we're just going to talk about the theory of museum wines first, and then, in part two, we're going to taste a couple. We have three. That we're doing comparative side by side.
Speaker 2:Okay, we're going to taste a couple.
Speaker 1:We have three that we're doing comparative, side by side. So we've got the young and the old, yes, but first we're going to talk about we've got a couple of wines from old saints, um, and they're what we're going to use to talk about, just generally, what you're going to find in museum wines and what we look for. So, meg, why don't you kick us off? I mean, let's start by how much of the wine in Australia do you think is actually being aged?
Speaker 2:Well, it was interesting because we always read this statistic that 96% of wine bought is consumed within the first 48 hours.
Speaker 1:I thought it was 24 hours.
Speaker 2:24 hours, I thought it barely made it out of the cupboard 98 within the first 48 or something like that, yeah. But I was talking to Stephen Marr from Endeavour Wine Group last night and he's a category buyer there and he was saying that the problem with Australia is people are keeping their wine for too long, which I was really surprised with, because I don't think most people do age their wines, and that's why we have talked about the Dan Murphy's Cellar Release Program, which we think is great.
Speaker 1:Yes, he's got to be talking about a specific kind of person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, I think it's minuscule, but minuscule, minuscule people who age wine. People don't have space. For a start, people don't buy the dozens of, you know, semi-yon when it's first released. That we used to do when we were students, and when we were students we would you know they were $6 a bottle, yeah. So yeah, you bought a dozen and then you drank them over the years and you can afford to do it.
Speaker 1:I just don't think it's embedded in our culture to age wine Like. I have friends going to Bordeaux at the moment and they said what are your tips? I said well beyond. Like. The first thing that you need to know is you're going to be buying wine to drink in five years. That's right. If you're buying it, either buy an older vintage or remember that it's being laid down. You're not buying it to drink now. It's just something that we're not used to doing in Australia.
Speaker 2:No, I agree, and I mean, I think, Bordeaux as an example. They are making more earlier drinking styles. Now they are more approachable at a younger age than they were.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But they still really need time to come into their own, and one could argue that with good Burgundy as well.
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 2:You know, if you're spending $350, then you're going to age it Barolo when you taste current release Barolos, they're almost undrinkable. Yeah they are. The tannins are all over the place, the acid's really high, yeah, and then, as they age, they just soften out and become beautiful, delicious wines, look at Young Marçan.
Speaker 1:Very simple wine. There's not much going on when it's young. No, it's just, it's semi-on. There's not much going on. It's young, exactly.
Speaker 2:And then even you could argue with reasoning. Not that I would ever say a word against my darling reasoning, but it is simple, it's not hugely complex. Yeah, and when we age wines it just adds this layer of complexity. But again, there is a small market to sell your wines into. Most museum wines, I would argue, in a winery, are kept back for the winemaker dinners.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes.
Speaker 2:I don't think many people would be selling them in cellars, or you know, they might sell a handful, but they wouldn't do a huge sort of promotion of them because they're treated as almost sacred, yeah, which can be a mistake, I think, because then you'd be sitting on like pallets and pallets and pallets of wine that really should be drunk and enjoyed.
Speaker 1:Enjoyed. So, meg, I'm going to give you a moment. I'm going to let you be nerdy. Okay, I want you to like tell us the science, like what happens when we age a wine.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'll start with white.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'll start with white. So white? The fruit component of white wine is made up by aromatic esters in wine. So these are just chemicals. As they age and they come in contact with oxygen, they chemically change and that changes the way that they are perceived, so that they will go from smelling like white flowers and then you'll get petrol kerosene in Riesling. I mean, that's a bit of a bad example because it's a bit of phenolic chemistry as well. But the actual compound changes and what we're finding.
Speaker 2:When wines were aged under cork, there was obviously ingress of oxygen into the wine and so the wines would age more rapidly. Now that we're under screw cap, people are making a comment that the wines are slowing down in their ageing so you can keep them longer than you normally would. So with white wine the chemicals are changing. It's all to do with an interaction with oxygen, because as wines age, the sulphur dioxide that you've bottled the wine with decreases. So you might bottle it with 35 parts of sulphur dioxide. That's 35 milligrams per litre. You test it a year later. It's probably about 25 milligrams per litre. It'll probably sit there for a long period of time. You test it at eight years. It might be down to 10. So that means that it's not acting as an antioxidant. Yeah, anymore, there's less of it that can act as an antioxidant.
Speaker 2:So the oxygen can start having an effect and that's why the colour starts to change. So what happens is the colour compounds in the wine become oxidised. If I took juice out of grapes and bubbled air through it, I could make it look like that bright yellow colour. Really, yeah, I could do it in juice. I can age a young wine just by bubbling oxygen through it to make it look like that. I can't get a change in aroma compounds, but a lot of the fruit does start to move from that fresh apple, fresh peach to cooked, so it takes on more of a cooked aroma, and then you get some of the honey aromas as well. You've got oak. The oak compounds will also start to change, so they may go from being more vanilla to being a little bit more toasty. But even in semion we see a toastiness as well. So it's basically the play of oxygen on the chemical compounds that make up the aroma and flavour compounds and that appears with colour.
Speaker 1:So how come? So if it's just that it's less like more oxygen can penetrate it, then why? What happens if you just put less sulphur dioxide in the first place?
Speaker 2:It would age more quickly.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So then, if you did less sulphur dioxide over here and aged it for five years and did more over here and aged it for ten years, would they come out looking the same?
Speaker 2:It's not that simple. No, because it all comes down to the pH of the wine at the end of the day. And you've told me I'm not allowed to mention pH.
Speaker 1:No, go on. I feel like this is the opposite way you can.
Speaker 2:Okay, so what the pH is is it's a measure of hydrogen ions in the wine which is related to the level of acidity in the wine. But the acid in wine can appear. It can have two hydrogen ions attached to it, or it can have one hydrogen ion and a potassium ion attached to it, and those tartrate crystals that you see the wine diamonds are when you've got the potassium in there, so they're a little bit heavier.
Speaker 1:Are they inherent in the grape?
Speaker 2:Yes, again, it depends on your soil and your winemaking and your skin contact, because that potassium is in the skin. So the more skin contact you have with whites, the more potassium that you'll pick up. If you do a whole bunch pressing as well, there's more potassium in the stems, so for champagne, for example, so you'll pick up more of the potassium in that.
Speaker 2:But we can adjust for that. So the lower the pH pH in white wine you want about 3.3-ish the lower the pH, the more molecular sulphur dioxide there is. Whoa, so that's the effective sulphur dioxide.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So if you've got 35 parts of free sulphur dioxide, your molecular is about 0.4, the actual effective part. I know it's very sciencey it is.
Speaker 2:You did ask, and that's the one that actually does all the work, so you don't need a lot. Yeah, so the lower your pH, the more effective your sulphur dioxide is going to be. But eventually, as sulphur dioxide drops with age which it will do there's less effective sulphur dioxide, so some of those oxidative effects decrease, happen. Now it's really interesting because we don't really know about the science. We've always attached it to being oxygen, but I've always thought, if you, when we bottle, we tend to put nitrogen into the bottle to evacuate all of the oxygen, so we blow it into the empty bottle.
Speaker 1:Empty bottle yeah.
Speaker 2:And that pushes the oxygen out, and then we fill with the wine.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Now, the wine does have some dissolved oxygen in it. We know how much dissolved oxygen is in the wine because we normally measure the DO, the dissolved oxygen.
Speaker 2:So that space, if you've evacuated the bottle with nitrogen, that head space, that alluge, as we call it, at the top of the bottle, shouldn't really have any oxygen in it. And it's not coming through a screw cap, yeah, but with a cork it does move through the lenticels, the little corky bits. Yeah, it can move through into the wine, the oxygen. But also cork can fail. So you know how you've pulled out a cork and it's not really mixed to the edges of the bottle. So that's how it allows for oxygen ingress as well.
Speaker 2:Wow, I know. And then with red wine, you have obviously the impact of Hang on wait, can we?
Speaker 1:taste the white one? Oh, okay, straight after talking about the white, I do. I'm actually laughing. So what have we got Really excited to drink this? So this is All Saints Estate. It is called the Alias, so this is from 2009. Can you talk about on what scale would a 2009 be? That's pretty aged for a white wine.
Speaker 2:We're talking, and it was a very warm vintage. That was the year of Black Saturday fires. It was too yeah. So it was a really, really hot year and they would have got the heat during the time that they were picking, because it was February. I remember my birthday going out to get pizza. It was 46 degrees, it said in my car and my thongs were sticking to the road, the road was kind of melted.
Speaker 1:I remember that I did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember my thongs sticking to the road. It was gross. So yeah, 2009 is old. This is a 15-year-old wine, 15-year-old wine, so that's huge for a white wine too. Yes, and generally from a warm climate, remember. Yeah, so generally that advances its ageing. Yeah, it's like if you go out in the sun too much, yeah. And also a hot vintage from a warm year From a warm region.
Speaker 1:Sorry, this is interesting because white wine God, if you looked at the aged wine in the world, what 90% of it do you reckon would be red wine? Yeah, and then when you go, okay, so of that white wine, most of it is going to be Riesling, then maybe a bit of Chardonnay, then maybe after that Simeon If we talk globally, not Australia then after that maybe Semillon and then in Australia Marsan, but this has so many what's in it, so it's Marsan and Chenin Blanc is predominantly, but then it also has Chardonnay, semillon, muscadal and Orange Muscat.
Speaker 2:Okay, so Chenin Blanc ages really well.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Again high acidity, grape variety yeah okay. Riesling high acidity grape variety. Marsan picked early high acidity grape variety. Semillon picked early high acidity grape variety. So acid is key to white wines. Now, if you taste this wine, it's actually got some pretty fine acid going on.
Speaker 1:It has amazing acid for a 15 year old wine and that would be acid adjusted, I would.
Speaker 2:I would say to get the ph down so that they can age the wine properly and let it age gracefully, like me, mmm. Aged Chardonnay, you know, I don't know that people really like drinking aged Chardonnay. Old Burgundy, yes, yeah, but you know, old Californian and old South African and old New Zealand. It's all pretty much consumed when it's young, but I guess that's just a cultural thing. As you were saying earlier, this has got two varieties in it that are designed no, not designed but have been historically aged Marsan and Chenin Blanc.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I would say the others are fillers, although Muscadel is the other grape variety in Sauternes. Ah, so you have Semillon. Sauvon and Muscadet at around 2%.
Speaker 1:This is quite interesting, because normally I would expect I don't know what she's doing, but it's her spittoon, it's very fancy.
Speaker 2:It's just a coffee cup. It is a coffee cup, but it's like ceramic or something.
Speaker 1:For the listeners. I shouldn't say this I've got a milkshake container, You've got a milkshake. It's actually a cocktail shaker. A cocktail shaker.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's fancy as a cocktail shaker.
Speaker 1:Last time I said on the podcast we're recording this because we're putting it on YouTube. It never happened. That was like four months ago and now I can almost say that we're on YouTube. We are one click of a button away from having an episode on YouTube. Yay, so there is at least a 50% chance that this very episode will be on YouTube. Let's not hold it to it.
Speaker 2:You can see these. Let's applaud her ambition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was a good way of putting it, but yeah, no, I think I'm used to. I was expecting way more like creaminess and toastiness, and it's actually really quite interesting. As an age one, I find this.
Speaker 2:It's beautiful. I mean, the first thing you notice about it. It is a deep gold, almost a wedding band gold colour, yeah, Although yours is white gold, is it? Or is it titanium?
Speaker 1:I have white gold. Well no, this isn't my one. I'm wearing my grandmother's one. Oh, my one. I'm wearing my grandmother's one. Oh okay, because I've got big fat fingers in pregnancy.
Speaker 2:But yes, oh, we get everything big fat. Yeah, don't lose it until you have the next one. Oh, excellent, there's no point. Yeah, well, that's true, anyway, we don't get. So the first thing you notice is it's a very deep gold color, not much of a green tinge, but there's a slight one. And the nose I get this real. Um, apricot and that apricot kernel which I know people sort of oh, what are you talking about? And there is a creamy smell to it, like a clotted cream smell.
Speaker 1:I find it's almost like an interesting kind of it's like a citrusy but not like lemon, like a mandarin or like a cooked mandarin skin candy.
Speaker 2:Have you smelt orange blossom?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I was actually thinking that there's a floral nest to it.
Speaker 2:And this has orange blossom grape variety in it. Yeah, and I get that too In Chile. It's a beautiful word. It's called azar, which is orange blossom. It's nice, isn't it? Azar, azar, yeah, loved that show Me too.
Speaker 1:But I was really surprised to smell something floral, because you don't get that much in aged white.
Speaker 2:No, I mean this wine. Even though it is aged it's I would say 80% aged it still has a fresh fruit, a fruitiness to it that's interesting. So it's moved to that sort of apricot and that honey or that orange blossom smell, yeah, and there's still some honeysuckle in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great acidity. Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:I better spit because I've got to drive. How much is that, do you know?
Speaker 1:Can you get them? This is the thing. It's all very well us reviewing them. So with All Saints, to my knowledge, you have to become like a member Okay, fair, and then, like once a year, they do a release. So that's from memory. So on their website at the moment I can only find the young one. So the 2021 is $48. But these kinds of wines are available. Just become a member, join their mailing list. Keep an eye on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. And support the wineries by going direct to them. Cut out the middleman Totally, as Billy Bragg would say.
Speaker 1:That's a song All right, start your own revolution and cut out the middleman.
Speaker 2:That's the whole part of the song.
Speaker 1:I won't do it in.
Speaker 2:Billy's voice. So, yeah, that is, with age one you're going to look at deeper colour, you're going to start moving to a cooked fruit profile, you're going to take on some of those what we call tertiary characteristics, which can be toast and honey and kerosene, petrol, and sometimes a minerality, a whetstone, as well. That becomes all part of the play, and what you're looking for in your aged wines. For me, is always that balance. I just don't want it to be 100% all of that. The beauty about this wine, I think, is there's still a fruit freshness to the wine.
Speaker 2:And that's probably down to all the different grape varieties that are in there.
Speaker 1:And in terms of ageing the wine, no difference in ageing white wine to a red wine.
Speaker 2:Nope, just keep it at a cool, constant temperature with no vibrations.
Speaker 1:You know this, yeah no, I just ask you questions on behalf of the listeners. Yeah, do you think that everything I ask?
Speaker 2:you I don't know, because you must think Stupid Warrick told me that girl knows her one. No, yeah, we keep it constant. You know 20 and constant is better than 12, 15, 18, 24, 26, 30. Yeah, no vibrations, because it can upset the wine. Keep it. In the past we always laid them down because we wanted to keep the cork moist. I know people had that word, so damp the cork in good condition.
Speaker 1:I've also said penetrate this episode. When I said it I was like it's not quite there.
Speaker 2:That was not a good choice of word, but you don't have to do that with screw cap.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The other reason we do it for reds is because if we have the deposit, it's going to fall on that part of the wine, but if you're standing the bottle up, it's all going to deposit to the bottom and it's going to make your decanting way easier. So it really depends on what space you've got. Wine fridges, as you'll see, are designed for everything to be laid down. So, again, you do what you can do to age your wine. Just keep it constant. One thing that you can buy is an old fridge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't plug it in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just leave it. Yeah, shut and don't keep opening and shutting it. And that's a good. That will stay pretty constant if you don't open it.
Speaker 1:Okay, awesome. Then let's move on to the reds.
Speaker 2:So red wine is a little bit more complicated. Ph is still really, really, really important because of that free sulfur dioxide. Obviously we add less sulfur dioxide to red wines anyway, because too much would bleach them. You've got tannin and what happens over time is tannins start out, if you imagine, as little lego blocks, and then another one joins that lego block and becomes a bigger lego block, and then another one joins and another one joins, and another one joins Eventually. This is a very simple explanation. They're too big to stay in solution, so they will fall out and that gives you that deposit in the bottom of your glass. Yeah, the acid will also, as those tannins start to form, you have like nucleation sites. So basically the acid will then be able to crystallise around that. So you'll get some of the wine diamonds coloured wine diamonds falling out as well. So some of the tartrate will fall out as well as the wine ages Making the wine, moving the wine from purple to red.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:To terracotta, to brown.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it becomes this, like beautiful orangey, like yeah, so it becomes that terracotta pot colour and then eventually it will just become brown and you don't really want to be drinking it at that end of the scale.
Speaker 2:What you want is to assess the colour. Hold the glass on the side and look at the back and it's looking at the rim. So the middle of the glass will always be deeper but it's whether it's got a ruby edge or it's got a barbie pink edge or it's got an orange edge. So you're looking at the back of the glass and the actual rim where the light's starting to penetrate through. So it gives you an indication of the colour of the wine. And you know we use that sort of garnet term which is a WCT. They're very limited in the WCT on what they use.
Speaker 2:So this wine still has an incredible amount of colour as far as I can see, and it has still a ruby edge to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this one? What are we drinking? This is a 2010 All Saints Ruby Cabernet. So we've had a Ruby Cabernet. A few weeks, months ago, we had one this year. I think it might have been from All Saints as well, or from like a sister winery, but 2010, yeah, so we're talking 14 years old.
Speaker 2:It does not look 14 years old, but Ruby Cabernet is renowned for having a very vibrant ruby colour. It's often used was used as a filler wine to pump up colour in cask wine, to pump up the colour of cask wine. To pump up the colour of cask wine and also to give it fruit, because it has a very, really distinct plum and dark cherry. It doesn't have that bell pepper character that you expect of Cabernet. It is a different grape variety.
Speaker 1:It has Cabernet parentage obviously it smells like boysenberry.
Speaker 2:It does smell like boysenberry. Like boysenberry ice cream? It does, and almost like you can smell the cream as well.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:I was thinking am I going to say that and sound like an idiot?
Speaker 2:I was thinking it too. It does. It literally smells like opening up a tub of boysenberry ice cream.
Speaker 1:Yes, but in a brilliant way, not in like an ugh way, in like a that smells so inviting and I can't wait to put it in my mouth and I know you taste in colours.
Speaker 2:It does have a very purple smell to it.
Speaker 1:Like a light, bright, violet. Oh my God, that is so nice.
Speaker 2:So boysenberry again.
Speaker 1:Yes, but way more layered and interesting, with savoury hints and spice, but there's still this brightness.
Speaker 2:So heaps and heaps of fruit for a 14-year-old wine from a warm region, from a warm climate.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, it has no right to still be so bright and lively, but there is there is a smokiness that I get in in which could be the oak sort of changing.
Speaker 2:Um, I also get a bit of a roasted red pepper character on the palate, not on the nose, which is a cabernet ish character.
Speaker 1:It still has kind of gritty cabernet tannins, which is interesting after that long, but on the finish I think it's that capsicum type thing that you're talking about on the finish as well.
Speaker 2:But for me, the palate, the texture of that wine is where it's starting to age, because the tannins are very drying, yeah, and the wine almost finishes in the middle of my palate. Yeah, and all I have at the back of my palate is tannin.
Speaker 1:I don't get any fruit follow through and that's the wine starting to age, so you reckon that this still has a decent amount of time left in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I say that. Look, there's so much fruit. On the nose I would say it's got another 10 years left in it. On the palate I would say it has a few years, probably five years, left in it, but it definitely needs at this age to have protein consumed with it. It needs some food to make those tannins look a little less drying.
Speaker 1:But the flavours, the beautiful, like floral boysenberry brightness. I just can't imagine having that with a steak or anything Like it would kill it. What would you eat with it? It would kill those beautiful flavours.
Speaker 2:I think a roast duck, because we often serve cherry with roast duck. So the boysenberry with the gaminess could work quite well. I just think the tannic are getting a little bit dusty. Yeah, they are Chalky like chalk dust, but it's still incredibly young. I did not know that. Ruby Cabernet aged yeah, I'm surprised.
Speaker 1:Do you get clay pot, crushed gravel and black olive?
Speaker 2:I do get clay pot actually.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get clay pot. I'm not sure about olive.
Speaker 2:but oh, actually, you know what the fruit is starting to have a look at it, it's starting to abate.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's the power of suggestion, yeah, yeah, no, as soon as we went boysenberry it took over everything. We just needed a moment to like take some other things. Okay, the food matching on their website is mushroom pasta. Yeah, so that's super. Yeah, avoid overpowering flavours like lamb stew. Yeah, it doesn't need a big, elegant gay meats. They agree with you. Yes, see.
Speaker 2:And they have to put the vegetarian option in because you know we have to abate peas, the vegetarians mushroom pasta would be before people come at us for hating the vegetarians.
Speaker 1:It should be noted that meg eats vegetarian most of the time anyway, because her child is vegetarian.
Speaker 2:I do I do four nights a week. Um friday nights is Friday Meat. The other thing like something with a romesco sauce which has got that. What's romesco sauce. So it's got roasted red pepper and almonds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yum.
Speaker 2:That would be. That is a beautiful wine actually. I love it, and maybe I have got an ulcer. Maybe the tannins are looking more. No, they're. Tanniny than they should be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're there, they're present. I noted them as well. I'm probably not as offended as you are. I can't believe how young it looks. It's awesome, it's really cool. I actually really like your call with Doc. So that is $143 on their website and that's why you buy it for $48?.
Speaker 2:Oh, we don't know how much the red was. I don't know how much you buy it for.
Speaker 1:Sorry, yeah, the red's different, but it says not available for sale. I'm pretty sure it's just because you need to like sign up to be on their database to buy these wines.
Speaker 2:So sign up with your mates. Yeah, oh well, sign up, share the cost with your mates, share the wines and then, every month or however often they send out their wine, you've got access to these beautiful aged wines.
Speaker 1:Yeah, unreal, that's awesome, love that.
Speaker 2:Because they are a treat to drink. We're very lucky, they really are.
Speaker 1:Any final notes on museum wines. I think I should say I have a note. Note and that is. Not everyone will like them.
Speaker 2:Oh, definitely.
Speaker 1:People think that just because you've got a really old, fancy wine, it's going to be delicious and no one's going to love it. It's not necessarily Like. It's a really interesting taste that some people love and wine nerds probably love. But if you are not a big wine drinker and you're not that far on your wine journey, I don't think it's a great place to go.
Speaker 2:I think whites are more appealing because they go into that toasty, creamy honey, apricotty, which I think everyone kind of likes. Reds move into a very savoury ground and so for people you know, for Cabernet, classic descriptors are cigar box tobacco cedar yeah meat for lamb, you know, black olive tapenade. They do move into that savoury space. So some people definitely won't. If you don't like Sangiovese's and Nebbiolo's, you probably won't really like aged wines because they are just a bit too savoury, but we like them.
Speaker 1:Any other points from you before we wrap up for this episode?
Speaker 2:No, I mean, if you've got space, I would recommend going out and buying yourselves a dozen bottles of Marsan and a dozen bottles of Semillon that are going to cost you probably around the $25 mark and putting them down and just seeing how they age. But if you don't have the space, I understand, try them every year and when they're drinking well, just drink them. Don't think they're going to get. They reach a peak, like all of us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the easiest way to find out if a wine is going to age or not, go to cellar doors. Just go to cellar doors and be like will this age or not, and they'll tell you. Yeah, they'll tell you.
Speaker 2:And look, it's a gamble, kind of yeah, but we know the basic science around it. We know the acidity, ph, the quality of the fruit. You need a pretty good quality wine. I would not be aging a $15 bottle of wine.
Speaker 1:No, and you need a good quality wine. But there's other things that get into consideration, for instance, like a Pinot Noir. Even if it's good quality, it's not necessarily going to age.
Speaker 2:No, that's right.
Speaker 1:Even if you paid $60 for it, it's probably not going to age.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's very few serving youngs in this world that can actually age.
Speaker 1:Mushy peas.
Speaker 2:Mushy peas.
Speaker 1:So I think either you just need to like it's, we could give you a bunch of guidelines, but it's like a case-by-case basis. Ask your local person in your liquor store that knows their stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and speak to cellar doors. Know cellar doors.
Speaker 1:Do some research. If you really can't tell, dm us. We're pretty nice, we might get back to you. Yep, now, actually before we finish up this episode, I do have a listener question.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so.
Speaker 1:Oh, and it's on my phone that I'm recording on, so I'm going to have to just cut that one short. Oh, my, okay. Our listener question is in the form of a video. Oh, so, a listener called Cassia, a new Cassia listeneria listener. We have two. I've never heard the name cassia before and all of a sudden there's all these people called cassia following us. That's nice, okay. So cassia said um hi, megan mal listening to your podcast, love listening to your podcast. Have a question about the electric decanter pouring machine I have. While pouring the wine into the glass it creates a lot of foam which settles down after a minute or so. But I wanted to know your opinion about it. Is it going to be any good? Here's the picture. Here's the video, meg, so you can see a lot. It's got like mousse, like a frigging sparkling wine, like the top head of a beer, so what?
Speaker 2:it is is. Look at the size of the spout that the wine is coming out. It's very small. That is basically just pushing something through something small. It's pressurising it and that's creating the foam. Remember that wine, even red wine has dissolved carbon dioxide in it. If you shake it, you're going to get foam. I don't know why you would buy an electric decanter sorry, cassia when you have your hands and a jug. Yeah yeah, I did say I've got some equipment, but I didn't bring it.
Speaker 1:But do you think that it? What's the?
Speaker 2:point. What's it supposed to do?
Speaker 1:It's not going to harm the wine, though it's definitely getting a lot of oxygen bring it, but do you think that it? What's the point? What's it supposed to do? It's not going to harm the wine, though it's definitely getting a lot of oxygen through it, or do you think that will harm the wine?
Speaker 2:That could be removing some of the dissolved carbon dioxide, which will alter how you perceive the tannins and could make the wine really look soft and flabby.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:I don't know whether is it oxygenating or is it just literally pushing it through. I don't know. Without knowing what the thing is supposed to do, it's hard to tell. But oh, I forgot to bring you a present. Oh, I would argue that one does not need an electric decanter. Will it harm the wine? No, Did you taste the wine before and after? I don't know if she did so. That's always key to decanting Taste always pour like a you know a couple of centimetres of wine in your glass. Yeah, and go back to that and taste it first before you decant. That's going to give you an indication of whether you need to decant first. This thing seems to screw. It looks kind of like a caravan yeah.
Speaker 1:So she said that's what I thought it looked like a caravan, because caravan does leave you a bit of foam on the top, does? She said there's a little tube that's inserted inside the bottle and by pressing the button the bottle and by pressing the button I guess it sucked out, but also pushed out with quite big power. It's definitely oxygenated. Meg is not convinced. I can tell you by her face.
Speaker 2:I just don't know why. Yeah, what was the why? What was the purpose?
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I guess, if it's decanter, I guess if you're told that with a normal decanter it takes two hours, and maybe the electric one just does it straight away.
Speaker 2:Okay, Time is the one thing we have people.
Speaker 1:Okay, wow.
Speaker 2:Because that is what they call in cooking books low input time. You don't have to do anything, it just sits there.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I don't know, meg, I don't know if I'm with you on this one. Sometimes you're just sitting there and you're like, should we open a bottle of wine? And you're like, yeah, we should, and you want to be able to open it, not open it. And then this is why people think wine people are wankers, because a wine person will be like oh, we can't drink it. It's breathing, but, like I said to you pour yourself a little glass.
Speaker 2:a little taster, decant it, but a little bit of planning. I very rarely if I'm desperate for wine, I would very rarely go, oh, I have to have a wine that I need to decant, so let me push it through this funny thing. So I actually have in my Coravin an aerator. I think we used it when we were looking at does decanting make a difference. I think it's the only time it's been taken out of the box. Look, is that any different to holding the bottle up high and splashing?
Speaker 1:it into a jug, like probably not, I guess no yeah.
Speaker 2:What was the line? We need more information. We need to know what was it like. Send it to us. We'll do a before and after. What was it like? Afterwards?
Speaker 1:There's too many variables. Sorry, we haven't been helpful, cassia. Sorry, it looks fun.
Speaker 2:All right, it looks like a waste of money. We will be back. It was probably a gift. Okay, in that case, lovely gift from someone, someone who loves you dearly.
Speaker 1:So we're going to be back next week. Next week, we are bringing you all these museum wines. We are going to be tasting the young one versus the old one and just taking everything that we've talked about this episode and putting it into practice and seeing how it tastes. Yeah, so we will see you then and enjoy your next glass of wine. Drink well.
.jpg)