Whitey ponders two delicious McLaren Vale tinctures which are preservative-free.
Battle of Bosworth McLaren Vale Puritan Shiraz 2013
$20; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 85 points
Here we go again: “grown in some of the world’s oldest soils”, the back label says. Why Australians seem to hope their vines are growing in the “world’s oldest soils” beats me. These vineyards are mainly in the Christie’s Beach Formations, alluvial stuff laid down in the last 10,000 years or so. Beneath those recent sands and clays, you’ll hit the Kurrajong rubble, there for maybe a million or so years longer. Just up the hill from Bosworth, across the Willunga fault, you’ll cross the 600-million-year line: siltstones and sandstones laid down when Uluru was an ocean bed. The particulate zircons of Western Australia, meanwhile, are about 4.36 billion years old. So forget the stuff about the “world’s oldest soils”. The other thing this label claims is that the wine has no added preservatives – it claims to have no sulphur and no oak. Having tasted the wine, I believe this bit. So? Is it orange wine, or bearded wine? Nope. It’s just hyper-clean unoaked Shiraz without any sulphur; the type of wine you could taste from many winery tanks after vintage. It has pleasing reeks of fresh dough and blackberry, like a vibrantly fresh tart yet to go in the oven. And it does have a whiff of something that reminds me of summer dust. The flavours are clean, supple and cute. So, where does it fit? People who get rashes, migraine and/or asthma from sulphur will find it hugely relieving; people who love the brash romance of Beaujolais will find it similar in style to a young one of those. Overall, it’s still Australian Shiraz, but pure and very youthful without being raw and without seeming unfinished. Lively and bright with a dark carbon glint, it is a vast distance from those horrid no-alc fake wines you’ll find in Coles and Woolies. It’s also a long way ahead of most of Australia’s dry red, which gets the sawdust/shavings/woodchip treatment and then heaps of sulphur, and most often, a polyvinyl chloride-rich plastic bag. No, folks, this is a serious clean preservative-free table wine, which would be great with a stack of field mushrooms, cheesy potato pie and spinach.
Goodieson Brewery Maibock
$22 a six-pack of 330ml stubbies; 6.5% alcohol; crown seal; 94 points
Pure as the driven snow, this German-style maibock is made to drink in spring. It’s made just a few kays from Bosworth, down on the Sand Road, and yes, it’s free of preservatives. It smells heartily of wet grain, somewhere between a rain-wet wheatfield and rising dough, with all the associated esters and florals. It’s a smooth, mildly viscous mouthful to drink – not too bitter – with a comforting sweetness and a vibrant, immediate freshness. In other words, a bonnie Beaujolais of beers, a grinning mouthful of spring, made for drinking, not thinking, and just perfect for those white-bread cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Or, for that matter, all manner of fresh fish, cooked without sophistry. It’s another stunning regional triumph from McLaren Vale’s only true brewery.
