So... Some Wine?

Tallarook Shiraz Viognier 2004, Victoria

This producer is I fear defunct.  Rather a sad outcome as I reckon they made some nice wines, not for everyone, but a bit more than interesting and rather enjoyable.

The pliers add to the rustic nature of the photo,
just like my messy kitchen.

Fading ruby to look at, this smells like dried herbs and flowers, with, violet? over mineral earth. The palate follows through with more herb, leather and dry earth, but the fruit is suprising with it's bright rasberry lolly and cherry character. Open for an hour or so classic shiraz fruit and spice show through. From here stem and leaf chime in and this producer always builds over an acid/tannin backbone, oak is subtle but nicely present. This all carries the wine and imbues structure and length. 90.

A bit of an old world pretender, I'd be intrigued to see this next to a couple of examples from the Rhone. Overall this is tight, but opens with a bit of time, it may also be a bit over age, but again this is gracefully so and I really like the faded primary characters yielding to other funk and complexity.  Like many good wines, the fruit comes up once the bottle is open for a little while.  The other point to mention is the deft handling of the Viognier, some of the previous editions of the wine have used Marsanne to the same end; the element to like here is that it is intergrated with such class.  The only hint to it's presence is the slight floral edge and ephemeral dried apricot note.  So many of these wines are so overladen with the viognier that they taste like apricots and flowers, which if the shiraz is good does not compliment, but rather overtakes.  As they say less is more right?