The SOMM Journal

April / May 2017

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102 { THE SOMM JOURNAL } APRIL/MAY 2017 { down under } I SIT HERE SCRATCHING MY HEAD. I hope that they think that I'm messing with the squirrels that may live in my curly mop rather than what's going through my head: "Why don't I know about these wines?" I look up at a skate ramp in the Basket Range, a tucked-away region just outside of Adelaide, and think how great it is to be wrong. I packed a lot of whitening strips and ibuprofen for the trip, thinking I was about to embark on a 14-day bender of big, bom - bastic wines whose alcohol content would rival that of Port. Before this trip, my experi- ence with the wines of Australia had been relegated to the country's most coveted releases and its very mass-produced plonk. If it cost more than $80 at retail or had a crit - ter on the label, it was well within my scope of understanding; other than that, I had very little idea what was going on Down Under. All of that was about to change. In Victoria The first region that caught my attention was the Yarra Valley in Victoria. The modern reinvention of the Yarra Valley only dates back to the late 1960s and '70s and a group of doc- tors, one of whom established Yarra Yering, but wines had previously been made there by Swiss settlers as early as the 19th century. Yarra Yering (YARRA YERING USA) was founded in 1969 by Dr. Bailey Carrodus, but the winery was ushered into the now by Sarah Crowe, who stepped in during the 2013 vintage. Crowe's contribution to the winery's evolution was so profound that James Halliday named her Winemaker of the Year in 2016. Yarra Yering is best known for its benchmark wines: Dry Red No. 1 and Dry Red No. 2. While Dry Red No. 2 speaks to Rhône varietals, Dry Red No. 1 is inspired by Bordeaux. I found the latter the most compelling, with blueberry and cassis on the nose and additional notes of dried black cherry, smoke and wood spice in the mouth. The 2012 finished with a touch of heat from its youth but also with long lean tannic structure. The youthful heat fell away in the 2010 and developed even further in the 1981, which was a rare and truly exqui - site delight. While Yarra Yering is beautiful and historic, a sharp Yarra Valley contrast can be found in Luke Lambert (VINE STREET IMPORTS). We bumped up the dirt road to a shed where the winery dog Murray greeted us and the Cool-Climate Australia A LOS ANGELES–BASED SOMM FINDS A LOT TO LIKE IN VICTORIA AND SOUTH AUSTRALIA story and photos by Mary Thompson Marco Cirillo's Grenache tucked in neatly among its basket vine that dates back to the mid-1800s. Taras Ochota from Ochota Barrels taking in the view and sips of his "weird berries in the woods" Gewürztraminer. Sarah Crowe of Yarra Yering, named James Halliday's Winemaker of the Year in 2016, points out some of the Yarra Valley blocks that go into Dry Red No. 1.

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