Woodstock 2001 Shiraz Cabernet

I received this excellent wine as a present back in Christmas '05 and have been saving it for quite a while. A friend at work said that anything 2001 from South Australia was going to be a very good drop - the main reason: bush fires. During 2001 South Australia suffered from many bush fires, the result being that the grapes in the wine regions were going to be very sweet and the wines excellent. Lesson for today: the year of a wine will be important to some degree, and you can tell if one year is better than the other sometimes from seemingly irrelevant reasons (such as a bush fire!).

So it comes as no surprise that when I did open up the bottle, to coincide with our wedding anniversary, the wine was brilliant. I have learned that one of the best reasons for keeping wine is to allow it to mellow out. However, wine can not be kept forever. This particular wine has a cellaring potential of anywhere from 5-8 years. I've opened it at the 6 year mark.

And after 6 years this wine has matured quite well. Whist I expected it to be quite strong, I was also quite surprised at how relatively mellow flavouring was. So I referred to the notes to compare what I was tasting stacked up to the winemaker's opinion...

Herbal anise and cloves spice with pencil shavings, cedar, coconut and complex bacon aromas.

Don't know about the complex bacon aromas, but there was a hint of coconut and a hint of wood. I thought I picked up the scent of tobacco but that could also be a by product of oaking. A 'complex nose' sounds rather pompish, but it simply means that there's so much going on with the aromas that it's hard to pick - as it is with this wine.

That said, it was a very nice wine to drink from a very respectable wine maker.