St Hallett Faith Shiraz 2004

Here's a review from Luke (PS - Luke, about the delay in putting it up as a separate post):

In preparation for my wine test in January, I decided to buy 20-some bottles of wine, mostly single varital, and put them in a box. For the past 3 days, I have been tasting one or two blind, making notes, and studying the region while having a glass. (And taking the leftovers to work and testing other people in my course...) I put some wines I had in the mystery box, bringing the total to about 30.

So far so good. I do have a "university exam" coming up on Tuesday, but studying wine is so much more enjoyable. I think it may be the wine...

Today I had Jaclyn pour me a random bottle at 12:30. I may have been because it was so early in the day, but my senses were either working very well or this was a great wine.

Before I even tasted, I wanted to say Australian Shiraz. The deep garnet core and the way it stuck to the glass looked familiar. The nose was very pronounced - dark fruit - cerries, plum, and white pepper. Not too heavily oaked. Very nice.

On the palate, medium body, soft tannin, and a very long finish. Lots of fruit and spice. I was very impressed by this wine. Greath depth and length. My conclusion was South Australian Shiraz, 2004.

Price $27.99
Value: 4.5/5
Score: 91
Region: Australia, Barossa
Grape: Shiraz
UPC #9316920000084

BTW - this week's tastings gave me the idea to see if there is are any valuable learning tools on youtube. So far there isn't, except for this guy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLdfeeXpJYc&feature=related

He says he has allergies, I say he has a coke problem.

Glaetzer Amon-Ra Shiraz 2005

This is a hot wine from a hot wine maker. Robert Parker gave this vintage 98/100. But Wine Spectator was more restrained, giving it a relatively modest 92. I'm with Wine Specator on this one. I had it with a few friends and while it was very nice, it didn't blow us away by any means. We had a bottle of the Pio Cesare Fides Barbera (post coming soon) and there was total agreement that the Fides was a much better wine (at half the price) because it was sigificantly more complex. The Amon-Ra was well balanced with good flavours, but without anything that would put it into that category of really special wines. Kelly and I had the Glaetzer Bishop a couple of weeks before, and there wasn't much difference between them, even though the Bishop was half the price.

Here's Kelly's note: "Intense nose of lush blackdurrant with evergreen and black pepper. Lush, smooth, and soft on palate with firm tar edge to end. Very nicely balanced. Up with Elderton command and Wolf Blass Black Label 1999 shirazes, which are best ones I've had. General agreement that (a) shiraz just isn't a particularly complex grape and (b) the Amon-Ra, while good, isn't great value at $70 or even $60. Ted says this isn't a classic big Aussie shiraz, as it's not so big on the fruit and doesn't have the pepper he's used to."

Price: Approx $70
Score: 92
Value: 2/5
Tasted: April 2008
ANBL UPC: No longer listed