Wine: Pooles Rock Firestick Late Harvest Shiraz 2006

Hunter Valley, $16ish

Well this is an unusual one.  Chocolate, plum and berry aromas.  Similar flavours.  Smooth almost syrupy texture.  And it's sweet!  Almost a dessert wine.  Nice.  Apparently it's good chilled too.

Wine: Warburn Premium Reserve Merlot 2006

Barossa, $9   James Halliday 89 pts

A good wine for the price. Nice deep red colour.  Soft and quite a short palate, but with a bit of fruity flavour.  Enjoyed it with rack of lamb with fennell and pear - went nicely.

Wine: Taylors Jaraman Cabernet Sauvignon 2004

Clare Valley / Coonawarra, $31

Dave says: 

This multi-medal wine was good but I wanted more for the price.

Had some warm chocolatey and blackcurrant flavours and also some cooler green capsicum / tomato tones.  Tasted a bit young to me, maybe a bit of cellaring would be worthwhile.  Lots of alcohol at 14.5%.

We had it with rack of lamb and it worked pretty well.

Certainly yummy but I didn't quite get the rave reviews it gets.

Cat says:

We bought this one on the recommendation of James Halliday, who in his 2008 Australian wine companion gave this wine 94 points. The wine companion says, 'Big, rich and ripe cassis and blackcurrent fruit solidly supported by integrated oak'. I don't know what the distinction between cassis and blackcurrant is (aren't they the same?), but I mostly agree with this description, except for the 'big' bit. It's certainly rich and ripe with lots of blackcurrant, but I've had bigger wines, for less money too. I liked this wine, although I think I've had better for the price. The fact that it's more medium bodied than full meant that it was better with the rare lamb rack I cooked to go with it.