Grant Burge Moscato Rosa sparkling rose 2007

Barossa, $14

Not really sparkling, more a light spritz.   A light and sweet rose from grenache and frontignac.  Vibrant rose colour.  Strawberries and a bit of lime.  Great summer afternoon / picnic wine.

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: Wine Society Vineyard Selection Chardonnay 2007

Multi-region, $9

I never thought I'd say this, but there's too much alcohol in this wine.  14% is big for a red, let alone a white, and it overpowers the fruit, making it taste a little rough.  Flavours otherwise good, but hard to taste.

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: Evans & Tate Margaret River Chardonnay 2006

Margaret River, $21  James Halliday 92 pts

I quite like it.  Subtle fruit (citrus, melon) and even subtler oak.  I like a bit more flavour, so I can get chardies that I like better for this price.

Wine: Cumulus Rolling Sauvingon Blanc Semillon 2007

Central Ranges, NSW

I like sauvignon blancs in moderation - those yummy tropical flavours are lovely for a pre-dinner drink or two - but I find it cloying after a couple of glasses.

This wine has those tropical flavours but nicely balanced with lemon and almost a sort of honey.  I like it!

Adventure: Mosel Valley, Germany

Cat and I journeyed here in October last year.  It is a postcard vineyard landscape: a gorgeous river meandering through cliffs and steep banks terraced with vines - and the occasional castle.  This is the centre of German riesling territory.

We stayed in Koblenz and took the train to Cochem, which takes under an hour.  We took a leisurely boat back, which takes about 5 hours.

Cochem is lovely too, with steep windy cobblestone streets leading up to an awesome castle on the hill.

We couldn't quite work out the deal with wine tasting: it seems that unlike with Australian cellar doors you only taste a wine to see if you do in fact want to buy a bottle, rather than sampling all of what they have on offer and seeing what you like.  Anyway, we found one cellar door who were very helpful if a little gruff and we sampled their rieslings.  All but the driest tasted too sweet to us, being used to Australian rieslings, but the dry was pretty yummy and the 'half-dry' would be a good match with sweet or spicy food.

Anyway, I'd thoroughly recommend a trip to this stunning part of Germany.

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.