$10 SHIRAZ TO IMPRESS WITH AT THE TABLE

GREAT value with oven-baked rack of lamb or a beef & Guinness pie.

Wc20Feb12

David Ellis

ALTHOUGH its just $10 a bottle, Deakin Estate’s 2010 Shiraz is a wine you can easily put on the table with a meal to impress – things like oven-baked rack of lamb, or a hearty beef and Guinness pie come quickly to mind.

Made from fruit from the company’s vineyards in the Murray Darling region of North West Victoria, it’s a wine whose deep and vibrant red colour not only looks good, it tastes good too.

Winemaker Phil Spillman aged separate parcels of the wine in American and French oak barrels, then brought them together for the resultant blend: rich blueberry characters are to the fore with medium tannins and a lingering finish.

With its $10 price-tag its worth considering by the case, particularly as its showing plenty of potential to cellar well through until 2016 or so; or enjoy now with that rack of lamb, beef and Guinness pie or even aged sirloin topped with a chimichurri sauce.

REALLY enjoy this with Moroccan and Asian dishes, or spiced-up chicken wings and pork ribs.

ONE FOR LUNCH: EVEN though he has planted just 34-hectares of their 280-hectare fine wool property to grapes, Graeme Shaw and his family have produced some ripper wines from their Shaw Vineyard Estate at Murrumbateman just to the north of Canberra.

One of their latest is their 2011 Riesling, a wine that shows how Riesling can enjoy life to the full in a cool climate like that around Canberra: this one’s got lovely tropical fruit aromas and a palate of passionfruit and limes, and with Riesling being one of the great food wines – it’ll match such a diversity of dishes through the whole spectrum from entrees to desserts – try this one with anything from Moroccan, Asian or Mexican, to spiced up chicken wings or pork ribs.

Just 300 cases were made, at just $22 a bottle these are sure to be snapped up.

(NEED A FOOD/DRINK IDEA? Check out  http://www.vintnews.com )