Wine is serious business.  Everybody knows that.  You can’t just sling it down, smacking your lips and saying “yeah, that’s alright”, you have to tip the glass solemnly over your nose, then tilt your chin all the way back to take a tiny, angled sip. Trust me, you have to. That’s how I do it, because I’m a Grown Up.  Okay, that’s a bit of a stretch: when I’m really, really concentrating on a wine, that’s what I do.  For the first couple of mouthfuls.  Then I get distracted and start quaffing with a little more enthusiasm and vigour.  If I really like a wine, sometimes I’ll start saying “MMmmm!” before I even swallow my mouthful.  It’s all class, all the time around here.

I had a point when this started.  Wait, I remember now!  Here it comes (in a while): some people are very, very serious about wine.  They’ll talk terroir, they know their New World from their Old School and they remember that time they opened the Henschke they’d been saving since they were married and it made them weep for one reason or another (either because of its glory or its decay).  Others are less intense: they drink sweet pink sparklings that claim to be strawberry-flavoured, they don’t care about what glass it comes in and they think spritzers are a refreshing low-cal alternative to drinks with lunch. The thing is, both those people can say they love wine.  There’s so much room in the wine world: there’s beautiful stuff, there’s horrid stuff, and there’s unusual, tacky and quirky stuff.  There’s plenty of room for everybody, and plenty of wine to go around.  Isn’t that nice?

I enjoyed the Heartland Directors’ Cut Shiraz with some friends the other night: two were old hands at wine, having been quaffing and collecting for years.  They sipped happily, making comments on this or that regarding the region and Shirazes they have known. I sat quietly and made a couple of notes. i am sure that we were all looking for something different, drinking our lovely wine for different reasons, and we all enjoyed it. It has a deep purple-red hue, and the nose is full of dry red fruity smells.  I found it rich, round and velvety, and the tannins were far more restrained than I expected from a shiraz. This wine is from the red berries/plums/chocolate/violet area of the shiraz spectrum (as opposed to the peppery, spicy area, I mean), and the overall effect is one of lushness, warm-and-fuzzy mouthfeel (not literally fuzzy, of course, but satisfying and warm and soft)(you know what I mean) and delicious red berry flavours.  A delight.

Man, I’ve come to love Wirra Wirra.  Their labels are unassuming, so if you are casually browsing the shelves at the store, you may slide right past them, in favour of something with a textured or embossed label.  A second glance may raise your interest, as you notice that the wine is labelled “Mrs Wigley” or “Scrubby Rise”.  If at this point, your interest piqued, you pick up the bottle and read the back of the label, you are less likely to find a detailed analysis of the wine inside and more likely to find a short, charming story explaining the origin of the name.  Mrs Wigley, for example, was the name of a resident pusscat who lived at the Wirra Wirra cellars, “Raised exclusively on Myponga Cheddar from the cheese board in cellar door”, according to the website.

Stories and legends are an important part of Wirra Wirra, and the website is full of small tales explaining the history of the winery.  Storytelling features on many of the wine labels, which I particularly like.  The Lost Watch Riesling I sampled explained that the founder (or, more accurately, the resurrector) of Wirra Wirra, Greg Trott, lost the only watch he owned, a gift from his father. He then made the choice to never undertake the responsibility of owning such a valuable item, and claimed to tell time by the sun — which ultimately meant that he was often hours or days late.  There’s a certain charm to this story, which I think lies in the appeal of the idea of freeing yourself from the obligations of times and dates: and that idea matches very nicely with the cool, fresh Riesling in the bottle.

To the wine: an Adelaide Hills Riesling, and a particularly fine example thereof.  The colour is light without bordering on colourless, and the scent is amazingly fresh and clean.  There are hints of fresh grass, lime and nectarines to the fragrance.  The palate supports these notes, and there are hints of tart pineapple and nectarine to the flavour, and notes of lemon and lime.  The acid is minimal without being absent: just a wonderful, smooth, citrussy freshness.  Beautiful.  An excellent reason to lose your watch.

Last year was hard.  The last few months, in particular, were very difficult, with stress and illness stalking about the place in a fairly uncomfortable fashion.  It was hard, in the context of all the things going on in my little world, to write happily about wines: it seemed trivialising and flippant.  But I began to feel that it’s important to take pleasure where you can: it’s not the be-all and end-all of living, but it’s important. It’s important in the way that, say, sitting down with your family for a big, tasty meal is important: there’s love and laughter.  It won’t save the world, or even make your job easier or your shoes pinch less, but it will take the edge off.

So to toast the end of 2008 and all its horrors, I and some like-minded associates got stuck in to the important business of sipping and quaffing.  It was a night for bubbles and cheer!  We kicked off with something a bit special: a 5:30 toast to 2008 that drained my Christmas bottle of Moet et Chandon.  I like Moet (or ‘Moey’, rhymes with ‘joey’, as it gets affectionately called); I like the passionfruity, citrusy notes.  Ending 2008 with a bottle of something nice made me feel like I’d drawn the line and set a standard for 2009.  That’s right, 2009: you had better be Moet et Chandon standard, minimum.

As the evening progressed, so did we: we moved onto Jansz (I have to be honest here: I was enjoying myself far too much to pay attention to what sort of Jansz it was) and then onto the Grant Burge Sparkling Pinot Noir Chardonnay.  If you’re looking for an Australian sparkling white, either of those choices would be excellent.  Jansz is quietly, icily, deliciously fine and delicate; Grant Burge is fruity, but restrained, and both are wonderfully dry.

It is wonderful to discard the old year, to bind it and put it on the archive shelf (or to rinse it and put it in the recycling bin), and crack open a whole fresh new year.  It is even more wonderful to open up a series of icy, glittering, sparkling wines and toast the new year with the clear, crisp flavours.  Happy 2009.

While we sip, my companions comment on the wine’s brightness and youthfulness, while a spring evening breeze wanders through and the dog rest her chin on my knee, begging for the rest of my dinner.  I refuse.  But really, are there any superior circumstances for enjoying a bottle of wine?  Friends; spring; outdoors; a dog; I hope the loveliness of the evening doesn’t compromise the integrity of my review.

I’m not sure it could.  Wirra Wirra’s Scrubby Rise range comes from a particular vineyard area, near the Wirra Wirra cellars.  The bottle label comments: “That the Scrubby Rise Vineyard is actually flat and bereft of scrub has never bothered us particularly. Nor should it worry you.”  I took this advice to heart, abandoned all thought of worrying over the scrubbiness or elevation of the vineyard and took a sip of the 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Petit Verdot. I can’t remember ever having a wine with Petit Verdot in it (a Bordeaux grape, Wikipedia tells me, frequently blended with Cabernet Sauvignon but starting to be used as a stand-alone grape, too), so I tucked in with enthusiasm.  Start with the eyes: the colour is dark, purpley-red.  The smell is incredible!  Sharpish and clear, with strong red berries.

The mouthfeel is wonderful, smooth and velvety, with a dryness that I attribute to the 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, and warm, restrained tannins.  There’s a very slight acidity to the last note, which isn’t unpleasant and, my companions tell me, is due to the wine’s youth.

I wish I could put my finger on this wine and articulate exactly what is so great about it.  Wirra Wirra have some pretty awesome drops (the Mrs Wigley and Church Block series spring instantly to mind), and this one is in keeping with their best.  It’s astonishingly well-balanced; seamlessly blended; and I struggle to identify any particular individual flavours.  There’s the juiciness of shiraz, the dryness of the cabernet sauvignon, and a new note that I attribute to the petit verdot — something a bit like spice and a bit like blueberry, but not quite either.  It isn’t a woody wine, either; the savoury notes come from something else.  But ooh, it’s good.

In the end, I had to cheat and checked out the Wirra Wirra website, where the tasting notes gave me a few hints: the spice I thought I could sense turns out to be star anise, if the notes on the 2006 blend are anything to go by.  I think this wine would do well to lay down for a year or so, but certainly not long — and it’s not essential.  The only traces of youth are a certain brightness to the smell and a little bit of acidity in the back of the mouth, but they’re not unenjoyable.