Grenache Vodcast

Hi I'm Chris Barlow and welcome to Hospitality Crew's website and the wine information that today is regarding the grape variety Grenache.

Grenache is grown widely in Europe, predominantly in the South of France and Spain, and now all through the new world countries.  That is Australia, the US, and South Africa.

Grenache particularly is blended with other red varieties.  It occasionally appears as 100 percent varietal, but predominantly you will see it blended with Shiraz, Mataro or "Mourvedre" as its known in France.  These GSM styles are popping up everywhere simply because its becoming a more popular style and appreciated more and more with different food groups.

In the South of France of course the typical sort of country style peasant dishes, braised meats, they work incredible well with Grenache based wines.

Châteauneuf Du Pape is an area that is recognised as producing the highest expression of a Grenache based wine and that is predominantly Grenache with these other red varieties in support.  Châteauneuf Du Pape copies or clones are made in Australia with all these varieties together, but of course in a new world style.

Still earthy and savoury and dense and tannic wines, but perhaps just lacking that French touch that we come to know from their wines.

Grenache can also be made into a rosé.  A lighter bodied slightly sweet wine that matches up very, very well with spicy Asian dishes of all things.   It seems an unlikely match, but in fact it does match up very well with spiciness because of the slight residual sugar that’s maintained in some Grenache rosé’s. Not all but most.

GSM wines in Australia are produced predominatenly from the Barossa valley or South Australia simply because that’s were Grenache is mostly grown.  It’s a grape variety that lends itself very, very well to heat affected and drought affected areas.

Grown in those very dry lands of central Spain and Southern France but also the flats of the Barossa.   Were we find some very old dry grown, that is un-irrigated bush vine, Grenache.   Un-irrigated and un-trellaced, so that’s simply a bush growing in the ground.  The resulting wine is a very dense earthy and savoury one.

Predominately the fruit notes that come through with Grenache are red current or some say raspberry qualities.

In the GSM style, the tannins are softened with that combination of Shiraz and Mourvedre.  We can enjoy this type of wine in our country with lovely grilled meats in the barbeque.  Very simple food.  It does not call for refined, elegant types of dishes.  It’s a wine for comfort food.

Please enjoy the Grenache next time your considering a barbeque, or perhaps want to sit around the fire place in winter time with your favorite company and enjoy a heart warming luscious red.

Cheers!

Pinot Noir Vodcast

Hello, I'm Chris Barlow. Welcome to Hospitality Crew's website on wine information. Today, we are going to be looking at the grape Pinot Noir.

Now, Pinot Noir has its home in Burgandy, France. Its the noble red grape of Burgandy now planted all over the world and particularly in cool regions of Australia and New Zealand, California, Oregon and various parts of the United States. ts a grape that is traditionally very difficult to grow and it has particular requirements in terms of soil and climate and because of that its perhaps not as popular grape for wine makers as other varieties.

The example we are looking at today is from New Zealand, its from the Marlborough Region and Pinot in the south Island of New Zealand has a particular style all of its own. Its becoming regarded around the world as a leader in new world Pinot Noir making. Traditionally Pinot exhibits qualities of cherry, spiciness, there's a certain spiciness in there and when it has some age on it, it gets into the sort of mushroom spectrum, a bit of a mushroomy forest floor characteristic. Those are qualities that you will hear mentioned about Pinot Noir, as it ages in particular.

In terms of food matching with this wine if you look on menus in Europe you'll find that things like duck and mushroom dishes, of course as I mentioned before, the flavours of mushroom and truffle. Those kind of dishes work incredible well with Pinot. Lighter sauces - you can't get into very heavily flavoured sauces with this wine or it tends to get blown away.

I don't know if you can pick up there but we'll have a look at the a bit closer later, but Pinot is a light to medium bodied red wine. It has a fairly thin skin, therefore the colour extraction during the fermentation process is not as deep and rich as Cabernet or Shiraz for instance. So it has a more delicate nature to it and therefore that medium bodied quality will match up with certain foods really well but not others.

Pinot in Australia is grown in cooler areas that is Southern Victoria, Tasmania and the Southern tip of Western Australia know as the Great Southern Region. The fact that Pinot Noir has a very thin skin means that it is also susceptible to mold and rot in the vineyards. Its often a very difficult variety to grow because of certain climates that have a high humidity. When it gets close to ripeness, sometimes we have that problem of rot coming to the vineyard and it causes many wine makers any number of problems.

However, a beautiful delicate wine light body that can take a bit of a chill in summer time. You don't want to be drinking this when its too hot, and please enjoy next time you perhaps visit an Asian restaurant and you feel like some duck. Peking Duck and Pinot Noir is a marriage made in heaven. So perhaps give that a try next time.

Cheers!

Shiraz Vodcast

Hi, I'm Chris Barlow from Hospitality Crew, welcome to the website and the content which is on wine education. It is my pleasure to present a short snippet of information about various grape types and wine styles over the next few weeks and today we're looking at Shiraz.

Shiraz, being a variety in Australia, which is pretty much grown everywhere, it's a grape which lends itself to growing in pretty much every region in the world. In France and California it's known as "Syrah". But Shiraz as it is in Australia is one of our older varieties. Some of the oldest Shiraz vines are grown here, some over 150 years old.

We have pretty much every wine region in Australia growing Shiraz right now including the very cold areas of Southern Victoria, and also in New Zealand, there're experimenting with Shiraz. But here in Australia we tend to produce that very ripe and dark purple coloured fruit which gives us a wonderful soft, round and heavy type of wine.

So a kind of wine that tends to go along with grilled meats, and when Shiraz is aged very well it matches up nicely with braised dishes like Osso Bucco and things like that, heavy braised flavours.

But we've chosen one example which is from McLarenVale today. This is an area of Australia that produces perhaps the most approachable Shiraz, when it's young, and probably quite the very best bargains in Australia come from McLarenVale Shiraz. Some old vines, but they produce it in a way which lends itself to friendly prices at the bottle shop.

This is a "Pirramimma" from McLarenVale. We're just going to have a little look at the colour, its density. From McLarenVale, we tend to get chocolatety overtones in shiraz and occasionally a little bit of anise or liquorish type of flavour.

I don't know if you can pick that up there, but it's an incredibly dense wine, a very deep brick red, purple wine, almost impenetrable. The colour, you can’t see the bottom of the glass and there's only a 100ml or so in there.

In France, Shiraz has been blended with a white grape call "Viognier" for hundreds of years. This is kind of a new discovery to Australia, and the addition of a small amount of the Viognier in the blend, or it's actually blended together prior to fermentation has a unique effect on the Shiraz. It brings out an increased colour and perfume and it's only about 5 to 10 percent of Viognier that goes into the Shiraz to have this effect.

So, you will be seeing a lot of Shiraz Viognier blends around if you haven’t already. It’s a wine which is perhaps a little bit softer in its youth and more approachable but it also produces a sweet sort of perfume quality.

So Shiraz, Viognier, keep an eye out for that. Our 100% percent Shiraz from McLarenVale - it is from a great year '02. All of South Australia in '02 Barossa, Clare, Coonawarra, and in this case McLarenVale had an outstanding year, so if you are able to find any '02 reds from that part of the world and particularly Shiraz you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Delicious!. That's Shiraz, a little snippet. Please enjoy and its many variations from around the world.
Australia having the best value Shiraz anywhere and pick one up before the next BBQ.

Cheers!

Key Notes from this episode:
- Shiraz aka "Syrah" is:
Rich;
Full-Bodied;
Tannic;
Plummy;
Chocolatety; and
Peppery;

- Home is in Rome, Northern Rhone.
- Australia is home to the oldest Shiraz vines in the world
- Penfolds Grange and Henschke Hill of Grace represent the epitome of Shiraz expression in Australia.