We had plenty of leftover lamb from the excellent roast leg last weekend - I always forget what pea-size appetites women tend to have, not everyone can eat as much as Fatboy - so I made it into a Spanish-style stew with paprika, lemon and olives, served on a bed of couscous with roasted garlic, which was all very pleasant indeed. But I have to admit that the main purpose of the meal was to have something to eat with the bottle of Henschke Mt Edelstone Shiraz that I had in the basement, and had been hoping to consume while my parents were here, though, with hindsight, given the extreme purity of the fruit in the wine, I think I could have made something else that didn't contain the smokey paprika. Here's my tasting note for this excellent Shiraz:
This is the second Shiraz of the famed Henschke outfit in Keyneton in the Eden Valley, South Australia. Some of the oldest Shiraz vines in the world are planted in Australia; Henschke's premier site, the iconic Hill Of Grace vineyard, is around 140 years old, and the Mt Edelstone vineyard is about 90 years old, which in my book would qualify as 'tres vieilles vignes'. Upon opening, the extremely intense and pure fruit aromas exploded straight out of the bottle in a melange of blackcurrant, cassis and sweet black cherry, as well as some toasty oak and herbs. Equally intense dark berry fruit shows strongly on the mid-palate, along with some mint and eucalyptus, and vanilla oak on the long and complex finish, which gained more minty characteristics around 2 hours after opening. There is great structure to back up the intense fruit - high acidity and velvety tannins - which gives a wine of excellent depth and complexity. This is the most intensely fruity wine I have had in a long time, but the purity of the fruit means that it is in no way over-extracted, and the high levels of acidity keep the fruit and the oak nicely in balance. Still young, it was open for nearly 3 hours and was still improving, it is not yet fully integrated, and the secondary characteristics haven't developed fully yet either. A very good wine indeed, though not as refined as the Hill Of Grace, I would be very interested to revisit it in 5+ years time.
Anyway, Fatboy must stop eating so much, I need to become Thinboy somehow! Not sure how that's going to happen, we have a few good wines to consume before my parents leave on Tuesday: a 1er Cru Puligny (Boillot), a Kracher TBA, and a Hugel Gewurtz SGN. It's a dirty job...
