The warm spicy wines of Austrailia's McLaren Vale are ideal with Mediterranean-style food
The important thing to fix in your mind about the wines from Australia’s McLaren Vale is their reputation for delivering the middle palate.
That’s not as wine geeky as it may sound; mid-palate is, as the terms suggests, that highly anticipated moment, after the initial taste sensation, when the wine hits the spot, or not. It comes after about 10 seconds, when a decent wine should be starting to show its wares.
If your lips spell satisfaction, the mid-palate is happy. That’s the way wine should be, you say. But remember the ones that are, as they say, “hollow,” when you are left wandering for a hit that doesn’t really land, or is thin, and you swallow in disappointment.
You may not always remember whether a wine had a long finish — although that is the sweetest thing of all — but you rarely forget that it made an impression at mid-palate. So, there is a certain reliability about McLaren Vale wines. Lying in South Australia, it is similar to the Mediterranean, a coast-hugging amphitheatre, producing warm and spicy wines, in the mode of the south of France, Italy and Spain.
Since the early days of winemaking in Oz, McLaren Vale wines have been used to beef up more dilute offerings, so the juice may feature in bottles with more generic labels such as South Australia.
When wine-making started down here in the 19th century, theMcLaren Vale wines had a reputation for being ferruginous or iron-rich, and it is said that doctors in England presecribed them as a tonic.
McLaren is a land of other rich flavours; it groans with almonds, and olive trees and is the sort of place where you can buy a cheese hamper and picnic your wayaround the local wineries, tasting as you go. It’s also the home of dukkah, a nut-and-spice mix into which you dunk olive-oil-dipped crusty bread and sit back and smack your lips. Its food sits perfectly with its wines, which are predominantly red.
Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz are tops here, the sunny clime assuring a lush, ripe style of dark berry fruit. You may detect some luscious dark chocolate on the palate, although the nearby Barossa Valley is better known for that while McLaren Vale majors heavily on dark berry fruit flavours.
Other red grapes, such as Grenache and Mourvedre, also feature, and Grenache is doing some wonderful things here.The GSM you see on some Australian labels translates as Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre, the mainstay of the red wines of southern France such as Côtes du Rhone.
There are whites, including Viognier and Chardonnay. Many of its wines, like D'Arenbeg, have been household fixtures for years. It is the origin of Rosemount and Hardys, which may also appear as the more generic South East Australia brand.
These are wines to savour with a barbecued steak in the evening — and perhaps best avoided outdoors in the midday sun because of their high alcohol content.
Pick up the Aussie wines’ mintiness with new season lamb or simply say G’day to a glass of McLaren Vale with any Medstyle cooking.
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