Given the weather conditions outside as I sit tapping away on a pre-dawn June morning summer is distant memory and a vague prospect somewhere down the track but the subject of summer drinking is something that's a recurring theme.
Given our location in the more-or-less Deep North of Australia it should probably come as no surprise to learn that the climate hereabouts has some impact on our drinking habits.
Living where winter days are usually accompanied by clear blue skies and temperatures in the mid-twenties (Celsius) a full bodied red wine is more likely to accompany steak or pasta rather than a roast or a big warming bowl of stew. It’s not that we don’t like roasts and stews, the climate predisposes us to travel in other culinary directions.
Winter 2011, however, has been a rather welcome cracker in the chilly nights department, with weeks rather than days of temperatures hovering over and regularly dipping below the ten degree mark, but we're talking generalities here.
And in summer the bowl of pasta or the steak and salad don’t really work all that well in conjunction with a really hearty red. They can, but the external temperature doesn't predispose you to reds at room temperature, I'm reluctant to kill some of the flavour through over-chilling or playing around with some variation on whack it in the fridge and then give it a chance to crawl back up to the ambient temperature, and Madam's been known to be critical of the overuse of the air-conditioner.
The steaks don’t go that well with whites either, so we’ve got a problem unless we can unearth some red wines in a lighter style that can handle a spell in the fridge.
The most obvious option is to choose a Rosé. Unfortunately there’s no stylistic consistency and the name covers a multitude of possibilities, some of which also coincide with styles that I’ll be mentioning a little later on.
So I could head to Portugal and go for one of the big names like Mateus or Lancers. I’ve tried both in the past and, while they’ve been acceptable, they’re nothing to write home about either. There are probably other Portuguese labels that would turn up in city bottle shops, but we’re not in a big city are we?
Another low-cost option in those circumstances would be a lambrusco, and if we were still buying from the local bottle shops we’d probably have a bottle or two of the De Bortoli’s version in the fridge.
There are other options open as you move up the price brackets, of course, and on visits to Stanthorpe, the South Burnett, the Hunter, the Yarra Valley, north-eastern Victoria, the Tamar Valley, Clare, the Barossa and Margaret River we’ve been keeping our eyes peeled for anything that fits the general description of light reds you can keep in the fridge.
One of the earliest was a Dusty Chill from Dusty Hill Wines in the South Burnett, and we managed to track down another couple in the Hunter but we’ve had more success as we headed further south.
We’d encountered the Brown Brothers Tarrango before we headed to the Rutherglen/King Valley area in early 2007, and, while I was there to follow the Muscat Trail, we found a couple of gems at the other end of the spectrum. Most significantly, we ran across Pfeiffer’s Wines just outside Rutherglen and signed up for their Wine Club, which delivers a dozen freight-free to our doorstep twice a year.
One of the main reasons we signed up was the Gamay, a delightful wine made from the grape variety that produces Beaujolais, although their Ensemble Rosé ain’t too shabby either.
And each subsequent excursion has yielded something interesting to add to the list. There's the Rockford Alicante Bouchet for a start, a little number that has the added advantage of being low (9.5%) alcohol, so you can knock over a bottle at lunch without going nye-nyes in mid-afternoon.
There have been a number of others, and they've often turned up on special ex-winery freight free at attractive prices. I'll cite the example of the Lenton Brae No Way Rose (by the dozen @$150) and rest m'case, m'lud.
But regardless of those offers there are a couple of year in, year out staples that you'll find stacked in the LHoC rack and chilling in the bar fridge. The Rockford Alicante Bouchet's a certain starter, and you can more or less count on the Brook Eden Pinot Rose, though the quantity's going to vary there, depending on how much I like the Riesling, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris and the Pinot Noir.
And then there's this one that went rather well with last night's pasta leftovers...
Pfeiffer 2010 Gamay (4.5/5 $18/ C2 $16.20) Regulation cheery cherry red in the glass, whiff of berries on the nose and the usual fresh fruity style across the palate. They've done it again. Integral ingredient in the Little House of Concrete summer drinking strategy. Would be 5/5 if you rated it on latest expression of almost absolute reliability.
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