Hay Shed Hill 2009 Block 2 Cabernet Sauvignon

I like it when someone delivers you a ready made, straightforward but still rather elegant to a potentially thorny problem.

We weren't long back from Western Australia and I was trying to figure out how to include the wineries we'd visited over there into a purchasing schedule that didn't have much room for manoeuvre when the flier about the Hay Shed Hill Four Seasons Club arrived in the P.O. Box.

The beauty of those we'll send you a specified number of bottles at prescribed intervals wine clubs is that the buyer is saved the effort involved in deciding what he or she wants to buy. Someone else makes the decisions, but you've probably got the chance to try what you would have ordered in the first place and, most importantly, it takes the when out of the ordering equation.

In the end it all depends on whether you're interested in what they're offering.

In this case, an arrangement where you receive the Semillon Sauvignon Blanc in summer, their Sangiovese and Tempranillo in the autumn, Cabernet Sauvignon in the winter and Chardonnay in the spring looked pretty attractive at a first glance, though the $180 a throw for half a dozen wines seemed rather steep, so I did a bit of basic research, and a bit was all that was needed.

Apart from the autumn wines, the wines are drawn from their Block Series, wines made from single parcels of fruit from designated blocks that supposedly represent the best grapes on the property.

Fine, so how were they rated?

The SSB consistently rated 84 from Mr Halliday, the Cabernet ranged between 94 and 96, and the Chardonnay was the same.

As far as the pricing went, the autumn wines were $20, the SSSB $30, the Chardonnay $35 and the Cab Sauv $50, so I figured that $135 x 6 was $810, while four times $180 was $720, and the deliveries were freight free, so why not?

The SSB duly arrived, and made for quite sublime summer drinking, the autumn wines were acceptable without being overly impressive, but this one…

Hay Shed Hill 2009 Block 2 Cabernet Sauvignon (5* $50) Bright deep dense red in the glass, intense berry and blackcurrant notes on the nose and a complex palate built from a base of tightly wound tannins this wine provides ample justification for signing up for the Hay Shed Hill Four Seasons. Colour me highly impressed.