Hay Shed Hill 2010 Block 6 Chardonnay

 Ah, the joys of a changing palate…

Or, more accurately, developing styles and changes in public perceptions. It's not that long since the drinking public seemed to be pouring vast quantities of Anything But Chardonnay down their collective throats, a shift in consumption that had winemakers scrabbling around for a way back once the big buttery styles I used to like went off the boil out there in Consumerland.

And in the wake of the Kiwi Savalanche, you'd be wondering how anything else was going to get a look in, but here's a perfect example of what's out there for the Savvied-out drinker, assuming you're not getting a bit of Semillon in with the Savvy or haven't rediscovered the joys of Riesling.

Hay Shed Hill 2010 Block 6 Chardonnay (4.5* $35) Early picked fruit from thirty-five-year-old dry-grown vines, free run juice, a total lack of malolactic fermentation (so not even a daub of butter in sight)  and minimal exposure to oak delivers fresh apple, citrus  and stone fruit aromas to the nose, concentrated flavours across the palate in an elegant understated style that's simultaneously vibrant and intensely fruity. Very easy to drink now, and could develop over the short to medium term, but the stocks wi;l, I suspect, be gone by autumn.

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.

Hay Shed Hill 2008 White Label Tempranillo

Rather than the unbroken half dozens that are apparently the go for the other three seasons, the Hay Shed Hill Four Seasons Club Autumn Pack arrived as a fifty-fifty split between the 2008 Tempranillo and the 2009 Sangiovese. While autumn in these parts may not quite be the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, this one definitely turned out to be mellowly fruitful.

Hay Shed Hill 2008 White Label Tempranillo (4* $30) Medium bodied elegant, silky style with full, soft, rounded tannins, gently spicy with tasty mouth feel. Very easy to drink. While it mightn't be the greatest Tempranillo going around it's a long way from being the worst.