Wine Tasting 49: 1999 Hardys Tintara Cab.Sauvignon Australia

Hardys is an Australian household name. The winery has been around for over 150 years. In fact, your lowly was invited to celebrate with Bill Hardy in a private tasting when he came to Vancouver a few years back for his round the world 150th anniversary of Hardys wines tour. Wow! Bill LOOOOOVES talking and I mean he LOOOOOVES talking! When the birthday cake came with the candles lit, he made a speech but the speech turned out to be longer than the Great Wall of China. All of us were watching the candles burning away...then one of the ladies had to step forward to signal him from talking further and asked him to blow out the candles immediately. Phew! I thought the fire alarm would go off any seconds...
The Tintara series is a premium economical line from Hardy. This wine when observed already gave a slight bricky colour. The wine has a typical nose of black current and black plum of a cabernet but has a scent of minty eculyptus mixed with green pepper and green stalk in the background. Medium to full body with slightly elevated acidity. It had soft tannin but not overly complex. What followed was dark chocolate character but like some other Tintara shiraz I tasted, bitterness and astringency (probably from over zealous wood treatment) came out that overpowered the fruit. The higher acidity and astringency made the wine a tad inbalanced. Still, all in all, this is a solid quaffer of good quality. Drink up your stock if you have any. (Rating 84-86 points) by Michael Lam of the Beverage Review.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Wine
• Tasting
• Michael
• Lam
• Beverage
• Review

[canerakgun21]

hello Michael that's really good job

Pls can you test Turkish wines? Thanks...

[michaelyblam]

Unfortunately we do not have a single Turkish wine offer here in Vancouver. Love to taste some Turkish wines for sure! Can you tell me a little about wines from Turkey?

[swt1212]

(continued from last post) From my understanding, gas exchange takes place through the cork allowing the wine to react with the small amount of air inside the bottle and goes through a slow evolutionary process as it ages. But in some cases, the capsule is so tightly bounded to the bottle that it stops gas exchange from taking place. Would you say that this factor will have negative effects on the wine's aging process? Thanks

[michaelyblam]

I honestly do not think micro-oxgenation plays a BIG factor in wine aging once it's in a bottle. However, it does play a part when the wine was aging in the barrels prior to bottling. Oxygen softens the wine when it's very young to give the wine a more mellow and round feel like airing a wine once it's opened...

[GhostMint]

Thats the first time I've seen you spit a wine. Must not have been that great. Does it make a difference to spit it or do you only properly drink the wines you like? Is one way more effective for tasting?

[michaelyblam]

I did spit wines in a few of the previous episodes. I spit because I have to taste more later or have another wine/beer/whisky functions to go later that day or have done some tastings prior to filming. The bottom line = to limit the intake of alcohol. You don't loose a great deal in taste if you spit...but you do get to stay sober!!! I sometimes spit wines that are over $200 a pop at trade tastings!

[swt1212]

Good day Michael. I hope you're doing well. I have a tech question that I hope you'd help me ponder since you mentioned in on episode that you're an engineer. I've been aging wine in my home cellar for quite some time, but I'm concerned about some of my older bottles that have their capsules tightly bound to the bottle neck leaving no chance for gas exchange. (continues in next post)

[michaelyblam]

Spitting wine is a MUST when you go through a lot of samples to prevent being drunk! I spit 95% of the wines I sample in a typical trade tasting as sometimes I sample 80+ samples in a span of approximately 3 hours. I have a tendency to swallow more beer than wine as they normally have 1. lower alcohol content; 2. I usually go thorugh less samples and 3. I feel more complete to get a better aftertaste in beer. Thanks for asking this excellent question.