Italian Wine Masterclass! Plus, new release Whiskies, Champagne & Wines!
Sense of Taste Portside will host an Italian Wine Masterclass on Tuesday (August 30) and, to get you in the spirit, the shop has a great selection of Italian wines ripe for the picking.
Portside manager Pete’s top pick is the Viviani 2018 Valpolicella Ripasso Superiore. At $54.99, Pete goes as far to say it’s in his top five of best value wines.
Ripasso means “repassed’’ and refers to its production process where regular, fermented Valpolicella (which is a blend of three red wine grape varieties – Corvina, Rondinella and occasionally Molinara) is added to a cask containing the skins and residue left over from recently fermented Amarone wines.
The process of adding (or repassing) the lighter Valpolicella wine over the remainders of the “bigger’’ Amarone wine imparts additional colour, texture and flavour to the Valpolicella wine.
The end result is a wine called Ripasso that retains the vibrancy of Valpolicella but is darker in colour, bigger, more flavoursome and complex than the original Valpolicella.
Pair with steak, beef ribs or a big-flavoured cheese like Gorgonzola.
The Italian Masterclass will feature seven wines from regions such as Tuscany, Sicily and Piedmonte. They will be accompanied by individual cheese platters to match.
Seats are strictly limited, so book your ticket now.
Champagne Deutz has returned to the Australian market after a three-year hiatus, and you’ll find four different selections at Portside – the non-vintage Deutz Brut Classic and Rose, Deutz Brut 2014 and Amour de Deutz Brut Millesime 2011.
The iconic French Champagne House was founded in 1838 in the Ay’ region of Champagne. Deutz is today owned by the Rouzaud family, which also own Louis Roederer Champagne.
According to Deutz Chef de Cave Michel Davesne, the Deutz style is a combination of elegance, finesse and vinosity. The wines can be drunk on their own as an aperitif, but the vintage Champagnes are really designed for pairing with food – especially once they have acquired some bottle age.
A mistake at the distillery has become ‘Good’ news for Archie Rose whisky lovers.
When cellar hand (now distiller) Mr Goode accidentally vatted Archie Rose’s Single Malt and Rye Malt Whisky together he was shattered.
The mixture of the two meant that the spirit could be neither sold as Single Malt nor Rye Malt Whisky anymore.
Curious to see how this concoction would taste, Master Distiller Dave Withers grabbed a glass. What he found was that the two whiskies offered the expressive oak of the rye with the charismatic flavours of the roasted malts.
The hybrid whisky ‘mistake’ was deemed worthy of a limited release, and that’s how Archie Rose Good (E) Whisky came into being.
In more good news, Sense of Taste Portside has most of the stock that’s available in Queensland.
New in at Sense of Taste are the S.C. Pannell Grenache and Shiraz. These solid McLaren Vale wines usually sell out every vintage and we have three different Grenache and Shiraz in stock at Portside.
Stephen Pannell loves working with Grenache and is justly seen as one of Australia’s foremost proponents with the grape. We have the S.C. Pannell Basso Garnacha, 2020 Clarendon Smart Grenache and 2020 McLaren Vale Grenache at Portside.
He makes a pretty fine Shiraz too. As Stephen and Fiona Pannell’s first vineyard, Koomilya has been the realisation of a long-held vision to create modern Shiraz which harks back to a tradition of what McLaren Vale Shiraz looked like in the 1960s.
The wines produced here have strength, intensity and glorious grape tannins. We have three 2018 Koomilya Shiraz varieties in stock, each from different blocks on the vineyard.
2018 was regarded as a ‘’solid year. A vintage without extremes that was kind to both winemakers and vines alike’’.
Also new in store and worth trying is Murdoch Hill’s 2021 Phaeton Pinot Noir. From mature vines in the Piccadilly Valley, this Pinot is elegantly perfumed with scents of wild strawberries and cherry, together with a little spice. A young and vibrant palate with superb fine tannins. Easy drinking now.
We also have Murdoch Hill’s 2021 Apollo Pinot Noir in stock, bit of a coup given only 100 dozen bottles of this was made. This is 100% Piccadilly Pinot Noir, hand-picked, 40% whole Bunch, wild-yeast fermentation, 60% new oak with 10 months’ maturation in a mix of Austrian and French oak.