Laughing Kangaroo Shiraz 2002

This 2002 Laughing Kangaroo Shiraz was a very, very dark purplish red, almost black, with a red berries and a little pepper on the nose. I thought I detected some of the clove that would be varietally appropriate, but Margaret Anne didn't get it.

Very dry and not as peppery as some Shirazes, but it's hard to say much more about it because the extremely high alcohol content, 14.5 percent, meant that mostly it just tasted hot: the alcohol simply wiped out whatever nuance we might otherwise have noticed.

Not bad, but probably wouldn't buy it again because of the alcohol content.

Two chardonnays, briefly

We had occasion to try two Chardonnays over the weekend, the 2003 Liberty School Chardonnay Central Coast from California and the 2002 Inniskillin Founders' Reserve Chardonnay from the Okanagan. The first had lots of tropical fruit--we particularly noted pineapple--plus vanilla and oak. Very flavourful. However, we actually preferred the latter. We didn't make notes, but we did taste them side by side, and found the Inniskillin lighter--less aggressive, I guess. Which seemed to be what we were looking for.

For some reason we failed to take a picture of the Liberty School label. Oh, well.