Cape Barren 2003 Old Vines Shiraz

"Not a fruit bomb" was Margaret Anne's first comment on this Australian Cape Barren 2003 Old Vines Shiraz. It certainly has big flavour, but it's more in the leathery, smokey-oak sort of way. We didn't get the cloves/cinnamon flavours one expects from Shiraz, though the pepper was certainly there. We're not sure how much of that was from the grapes, though, and how much was from the extremely high alcohol content--15 percent. Maybe our tongues were just burning.

Quite possibly we drank this too young and it will become better balanced with age.

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.