A Welcome Home Bottle

So, here we are - back home after 3 weeks of Aussie wines Down Under and in Hong Kong - and what bottle do we open first? An Aussie one.

Poetic? Not really; it wasn't even one of the bottles that we brought back from our vacation. It was simply a wine that we still had hanging around and I thought it would go nicely with the real focus of tonight's "welcome back" dinner - spot prawns. The local spot prawn season and festival had just opened; so, I took advantage of an extra day off and headed down to the docks to wait for one of the boats to come in. It was worth the wait.

1141. 2007 Tahbilk Marsanne (Nagambie Lakes - Victoria - Australia)

This is the second Tahbilk wine that I've added to The List. It isn't a winery that we see much in the Vancouver market, but the Marsanne is the most likely find. I added the Shiraz to The List rather a long ways back at #323. At that time, I was surprised to learn that it is the oldest winery in the state of Victoria and the fifth oldest in all of Australia. It was established in 1860 - old enough that they refer to a cellar, built in 1875, as the "new cellar."

Age also comes into play with the Tahbilk Marsanne. The winery claims the oldest Marsanne vines in the world - their oldest vines having been planted in 1927. With just over 100 acres of Marsanne planted, Tahbilk has the largest single planting of the traditional Rhône varietal in the world as well.

An unoaked white that is white capable of ageing, it was quite different from most of the whites produced in BC. It was more rounded and full, with softer acidity and more subdued fruit. But the taste of our spot prawns didn't seem to be hurt by the pairing.

My test, upon having finished all the posts on Oz, will be to see how long it will take me to catch up on all my late posts. I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. But, I'll have to give it the old college try.