When the tasting path takes a different fork

Wine writer RICHARD CALVER expected to start his evening at the top of the cabernet sauvignon range, but ended up somewhere quite different. 

OFTEN you start out on a particular path and it leads you in a direction that you didn’t see coming. 

I’d invited a mate for dinner to help me assess one of the wines that Brown Brothers sent me to taste as part of the 20th release of its premium Patricia range, the 2018 Patricia Cabernet Sauvignon. While I knew that this wine would soften and integrate its characters over the next six to eight years if properly stored, I felt obliged to report on its qualities as it was a freebie that retails for more than $70 (more of that in subsequent communication). 

Plus, I’d recently tasted a top range cabernet sauvignon that was also vintage 2018, a Domaine Naturaliste Morus from the Margaret River, which sells for around $85 and it was outstanding. A good place to revisit.

Morus australis is the species name for the mulberry tree, with mulberry being the key identifying characteristic of this wine, according to the winemaker. 

This was true on taste, with the wine having a velvety, fruit-filled bouquet and an earthy tannic finish that rang true of this varietal. The wine opened beautifully in the glass. 

In any event, we didn’t spend the night at the top of the cabernet sauvignon range. My mate insisted on bringing part of the main course, spicy chicken drumsticks, and I cooked red onion and chilli to go with air-fried paprika potatoes. This was heady, very spicy food. In that context my friend had brought to drink a $15 Annie’s Lane 2021 Cabernet Merlot. He rates cabernet merlot as a good mid-week staple. 

This is a traditional French blend originating in Bordeaux and often designated claret that is historically resonant of stuffed armchairs, cigar smoke and expensive English gentlemen’s clubs. In that vein this is what British novelist Nick Harkaway said about claret: “It smells of old houses and aged wood and dark secrets, but also of hard, hot sunshine through ancient shutters and long, wicked afternoons in a four-poster bed. It’s not a wine, it’s a life, right there in the glass.”

I’ve nothing really to add save to say that Nick has quite an imagination. 

At the more prosaic level, the function of the merlot is to soften the tannins in the cabernet sauvignon and to have a more mellow wine than a young cabernet sauvignon would deliver. 

I had opened, the day before, a Jim Barry, Barry & Sons 2021 cabernet sauvignon from the Clare Valley. It cost $20 in a two-for-$40 deal at a major supermarket-owned liquor store. 

We decided to abandon the premium end of the market and try, before eating, a taste comparison of these two more quotidian wines. 

The Jim Barry had plenty of time to soften with air and this was evident in the first stage of the comparison, being softer and with a plummy bouquet. It was pleasant but nothing special. 

After about 15 minutes or so, the Annie’s Lane settled down from an astringent first taste with an unattractive bouquet to softer, rounded keynotes you’d expect from the blend. It’s still a wine with a punch at 14.5 per cent alcohol by volume and it slowly caught up in delivering a smoother finish and better mouth feel over time, but again without sending any messages that this wine was special. The Jim Barry delivered a soft plum finish with a chalkiness in the tannins at the back of the palate. These were both quaffers that we’d revisit for a weeknight dinner. 

Tasting the wines after having such a spicy meal was quite a different sensation, with neither wine being able to resurrect our now ruinous palates that required a glass of milk to completely rid the chilli taste. And I don’t recommend drinking red wine and milk together, although I would recommend drinking good Australian cabernet sauvignon.