Les Dauphins - Cotes Du Rhone Villages

Lovely label on that.

A couple of drams of Roughstock, Montana whisky last night. Good stuff.

Jim Barry Clare Red

Kingston beer festival yesterday.

Had some lovely tasty beers from Weltons

Pride n Joy 2.8%

Light Duty 2.0%

http://www.weltonsbeer.co.uk/index.php/ … /cask-ales

A 2010 Shiraz made by a mate from his own grapes - nice drop.

I went up to his farm for the weekend and he gave me a mixed dozen.
I've opened 4 and only had to pour a 2002 down the sink - no good.

In other news there is a great cheap but good pinot::

De Bortoli’s Windy Peak Pinot Noir.   At Dan Murphy’s liquor stores the 2010 was retailing at under $10 a bottle.

I dunno if its available overseas.

fxh wrote:

eg wrote:

fxh wrote:

Mount Langi Billi Billi Shiraz is a rich and exciting Shiraz from one of Victoria's most respected Shiraz makers. Consistently rated as one of our customers favourite full-bodied red wines, the Mt Langi Billi Billi is quite phenomenal value for money and is a slice of Victorian Shiraz royalty for a price that is too good to refuse.
$14.25 in any six, $84.55 per case of 6. $14.99 per bottle

Mmh I've been sticking to cleanskins from my local bloke. Extreme value for money.

Had another bottle of the Billi Billi last night with dinner.

What are "cleanskins"? http://serve.mysmiley.net/confused/confused0007.gif

cleanskins are unbranded.

They are usually sourced from known vineyards and re-branded as a shop or cleanskin brand.

The worst are simply cheap over supply stuff.

But the best are often exactly the same as some brand names that want to maintain a retail price point of say $28 but they have a "wine lake" of the actual wine. So they sell it off to a cleanskin merchant who knows how good it is but can sell it at around $12 without diluting the brand. So it can be exactly a brand name.

Others are simply big lots of good wine that someone wants to sell without bothering with marketing, bottling, storage etc.

In general you can expect to get a $26 wine for around $12 in a cleanskin.

There good bargains to be had - but it is important that you can trust you local cleanskin bloke.

This is my local cleanskin bloke - knows his stuff.

http://www.taste-dvine.com.au/

Interesting -- will have to see if there is a Canadian equivalent to this arbitrage.

Presumably none of this stuff would escape the local Oz market?

Ardbeg Correyvrekan, first almost went down, then Gilgamesh posted something funny elsewhere so Ardbeg came up through nose, setting my exposed olfactory nerves on roof of the nasal cavity on fire with direct seven alarm blaze to brain and irritated meninges to boot.
Not to be duplicated any time soon. Still hurting.

Chévere wrote:

Ardbeg Corryvrekan, first almost went down [...]

This is quite funny.

eg wrote:

Interesting -- will have to see if there is a Canadian equivalent to this arbitrage.

Presumably none of this stuff would escape the local Oz market?

eg - Some of this certainly does get shipped overseas. More in previous years when the aud$ wasn't strong and we had a glut of wine - we always have a glut of wine.

Remember here that a lot of our wine - certainly the mass market big sellers isn't always - or even often - locale / terrior based, but big trucks of grapes are sourced form all over the place and mixed up to make a blend.

The sort of stuff we call clean skins is most likely found in your a local wine shop with perhaps their own label or brand and no where else much, or not even a brand sold in Oz.

F'instance take [yellow tail] in the early to mid 2000's it was USA top selling wine by a huge margin. No one in Australia had heard of it. You couldn't buy it here then. Millions of litres of it were shipped out.

Now its available here but not much of a seller.

What happened was a family group decided to use the vast amount of grapes  overproduced in Australia - combine it with the advanced factory methods perfected here to produce consistent wine year after year from batches of grapes sourced from nearly anywhere. They also understood that the average American doesn't like wine. So they produced a fruity alcoholic drink that had the tannin, acid, soil all removed to make a smooth drink . Not really a wine.

Yellow Tail is a triumph of marketing utilizing the Australian know how of making bulk consistent wines.

fxh wrote:

eg wrote:

Interesting -- will have to see if there is a Canadian equivalent to this arbitrage.

Presumably none of this stuff would escape the local Oz market?

eg - Some of this certainly does get shipped overseas. More in previous years when the aud$ wasn't strong and we had a glut of wine - we always have a glut of wine.

Remember here that a lot of our wine - certainly the mass market big sellers isn't always - or even often - locale / terrior based, but big trucks of grapes are sourced form all over the place and mixed up to make a blend.

The sort of stuff we call clean skins is most likely found in your a local wine shop with perhaps their own label or brand and no where else much, or not even a brand sold in Oz.

F'instance take [yellow tail] in the early to mid 2000's it was USA top selling wine by a huge margin. No one in Australia had heard of it. You couldn't buy it here then. Millions of litres of it were shipped out.

Now its available here but not much of a seller.

What happened was a family group decided to use the vast amount of grapes  overproduced in Australia - combine it with the advanced factory methods perfected here to produce consistent wine year after year from batches of grapes sourced from nearly anywhere. They also understood that the average American doesn't like wine. So they produced a fruity alcoholic drink that had the tannin, acid, soil all removed to make a smooth drink . Not really a wine.

Yellow Tail is a triumph of marketing utilizing the Australian know how of making bulk consistent wines.

Reminds me of the time this suthern gal claimed she'd discovered zinfandel and begged me to bring her a bottle. I brought her a nice Swiss selection and she practically did a spit take when she tasted it. Turns out she'd been buying something called zinfandel from a local "wine" shop which tasted a lot like liquid sour balls.

fxh wrote:

fnb - you ever tasted yellow tail?

Sure have, it's at a lot of mixers both business and social in the city; must be a catering fave. It's alright; better than staying sober at those sorts of functions.

Film Noir Buff wrote:

fxh wrote:

eg wrote:

Interesting -- will have to see if there is a Canadian equivalent to this arbitrage.

Presumably none of this stuff would escape the local Oz market?

eg - Some of this certainly does get shipped overseas. More in previous years when the aud$ wasn't strong and we had a glut of wine - we always have a glut of wine.

Remember here that a lot of our wine - certainly the mass market big sellers isn't always - or even often - locale / terrior based, but big trucks of grapes are sourced form all over the place and mixed up to make a blend.

The sort of stuff we call clean skins is most likely found in your a local wine shop with perhaps their own label or brand and no where else much, or not even a brand sold in Oz.

F'instance take [yellow tail] in the early to mid 2000's it was USA top selling wine by a huge margin. No one in Australia had heard of it. You couldn't buy it here then. Millions of litres of it were shipped out.

Now its available here but not much of a seller.

What happened was a family group decided to use the vast amount of grapes  overproduced in Australia - combine it with the advanced factory methods perfected here to produce consistent wine year after year from batches of grapes sourced from nearly anywhere. They also understood that the average American doesn't like wine. So they produced a fruity alcoholic drink that had the tannin, acid, soil all removed to make a smooth drink . Not really a wine.

Yellow Tail is a triumph of marketing utilizing the Australian know how of making bulk consistent wines.

Reminds me of the time this suthern gal claimed she'd discovered zinfandel and begged me to bring her a bottle. I brought her a nice Swiss selection and she practically did a spit take when she tasted it. Turns out she'd been buying something called zinfandel from a local "wine" shop which tasted a lot like liquid sour balls.

There does seem to be glut of really crappy wines around and from my recent experience, most of the Australian wines have deteriorated into mass produced blandness. At one time, I would say throughout the 90s, the New World wines had an edge over Europe and in particular, France. Not so now, European wine, including German wines from my limited exposure, seem to have more quality of depth and complexity.