Artisan Wine on a Budget: Chapel Hill House Block McLaren Vale Shiraz, 2014

Monday, July 10, 2023

Chapel Hill House Block McLaren Vale Shiraz, 2014

Chapel Hill's House Block Shiraz comes from one of the best vineyards in McLaren Vale, and the winemaker is Michael Drago. Like John Duval, Drago is a former winemaker at Penfolds who helped produce the highly touted Grange Hermitage.

Very deep and dark. Big and youthful. Blackberries, mulberries, oak. Full bodied with substantial tannins on the mid-palate and finish. Good potential, but, for my taste, this wine needs at least another five years in the cellar.

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Wine Sites I Like

The best site I know for information about Rhone wines is DrinkRhone.com by John Livingstone-Learmonth, who has written several of my long-time favorite books on both the Northern and Southern Rhone. Use of the site requires paying a fee of about $25 a year, but I get my money's worth many times over. https://drinkrhone.com/
My go-to source for information on Piedmont wines is Kerin O'Keefe, author of the excellent book, Barolo and Barbaresco: The King and Queen of Italian Wine. Kerin also critiques Italian wines for Wine Enthusiast. I find Wine Enthusiast reviews for nearly all wine areas to be particularly reliable. Google winemag for WE reviews.
Chris Kissack, an English physician, has a good grasp of French wines, particuarly those from the Loire Valley and Bordeaux. His wine site also requires a fee. : http://www.thewinedoctor.com/

Jacqueline Friedrich's book on Wines and Foods of the Loire Valley is a favorite of mine. She also runs an interesting, albeit a bit unusual, wine site: http://www.jacquelinefriedrich.com/

Wine Review Online offers columns by several knowledgeable wine lovers: http://www.winereviewonline.com/

Alice Feiring, http://alicefeiring.com/, has a unique approach to wine and life that I appreciate.

Since the early 1980s, Village Corner in Ann Arbor has been my primary source of wine and wine information. The store was closed for awhile but has now re-opened in a new location on Plymouth Road: http://www.villagecorner.com/

And a few other sites give me an insight into what is happening in some of my favorite wine areas: http://vmv.eu/uk/presentation/introduction.php, htttp://www.alsace-wine.net/#

http://www.provence-hideaway.com/504.html

Why I Blog

If you read this blog fairly regularly, you've probably figured out that it's mainly a diary of the wines I drink every night with dinner. You're invited to share them vicariously with me, if you wish. Artisan Wine on a Budget is admittedly an act of self indulgence. My wines and my views about those wines are ultimately not all that important to anyone but me. The act of writing helps me understand and appreciate the wines on a different level, and I enjoy that. I should make it clear that I am not ranking nor recommending these wines. They are not necessarily the best wines nor the best values. They are simply the wines I enjoy for the reasons that I state. Although I have been tasting and enjoying wines for about 30 years, that doesn't qualify me for any special expertise or critical judgment. In fact, it may have locked me into certain biases that you have probably already discovered. The product of my self indulgence, however, is an ever-growing collection of tasting notes, which I trust will be useful. As a wine lover, I spend a good part of my life searching for tasting notes on wines--those I haven't tasted and those I have. I want to compare notes with others who enjoy wine. When I agree with the taster, whoever it may be, I gloat; when I disagree, I move on to find someone who has tastes closer to my own.

Artisan Wine on a Budget

Monday, July 10, 2023

Chapel Hill House Block McLaren Vale Shiraz, 2014

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