Tag Archives: Barossa Valley

This Aussie red blend speaks to terroir, and at a more than fair price

The last several years have not been kind to the Australian wine business – a tariff wall in China, one of its best markets; drought and oversupply at home; and a continuing lack of interest in the U.S.

So those of us who are looking for value have been able to find more and more of it with Aussie wine.

The latest example is the Barossa Valley Estate GSM 2018 ($12, purchased, 14%), a Rhone-style red blend from a quality Australian producer that has been on the blog before. The 2018, more grenache than syrah and mouvedre, is a step up from the 2017 and takes this style of Australian wine where I haven’t seen it in a long time.

That’s because it’s peppery and spicy, but not all that jammy, something that was rarely the case with Australian wine in year’s past. On the other hand, there’s enough red fruit from the grenache so that it tastes like where it came from. In all this, it’s a substantial, but not a heavy, wine and I enjoyed drinking it a lot more than I thought I would.

Drink this with summer barbecue. Highly recommended, and a candidate for the 2023 Hall of Fame and Cheap Wine of the Year. And who thought they’d ever read that on the blog about a wine from down under?

Imported by Delegat USA

The Barossa Valley Estate GSM is an Australian red blend that is simple, but still interesting and enjoyable

Before the pandemic, the last Australian red to be a wine of the week was the much appreciated and much missed Pillar Box Red. In 2015. Which should tell you that Australian reds stopped interesting me a long time ago.

So why is the Barossa Valley Estate GSM 2017 ($13, purchased, 13.5%) the third red Aussie to be the wine of the week in the past 15 months? Several reasons:

• Frankly, I’ve tried harder to be a better critic, tasting wines that I might have passed up before.

• More Australian reds in the blog’s price range have been on store shelves. Pre-pandemic, Yellow Tail was most of what I saw from Australia in red for less than $15.

• Many Aussie reds have lightened their approach since the days of the infamous 15.5 percent, squid ink dark, teeth-defiling shirazes that Robert Parker championed.

The Barossa Valley GSM is a fine example of that third point. If nothing else, it’s a simple – but not stupid – red blend with grenache, mourvedre, and syrah from a region that didn’t export many simple, but not stupid, wines in the past. In this, it tastes Australian without being over the top. There is lots of dark berry fruit, but the fruit doesn’t enter Parker Smucker’s territory.

This is despite the presence of grenache, which can turn any wine too jammy with a minimal of effort. In fact, it’s surprisingly balanced – bright even, if that’s to be believed.

Drink this with any weekend barbecue or even takeout pizza during the week.

Imported by Delegat USA