The Castagna Genesis Syrah is a throw back to the days when wine taxed a drinker's inquisitive instincts.
Syrah of course is Shiraz and Shiraz dominates the shelves of any drink-seller as assuredly as it dominates a meal. Castagna is attempting to introduce finesse, subtlety and class, to turn it into a wine that provokes old-fashioned respect.
"I wanted to make an Australian wine that people would recognise as a classic wine," says Castagna, who plies his trade in Victoria, a region with a climate similar to that of Europe.
The Jasper Hill Shiraz, also produced in Victoria is a wine that needs approaching philosophically.
At a huge 15 per cent it needs teasing out over an hour or two, maybe a day or two. Enjoy sensing the wine unfold with the glass in your hand, smell the aromas separating, and lock on to the fine scent of alcohol in there. Like many wines produced biodynamically the thrill lies in locating that smell. Keep a few bottles with pride.
Vanya Cullen and James Millton have been producing celebrated wines for two decades now and need no further endorsement from me. Both produce wines that need to be talked about over the dinner table and not simply because it's great to be a snob.
Having endured the daily dose of big Aussie and Chilean reds, we have to rediscover wines that we might be proud to own, wines we might avoid opening for a year or two. Cullens' Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot 2002 will improve over the next 20 years, which is more than you can say for your dog or cat. It is a complex wine. A group of friends could usefully pool their intelligence and decide how best to describe it.
Similarly the Millton Gisborne Merlot is elusive and defies easy description. Big? Fruity? Brambles? Blackcurrant? Not a bit of it.
It is time to turn off wine writers whose vocabulary is so limited and turn to winemakers who respect the link between our health ambitions and their methods.
Haydn Shaughnessy