Happy New Year to all who visit this page.

This is my first post since Boxing Day.  It introduces  an entirely new category for my blog pages.  It’s a subject that has been very dear to me since 1967 when my boss of the day took me to lunch and insisted I drink red wine with him – at Chesser Cellars in Adelaide.  In those days Chesser Cellars was magic.  I’ve found nothing like it since, much to my sorrow, now that I live in Melbourne.  But very sadly, I’ve been told that Chesser Cellars no longer has that magic and aura that it once had, when Pam ran it.

I’m going to write about red wine, and what I think of it.  While I love red wine, I’m afraid that I’m a very poor person to write about it, as I’m totally lost when it comes to talking about tannin, oak, aftertaste, back palate  and all that terminology.   I’m sorry to say that my outlook is rather common, much like with art: I either like it or I don’t, and this will determine whether I buy it again or forget it.

So, you’re not going to read fine descriptions of wine on this blog.  All you’ll read is whether I like a wine enough to recommend it to you, to see if you like it.  What I can say, is that if I really like any wine, it will probably have scored at least 90 points out of 100 in major wine reviews.

And so on with the wine in this post.

I buy my wine from Bootleg Liquor Cellars in Carnegie  It’s the bottle shop / liquor store at the rear of Rosstown Hotel, at the corner of Dandenong and Koornang Roads in Carnegie.  Bootleg Liquor Cellars was voted by the Australian Hotels Association two years running as winner of the best bottle shop in Victoria, and winner of Best Bottle Shop in Australia.   And well deserved.

They carry some great wines from under $10 to over $1,000 (well over).

I’ll be reviewing some of their wines, and I’ll start with the Reilly’s Ryder Basket Pressed Shiraz 2008 – which is a stunner at about $14.99 – for a 93 point wine.

I was buying my wine on New Year’s Eve and chatting to Michael, the Manager of Bootleg Liquor Cellars, and mentioned (again) that I think Reilly’s Barking Mad Cabernet Sauvignon is a wine I really enjoy every time I have it: amazing value at about $14.95 a bottle.  Michael said he had some new wines from Reilly’s in his office, and fetched me a bottle of each to try.   One of them was the Ryder Clare Valley Shiraz 2008.

I took the photo shown left with my Panasonic GH1 and can assure you that when sold by the Rosstown Hotel’s Bootleg Liquor Cellars, each bottle has wine in it – filled almost to the brim.

But I can hardly review a wine I haven’t drunk; and drunk at least one whole bottle of.  None of this have a sip , swill it around my mouth, and then spit it out approach for me to judge a wine.

Sure, first impressions are important for me, and I’ll dismiss a wine on first tasting if it doesn’t give me a reason to try it further.  I don’t judge a wine finally, until I’ve drunk lots of it on different days and in different moods, and the wine proves to be reliable.  So I can’t give a give a final judgment on the Ryder yet.

But at this stage, based on the consistent performance of Reilly’s Barking Mad Cab Sauv, and my initial impressions of the Ryder, I’ll agree with the 93 points and 5 stars I’ve see about it on the Internet.  It’s a dark, rich, intense wine full of blackberry flavour and is a very satisfying drink that puts in my buy again list.

Copyright prevents me copying the rave reviews from other websites.

The best I can say is – Recommended.

You are welcome to comment if you have tried this wine, whether you agree or disagree, and tell readers how you would describe it.