Just delicious and why weren’t wines of this type a regular part of our drinking decades ago. Why were they not made? The three varieties that thrive together in the Australian warm climate districts are Grenache, Shiraz and Mataro and they have been around since the start.
We need to go back to the fortified era to understand why these three varieties were planted. Each achieves full ripeness in the warm Barossa climate, yet they ripen at different times plus some do better in one vintage with another in perhaps a cooler vintage. This spreads the risks for the grower while the different ripening times takes pressure off the winery. And they made wonderful ports and sherries.
The growth of table wines is recent and while Shiraz was readily accepted from the 1950s wines made from Mataro and Grenache did not appear until the 1990s. Perhaps it just takes time for consumers to embrace a wide range though I still think producers and retailers should have been alerting consumers to what they were missing decades ago.
