19 Crimes Red Wine

19 Crimes Red Wine

Southeastern Australia

2012 Vintage

Shiraz-Durif Red Blend

I must say, 19 Crimes has one of the coolest, most unique labels I've seen in quite awhile!!! Not only does it look very interesting, but it definitely catches your eye among the shelves lined with very similar looking labels.  The brand claims this is a picture of an actual criminal, which makes it even cooler.  But yeah anyway, this is the 19 Crimes Red Wine up for review today...

Jacob's Creek Red Blend Wine

Jacob's Creek Red Wine Blend

Vintage: 2012

South Eastern Australia

So, this is the second wine from Jacob's Creek that I have officially reviewed, but I'm certain I've tasted a couple others over the last two years since I reviewed their Adelaide Hills Pinot Noir.

Red Bicyclette Syrah

Red Bicyclette Syrah

2009

France

Vin de Pays d'Oc Appelation

Red Bicyclette Syrah is another Syrah which brings up the discussion of Syrah versus Shiraz.  If you're familiar with these wines, you'll already know they're the same grape.  The difference is in their characteristics determined by where they are grown...

Purple Cowboy Tenacious Red

Purple Cowboy

Tenacious Red

Cabernet Sauvignon-Syrah Blend 

 Vintage: 2010

Origin: California

Paso Robles Appellation

Purple Cowboy.

That's right, Purple Cowboy.

In an extremely juvenile way, I find that name kind of funny.  I almost want to make a Brokeback Mountain reference or tell a dirty joke.  The name just sounds like some sort of innuendo.  Purple Cowboy.  My wife actually didn't believe me at first that this was the wine's real name.  True story.

But, we're here for the drinks.  So, let's get to it.

Purple Cowboy is supposedly named after a group of early California cowboys/winemakers who made dark wine which stained their teeth purple.  I don't know if that's true, but the name certainly gets your attention.  And again, I kind of want to tell a dirty joke.

Anyway, this is the 2010 Purple Cowboy Tenacious Red, a Californian Cabernet-Syrah blend.  It pours a dark purple (imagine that!) and has strong aromas of blackberries, black cherries, and a touch of spice and leather.  Tastings brings sweet cherries, dark fruit, and chocolate followed by an unusually short finish.

This is a confusing wine for me.  It smells dark, luscious, and sinful but tastes very sweet and cherry-forward with a short finish.  Meaning it smells much better than it tastes.  Now there's nothing awful about it and it's certainly quite drinkable, but it tastes kind of ordinary, especially following the delicious aromas.  

So, there you go.  Not bad, not great.  

But perhaps at least, it'll stain your teeth purple so you can throw on your sexy chaps and dance around like a Purple Cowboy.  Or something.

Drink This: if you want a reasonably cheap Cabernet-Syrah blend that tastes of sweet cherries, but smells luscious and dark.

Don't Drink This: if you're not down with the Purple Cowboy.  And I don't really know what I mean by that...

Cheers! 

              

Rex Goliath Shiraz

Rex Goliath

Shiraz

Origin: California

Vintage: N/A

Alcohol: 13.5%

Okay, so once again I'm reviewing a pretty cheap wine and once again, I've poured myself a slightly overfilled glass.  

Oops!  

It's some weird subconscious thing.  Cheap wine = drinking more.  And I know, it makes it hard to swirl, sniff, and all that formal wine jazz.  But hey, it's cheap wine so who cares.  Anyway...

 

Not too long ago I reviewed the Rex Goliath Free Range Red wine (link is here) which I found a bit underwhelming.  I was hoping their Shiraz would fare better, so I bought another bottle with that giant 47 pound Texan circus rooster and saddled up.  

Yes, you read correctly.  

The rooster on the label is of a giant rooster that was in a circus in Texas.  Why a California winery chose this as their icon?  And for a wine, no less?  I haven't a clue.

The Rex Goliath Shiraz pours a deep purple and smells of blackberries and oak.  Tasting brings surprisingly dry raspberries, plum, black licorice, and a good deal of oak.  The finish is short, yet smooth, with relatively mild tannins.

This really isn't a bad wine at all.  And for the price ($5), it's a pretty damn good California Shiraz.  Overall, the Rex Goliath Shiraz is considerably better than their Free Range Red.  

Rex Goliath, you have redeemed yourself! 

*For other Shiraz reviews click here.  There are also a few write-ups about the differences (or lack thereof) between Shiraz and Syrah.

Drink This: if you want a well above average Shiraz around the $5 price point.   This would easily make a good everyday type of wine.

Don't Drink This: if you're looking for a cheap, sweet red wine.  Like I said in the tasting notes, this was surprisingly dry, especially for a budget wine.

Cheers!  

Barefoot Shiraz

Barefoot Shiraz

Origin: California

Vintage: ?

Okay, so here's another cheap wine.  

Super cheap.  

We're talking like $4 or $5 a bottle cheap.  And hey, there's nothing wrong with that.  It just lowers my expectations a little.

Shiraz is famously grown in Australia, but this bottle is from California.  And as I've said before, Shiraz is technically the same grape as Syrah.  However, since the grape was historically grown in two different climates (France and Australia) which produced different flavor profiles and were subsequently named differently for each place, wineries outside of these regions tend to name their wines depending on whether their wine has Shiraz (heavier, jammy) or Syrah (lighter, peppery, acidic) characteristics.  

Does that make sense? 

Good.

Back to this bottle.  This is from Barefoot Cellars, a California winery known for making affordable/budget wines which can be found just about anywhere.  They also produce pretty much all of the major varietals.  This is their Shiraz, which unfortunately has no vintage.  

The Barefoot Shiraz pours a dark garnet verging on purple and has aromas of grape jam, grape jam, and oh yeah, more grape jam.  It tastes moderately sweet and predominantly of blackberries with a hint of spice.  It is a bit too thin, mild, and short-lived.  Nothing really interesting or all that tasty going on here.   

Drink This: if you've already had a few drinks and you don't really care what you drink.  This could be good to serve to drunken house guests so they don't guzzle down all of your good stuff.  And hey, it's SUPER CHEAP!

Don't Drink This: if you want something interesting, or tasty, or complex.  Not to be harsh, but this wine is a bit too much of nothing at all.  I really wish it had a vintage so they could tweak the blending yearly.  I've had considerably better wines from Barefoot... oh well.

Cheers!        

Layer Cake Shiraz

Layer Cake Shiraz

Pure Love Wines

Vintage: 2010

Origin: Southern Australia

Alcohol: 14.1%

Awhile back I reviewed the Layer Cake Malbec (yes, that's a link to the review, go check it out) and was utterly surprised with how tasty it was.  

Granted, I'm a Malbec lover.
  

But seriously, it was good.

That was my first tasting of a Layer Cake wine and I said I would try to track down their other varietals.  

Well, I did.

So, here we are.

This is the 2010 Layer Cake Shiraz.  Go check out my other Shiraz reviews to see my write-ups about the differences between Shiraz and Syrah (*Hint, they're the same grape, but different style due to growing conditions).  Like many Shiraz wines, this is made from grapes grown in Southern Australia.  According to Layer Cake (owned by Pure Love Wines):

For our Shiraz, we pull from vineyards in McLaren Vale and the Barossa Valley; from the sandy soiled blocks on the sea coast of Gulf St. Vincent, to the Terra Rosa based, tiny-berried wind-blown rolling hills in the Barossa Zone. The microclimates give us a broad array of flavors to blend into a complex, rich, full wine. 

Anyone who drinks enough wine knows that where grapes are grown does play a huge role in a wine's characteristics (this concept is called terroir).  This is likely why I have yet to try a great wine from the mountains of Idaho (Dear Idaho winemakers, send me tasting samples to prove me wrong!).  Regardless, I've had most of the Layer Cake wines now (reviews coming soon) and they consistently seem to source great grapes.

The 2010 Layer Cake Shiraz pours a deep, dark purple and has aromas of spiced plums, blackberry jam, and vanilla.  It tastes quite jammy with more of the blackberry jam, plums, black cherry, dark chocolate, and a good bit of oak and pepper.  The tannins and moderate and the finish is relatively smooth.

Like the Layer Cake Malbec, I would have liked a bit more tannins.  But as it stands, this wine is a tasty, dark fruit-forward, jammy (without being overly sweet) Shiraz.

  

One thing is for sure, the Layer Cake wines are not subtle nor are they lacking in flavor.  Personally, I prefer that approach over a wine that's so subtle you think it may have been watered down with, well, water.

I like this wine, but not nearly as much as the Layer Cake Malbec (which, by the way, is one of the few bottles of wine I have bought more than once this year).

Drink This: if you want a flavorful, dark-fruit bomb of a Shiraz.  This is not subtle.  Like most Layer Cake wines, you should be able to find it for around $12-15 a bottle if you check around, although I've seen it priced at $19 before.

Don't Drink This: if you want a subtle, dry, subdued wine (how did you know I was going to say that?! Hahaha). 

  

 Cheers, my friends!  

   

 

Fish Eye Sweet Red Wine

Fish Eye Sweet Red 

Wine

Alcohol: 13.5%

Australia

Recently it seems that many of the hip, young wine drinkers have been rebelling against the dry, oaky red wines of the last generation and been shifting their focus toward sweet red and pink wines.  I was at a wine festival recently where this was most evident by the number of people enjoying regular and pink Moscato and the sweeter Merlots and such, something which I found astonishing!  Who drinks pink wine and sweet reds?!  Well, apparently lots of people now.  It's the new in thing to do.  I also saw an article in Wine Prospector a month or so ago where the hip hop artist Drake reported to drink massive amounts of Moscato.  Not only was I surprised that Drake drinks Moscato, but I was surprised that Wine Prospector would feature Drake.  It made my brain hurt for many reasons.

Anyway, Fish Eye Winery has released a new sweet red wine, hoping to follow these wine trends, which is simply called Fish Eye Sweet Red. No beating around the bush with that kind of name.  Fish Eye Winery is out of South East Australia and is known for making quite a few varietals.  For their Sweet Red, they start with a Shiraz base and blend it with Moscato and other sweet wines.

Fish Eye Sweet Red pours a dark, cherry red.  It smells of sweet strawberries and raspberries.  This carries over into the taste, with pronounced sweet raspberry and strawberry, and a hint of cranberry in the finish.  The tannins are there, but really quite mild.  Fish Eye Sweet Red is as you'd expect, sweet, but the flavors are much deeper than I was expecting.  Typically sweet wines tend to be a bit thin, but this is a bordering on full-bodied which is refreshing to see from a sweet red, which is probably from the Shiraz base.  Whatever it is, it works.  I was surprised how much I enjoyed this!

Drink This: if you want a surprisingly fuller-bodied sweet red wine.  I could see this being enjoyed by newbies to red wine, as well as veterans.  It fills the gap between traditional dry reds and sweet, pink wines.  And with a suggested retail of $7 a bottle, it's definitely worth a try.
Don't Drink This: if you're looking for a dry, oak bomb of a wine.

Cheers!              

Lucky Duck Shiraz

 

Lucky Duck Shiraz

Vintage: ?

Origin: South Eastern Australia

Walmart

Alcohol: 13%

Ahh yes, the drunken duck is back.  I'm of course talking about the Lucky Duck brand of wine.  You know, the one with the eye-catching labels of a drunk as a skunk duck that's only sold at Walmart?  Yeah, that one.  And it's only sold at Walmart because they produce and own the line of wines.  Well, they import it anyway.  I still have yet to find out who actually makes this stuff.     

This is the Lucky Duck Shiraz, which apparently is actually grown in Australia where Shiraz is king.  I've gone over the difference (or lack thereof) between Shiraz and Syrah before (in my Black Swan Shiraz review for example), so I won't bother with that again.  Go read it if you're curious about the two differing styles.  

The Lucky Duck Shiraz pours a rather dark purple with fairly strong aromas of blackberries and a hint of earth and coffee.  You take a sip and get more of that sweet blackberry and some lingering jammy plum, with a decent acidity and a hint of spice in the finish.  The tannins are actually fairly moderate which was surprising.  Actually, the whole wine was pretty surprising to me.  

This isn't complex or dynamic by any means, but it actually tastes like Shiraz!  And for only being $4, it's quite the deal.  It had much better flavor than I was expecting and caught me off guard.  Even though I haven't formally reviewed all of the Lucky Duck reds, I have tasted all of them and this, to me, is the best of the bunch.  And yeah, that's not saying much because it's still a $4 wine that's only sold at Walmart, but if I only had $4 to spend on a bottle of wine this may be the one I choose!  Granted, for a dollar or two more there are many better wines, but hey, it's only $4, what do you expect?!

Drink This: if you want a relatively good bottle of $4 wine.  It's nothing amazing,but it's crazy cheap and decent quality considering the price.

Don't Drink This: if you have $5 or more to spend on a bottle of wine.  

-On a side note for the curious, if you only have $3 to spend drink this stuff (yes, that's a link to a ruby port).  It's not good, but it's made with real wine and hey, it's $3.

-On another side note, I just realized how many dollar signs I typed in this review...  

 

Black Swan Shiraz

Black Swan Shiraz

2010 Vintage

Origin: South Eastern Australia

Alcohol: 13.4%

A lot of people get confused by the difference between Shiraz and Syrah wines, and will often assume they are completely different varieties.  But, as I said in my review of the impressively long-named 2007 Wyndham Estate George Windham Founder's Reserve Langhorne Creek Shiraz, they are technically the same grape.  But even the same grape grown in different conditions will yield quite the different wines.  Essentially, Shiraz tends to be heavier and more jammy, whereas Syrah is typically lighter, spicy, and more acidic.  This difference is largely due to, as I said, growing conditions and what flavor profile the winemaker is trying to produce.  Using the basic flavors as a guide for each style, you can then have at least some idea of what to expect from say, a California-grown Syrah. 

Well, here we have another Shiraz, this time it's the 2010 Vintage of the Black Swan Shiraz.  It pours a dark ruby and has aromas of raspberry and pepper.  On the palette, I got sweet cherry, raspberry, and a peppery finish.  The tannins are moderate to mild, as is the body.  

All in all, this is a pretty straightforward, simple red wine.  It's not complex, it's not luscious, and it's fairly sweet for a red.  So, if that's your style, go right ahead.  It's actually pretty easy-drinking and likely to be enjoyed even by those who aren't huge red wine fans.  There's nothing bad here, just lots of mediocrity.

Drink This: if you want a simple, everyday red wine. 

Don't Drink This: if you're looking for complexity and huge, mouth drying tannins.  This has neither, but as far as budget wines go, you could do much worse. 

 

2007 Wyndham Estate George Wyndham Founder's Reserve Langhorne Creek Shiraz

 

2007 Wyndham Estate

George Wyndham

Founder's Reserve

Langhorne Creek

Shiraz

Origin: Australia

Alcohol: 14%

Well, we have a new winner for the longest wine name to be reviewed here!  The 2007 Wyndham Estate George Wyndham Founder's Reserve Langhorne Creek Shiraz!  Wooo, that takes awhile to say (and type).

Shiraz/Syrah Grapes

A quick refresher for the wine newbies.  Shiraz is the exact same grape as Syrah.  I know, it sounds crazy, but it's true.  The difference in name comes mainly from where they are grown.  Shiraz is Australian grown, whereas Syrah is French grown (although this grape varietal is now being grown in California and other places).  Even though they're the same grape, the flavors do vary greatly due to growing location (imagine that).  Shiraz tends to be heavier, full-bodied jammy wines, while Syrah is typically lighter, peppery, and more acidic.  Same grape, different taste.  Understanding the difference in flavor profiles due to growing location, you can then figure out what to expect from bottles of Shiraz and Syrah grown in California and elsewhere.  

Anyway, back to this bottle of wine.  Wynham Estate was the first commercial Shiraz vineyard in Australia, and it shows in the quality of their wine.  This bottle uses grapes from the Langhorne Creek vineyards which were aged in French and American oak barrels for 15 months. 

The 2007 Wyndham Estate George Wyndham Founder's Reserve Langhorne Creek Shiraz pours a deep, black cherry color that verges on becoming purple.  It smells of ripe plums, red currants, and has a strong mint presence.  On the palate, I get jammy black cherries, plums, and blackberries, powerful notes of menthol, with hints of chocolate, vanilla, and bits of spice in the finish.  The tannins are moderately strong and chewy, very fitting for the style.  While the overt minty quality of this Shiraz may turn off some people, I find it to play into the wine's complexity making it extremely interesting sip after sip.  

The Chief Winemaker, Nigel Dolan recommends having this alongside "scotch fillet with herb butter, succulent slow-roasted lamb shanks and braised beef cheek with seasonal vegetables."  Personally, I say have it with any hunk of delicious lamb or beef you can find.  A very tasty, complex wine.

Drink This: if you're looking for a mint-forward, deliciously dark, jammy Shiraz.

Don't Drink This: if you don't like minty notes in your red wine, because that's upfront and center here.