Andy Abramson's Road Reports

Hospice du Rhone:
An Evening With Torbreck Wines and Winemaker David Powell at Villa Creek
© Andy Abramson
May 31, 2003

David Powell's new wife landed earlier on the day on Friday, flying all the way from Sydney to California with their newest wines in tow. Two cases of the 2002 Torbreck Viognier/Marsanne/Roussanne direct from the Barossa Valley winery. There needed to be something new, right? So the just-bottled wines made it to the USA just in time to be served at Villa Creek, the site of the Torbreck Dinner at Hospice du Rhone.

The delightfully refreshing high acid white offered up flavors of dried apricots, orange peel, peach and pineapple. It was a very nice counterpoint to the first wine, the 2001 Woodcutter's White, Barossa. Made from pure Semillon, the almost bone dry white has a clear color, good balance, and a lively lemon-lime flavor with a long finish. Served with appetizers, the wine was a perfect set up for the Rhone white blend that followed to accompany the fresh wild salmon julienne with cucumber, frisee shaved fennel and lemon mint vinaigrette.

Two wines made with the same grapes but in different styles were married correctly to a rustic rabbit stew that was accompanied by fava beans, new potatoes and farm fresh carrots. The newly released 2002 Juveniles Barossa sees no time in oak at all. The ultra-fresh, ripe, precocious red blend is made from a traditional mixture of Grenache, Shiraz and Mataro. An earthy wine by nature, the blackberry and Asian spiced wine has great dexterity and an ability to seem to age well, based on previous vintages I've tasted.

Its mirror wine, 2001 The Steading, albeit one year older, has slightly more Grenache in the blend, but less Syrah. Like Chateauneuf du Pape, the wine is one that can be enjoyed when young, but has an ability to age a long time. How long, no one is sure. This wine was bright, juicy and chunky. Already showing blackberry, black plums and raspberry fruit, with a hint of blueberry, the wine is a real winner.

1999 The Factor, made from 100 percent old vines Shiraz, is equally a young wine that needs time. Matched up to a new release, the 2001 Struie, a blend of Shiraz from the Barossa and Eden Valleys, one sees how different plots of grapes and different climactic regions influence Torbreck's wines. The factor is a big, monolithic wine, with brambly, briar patch aromas and dense blueberry fruit. The Struie is more velvety with notes of pepper, blueberry and stony plums. It was served with lamb chops and a creamy polenta in a Torbreck blackberry reduction sauce.

Another new wine the 2001 Descendant Barossa Valley is a Cote Rotie look-a-like. Made from a blend of Shiraz that is a true descendant of the famed Torbreck Run Rig, the wine is made on top of Viognier that is farmed from the same vineyard. Like Cote Rotie, the wine possesses an olive flavor, tar, Asian herbs and spices and white grapes aromatics.

Cheers,
Andy Abramson

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