I have recently started working at Armadale Cellars, one of the great independent wine stores in the Melbourne region (see November 2009 article for a detailed list of the other folk doing great wine work).

Besides what you would expect people to normally do in a wine store (i.e., sell wine), Armadale Cellars also offers and runs wine education and appreciation classes and may be one of Australia’s (or at least Melbourne’s) best wine educators. And Melbourne is blessed with a plethora of education and tasting events and options – you almost cannot go a day without some wine related event taking place.

Wine, like almost any subject worth tackling, can appear a bit daunting at first and frighten people away screaming ‘there is too much to learn!’ but, as with many things in life, there are two sides to any coin. To continue on with the well-worn clichés, one man’s meat is another man’s poison and for me, complexity (some people’s poison) is a wonderfully meaty challenge. It means you will never fully master your subject so you will always be learning new facts or facets of wine, tasting new wines and different types or styles, visiting new regions, meeting interesting people, etc…And it is not a bad subject to be continually learning as it is not at all painful (like going to the gym) unless you drink far too much.

Wine, at least in the past 10 years or so, has become far, far less wanky. In fact, at the recent Melbourne Wine and Food Festival I attended a session called “How Not To Drink Wine Like A Wanker’. It was run by a few of Melbourne’s best wine folk who really took the piss out of the Paris End of Town of wine drinking. Their main point is that wine, like food, is essentially a very social thing – to simply be enjoyed with others. All wine education classes are aiming to help you do is to ‘Think while you Drink’.

So if you have just a wee bit of curiosity, a little niggling of interest or maybe you are just plain bored, try a wine course.

At a minimum you will get to drink some good to great wines with some nice folks.

Below are two of my recent vino favourites and they would be a good place to start on your wine education…

Pewsey Vale Eden Valley Riesling 2009 $14 - $15

This has been one of my favourite drinking whites over the summer. I try to move on to something else but every time I pass it in the wine store it gets plopped into my basket and I have no regrets. A Riesling that punches way, way, way above its weight and price – it is a contender.

A stunningly rich and intensely flavoured wine that possesses almost perfect balance of all the nice wine bits and bobs.

Wine writer Jeremey Oliver did not seem to disagree in the latest Gourmet Traveller WINE magazine (February / March 2010) – “Very shapely, with a streamlined and deeply flavoured combination of luscious fruit. Perfumed with a musky scent of lime juice, lemon rind and white flowers…Long and layered, its succulent expression of apple, pear and citrus flavour has a chalky undercarriage and a refreshingly clean finish of lively acidity…As for its price? Low enough for most sauvignon blancs to blush.”

Massena The Surly Muse Viognier 2008 $18 - $20

This is an absolutely cracker of a Viognier – one of the affordable best (Yalumba’s Eden Valley is another one to seek out) I have tasted from an Australian producer. I have to confess I am a big fan of Massena wines.

Having tried most of their red range across a number of vintages and have not had a bad drop in the lot; this Viognier did not break their winning streak.

The wine is named the ‘Surly Muse’, because has been traditionally blended with Shiraz (Syrah in France) to add a floral or lifted quality and a degree of richness. I believe it gets the ‘surly’ moniker as the Roman translation for Viognier is ‘road to Hell’ – it is a hard grape to grow.

Mr. James Halliday appears to have no reservations granting it a respectable 95 points and describing it as a wine with a “vibrant hue; a deft and poised bouquet, exhibiting attractive peach kernel and spice aromas; the palate is ample but not in the least bit heavy with focused fruit, and really lively acidity; the conclusion is seamlessly balanced and fine. Now!”

I concur.

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