Merlot -- Barossa Valley

While the heart of Barossa Valley wine region is perhaps a 20 minute drive from the heart of yesterday's Eden Valley, we wanted to explore the possibility of doing our day's travel differently. Needing some exercise, we walked it. It was a few hours, and quite rolling as we crossed the countryside from one Australian Geographical Indication to another.

It's an ideal region for growing grapes that get particularly ripe -- warm, dry during the growing season, many gentle slopes to plant on, and intense sunlight. What this gives us in nearly all the grapes of the region are highly intense flavored wines with typically high alcohol content.

How did people get to Barossa Valley to start growing grapes? It was seemingly by accident. When persecuted Silesians (then part of Prussia and now Poland) sought refuge from eastern Europe, they embarked on a journey to the other side of the world. Many landed in Adelaide and headed northeast to the valley that they found stunning. There, they planted perhaps the first wine grapes in Australia with a focus on those that they brought from their European homes. While not an original grape there, eventually many of the wineries planted Merlot, often as a blending grape to soften the massive Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon they were producing, but in less quantity as a single varietal wine.

Many streams, some might call them rivers, run through Barossa Valley. Near the streams, the soil could be described as a clay loam, but up the slopes away from the stream, we see a sandier soil, more attuned to Merlot than to the bolder grapes. Combined with the cold fermentation use by most winemakers of the region, this produces a fruit forward, sometimes jammy wine.

On the nose, we get the characteristic cocoa and eucalyptus of the area. On the palate, however, we get lots of ripe plum, juicy blueberry, and black cherry, integrated with rich capuccino.

Pair this Merlot with roasted dishes, particularly root vegetables and almost any traditional meat (beef, pork, or chicken).




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