TAKE TWO: Lerida Estate Cullerin Pinot Noir 2009

Lake George Cullerin 2009 Take Two..

TAKE TWO: Lerida Estate Cullerin Pinot Noir 2009 (Canberra District)
13.9%, Screwcap, $35
Source: Sample
www.leridaestate.com.au

I don’t know about you but I rather like expecting little and being delivered much. It’s that simple joy of getting more than you bargained for, like when you get a badly wrapped Christmas present in the office Secret Santa and it turns out to be an excellent novelty pen that doubles as a waiters friend (or the like).

In the wine world such happy surprises seem to happen most often with old bottles, particularly the sort of old bottles that have no business looking as good as they do. Like the original Penfolds Koonunga Hill (the 76) which – when tasted in 2004 – still looked remarkably fresh (and admirably tasty) given it’s relative station in life.

On a lesser scale I think you get a similar satisfaction when you retaste a wine and discover a much more attractive side of it, almost like meeting someone for the second time and realising that they’re even cuter than you first realised…

In this instance that second look was at a Canberra Pinot that, it’s fair to say, I wasn’t all that impressed with on the first showing (have a read of the first note here). Yet this time around it just looked genuinely more composed, more balanced and more drinkable.

Again, like many Canberra Pinots, my biggest gripe again with this wine revolves around a lack of delicacy – they’re simply too raw, firm and dry red leaning to be genuinely satisfying. They’re Shiraz drinkers Pinots for want a better description. However this retaste saw a little of that firmness drop away in the glass to reveal a deep and ferrous Pinot that’s all about spicy bacon bit and spicy plum fruit backed by tannins aplenty. There’s a richness to the mid palate too that is quite attractive too, though that richness vein takes a solid six hours in the decanter to come out (which probably partly explains why it looked better this time around).

Ultimately this is still something of a bulky Pinot and probably lacks that delicacy that I really love in Pinot Noir, however I think that there is still plenty of joy to be had in the style (and much more than my first taste suggested) that’s worth highlighting (at least more than I did last time). 16.8/89