After a pretty fucked 24 hours in Sydney it seems a bit rude to be talking about booze today.

I’ve got too many friends who work around Martin Place, who were evacuated, who could have been in that cafe buying a hot chocolate on a Monday morning – It’s all too close to home, especially as I walk past there several times a week. I feel sorry and sad for the families of those who lost loved ones overnight, especially so close to Christmas. Awful.

Anyway, I wanted to talk today about how good the new Clover Hill Vintage Cuvee 2009 is, but that just seems wrong. Then again, maybe today is a good day to bring your family together and open some really good booze, just because life is too short.

On the Clover Hill, it’s perhaps the most serious release in years. I’ve always preferred the Blanc de Blancs from Clover (and ex-winemaker Karina Dambergs thinks the site is best suited to Chardonnay) but this ’09 is fair up to the task; built in a quite masculine style with real extract and power, if just a little strict and serious for most wine drinkers.

For the $36 it can be found for around the traps this is really classy Australian bubbles, with the concentration and structure to match most NV Champagnes, if not quite the delicacy and acid balance perfection of the better house styles. In other words, it’ll beat Piper, Pommery or Lanson, but not quite Bollinger/Taittinger level.

A natural choice for celebrating life itself.