Issue V: Penfold’s Koonunga Hill Shiraz-Cabernet Edition

Penfold Koonunga Hill Shiraz-Cabernet

When it comes time for yours truly to do some recommendations, which people will often request of me, sometimes giving me a dish to complement, sometimes just for an all-around good pick, I invariably will lean on Penfold’s. There are a few good reasons for this. Some of them are practical, such as this is a very smooth, very drinkable wine after it gets some air and the astringency has a chance to depart (15 minutes airing minimum) and it’s generally well-received. It’s also usually easily accessible and is one of the most commonly found wines regardless of state. The price point is such that it’s not going to break the bank, but is obviously a far cry from bottom of the barrel rotgut. It speaks value, generally and Penfold’s is a pretty good name, as far as wineries go. It also makes a nice addition to dinner parties.

Some of those reasons have more to do with me. Syrah/Shiraz (same grape) is one of my favorite varietals and though Penfold’s does a fantastic Koonunga Shiraz, I somewhat prefer the Shiraz-Cab, though when recommending, I don’t generally make a huge distinction between them, telling whoever it is to just pick up whichever they can find. The grape I find is very adaptable and generally it goes well with whatever protein is on for the night. I don’t use it for that, obviously, but I do like to know those things to a degree, in case someone does want to use it for such an occasion.

One of the best things about that grape is that I find it falls squarely in the middle. When done right, such as this gem that hails from Australia, it has good body (somewhat moreso with the addition of the cab here), neither too heavy nor too light, a nice balance between a touch of bite and a velvety smoothness, a very pleasant and round taste and can probably be considered, when done well, to be almost the “perfect” medium grape, as in splitting the difference of the extremes when it comes to red wine grapes.

For $12 or less a bottle (often you can find this for below $10), this makes it easy enough to pick up, even when not on SPA. This is another easy pick for a Standard, as it’s one of the better fallbacks on this list and an easy recommend.

 

Issue IV: Fat Bastard Chardonnay Edition

 Thierry & Guy Fat Bastard Chardonnay

We don’t generally drink a lot of whites, as a rule, but my wife likes to have a bottle on hand for cooking. Despite some advice I’ve seen elsewhere, I don’t think you can just use any old thing and I firmly believe that if you wouldn’t drink it, you shouldn’t be cooking with it, either. I’ve seen the exact opposite advice elsewhere, but in my view, you run a high danger of ruining your food with a garbage wine. Whites can be very dry and very astringent, two characteristics I may find more appealing if I want to make vinegar (I don’t), but are nearly useless to me in terms of drinking.  Both this and the other regular white I keep in rotation (also a Chardonnay – review coming soon) are something I don’t mind drinking, though we wouldn’t use for movies. While the two share that characteristic, both are very different wines, though they both are French as well, perhaps not coincidentally, though this particular one has a more British sounding name.

Chardonnays, generally as one of the stronger and drier whites, can get very harsh, very quickly, but this one has a very nice and appealing smoothness to it. It’s not quite what I would call refreshing, but it has just the right balance of fruitiness and dryness to it, along with a pretty good flavor, though if you bolt it, you will get the alcohol hit.

I look for a couple things in choosing a white for cooking. I’ve already described one of them above, which is the same sort of criteria I use for choosing a drinking wine. The other – and this might sound a bit silly – is that the bottle must come with a screwcap. This is for mostly purely practical reasons, i.e. we like to keep the bottle in the door and it generally won’t fit with a stopper and it is currently much more difficult for our son to open the screwcap than to remove a stopper. That is not to say that we’ve not had other Chardonnays (others are on my list as well), but after finding these two that work well for cooking (I’d give a slight nod to the other one), I’ve pretty much stopped the search and don’t generally look to those.

What we have here is one that I may or may not pick up if it is on SPA, but if it is, I usually will.  The whites we keep for cooking are generally exempt from the three main categories, so expect not to see too many more of these as we go along the way.