Street Style

I just got through a function last night having been served a Zilzie Section 23 Chardonnay, probably from vintage 2010. Fuck! I cant believe how something that tastes like its lactating can pass as wine. Fruit? A pastiche of Chardonnay essence. Balance? Like munching on a balloon filled with custard. Length? I’d give it a run for money in my pants, and that aint sayin much. Yeah we see some fruit sweetness, some syrupy, warm melon hints, some vanilla licks. But it’s all colour by numbers stuff. It’s the kind of ten buck wonder that props up generations of families in bulk wine making wonderlands.  Similar wines from the miraculous single vineyard estate of South East Australia can produce strangely good wines at price, but this Chardonnay suffers from the ad-hoc, thrown together necessity wine style found in poorer vintages. Bung on the sprinklers, were gunna get the mother load! This cobbled together wine might have a fair whack of winery fairy dust sprinkled into it, but it drinks poorly, is blase about style, and is pounded by similarly priced market competitors from the likes of some of the other big guys like Penfolds, Yalumba, and dare I say Yellowtail. E for effort sure; what can one expect at ten bones? Yeah I drink well beyond this price point and might be missing some clue, point or demographic, but this wine sadly has little to roll out the cheerleaders for.

… and as a throwaway, the Shiraz 2007 wasn’t as bad. It was paired with Chard as the killer combo for the evening. You’d get a bottle if you only had a blue note in your back pocket or knew that you wanted some party booze that tastes good from the bottle. You get some balance from the Shiraz, and some real red/black berry fruits. This is more like the kind of stuff that Australia hangs its hat on - generous to a point, ripe, juicy, easy to drink and kinda fun. Quite a few people I saw reached for a second, nay third glass. Now we’re talkin’! 

Zilzie Section 23 Chardonnay 2007

Zilzie Setcion 23 Shiraz 2006

Somewhere in Victoria/SE Australia

$10.00 - $13.00 RRP

Chard - 79/100

Shiraz 86/100