The 2009 wine has won gold and silver at the Australian Small Winemakers and Alternative Varieties Show. The wine is made by the Kirby family. I bought this at the July 2011 Lismore 4WD, Caravan, Camping and Marine Show, because the wine is not carried in any bottleshop I know of in the Nothern Rivers. It is a clear lemon-green in colour. It has a grapy, fruity, sweet odour, and finishes slightly sweet. But it has a dry early and middle palate. My drinking companion throught it would be good with food.
The 2010 is a pale-heading-toward-deeper lemon, with spice and sugar in the perfume, and an edge of musk. It's smooth and slippery on the palate and a little musky there too, and like a small, not-too-sweetish biscuit. Not your average wine said my drinking companion, but as overly perfumed. It's long in the palate, memorable, and almost-but-not-quite full-bodied. According to Jancis Robinson's Oxford Companion to Wine, the traditional Alsace Gewurztraminer is full bodied, golden and very perfumed. But although New England is cold, it's perhaps not as cold as Europe, and I've found wine grapes from the Granite Belt, for example, although grown in a high altitude, are lighter than what you would expect. So this Gewurtz is probably a new-world take on its traditional relative.I ordered the 2010 online,for $30, once I found out the winery had won a new set of awards. But then I saw a couple of reds at the Clunes Cellars. Owing, I am assuming, to his enterprise and passion, Jared, the winemaker at the Clunes Cellar, has organised a tasting with the Vigneron, Mark Kirby (Mike Hayes, of the Granite Belt's Symphony Hill, is the winemaker) on Saturday 10 November. See you there. Check out the time/s with the Clunes store.
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