2014 Symphony Hill Granite Belt Pinot Gris

We are lucky to have a winemaker running an independent, local bottle shop in a village in a regional area of NSW, Australia. Jared Dixon stocks the Clunes Cellars as if it was his private cellar. Currently he has the gifted Mike Hayes' wines from the Queensland Granite Belt's Symphony Hill, a distinctive label featuring a cello, almost coloured-block-coded for different grape varieties. To drink the Granite Belt is to drink something different than expected of South Australia, or even the NSW Hunter Valley. To drink the Granite Belt's Verdelho and Pinot Gris is to drink something much lighter than expected. The 2014 Pinot Gris is the palest of pale lemon silk in colour with just the slightest tinge of pink, so light it could be hallucinatory. It smells of the lemon combined with pineapple. On the palate it's astringent with unripe pine coming through

2015 Jilly White Wolf of Cumbria ENew England Rosé

In Jared Dixon's 2015 Jilly White Wolf of Cumbria Rosé, Pinot Noir is combined with Gerwurztraminer, both from New England. The colour is bronzed-orange pink, like shiny, new polished copper. There is strawberry and some citrus in the perfume. The palate is salty water and preserved blood orange or tangerine/mandarin, with honey mead on early palate and ginger in the mid-palate. Since Dixon's inclination is food-friendly wines, I thought lusciously about our forthcoming lamb chops while I drank a first glass.