It’s Yendah right. Not Yenda where the wine is made. So the marketing people have dictated for the latest batch of wine from Casella Wines. Yes, that’ the Casella from Yenda (no h) in New South Wales.
With an h or not these wines are a decent well-priced (around A$16) drops designed to be drunk with food rather than my normal method – morosely slumped on a sagging sofa watching reality TV with a jumbo bag of crinkle cut crisps.
I’ve left my cave for Karen Martini’s Melbourne Wine Room (she has a new cookbook out) for the launch of the “h” wines with a bunch of journalists and the trade. The gossip columnists from the local rags are there – Suzanne Carbone from The Age and Mike Edmonds from The Herald Sun. And everybody is enjoying the Pinot Grigio.
It has a bit more colour than usual, but the Casella guys tell us they left the colour in for better flavour.
International visitors will recognise Casella for its Yellowtail brand, of which millions of cases are exported to the US. In fact, it is the number one Australian wine in the US.
Coincidentally, Cam at Appelation Australia has just give the thumbs up to Yellowtail, the wine that made Casella one of the top grape crushers in Oz. The winery accounts for 10 per cent of all local grape crushing, about 150,000 tonnes.
Today, however, we are dealing with smaller crushes, around 10,000 tonnes for the Yendah Sangiovese, Tempranillo and Durif.
I could bore for Australia going on about the cherry and plum (Sangiovese) the chocolate and leather in the Tempanillo or the spice from the Durif. And I quite possibly have.
What this is about is recognising the match of food and wine rather than drinking wine for wines sake.
Depending on what we eat each wine displays different flavours and characteristics. What I can say is with the antipasto and the carpaccio, the fried Glenloth chicken, the Pasticcio di lamb shank with haloumi and pomegranate and Bistecca di Fiorentina it all tasted good.
Isn’t that enough? Apparently not, we need the extra “h”.
Mind you, “Yendah” does have a certain ring to it, I think.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Ben Canaider recently told me that as far as he’s concerned, as wine IS food it made the business of wine and food matching superfluous. Just drink it
any thoughts?
I agree although onviously I don’t want to drink Shiraz with fish. I s’pose the point I’m making is how silly all these rating systems are because once you eat food with wine everything goes to pot. Crap wine starts to taste great and great wines can taste crap. Or something like that anyway. And I really must cut back on the grog (drunk through boredom) when watching TV.
Reviewed all these Yendah wines recently and they are pretty good. I can’t say I have ever had a great wine made to taste crap when drinking with food tho.
GW
What i mean is big wines mand food don’t go.