{"id":5645,"date":"2012-09-19T22:05:51","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T22:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=5645"},"modified":"2012-09-19T22:05:51","modified_gmt":"2012-09-19T22:05:51","slug":"an-evening-of-semillon-an-underrated-grape-variety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/australia\/an-evening-of-semillon-an-underrated-grape-variety","title":{"rendered":"An evening of Semillon, an underrated grape variety"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bruce Tyrrell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yesterday evening I took part in a tasting at Australia house, focused on Semillon. It’s a variety that hides in the shadows, but which excels in Australia, and specifically in the Hunter Valley. Here, it makes tremendously long lived white wines that start out life crisp, fresh and lemony. Give them a decade or more of bottle age, and they go through a magical transformation, emerging rich, complex and toasty.<\/p>\n

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I was on a panel put together by Richard Hemming, which included the two of us plus legend of the Hunter Bruce Tyrrell, and ex-Ledbury sommelier Luke Robertson. The tasting was all blind, and included Semillons from all around Australia, of different ages.<\/p>\n

In preparing for the session, I did a bit of head scratching. Where else, other than Australia, are world class varietal Semillons made? In Bordeaux, it is a blending variety. There are a few examples from the USA, I have heard, but the only other country that makes super Semillon is South Africa, albeit on a small scale – I’m thinking of Boekenhoutskloof, Steenberg\u00a0and Cape Point. At the moment, Australia owns world-class Semillon.<\/p>\n

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Some of the wines I tasted last night really impressed, but two stood out in terms of value for money. The first is the Brokenwood 2011. This is already much more perfumed and exotic than you’d expect a typical Hunter Semillon to be, but it is still recognizably Hunter. The second is the McWilliams Elizabeth 2005: this is not an expensive wine, but it is complex and fresh, and is already beginning to display\u00a0some of the warm toasty notes that come with age.<\/p>\n

Away from the Hunter, we also tried impressive Semillons from the Clare Valley, Margaret River, Queensland’s South Burnett and the Barossa. This\u00a0reinforced what an interesting variety\u00a0Semillon can be. Must drink more.<\/p>\n

Find these wines with\u00a0wine-searcher.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday evening I took part in a tasting at Australia house, focused on Semillon. It’s a variety that hides in the shadows, but which excels in Australia, and specifically in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,35],"tags":[366,199,367],"class_list":["post-5645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia","category-semillon","tag-australia","tag-hunter-valley","tag-semillon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5645"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5652,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5645\/revisions\/5652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}