It bought this red wine from the local supermarket with a sense of excitement as it had been award prizes in South Africa.. However, I did not know what to make of it. It had all the hallmarks of a good quality wine even though it had a strong flavour of malo-lactic conversion which made the wine smell a bit buttery. Malo-lactic conversion is used to convert the malic acid in the wine to lactic acid which is softer on the palate.
The wine was young and lively with fruit and spice taste and seemed to be well integrated. We drank half a bottle with roast duck and the wine went well with it, however at the end of our meal I still had half a glass left over. Usually, when this happens I sip the glass before tea or coffee to finish it. This time I couldn't finish the glass the wine did not taste right and I could n't put my finger on what was wrong. Maybe, we were drinking it too soon and it should have left the bottle to mature for another year or so, but these days wines such as this are designed to be drunk young. Maybe it was to blend of grapes or the strong smell of malo-lactic conversion or maybe it had not been stored correctly. perhaps the style wasn't to our liking.
We saved the remaining half of the bottle until the next day to drink with our roast pork. I thought that a little bit of oxidation, overnight, would improve matters but it didn't: we were a little bit disappointed but finished the half bottle all the same as it went down quite well with the food. To finish things off I opened a bottle of Burgundy red from our favourite producer; a couple of glasses of that alleviated our disappointment.
Others, may find that this wine is perfectly satisfactory and that they enjoy it very well , so I am not going to mark it down in anyway. In the future, I might buy another bottle and we will then really enjoy it - who knows? But, then again we could have been spoilt by drinking too much Burgundy red.
https://www.waitrosecellar.com/zalze-shiraz-mourvedre-viognier
