Hi everyone,
This 2023 Syrah is a new release from Mischief Wines up in Waipara. We were lucky enough to have been gifted this bottle from Saskias dad when he visited a couple of weeks ago.
Before we get stuck into the tasting notes, we wanted to introduce our own wine-tasting mats that you can download and print out free of charge to use for your tastings. Click download below to get access to the pdf!!!
From now on, all of us will write our individual tasting notes, which we will include in each blog post. You will be able to see what things each of us picks up on and how different people have different palates. Hopefully, it will also help to give a summary of the characteristics of each wine that we try.
On to the tasting…
Price:
This was bought for NZ$40( £18.78, R432.31, US$25.03) at the mischief cellar door store in Riverside Market. Unfortunately, this wine doesn’t appear to be on offer on their website, so if you want to try it head down to the stall in the market!
Appearance:
This syrah is a ruby red leaning into purple with a medium colour intensity.
Nose:
Immediately upon smelling this syrah, you get hit with wonderful rich wafts of dark plums and blackberry which are quite characteristic of the syrah grape. There are also layers of vanilla and warm spices that give it a complex but homely feeling.
As you gain more wine knowledge, you start expecting certain characters to come out of a particular varietal. With Syrah, we expect to be greeted with freshly ground pepper. This wine definitely had those notes. However, it is difficult to tell whether we would have identified those notes as quickly without prior knowledge.
Palate:
A very similar palate to what we found on the nose. There were plums and berries, as well as those expected spices and oak. We also found an underlying taste of currant which added to the perceived bitterness of this wine, allowing it to not come across as too flabby which was a nice touch.
It is dry with high acidity, a medium body and medium intensity. The tannins were surprisingly quite low and only really showed up in the aftertaste. The finish was medium with the tannins sticking around for a while as well as quite strong black pepper notes.
Conclusion:
At this price point, you expect good things to come out of your bottle, and this delivered. It was well-balanced and checked all the boxes of what you want from a Syrah.
We recommend going down to Riverside Market and trying out some of the stuff from Mischief wines. The atmosphere is lovely, and every time we visit it’s a great afternoon out.
A perfect pairing with this wine would have to be anything you can whack on a barbeque. It complements the smoky charred characteristics of BBQ meats and vegetables perfectly.
Here is a quick summary of our tasting notes. Unfortunately, we only had one sheet printed for this tasting so incorporated all of our ideas into one, but in the future expect to see a sheet from each of us!
Thanks for reading another of our blogs, we hope that you are enjoying them. Please leave any comments below with suggestions of what content you would like to see in the future!
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