(1.5/5)
Varietal: shiraz / viognier blend – Price: $15.95 Cdn – website – Winery: Yalumba – Vintage: 2006- Region: South Australia – LCBO No: 624494 – 
Other Reviews: wine scamp | The WineMad Blog
The back label says this wine is spicy, savoury and silky. I found it to be dull and limp, tasting too much of dishwater and rubbing alcohol, particularly in the tarty finish. Though it was silky! 🙂
I decided to give this shiraz / viognier blend a try when I was unable to find another bottle of the Jacob’s Creek Reserve Shiraz that I liked so much last week. An LCBO staffer recommended it as a comparable wine that had been a recent staff pick.
I only noticed that this wine had a screw-cap (a sure sign it will disappointing) when I got it home. How could this be an LCBO staff pick?
This is what shiraz has typically been like for me for the last twenty years and why I have always disliked it – my recent Shiraz experiences (here and here) notwithstanding. You should certainly consider my general distaste for this varietal when assessing this review.
To the LCBO staffer’s credit, when I told her I was a bold and spicy California zinfandel fan, she did say this might not be to my taste. She was right. There’s bright line between being spicy and being tart. This one falls on the tart side – especially on my second tasting – see below.
I must confess that I have little knowledge of the viognier varietal. And, neither the bottle nor the wine’s – website – indicated the percentage of the blend.
Second Tasting: After writing the review above, I tasted the wine again the next day. I had used my vacu vin wine saver to do its best to save the wine over night. Usually, even with the vacu vin, wine tastes considerably worse the next day. Not so with this wine. I actually liked it more after having been exposed to oxygen and sitting over night. Go figure! This raised my overall rating from a 1.5 to a 2. But for the distasteful finish, I might have even given it a 2.5.
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