Any grower on The Granite Belt will tell you that Sangiovese is the local varietal sook, often in need of attention. Consequently you won’t find a lot of Sangiovese in the ground on The Granite Belt. There is some at Boireann and at Jester Hill, I’m not aware of others although they could exist. When The Granite Belt offers favourable conditions to Sangiovese you are in for a rare experience, I had other favourite Sangiovese wines in Australia, that is until I encountered a 2014 and then 2016 Boireann made by Peter Stark.
This Boireann wine made by Brad Rowe is a rare beauty. Red rubies and garnets beam their reflective radiance at you from the glass. It’s immediately apparent from the nose that this is a wine of depth and complexity. There are earthy wafts and savoury, sour scents. Intense red fruits attempt to take command but they are pierced by quite redolent spices and then the earth returns and performs an upwards collaborative carriage of all the bouquet’s components.
It’s a huge call but the palate delivers on the bouquet’s promise and actually manages to amplify it substantially. Impassioned red and black cherries deliver a potent savoury and sour greeting and then begin to segue into a long mouth coating succulence. The succulence though has been buried in deep earth and it still harbours some of those qualities. This red cherried sour and savoury earth is spiked with white pepper and cloves and swims in a little cherry cola. The young acid is fresh and clean and sustains the flavours long and lusciously and in that bolstered length some red liquorice appears toted on fine grained filigreed tannins.
I had tasted this wine twice at the cellar door and, based on that, ordered meat lovers pizza tonight which was a sublime match. If you enjoy the wine of Chianti made in Australia be sure to try this 2019 Boireann as I doubt it has a local peer. I know the extreme drought has been very tough on producers but it has to be acknowledged it has delivered the most exceptional sangiovese that has come from The Granite Belt – no sooking here!
Tasted: Saturday 21st November, 2020 without food and then with over several hours.
Alcohol: 14.6%
Closure: Screwcap
Price: $45
Suggested Drinking Window: 2019 to 2032
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