My Aching Head

I’m a huge fan of cheap good wine, happy to drink good quality boxed wine and certainly not turned off by a $4 bottle - so long as it tastes good. But currently I have a glass of Yalumba Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 in front of me, and let me tell you I’m not that impressed. It’s one of the “premium cask wines” just like the Banrock Station wine I’ve written about before and it might be harsh on the Yalumba, but it just doesn’t match up against the Banrock.

Before I start talking about the wine itself I think it’s important to mention that by all reports the 2007 vintage in the Barossa valley was extremely hard for the growers, with a late frost and some heavy rainfall damaging a great amount of the harvest. This may well explain the low quality - especially because this box is of the 2007 vintage, as compared to most cask wine which is blended.

On the nose there is a definite smell of blackcurrant, and a slightly unwelcome hint of menthol. The taste is not what I have become used to from cheap Australian wines, which normally provide a somewhat balanced taste. It lacks body, tastes young (yes, I realise it is young) and has a touch of alcohol aftertaste. It’s not all bad though, it is quite easy drinking which isn’t always the case for cheap cabernet sauvignon’s and definitely is very good value drinking.

As far as dinner goes, there isn’t a better drink to accompany it than a glass of red. That is of course if the source is tomato based or the meat is red, otherwise white wine is preferential. Now let me start by saying I’m definitely no expert on wine, but I know what I like and first of all I like cheap. When you talk about cheap wine there is 2 types of cheap, cheap and goon. This classification is pretty down the line, goon comes in a bag (sometimes disguised as a box) and cheap wine comes in a bottle. Until recently this differentiation was pretty clear cut with nothing in a bag being worth more than $3 a litre and bottles starting at about $10 a litre.

Which brings me to the crux of the matter, for about $20 you can pick up a box of Banrock Station red (or white). They come in a range of blends, cabernet sauvignon, shiraz, merlot, and my personal favourite cabernet merlot. This isn’t any normal goon bag, I consider it to be in the class of “cheap wine,” or at least that’s what I tell myself. I suppose a sign that the box isn’t going to be horrible is the specification of the actual blend of grapes, rather than “dry red” or “crisp white,” another sign is that the grapes are all sourced from the same place, rather than from Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and Chile.

The beauty of buying 2 litres of cheap wine to have over dinner is it’s flexibility you have enough for tonight and tomorrow night, can drop a splash of it in your cooking and you aren’t too worried if you leave a glass that needs to be thrown out at the end of the night. While you might not believe me, by forking out the extra $10 your head might not ache so much tomorrow morning.