That is a bottom heavy bottle!
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And that’s not considering the pound of sediment!
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Uh-oh
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No, this is one of the good ones.
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yes a traditional family run winery. Honest Barossa Shiraz - I would expect the bottle to be good
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It was excellent. Fine balance, dark fruit, and no undue heat. Wish there was more, but this was a lonely single bottle.
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Loved those wines back in the day!
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Sold pallets of early 90s of this back in the day for $9 a bottle. Was one of the great buys.
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this is honestly what I expected for this one, great wines.
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I bought poorly in those days, at least in terms of Aussie Shiraz.
I bought almost nothing, but I had a lot of friends who bought both well and poorly.
Early in my wine journey, I chased exuberant wines with equally exuberant scores. I have no regrets. I only bought a couple cases or less of Aussie monsters, and when those wines fell apart, it helped me shift focus. I started paying more attention to what I actually liked, rather than what a critic said I would like. I do feel bad for the Australian wine industry as a whole, which likely suffered from the fallout of those times.
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I visited the winery and had lunch there in 18’. They make some good wines.
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Love me some well-made ShirOz. Massena is a personal favorite.
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Used to buy that one regularly. Can’t remember anything about it, but I must have liked it at the time.
Full note on the Peter Lehmann
- 1998 Peter Lehmann Shiraz Barossa - Australia, South Australia, Barossa (5/30/2025)
From my late father’s cellar, this was a solo bottle hidden amongst a bunch of d’Arenberg bottles that I was organizing. Cork came out in one solid piece, and with very little staining. Looked like a barely bottled wine! Color dark, and with virtually no fade or orange. Dark cherry, light wood smoke, and a cedar note were the initial aromatic and flavor elements, with a richer, meatier bass note developing with some air. Tannins were still holding things together, and the balance was so good I suspect another decade would not be an issue. I don’t think it was going to develop much more, but could certainly have held. Delicious, very drinkable, no trace of alcoholic heat. Wonderful old bottle.
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great notes, as always ,David…this continues to be one of my alltime favorite WB threads…bought a fair amount of Peter Lehmann wines back in the day…all quite good if memory serves…will also confess to having been sucked into buying some of those gloppy Oooz monsters when I was under the RP influence…fortunately that didn’t last too long
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Must have been the high test stuff.
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I know I’m dragging this thread back a week in the past, but I’ve never really minded a bit of brett on rhones. But then I participated in a big Harry Karis CdP tasting where he’d sourced bottles from the domains going back to the 40s or 50s or something and we tasted all these amazing wines that were 60-50-40-30 years old as we progressed old to new.
And they all were brett built and tasted the exact freaking same. Leather, poop, stewed plums. Leather, poop, stewed plums. Over time the brett just overtook the wines and with age they became so disappointing and monotonous. It was that tasting at which I decided it’s a flaw. While I’m still okay with enjoying a young bottle with a little brett, it’s a death knell for good aging.
Then again I hear that there is this method by which you can turn old dead poopy brett bombs into clean, majestic wines of incredible stature by taking the cork out and just letting it sit on a counter for like 12 hours.
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All Brett and no fruit makes Beau a dull drink, or worse! On that we agree.
A lot of that can be dependent on storage. Exposure to temps in the high 60s or low 70s, while not high enough to cook the wine, will allow the Brett to blossom. Even if it’s only for a few days or weeks. For a 30-60 year old bottle, there are plenty of opportunities for that to happen.
That said, if the bottles you drank with Harry were all stored under ideal conditions at all times, I will be opening my remaining '89 and '98 Beaucastels with trepidation. They haven’t yet (metaphorically or literally) $hit the bed.