Product Review: Wollemi Shiraz, Red Wine from South Eastern Australia

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I picked up this little bargain from the local Sainsbury's, where it is to be found currently retailing for the bargain price of just GBP £4.00 (and that's down from its more usual £4.50 price label.) It's not as if you can even normally pick up a wine anywhere for under four quid any more, unless it comes in a plastic bottle and has the words 'basics' or 'value' inscribed somewhere on the label. Or maybe has an alcohol content of around four percent and is really fruit juice masquerading as an adult beverage.

Of course, fruit juice is a 'healthy' beverage. (Depending on who you talk to, and whether or not they're dieting or sensitive to fruit sugar, or with blood sugar issues of their own). Does red wine qualify as healthy, in any sense? Well, we seem to be told so on a fairly regular basis – with quantity being the crucial issue, and 'moderation' being the watch-word. It has lots of pesky delightful polyphenols, that's what the white-coated scientists seem to tell us on a rather frequent basis! And apparently that's a very good thing! (?? Is it?)

On the other hand, from a little light reading around, I'm also under the impression that wine contains an awful lot of salicylates... which is fine. That's the stuff in aspirin, too, right? Great. Unless you happen to be sensitive to salicylates, in which case maybe not so great. (And tea also, it seems, contains a ton of salicylates. Two of my favourite things, then, wine and tea, jam-packed full to the gills of stuff that doesn't agree with me. Darn it.)

But, personal vagaries aside, what about the wine itself? Well, gotta say, for such a bargain-bin rock-bottom wallet friendly experience, I'd rate this wine as pretty darn good. It goes down nice and smooth, no sourness like red wine can have that sits uneasy in the stomach, and I'd describe it as more black-curranty than jammy. (If I was going to try to describe it at all.) I had it with houmous and sausage sandwiches in ciabatta bread, with plenty of nice crunchy green salad and some french fries. I have literally no idea whether that's an officially 'good' combo or not – but it certainly worked for me!

And as far as the actual purpose of wine is concerned, the percentage proof of this very nice vino is 13.5 percent – so yeah, it certainly hit the spot in other ways too! Altogether a nice inexpensive bottle, nothing wrong with it.