Riverland (The Big Guys)

Tasting the scale wines that come out of Riverland. Look out for an upcoming ep where we taste from the smaller wineries!

Wines tasted:

• Innocent Bystander Pink Moscato $20
• Cupio Pink Pinot Grigio $18 
• Grant Burge Classic Collection Shiraz $8
• Banrock Station Crimson Cabernet $8

Follow us on instagram @winewithmegandmel

and TikTok! @winewithmegmel

Chapters

• 0:09 Exploring Wine Regions With Megan Malt
• 6:34 Australian Wine Regions and Brands
• 16:19 Wine Sustainability and Water Conservation

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:09

Hi and welcome to One with Megan Malt. We're here to help you navigate the world of One. I'm Mel Gooch a. Umui to pass rate, and so I always ask Meg what she's been drinking, because it's just really interesting to be like what does a master of wine drink in this spare time? So, meg, what have you been drinking?

Speaker 2 1:03

So I had the Tempest 2 Ensonica. So you may remember we did the Lowy Wines last year and there was Ensonica which I think became one of your top wines, right, yes, so I drank that really lovely refreshing. Probably didn't have the length and linearity, quite mineral lemon. Pithy. If I was going to relate it to a Great Friday, maybe a nice would be where I'd sit.

Speaker 1 1:35

But beautiful, beautiful wine, and a lot of people haven't tried our nice either.

Speaker 2 1:41

Oh, okay, like a pina, grig Less floral than a pina grig, more textured, more minerals, saline, but it has a. There is a florinus, but it's more on the honey suckle rather than big blossom, kind of More subdued but just lovely, fine line of acidity and a temp I know Tempest 2. Buy grapes from Oliva and I'm wondering if this Ensonica is from orange, which is where the Lowy Wines were from. If not, maybe it's been grown in one of these warmer regions so it could be one of those interesting great varieties that could work in the warmer regions for the resurrection of the inland areas.

Speaker 1 2:20

It's pretty cool that Tempest 2 is doing this.

Speaker 2 2:22

I'm just having a great time doing some amazing grapes. This is their own by Australian Vintage big company Remember we had the Gruneweltlinger a few years ago just blew our mind. It was like $13. It was $13. It was nothing. So just loving what they're doing and you know, if be honest it seems like a bit of a daggy brand, but it's the coolest daggy brand ever. I think I often will look and buy their wines now when I'm shopping. Yeah, me too.

Speaker 1 2:50

Is this some?

Speaker 2 2:51

odd random stuff.

Speaker 1 2:53

Yeah, like they sent us stuff and I probably never really would have thought to them. But now I'm like they do really cool stuff and they do at pretty good prices.

Speaker 2 3:04

Like it's really worth trying. I don't know what this is because I couldn't find the form because they often just send us stuff, but I'm imagining it's probably. I just looked it up. Yeah, yeah, not that expensive. Good, really good wine we had it with. I bought Pete and Hibachi Grill so we did like really oily salmon with with miso, with the skin really crispy, and it was just with lots of sort of seafood on the hibachi Is it, is it as good doing it at home?

Speaker 1 3:35

The hibachi.

Speaker 2 3:36

You have to buy the special coal, which I did. Oh god, that's a lot of effort, and but Pete's a man of fire. He loves anything to do with coals. Even if he's just doing a steak, he'll like the coals for a steak, because my barbecue doesn't get hot enough, apparently. Anyway, yeah, it's. The problem is that it's quite small and you can't really do enough. You sort of have to sit around and do it. It's an interactive dinner.

Speaker 2 4:07

Yes yeah, yeah, oh, that's fun, yeah, which is fun, but because it is so bleeding hot, someone has to be standing over doing it rather than at all sitting on the table. It does come with the thing that you can put on the table, but it's a good fun thing and you can do it indoors because it doesn't really smoke.

Speaker 1 4:23

Yeah, so it might be better in winter, when you can actually sit around it.

Speaker 2 4:27

We've only used it twice since I bought it for him.

Speaker 1 4:31

Well, yeah, it does. It sounds like a novel, it's like a novelty. It sounds like a lot of work.

Speaker 2 4:35

It is a bit of work. You've got to screw all the way, rah, rah, rah Anyway, but it was worth it and the funnacle was fabulous with it, and it's 30 dollars, so it's a good price.

Speaker 1 4:45

Awesome. Well, the other thing that we always cover in these episodes is a fun fact.

Speaker 2 4:49

What have you got? It's a bit late, but this was Halloween last year. You know 19 crimes. The wines, yes. So this last Halloween they actually buried a wine in a coffin in a cemetery next to Victorian graves in England, like these really old Victorian graves.

Speaker 1 5:07

Excuse me, they got a lot of stick for it, they would have. People were not happy. No, they put kind of backfire on them. So A lot of people would say that as disrespectful.

Speaker 2 5:18

I agree, and if you're going to do it, well, actually why would you do it? Yeah, you know, 19 crimes is all about the story and everything, but I just I thought it was a bit off.

Speaker 1 5:29

Yeah, to be honest.

Speaker 2 5:30

Kind of agree. So, and the wines you know, super Valides, yeah, a big gimmicky for such a big company, but they're so gimmicky.

Speaker 1 5:41

19 crimes is built on gimmicky.

Speaker 2 5:43

Exactly, yeah. So yeah, that's. That's my little fun fact.

Speaker 1 5:46

All right. Well, we are getting into the wines. This week we are exploring Riverland, which is kind of, I think, a lot of people just think of like Goon when they think of that area. They do.

Speaker 2 5:58

Berry Ren Mano casks.

Speaker 1 5:59

Yeah, when.

Speaker 2 6:00

I was Googling this so I put in Ren Mano or Riverland, or Swan Hill or Griffith Griffith. Nothing is. It seems to be actually under. It's actually like a region, a GI, I don't know, some of the town, some of the, the Marambige. I guess that some of the, the wineries you know, you, they would be making other wines but their own brands on their websites are very different to what.

Australian Wine Regions and Brands

Speaker 2 6:28

You cannot buy them except there, which is another reason like I said last week, to go and visit these regions. Yeah, but I've got a couple from the river and I wanted one specifically from Swan Hill because it's the innocent bystander Muscato, which will taste first. Innocent bystander is a Yarra Valley brand. Yeah, I started out by Giant Steps, their second brand, muscato, and the Muscato is actually from Swan Hill. They don't champion that.

Speaker 1 6:55

I bet, they don't yeah.

Speaker 2 6:59

And Muscato, because Muscato loves the warm climate. It doesn't.

Speaker 1 7:03

Especially because it used to be from Yarra Valley.

Speaker 2 7:06

Brown Brothers own it now and they bought it so they could buy Yarra Valley brand. They didn't want to reinvent the wheel, so they bought innocent bystander as a Yarra Valley brand.

Speaker 1 7:15

It's just. It's always interesting, though, that when, like, companies take something and change it, but people don't notice, like it would have been Yarra Valley fruit originally, so they've changed it.

Speaker 2 7:25

I don't reckon it was, because I don't have any Muscato in the Yarra Valley, I think it was always warm inland regions fruit, oh, that's interesting. So this is Swan Swan, swan Hill, so up on the Victorian border, on the Murray River. So around Swan Hill there was Karidoc, which was South South called Treasury Wine and Sack's largest winery, yeah, lungest one, I think, in the Southern Hemisphere closed Really. They shut it three months ago, sacked everyone. It was a massive one. I don't know how many people do no longer have jobs. No one in the wine industry is going to absorb them up there.

Speaker 1 8:11

No.

Speaker 2 8:13

Just bloody heartbreaking. Every time I turn around the store it's all really sad. So all right now Muscato. As you all know I love. Oh my God, that's so cute. It's a really cute noise she loves.

Speaker 1 8:25

Muscato. Yes, I know, I think that was a winch, meg, that was just winching about Muscato.

Speaker 2 8:30

That was like sharding, she was like sharding, she was like sharding, she was like sharding Corby said to me the other day, I'm always going to call her shardy, it's a cute nickname. Anyway, thanks for Muscato. So, this comes in a little.

Speaker 1 8:44

It looks like a cider.

Speaker 2 8:46

Yeah yeah, it was $21 for four of them. It's 7% alcohol, it's pink, it's fresh, it's refreshing, it's delicious. I bloody love it. Yeah right, that's yum.

Speaker 1 8:58

Yeah, okay, fine, it's yum. It is yum, is it yeah?

Speaker 2 9:01

it's just yum the bubbles right. Yeah, there's nothing. Some of the muscaros they're too fizzy. I just love that little fizz, yeah, like you have a whizz fizz in your mouth or a fruit tingle, and it is a bit like a fruit tingle, tastes like one. So this is grapes grown in the warmer regions, inland regions of Victoria.

Speaker 1 9:25

So it is still helping. Yes, because it's using their grapes. It's getting grapes out of the area of Australia.

Speaker 2 9:29

I would say most of the muscaro in Australia is from that area, because it probably would have gone into casque wine back in the day to give a little like fruity lexia. Yeah.

Speaker 1 9:39

What was that made from?

Speaker 2 9:40

Probably muscato, yeah, so buy it, drink it, enjoy it, and I think we talked about Brown Brothers' flavoured muscato last week, probably from the same area?

Speaker 1 9:52

Yeah, for sure. So Okay, fine, that's nice. I don't know how much I could drink, but that is like a sip is very pleasant. So now we have cupio.

Speaker 2 10:02

Cupio. All right. So I have a big Pinot Grigio 2022 in a very fancy bottle, very heavy.

Speaker 1 10:11

Who is cupio? I have no idea. They are part of the Acolyte group. Right, oh, thank you.

Speaker 2 10:24

So Acolyte owned. What's the old Hardee's group? Yeah, it was then bought by a large company in America called the Kalao Group, who have subsequently sold it. Yeah, okay, as a result, we're seeing a sell-off of well. Arras House of Arras was part of them.

Speaker 1 10:46

Yes, yep, the Tasmanian sparkling.

Speaker 2 10:49

Yep, which was bought by Handpicked Another wine, benrock Station, which is another one we're going to taste today. That's up for sale. I think anyone's actually bought, I think it's $200.

Speaker 2 11:00

Oh, two mils also, yeah, 245 hectares of vineyard. I don't think the brand is, I think they're just selling the vineyard and the facility, right? So, cupio, this is Pinot Grigio. So it's from, according to Dan Murphy's data, renmark, so that's in the Riverland, yeah, or say from the Riverland, so the fruit will be obviously from around there. But again, in the label it says absolutely nothing in terms of wine of origin, which is completely legal, at least, that's to say, wine of Australia.

Speaker 2 11:36

It's just so mean too, it has nothing. Oh Wow, drink wise. Standard drink 7.4. This pink South Australian wine showcases fragrances of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This was 14 from memory.

Speaker 1 11:53

Yeah, so that's about right. So, cupio, this is interesting. They really lead with their rosé. It sounds like Acolyte started it in 2018, just on the back of that big rosé push whenever I wanted it, so it's just as pink. Yeah, so it started off as a rosé, but now it's expanded and there's a pink oh my God. There's a pink Chardonnay, so they do a Pinot Noir drive rosé a pink Chardonnay, a pink Moscato, a pink Pinot Grigio and a sparkling rosé.

Speaker 2 12:31

Well, I think that's lovely. It's very cute, beautiful. Acidity, yeah, colours, gorgeous. Much more in the Grigio style. So less texture. It's more of that fine line straight down your palette like a straight line. Lovely lemony citrus fruits, little bit of apple. It's very much a drink, don't think.

Speaker 1 12:52

style of wine, absolutely, and they're definitely targeting it to young women who are lack. It says on their website Love this Journey For Us and there's like pictures of me, girls and stuff on the Instagram. So it's definitely targeted at like women in their 20s who just want pink, gummy things and I think the one really delivers and they deliver it.

Speaker 2 13:12

The packaging's lovely. Yeah, how they my only comment QPO slash accolades back off on the weight. That bottle is way too heavy for a $14 bottle of wine. Yeah, yeah, but lovely fresh fruit, yeah, you know, this is the thing about these regions they know how to make wine, they know how to grow grapes. They just have been selling to a cheaper volume market. So it's time to start repositioning themselves and the grapes that they grow, which is going to take money and time. Peno Grigio pink Peno Grigio could be the way to go. That's not good. It's all part of the mix. We can't have one solution because it's never going to work.

Speaker 1 13:52

Yeah, okay, I mean nice, yeah Me too.

Speaker 2 14:02

So this is from South Australian fruit. Again, when I looked it up it said it was from Riverland. Oh so so it's not a Riverland one From the Riverland, what? So it says South Australia on the label yeah, but when I looked it up on the Dan Moofies website it said Riverland. So it is Riverland.

Speaker 1 14:22

Oh, you mean the Riverland part in South Australia? Yes, right.

Speaker 2 14:27

So for those of you who don't know, okay, so we have what we call the inland warmer regions. Yes, I'll start towards the east coast. We have Griffith. It's called the Murrumbidgee irrigation area. So it's a massive area where they grow wheat and all kinds of crops because there's lots of irrigation, because there's lots of water around there. So we call it the MIA. Yes, it's the Inaction Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. Griffith is part of that. Big wineries and that's like New South Wales. New South Wales, yes, that's where Cassela is from. Yeah, it's the Yellowtail. Yes, which I don't think is that.

Speaker 2 14:59

Then we move across to Victoria and we have the Victorian border towns and river towns of Woodura and Swan Hill. Yeah, again, flat water, lovely, rich red soils, volume, yeah. Then we cross the border where the Murray River sort of does a little bit of an up and then a down and that is known as the Riverland. That is the fruit bowl, literally oranges, apples, whatever, of Australia. It's got red mark within the Riverland. So that's the sort of South Australian area that sort of stops about an hour and a half north of clear and then you sort of hit the clear.

Speaker 2 15:40

Then you move down to the Barossa, yeah, okay, so it's in the north. For South Australia it's not the northern, it's sort of the middle part of the state, but it's at the tail end of the river and all of these regions have grown on the back of the water. Yes, so when they're talking about the water buyback schemes, yeah, this is what it's all about. In fact, some people's vineyards. The only value they have is the fact that they own water rights. The water rights are worth more than they've even yet, oh God, it's freaking heartbreaking man.

Speaker 2 16:10

Anyway. Gratvuj classic collection very simple bottle. Oh sorry, man Oopsies Leaving me out.

Speaker 1 16:17

Welcome to Meg's podcast.

Speaker 2 16:19

I like these glasses. What are?

Speaker 1 16:21

they. They're Riesling glasses from Ridao. Ah, it's my.

Speaker 2 16:24

Riesling glasses. I love those. I love Riesling glasses my five glasses at the moment, but I'm down to one.

Speaker 1 16:28

Oh yeah, mine keep breaking too, and Tom's has an a lot of buy more because we're gonna have a total of soon. He's gonna smash things Arms to drinks.

Speaker 2 16:35

Keep them up high, thank you.

Speaker 1 16:37

Tell Tom that, get on my side. Actually, you were both tall, so you could have a tall toddler. Yeah, oh, she's really tall already, so anyway, Anyway, classic collection, mel's glass problem.

Speaker 2 16:49

It really wait, wait, because then they break them when they put them in the dishwasher and stuff their shits. Yeah, Gratvuj, classic collection. Shiraz 14% Lightweight bottle, which is good to see. It smells sweet.

Speaker 1 17:04

Like not sugar sweet, but like um Sweet, like, yeah, super fruity. It's got Oki Blackcurrant. Yeah, it's got all the wine making in it. Yeah, because these regions are about volume.

Speaker 2 17:16

the grapevines are having to ripen a lot so they don't get as much concentration of flavour. So you do get that lovely jammy cooked fruit blackcurrant, plum, and then you have a lot of lovely jammy cooked fruit, blackcurrant plum, a bit of strawberry, macerated strawberry in there, but then you layer in Mm-hmm Oak flavours with probably oak chips. We know that people who are buying at this price want bang for buck for flavour.

Speaker 1 17:46

I mean, yeah, and what I've looked at up, the price is $8. Yeah, I $7.99, mate. I want to say support Rivle-Land, like these. I want to say support these regions, but I can't in good conscious tell people to go buy that. The best way to support Like. Our listeners just aren't into that.

Speaker 2 18:03

No, the best way is to support these people are to go into the regions and actually discover some of these small mom-and-pop wineries.

Speaker 1 18:10

And they actually have good. They do. They have really good ones when you go there. They just don't tell the dance. So this is another accolade wine. Yes, it's turned down in high volume.

Speaker 2 18:17

Yes, but it's. The aim of this is to talk about the fruit of the grow. It's the growers that I care about, not the companies that make the wine. That is yes, and that would have loved that wine.

Speaker 1 18:30

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 18:37

Not the most exciting entrance back to the tasting. Mel, Would you like me to do that? Yeah, I know. Yeah, this is me. She's her face.

Speaker 1 18:43

She's looking always disappointed, I have to say she's come back for a pregnancy, ready to attain, to get the throne again, tasting eight dollars for the Riverland Well how much is that? Crimson cabinet. A crimson cabinet, it's also eight dollars. Bent Rock Station my oh you know Katie, one of my friends we're in like high school. I was drinking passion pop, like when we're like 17. Passion pop was my go to and her go to was Bent Rock Station Moscato.

Speaker 2 19:16

So crimson cabinet 2021. Well, this is probably Ruby cabinet. So we have a great variety in Australia called Ruby cabinet, which is in a thick thinness cabinet. It doesn't have as much tan and often goes into fortified wines or casque wine because it's lovely and fresh and lively, and this is about the same price. This is Bent Rock Station. Again, this is owned by Acolyte.

Speaker 1 19:39

Okay, it actually smells yummy. It smells like cranberries. I love the color. I love the color too. It's like really light red. It looks like it could be a gamma or something what? No, no, meg looks like she's got vomit. It's sweet. Oh, okay, I hate that. Oh, no, it's Bent Rock Station. I think you. Yeah, no, I did. I was not expecting that. Yeah, no, we should have been expecting. I'm glad I know we should have been expecting it with Bent Rock Station.

Speaker 2 20:07

Okay, so it's obviously alcohol, it's obviously low alcohol.

Speaker 1 20:13

It's 9.5% alcohol. I'm really glad I had warning for that.

Speaker 2 20:17

Okay, so this is a 9.5%. This is obviously playing into the, so I'm going to re-judge it because it's obviously playing into that mid-strength thing. With that residual sugar it is just like cordial.

Speaker 1 20:27

It tastes like a lulley. It tastes like a red snake has been made into a drink.

Speaker 2 20:32

Yeah, but add a little bit of plum juice as well. Yeah.

Speaker 1 20:35

Yeah, plum juice, it is like drinking bubbly, it's plum juice.

Speaker 2 20:38

That's a bit disappointing. I should maybe I should have done my research, because I didn't notice that on the website. Yeah, but I wanted to sort of champion something that was a great variety that is planted up there in high volume. It doesn't say what great variety is, but I'm assuming based on the colour, and Crimson Cabernet, ruby Cabernet yeah, it's kind of giving you a few hints there the big hints were there. So well, that's it. So not a very exciting start to your.

Speaker 1 21:06

No, we'll do something fun next week, but no, it's really good that we raise awareness about what's going on and look, people should just be aware what's going on. Any pressure that we can get, any awareness we can get, will help apply pressure to the government to help look at this region and see what we can do.

Speaker 2 21:26

Yeah, and you know you're not going to be able to really help them by going into a local retailer, because you just don't know where the wine's from. It's impossible to find out and who can be bothered doing it? Yes, so you're better off, like I said, visiting buying online direct from the wineries up there.

Speaker 1 21:43

Oh go. I just think that's a great idea. Go for a holiday up there, it's beautiful and their autumns are amazing.

Speaker 2 21:49

Yeah, Warm days, cold nights. So what's his name? Stefano Deperies Restaurant in Mugura. Oh yeah, Save up for that one. Oh yeah, but it's fantastic. Oh, I love it. Eat, you know, classic fish and chips, chop food and wrap them in the paper in your car. Do a real Aussie holiday Awesome Well before we head off.

Speaker 1 22:13

I do have a question for you this week. This is from Annie and Jo one of them. So this is nice. Hope everything's going well with Baba, thank you. So they were listening to an interview with Jeremy Oliver on the Cellar Door podcast and he said that to make one glass of wine, 125 ml, it takes 110 litres of water just to make that one glass. Can that be right? It seems crazy, especially seeing as the importance of sustainability Doesn't sound right.

Speaker 2 22:46

What do you think it's end to end? So that's from the grape In the winery In the winery. It takes us about between two, if you're really good to four litres of water to make a bottle of wine, a litre of wine, sorry.

Speaker 1 23:04

So when you say that you don't mean it's so you mean things like cleaning and Cleaning cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.

Speaker 2 23:15

Yeah, that's all about cleaning. Every time you use a press, you've got to clean it out with water. Every time you take a wine out of a tank, you have to clean out the tank with three washes of water. So there's a caustic wash and acid wash and a water rinse and you've rinsed it out to get the solids out as well In the vineyard. Now, I would say that's average, because some cooler regions aren't going to use as much water as warmer regions. So is it possible to talk about warmer regions? Yes, it's a lot, and it plays into the thing that I said last week.

Speaker 2 23:48

Why is Australia one of the driest land? Well, the driest continent in the world yeah, producing water-heavy crops. That's so dumb. That said, we are the greatest. We use less water per ton of grapes than anywhere else in the world. We are the most conservative, yes, with water. We have damliners, we have like directed irrigation. We don't use flood irrigation, we have minimal irrigation. We have deficit irrigation. We have introduced, we've grown our vines to live with no water the least amount of water possible.

Speaker 1 24:36

And you know what, like even like I can say because I work for a big company like there is a whole team focused on sustainability and I sit in these meetings and the topic of water comes up all the time and there is the most ambitious targets to get this water down. It's like we spend so much time and money being like how can we reduce water? And there's some cool stuff, like there's one thing that's like it blows air in to clean instead of, I think, washing old bottles or something they can clean with air now instead of water. Like it's definitely a focus and I can see why that figure is alarming for you. But yeah, know that it is a focus for the industry.

Speaker 2 25:18

I think one avocado takes 600 litres yeah.

Speaker 1 25:21

Is that bit of?

Speaker 2 25:22

perspective.

Speaker 1 25:23

Yeah, but yeah no, it's definitely something we're looking at.

Speaker 2 25:28

No, we are aware of it, but I will champion our country. Yes, we are the. While it does sound a lot, we are the Jeremy's not giving you the full story, which has been unfair because we don't use as much as other places in the world.

Speaker 2 25:43

Yeah, so, and we're trying to use less and less and less. The people in the river land, in the irrigation areas, know how much water is worse. Yeah, yeah, well, exactly, yeah, so they're not going to waste it. It's like spraying on grapes and I was going to spray and let's say, absolutely, let me have two. Yeah for sure, we just don't do it to poison you all. We don't do it to poison you all at all.

Speaker 1 26:07

All right. Well, that is it for this week. We'll be back with you next week. I'm not sure what we're yet, but we have compiled all of your. We asked on Instagram what you want to hear from us this year and we've compiled all of them, so we'll be diving into that and we'll come out with something good that's being requested for the next couple of weeks. I think Billy's got a request.

Speaker 2 26:25

I can hear it. Can hear it. Can hear it. Well, welcome to the podcast. You know one of the podcast, Billy. Billy, I'm sure she won't behave this well with everything, but my gosh, she's just like she's child today.

Speaker 1 26:40

Really good, baby, keep this up, but we'll be back with you.

Speaker 2 26:43

She must be Tom. At the moment she's in the Tom arc Very gentle part and our Tom. I hope she gets a lot of Tom. I hope she gets Tom anxiety levels.

Speaker 1 26:50

Not mine, yes.

Speaker 2 26:55

Yeah.

Speaker 1 26:59

All right, my darling. Anyway, we will see you next week. Until then, thanks for watching.