2010: Done and dusted (plus wines of the year)

2010: Done and dusted (plus wines of the year)

Seeing as it's the last day of 2010, I'd like to take a brief moment to talk about the year.

On a personal note, 2010 has been a year of change. I changed jobs, homes, partners and favourite shoe brands (I'm a Newton man now. It was a happy transition) with much of the action happening over the last three months (It's been an interesting time...).

On the wine side, I've never drank more great booze, more often, in more parts of the world than I have this year. By my count, I have been to at least 53 different winery/cellar doors (and that's just counting the operational ones) in 19 wine regions around the world. I've made my first wine too, a Canberra Shiraz Pinot that taught me an awful lot about wine, even if it didn't turn out like I would have liked.

The only downer from all this action is simply that Australian Wine Review has suffered, with the lack of posting particularly noticeable during the brief period that I spent homeless and computerless (which I'm in no hurry to repeat any time soon). What's more, I've still got piles of notes on literally hundreds of wines that remain scattered around the place, in random notebooks and on even more random pieces of paper, napkins and wine order forms. I promise to try harder to catch up on these in 2011 :)

So now, as is customary for us wine scribes to do at this time, I'm going to list my wines of the year. Nothing complex about this process, I'm simply picking out the wines I scored the highest this year in red and white wine categories (skipping sparklings), all compiled in simple Halliday style (some of these wines I haven't written up yet, but I promise I will) by score.

Oh, and if I have to pick a single 'wine of the year', it would be the Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2005, a world class wine that will come to be regarded as one of the very finest Vat 1s ever. A wine that we should hold up to show exactly how amazing and unique Australian wine can be.

White
Look at all the Rieslings! The first wine is a ring in perhaps, but deserves highlighting. Riesling and Chardonnay, that's my bag and it shows with this list. Would like to have more of these in my cellar!

19.8/98 Chateau d'Yquem Sauternes 2003
19/96 Tyrrell's Vat 1 Semillon 2005

19/96 Peter Lehmann Wigan Riesling 2004

19/96 St Hallett Eden Valley Riesling 2005

18.8/95 Oakridge 864 Chardonnay 2009

18.8/95 Bonneau du Martray Corton Charlemagne 2006

18.8/95 Dönnhoff Riesling Oberhäuser Brücke Spätlese

Reds
Interesting to note the volume of top Shiraz in there. Cool climate Shiraz and Pinot make up most of the top places, which quite surprised me.

18.9/95 Clonakilla Syrah 2008

18.7/95 Yabby Lake Block 5 Pinot Noir 2008

18.7.95 Domaine Dujac Vosne Romanee Les Beaux Monts 2007

18.7/95 Voyager Estate Cabernet Merlot 2005

18.7/95 First Drop 'The Cream' Shiraz 2006

18.7/95 Paringa Estate 'The Paringa' Shiraz 2008

18.6/94 Bodegas Alion 2003

With that out of the way, I'd like to also add a heartfelt thankyou to you for reading and commenting on this site during 2010. Wine blogging is a self indulgent sport, but the interaction and debate is what makes it fun.

Bring on 2011!