There’s something about a wine with an overtly Scottish name that makes me reticent. Silly, I know, when you consider the considerable Anglicising of so many Bordeaux chateau names, but you can’t help what you feel, can you? Come to think of it, I actually enjoy Campbells’ Bobbie Burns despite its name, which I still struggle to take seriously. The outcome of this absurd, irrational prejuduce of mine meant that I did not taste my first McAlister wine for years after I should have. As the song went, that was my mistake. Look around Australian wine and what do you see? Row after row of oaky, jammy shiraz, sporting an alcoholic strength bordering on the fortified and packing the subtlety of Aussie Joe Bugner. Even the red wines of Coonawarra, once a metaphor for elegance and finesse, are frequently constructed along the lines an East German sporting coach could only admire. The dinosaurs, for that is what they have become, who seek to express fineness, restraint, sophistication and subtlety in their red wine, have become more than an endangered species. Luckily for some of us, Peter Edwards is such a dinosaur. His McAlister red, grown without irrigation and painstakingly made at his property near Longford in south-east Gippsland, is a melodious blend of Bordeaux varieties which, Mr Southcorp, is actually made to reflect the different conditions experienced on site each year. At its best it is something a Bordelais maker would be proud to call his own. And at another time, when its virtues and those of other rare wines made like it are in high demand, you would hardly need an article like this to tell you about it.
