Quality Cask Wines – Is There Such A Thing?
Friday, October 1st, 2010It has been well publicised how we have a substantial oversupply of grapes in Australia. Last year there was so much wine sloshing round the country that winemakers frantically sold their wares to anyone that would take them. Some well known wine producers from quality wine regions have had to sell their wines well below their regular cost and much of these have found themselves in casks. That’s right, some of those cardboard boxes that are generally viewed upon as being the bottom rung are now home to some fairly smart, cheap wines, the best of which offer great value for money.
What many people don’t know, though, is that the wine cask was developed right here in Australia for local conditions. While cask wine is often deemed as a poor man’s wine, you can find some decent, very drinkable quaffers. Currently, cask wine supply approximately half of all wine that is drunk in Australia. In addition this Aussie invention has spread throughout the world.
One great advantage of casks is that you can drink a cask, independent of size, at a snails pace and the wines will not go-off or oxidise like they do in bottle. So a cask can sit in the fridge for up to six months and the first glass will be as fresh as the last. So for anyone just wanting a glass or two per day, they are absolutely perfect. If you did that with a regular bottle of wine, and after a few days of being opened, the rest of bottle is ready to be thrown away.
Another change has seen some of our big producers putting a selection of their trusted wines in cask. Sure you’ll never see a Penfold’s Grange Hermitage cask, but it just shows that the winemakers in this country are taking cask wine more seriously than ever before. Here are some options worth looking out for.