Author: Jodie Smith
The Gourmet Pantry is delighted to be working with renowned Australian wine writer and presenter Jeremy Oliver to launch an exclusive new range of premium gourmet wine hampers with a selection of the finest Australian wines personally chosen by Jeremy and paired with delicious gourmet food treats.
Every wine selected showcases the best of the variety, and a hamper from this exciting new Jeremy Oliver Wine Hamper range, will make the perfect gift for wine lovers to give and receive. These luxury gourmet wine hampers are sure to delight and impress.
Simply choose the wine variety you would like to gift and we'll take care of the rest, delivering straight to their door Australia-wide with your personalised gift message. Every Jeremy Oliver Wine Hamper includes free standard shipping Australia-wide.
About Jeremy Oliver
Jeremy Oliver is one of Australia’s foremost wine writers and presenters and this country’s most influential wine presence throughout Asia. With the publication of his first book, Thirst For Knowledge, he became the youngest-ever published wine author in the world.
Today, the author of 30 wine-related books and annual guides, he is a fully independent wine commentator whose words are published in several countries and languages. He was the first western wine critic to create and publish a book in China especially for the Chinese audience and in their own language. Four seasons of his online bilingual wine TV series in China attracted more than 1,000,000 viewers each week. He has made hundreds of appearances on radio and television.
Jeremy was listed in the World’s Top 20 Wine Critics by the 2018 BWW competition and tastingbook.com and is rated by Sopexa as one of the World’s Top 100 Palates. In late 2005 he was named the inaugural Wine Writer of the Year by the widely circulated Australian Wine Selector magazine. Deeply committed to Australian wine, Jeremy is not afraid to be critical of it when he believes the occasion demands.
Tasting Notes for Wines:
Brown Brothers Patricia Pinot Chardonnay Brut 2016
Elegant and artfully balanced, this stylish sparkling wine reveals an intriguing bouquet of floral and faintly toasty, bready and bakery yeast-like aromas backed by nutty and faintly meaty notes. Prickled by a crackly effervescence, its lively core of vibrant stonefruit and raspberry flavour extends long and creamy towards a savoury finish of refreshingly brittle acidity.
Castle Rock Estate Porongurup Riesling 2022
Pristine and penetrative, with an alluring fragrance of lime juice, white peach, green apple skin and lavender backed by a whiff of mineral. It’s long and focused, with vivacious lime and lemon flavours driving with purity and focus towards a dry, schisty finish of mouthwatering acidity. Enjoy now or much later – it’s your call!
Thomas Braemore Cellar Reserve Semillon 2016
Beginning to reveal the buttery, toasty reflections of bottle-age, this classy re-release reveals a faintly smoky, lemony bouquet backed by just a hint of lime and mineral. It’s generous and juicy, with a mouth-filling presence of citrusy flavour that glides smoothly down a fine, powdery spine towards a tangy, dry finish of soft, lemony acids.
Shaw and Smith Lenswood Vineyard Chardonnay 2020
Supremely elegant and measured, with an alluring, translucently clear bouquet of grapefruit, peach and red apple skin aroma underpinned by creamy vanilla oak, hazelnut and coriander. Revealing a hint of smoky oak, it’s smooth and polished, with a faint chalkiness beneath its gentle but mouth-filling core of creamy flavour, before finishing long, dry and savoury.
Swinney Grenache 2021
An extraordinary grenache whose heady, penetrative aromas of fresh raspberries, cherries, redcurrants and blueberries are lifted by a whiff of rose petals and a hint of gravel. It’s medium to fullish in weight but opens out to reveal a profound spine of firm, powdery tannins beneath its luscious, mouth-filling depth of vibrant red and blue fruits. Wrapped in an effortless acidity, it finishes dry and savoury with a lingering note of red licorice.
Tim Adams Schaefer Shiraz 2015
Classic, ripe and generous Clare Valley shiraz with a deep, musky and smoky bouquet of cassis, redcurrants, blood plums and chocolatey oak backed by notes of paprika, mint and eucalypt. It's fullish in weight, with a plush core of fiery dark fruits, roasting tray juices and smoky mocha oak underpinned by a crunchy spine of slatey tannin. It finishes long and powerful, with persistent notes of licorice and briar.
Neldner Road Herrmann Shiraz 2019
A steamroller of a northern Barossa shiraz – plush and densely packed with brooding dark berry, cherry and plum-like flavour smoothed out by chocolatey, coffee grounds-like oak and supported by an underswell of fine, kernelly tannins. Laced with dark pepper and exotic spice, it’s smoky and briary, unfolding notes of roast meats and walnuts beneath its generous dollops of plush, fiery fruit. Its exceptional texture, structure and balance stamp it as a high-level Dave Powell wine.
Peccavi Cabernet Sauvignon 2019
A quintessential cabernet whose heady bouquet of cassis, violets, dark cherries, and fresh cedar/vanilla oak reveals smoky, meaty undertones and a hint of molasses. Long and evenly paced, with a plush, perfectly ripened expression of classic cabernet flavour, it’s tightly knit with fine-grained chocolatey oak and supported by a firm, gravelly backbone, extending towards a lingering finish of focus and freshness. A long-term classic offering equal parts of power and charm.
Leconfield The Sydney Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2017
A superb Bordeaux-inspired cabernet with an earthy, musky and faintly floral bouquet of dark plums, cassis, mulberries and smoky oak backed by suggestions of gravel and dark chocolate. Underpinned by a gravelly, mineral spine, it’s long and complete, delivering a polished expression of dark cabernet flavour with a suggestion of dried herbs and tight-knit cigarboxy oak. Classical cabernet made as it should be, without any pretence towards the contemporary trends of under-ripe fruit and excessive acidity.
About the Wineries:
Brown Brothers
One of Victoria’s large family-owned multi-generational wine businesses, Brown Brothers is best known for the sheer number of different varieties from which it makes its extraordinary range of wines. Wine drinkers are perhaps less aware of the quality and consistency of its premier sparkling wine, the Patricia blend of pinot noir and chardonnay, which is grown on its own vineyards planted at an altitude of 800m near Whitlands in the upper reaches of Victoria’s King Valley. Here’s a wine I regularly pit against high-quality Champagne (French, by definition, of course!), which it often then goes on to beat. In my view, mainland Australia’s finest sparkling wine.
Castle Rock Estate
A small, little-known vineyard on the eastern side of Western Australia’s picturesque Porongurup Ranges, Castle Rock Estate has long been a maker of some of the West’s finest shiraz and pinot noir. That said, its proven ability with riesling stand it apart as something truly special. With more than 30 years of stellar performance delivering its own expression of heady, precisely focused rieslings typically made between the bone dry and the off-dry, this estate should be on every riesling drinker’s list of favourites. And as for value for money…
Thomas Wines
Andrew Thomas fell into a career in wine through the exploits of his father Wayne as a noted McLaren Vale maker, but it was the lure of the elegance and balance of shiraz and semillon in the Hunter Valley that saw him work firstly for Tyrrell’s prior to establishing Thomas Wines in 1997. Since then, he has contributed in no small measure to the evolution of these distinctive styles – helping to build structure and savoury qualities into medium-weight Hunter shiraz and to introduce texture and minerality into its legendary semillon. Andrew’s premier semillon is the Cellar Reserve release of his Braemore Semillon.
Shaw + Smith
While the bread and butter for this Adelaide Hills-based maker remains its market-leading Sauvignon Blanc, what floats beneath the surface of this iceberg is seriously interesting. Its trio of M3 Vineyard Chardonnay, Shiraz and Pinot Noir provide exceptional mid-market value, but winemaker Adam Wadewitz saves his very best for limited offerings of individual vineyard wines from these varieties. I particularly appreciate the international style and balance of these Shaw + Smith wines, each of which are perhaps the finest from their region.
Swinney
Matt and Janelle Swinney operate a large family-owned vineyard at Frankland River, Western Australia, that was primarily planted to provide high quality fruit to a range of winemaking customers. Today, with four releases to the market of its own brand, Swinney has become one of the State’s most sought-after labels. Made by Robert Mann, whom I have long rated as one of this country’s finest winemakers, Swinney’s steadily expanding collection of table wines successfully pairs exceptional Australian grape growing with Mann’s international perspective on winemaking. Its stunning Grenache, in particular, has totally changed perspectives on Australian expressions of this variety.
Tim Adams
Tim Adams is an exceptional leader in Clare Valley wine. Consistently over-delivering across its range of price-points and ever-increasing mix of varieties offered, he has steadily acquired and planted some of the region’s finest vineyards and sites. Made with flavour and drinkability at front of mind, Tim Adams wines have a deliciousness and consumer appeal that other makers can only envy. Today, with a strong focus on the regional specialities of riesling and shiraz, the company will steadily expand its exciting series of individual vineyard wines. It is also the owner of Mr Mick, a great destination and customer-focused brand.
Neldner Road
I rate Dave Powell as one of South Australia’s most important winemakers. Ever. After creating Torbreck and establishing it as a true international brand, Powell is now focused on the making of wines from the Barossa’s finest mature small vineyard sites, each of which he crafts according to his instinctive understanding of the differences between terroir and vintage. Neldner Road is the new identity for this astonishing collection of wine, which incorporates for the first time in 2019 shiraz from the Herrmann Vineyard at Kalimna in the Barossa’s north-west. It’s a regional treasure.
Peccavi
One of the best-kept secrets in all Australian wine, Peccavi has for a decade or more been the maker of the most classical table wines in Margaret River. The dream of Jeremy Muller, whose background was in the money market, reds from Bordeaux and whites from Burgundy, Peccavi is based at Yallingup in the region’s north. Its Cabernet Sauvignon now has few rivals in Australia, its Chardonnay is a regional benchmark and its Estate Merlot is by some distance the finest merlot made in this country. Peccavi wisely ignores the current trend to strip fruit and flavour from Australian wine, choosing instead to focus on what international markets recognise as style and quality. It succeeds, handsomely.
Leconfield
A long-establish Coonawarra maker, Leconfield is principally known for the consistent style, quality and value of its core range of table wines. As a young entrant to the wine industry, I well recall tasting with owner Dr Richard Hamilton his wines from cabernet sauvignon (occasionally blended with shiraz) from the late 1970s and early 1980s – wines of exceptional polish, elegance and balance. Forty years on, and the exceptional releases under The Sydney Reserve label (named to honour Richard’s uncle and Leconfield’s founder, Sydney Hamilton), show what a difference that more mature vines and better oak can deliver. These are truly exceptional wines, and if more attention was paid to cabernet in Australia today, you wouldn’t be able to buy them.