Why do we pick the wine to buy that we do? Is it because we know and respect the brand? Or do we like the varietal, or vintage, or region? Or was it something recommended to us?! Price? The whopping big display smack bang in the front of the store!

Choices are endless.

Me, I just ask a mate to pick something for me, which is what Noel from Red, White & Amber Wine Merchants did.

A choice between a fancy Italian number of unpronounceable name and origin, or a wine from Massey Wines in the McLaren Vale.

The shallow character I am decided on the Aussie if for no other reason than the name of the wine, and the fact Noel raved on about how good it was!

Massey Huey’s Patch 2008 Shiraz @ $35 from Red, White & Amber in Hawthorn.

I have to admit I’d never heard of this wine before, never seen it anywhere, hadn’t read about it…nothing. Just another of the hundreds of wineries out there battling for recognition in an all too crowded marketplace.

A young couple taking the plunge, having a vineous crack!

The only way to survive as a tiny winery is to produce, and over deliver which this wine does in spades.

This wine hits all the right notes from the clean modern label, to the wonderful intense flavours, and the solid 15% alcohol!

I love the label, simple, clear and precise. Some wine labels waffle on ad nauseum, riffing on about all sorts of bullshit, completely irrelevant to the stuff in the bottle.

Not Massey, the back label simply state “grown on the gravel soils of the Sellicks Hill Escarpment”. That’s it. Goodbye marketing department!

The Sellicks Hill Escarpment is part of the southern extension of the Mt Lofty ranges, running through the McLaren vale down to Sellicks Beach. Don’t believe me? Google map it, most enlightening.

Huey’s Patch is certified organic to boot, a small footprint on mother earth. Some producers are unsure whether to declare their organic endeavours for fear of scaring off the knuckle draggers who think organic practises involve tantric baying at the moon!

Organic farming typically excludes the use of pesticides, fungicides, herbicides and chemical fertilisers, nothing more sinister than that. Biodynamic wine..well, now we do involve the lunar cycle, but that’s a discussion for another time.

Low yielding, big and bold, full of blueberry/blackberry goodness, packing quite the punch! Massey’s Huey’s Patch Shiraz is a tremendous wine (organic or not), big and powerful, well worth ever one of the cents I paid for it.