Have you every had a time when you put your foot right in it, without any way of retrieving the situation without looking like a dick?

Well….this wine did just that!

Point Leo Road Lagrein 2011 $28 @ Blairgowrie LG

My mate down at Blairgowrie loves this wine, strongly recommended it, so I bought it. Better be good, Chris!?

Never heard of the varietal before, Lagrein, which comes from northern Italy, and is a cousin of Pinot Noir and Shiraz amongst others.

Point Leo Road winery is, surprisingly, on Point Leo Road…..Red Hill Sth!

God’s own country, Mornington Peninsula!

So far, so good.

Trying new styles is always interesting, helps broaden your mind to the possibilities, and provides a nice change of wine scenery. There’s only so much Shiraz you can wash down with a roast leg of lamb!

Roast lamb, open fire, bottle of red….perfect!

Have I mentioned my hatred towards all reds 2011? No? My mantra to all who do, or don’t, listen…..never buy 2011 unless absolutely no alternative. It was a stinker of a vintage everywhere, except WA, wet wet wet. Mildew, disease, footrot….you name it. Reds coped it worse as they were picked after the rains, the whites being picked earlier missed most of the trouble. I wandered through a vineyard up in Glenrowan in March of that year and the undergrowth was steamy wet, fruit set was full of fungus, a disaster. That vineyard was 400 hectares, and they dropped 80% of the fruit on the ground!

Some wineries just wrote off the vintage all together.

Places like the Peninsula, which is cool at best, thus picking later, struggled big time.

So, I’ve got an unknown style, from a shit vintage. How do you reckon I went?

Ordinary! The wine lacked backbone, acid, length, fruit……etc.

Chris? What the…we need to talk.

But….I”ll vent elsewhere first.

I’m at uncle Dan’s just looking around, and get asked by the Dan’s man if I need any help. Don’t really, but we get chatting anyway, just talking about wine stuff, as you do in a wine store….when you work for a winery, which you mention to the chap.

More talk, now about our vineyard and wines, then more broadly about the Peninsula. When I mention the disappointing Pt Leo Road Lagrein we had, he asks which vintage.

“2011…pretty crap, average, not worth the money, no idea why they bother with obscure varietals. Trying to be a bit fancy…”

Guess who made the wine???

Yep….standing right in front of me, Mr Dan’s man!

You don’t have to be dead to be stiff! No way to back-pedal, so don’t try. He actually agrees 2011 not much chop. “You should have tried the ’10, far superior”

Maybe I should have, or the 2006 someone else said was very good……but I didn’t!

Still, my little whinge is small potatoes, Point Leo Road sold up a little while ago, another example of how hard it is to make a quid in this business. They retained the name, but no longer have any fruit source, and probably no real desire to go chasing it.

The moral of this story…..there’s probably a winemaker around every corner, especially working part-time in a bottle-o to make ends meet!