Sometimes you need to pull out a wine that’s a little bit special to commemorate significant moments in time, something befitting the occasion.

Saltram Mamre Brook Cabernet Sauvignon 2006 certainly fit the bill the other day, as Rachael held a glass up to her mum, Marie, who passed 12 years earlier….much too early!

I never had the pleasure of meeting Mars, but from all account a wonderful wife, mother and friend to many. If her offspring are anything to go by, she was a beauty!

…and so is Saltram Mamre Brook. The Cabernet was fabulous, fully matured at eight years but with a few more in the tank, I reckon. Full bodied, lush with layers of plumb, berries, and chocolate.

The Barossa is more famous for Shiraz, which there is a Mamre Brook as well, but Cabernet done well is a pleasure no matter where it comes from.

Saltram may be owned by the largest wine company going around, Treasury Wine Estates, but continues to be a hidden jewel in their vast cave of wine brands. So often when wineries are gobbled up by conglomerates individual brands suffer at the expense of the profitable mass produced offerings which warm the bean counters hearts, but few others.

Luckily, Saltram has been able to fly under the corporate radar, and produce wines which are both  stylistic and true to the region, but also free of all the marketing bs that goes on with the trendy upstarts hogging the shelves and fridges.

Established in 1859 Saltram is one of the elder statesmen in the Barossa, probably the premier wine region in Australia. The homestead is beautiful, built in 1844, and largely intact still today. The wines try to stay true to it’s origins, bucking faddish trends, sticking to what works, and works well.

Saltram is a wonderful place to visit in the Barossa, and if you’re lucky you might get to sit in the most comfortable chair in the state! Inside cellar door, down amongst the barrels, at the end of a brick paved walkway is the wing-chair from heaven. Glass in hand, head leaning ever so slightly to the side, you are engulfed in fabric paradise, cushioned like an overstuffed turkey at Christmas. Surrounded by wine, in the bowels of the cellar, Mamre Brook swirling around the Riedel how could you not be comfortable?

If Marie were still with us today I dare say she would have been right at home in that wing-chair, a glass of Saltram’s finest in hand.

Salut, Mars.