2012 Philip Shaw Orange The Gardner Pinot Gris and The Architect Chardonnay

The 2012 Philip Shaw Orange The Gardner Pinot Gris was grown at the Koomooloo vineyard which rises to a 900 m altitude. I bought it for just over $20 at Sawtell Hotel, NSW North Coast. Pale lemon in colour, it has lemon and pear in its perfume, with a combination of salt and white pepper on the palate, but, with food, becoming Very Vanilla. The image of the gardener on the label could be mistaken for a combat soldier or birdwatcher in camouflage, or a scarecrow – but not any gardener I’ve known.

The Architect Chardonnay, in the same series, is lemon-lime in colour, with honey-cinnamon stewed apple on the nose, and some of the velvet and apricot of warm-climate, wooded Chardonnay on the middle-to-long palate. Even though initially astringent, it still foreshadows some honey and marmalade. The architect image? A woman in peasant/servant clothing hauling, with a string, a whole Gothic household! (Sorry, don’t know the significance of this – but, at the very least, it seems kind of … feminist (?)).

Any wine grape, as with the above Philip Shaw, that comes from a single vineyard and that’s suited to its terroir is set up with the best chance to succeed. Orange, in western NSW, is looking very good.