{"id":61,"date":"2005-10-17T12:23:36","date_gmt":"2005-10-17T19:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/danthewineguy.com\/?p=61"},"modified":"2006-09-19T10:06:01","modified_gmt":"2006-09-19T17:06:01","slug":"australias-barossa-valley-is-countrys-premiere-growing-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/?p=61","title":{"rendered":"Barossa Valley is Australia&#8217;s  Premiere Growing Region"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had the privilege of meeting with Stuart Bourne, winemaker for Barossa Valley Estate, during his visit to Bellingham last month.  The Barossa Valley is home to about 25,000 acres of vineyards and is recognized as the premium grape growing region of Australia.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/satcatdw.itnu.com.au\/multimedia\/SATC\/Bethany1.jpg\" alt=\"null\" \/>Highly personable, Bourne has the wonderful, playful air of an old college buddy who\u2019s ready to go out for a few beers at a moments notice.  But when the conversation starts to turn to winemaking, things become very serious.<\/p>\n<p>Bourne has been the winemaker for Barossa for about four years and it\u2019s readily apparent that he\u2019s very passionate \u2013 and very good \u2013 at his job.  <\/p>\n<p>During our meeting we sampled a couple of Shirazs from his Ebenezer and E&#038;E labels.  Each of these wines is the quintessential Aussie Shiraz; big, dark, fruit forward and spicy.  They\u2019re also in extremely limited supply, although you may be able to find a glass or two at Stars restaurant at Semiahmoo Resort.<\/p>\n<p>More accessible are his 2004 Spires Chardonnay and 2003 Spires Shiraz (about $10 each).  The Chardonnay is full of green apple and citrus flavors and a slightly oaky finish.  The Shiraz is loaded with berry flavors and has a finish of black pepper and spice.<\/p>\n<p>Check your calendar.  The holiday season is just around the corner.  If you\u2019re thinking about serving wines with broad appeal that won\u2019t cost you a small fortune, here are two from Spires that should fit the bill.  Stock up and enjoy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had the privilege of meeting with Stuart Bourne, winemaker for Barossa Valley Estate, during his visit to Bellingham last month. The Barossa Valley is home to about 25,000 acres of vineyards and is recognized as the premium grape growing region of Australia. Highly personable, Bourne has the wonderful, playful air of an old college [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-bellingham-herald"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}