- Barossa Valley, SA - $32-$36 (500ml)
- Cork (Capsule)
- 19.5%alc
Thanks to his family connections with the old Wilsford winery, Rick Burge is able to fashion a thoroughly diverse set of Barossa fortifieds using some very old base materials. Atop Rick's sextuplet of fortified styles sits the VO Tawny, a grenache-based wine awarded a Top Gold at the 2010 Rutherglen Wine Show.
A powerful, heady, intoxicating whiff of alcohol commands the aroma of Rick Burge's VO Tawny, giving a sharp, vaporous intensity to its deeper set notes of fruitcake, currants, spice, orange rind and vanilla oak. The fumes alone would scare the pants off any teetotaler, but the wine's strength contains itself nicely on the palate, which is charmingly rich yet balanced and integrated throughout. Its burnt caramel and nutty rancio flavours persist with sticky saturation along a medium-full bodied framework, leading into a more open-ended, aggressive finish where spirit and spicy fruitcake notes forge the wine home with a lingering orange jam-like sweetness and alcoholic heat. It revels in the intensity of its finish, so a single glass should suffice.
ü A marvellous little show of the excesses of Barossa tawny, without the excessive price. For slightly less ($22), you can get Rick's Old Barossa Tawny (90pts) with even more alcohol (21.0%). Drink now.
92 points
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