Reading Your Wine Bottle Label - Rutherglen Muscat from Australia

Rutherglen Muscat

Muscat is the grape, Rutherglen sounds like the area. This is a sweet wine you are most likely to be offered with dessert, in a small glass, not the tasting glass you see I have used. 

The label on the front, if the waiter shows you that before pouring, has a green oval sideways label with the initials of the firm, Stanton and Killeen. The symbol shows two grape vine leaves, presumably the muscat grape, with grapes. On a circle with verticals, perhaps representing an oak barrel, are the initials S and K for Stanton and Killeen. The label tell you that members of the company have been 'winemakers since 1875'. If it is still a family business and the same two families are involved, the current owners will probably be grandchildren or more likely great grandchildren of the original owners.

Now we can see the colour of the wine in the bottle and the glass. Dark browny red but a pale edge. 

Swirl it around the glass and sniff. Heavy, liquorice. Then taste it. Thick, like cough syrup. So it has 'body'. Other members of my family say they taste marmalade and coffee. I'm not much of a marmalade eater. I taste chocolate, but it's sharp, biting like pins and needles or pepper - that's 'acid', from a lighter, sharp green grape added to stop the mix being too cloying,' the family expert tells me. I sip again and suck my lips and inner cheeks. I taste liquorice, currants.

Let's look at the label on the back. 375 - a half bottle. Well, it will still last a while because you don't drink much - 17.5% alcohol by volume.  That's high. Most wines are 5-15%. Dessert wines, fortified wines and after dinner spirits such as port, sherry and Madeira are over 15% and are taxed high because you don't drink/buy so much, and taxation its up the price which is a way or preventing you, the consumer, from buying and drinking too much and getting drunk.

Checking the stanton and killeen website, I immediately see their proud claim that seven generations of the family have worked on the wine. There's a famous saying, 'I plant wines for my grandchildren.'

http://www.stantonandkilleenwines.com.au

Where is this dessert wine from?

Stanton and Killeen, Jacks Road, Rutherglen, Victoria, Australia.

Bring a picnic. Book a tour, says the website.

The bottle I tasted was imported into England by:

Siegel Wine Agencies, 123 High Street, Odiham, Hampshire RG29 ILA. 

Victoria, as I said in my previous post, is the Australian state whose biggest tourist draw is the city of Melbourne. 

Melbourne

What is there to see in Melbourne?