A Costco Purchased Aussie Disappointment

I must admit, I am a bit reticent about writing tonight’s post. I wanted to like this wine, and in fact, I was so perplexed by my own reaction to the 91 point rated bottle that I had several family members opine on the tasting. To confuse matters even more, a few failed to fault the wine as I had, and in fact one even gave it a “thumbs-up” as a worthy everyday value wine.

With the wine’s back-story now laid bare, I feel free to weigh in on one of Costco’s highest rated, super value, monster reds.

The 2008 Marquis Philips McLaren Valley Australian Shiraz is an exorbitantly jammy wine right out of the bottle. The Aussie Shiraz is a mouth filler of plum fruit filled jam with a fairly strong kick of alcohol powered by the wines liver punching 16% alcohol. Unfortunately, the Marquis failed to mellow and open up with time as I had hoped. 15 minutes into the bottle the alcohol flavor was still overpowering the McLaren Shiraz sensation I had come to expect from my recent trip to the land down under.

To be fair, 30 minutes in, the wine began to mellow slightly and the thick jam opened a bit, however, all in all, this wine was a disappointment. The general consensus, even from those that found it a worthwhile value, was that this wine was too fruity and to boozy. For $12, there are far better values to be had at Costco that offer a truly enjoyable everyday red wine.

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