The man who said wine is bottled poetry was quite spot-on, and he also had a lavish cellar to enjoy in the evenings. If one ounce (Oz) is roughly to be taken as 30ml, then a bottle of wine is worth 750ml or 25 Oz worth of words. But words can be weighty often in an entirely different way. Take the word Oz for example; in its Imperial form, it represents ounce (from Italian onza), a measure of mass of a substance. In a more casual form, it is a way to refer to Australia and all the goodness that this distant land mass sends our way, aka Aussi (pronounced, ozzy).

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Recently, I went travelling through the prestigious wine regions of South Eastern Australia and it was quite an experience. I tried quite a range of wines but the highpoint of my trip was getting to the vineyards of Coonawarra. This is one of the most cherished vineyard stretches of SE Australia and it is a narrow little stretch, no more than 2km wide, and about 15km long. What makes it so special is that it has similar climatic influences as Bordeaux (in France) and Napa (in California), and hence is one of the most ideal sites to plant Cabernet Sauvignon.

And then, they have something even more special: the soil. Coonawarra has this unique red (iron-rich) top layer of soil, resting on fractured pieces of limestone rock. The red soil provides essential nutrients and drains water well, which then passes through the limestone and gets filtered and further infused with all the right minerals that make up the wine’s bouquet. The result: some of the most expressive yet elegant Cabernets of the world. Wynns was one of first houses present here.

Penfold’s too has a presence. And then, surprise surprise, Jacob’s Creek! Yes, the very brand which we see crowding shelves in our nation, has an imposing presence in the area and makes a very unique range of wines — one that we don’t get in India yet — called the St Hugo. It is one of the best Cabernet wines in the world.

I, of course, didn’t know this. And it was a good thing for I went into a tasting of almost a dozen different wines with absolutely no idea and, if I may confess, a mild prejudice that I reserve for Australian reds as being too jammy and over-ripe. Suffice to say then that the first wine, a 1998 vintage bottle had me convinced that I was drinking a slightly flamboyant aged Bordeaux! The others that followed were still fantastic examples of an exercise in elegance and classiness. An hour later, I stood up, moved by the sheer quality of these wines, moved by the enchanting influence of the region’s red soil, and, perhaps, moved because the wines were so darned good that I forgot to spit them!

I had had more than my share of the fluid ounces and it wasn’t being measured in ounces anymore. I feel the poetry kicking in; best off!