I was trying my best not to drink during the week, but when a friend brings over a bottle of wine to your place, it would be rude not to! So I guess my no drinking thing lasted from Sunday night to…Monday night. But hey! There is always next week, and I guess that makes this week a write off so I can drink more wine!

And now a plug for my local bottle shop

There is a great bottle shop that is in walking distance from my apartment, and I am loving the wines that they have available. They have a lot of smaller Australian producers, as well as some cracking international wines, and I absolutely love their selection. The first time I went there I got a little overwhelmed by just how many bottles I wanted to try, but managed to just walk out with one.

I’d highly recommend visiting if you are in the area, as it is probably my favourite bottle shop around West End at the moment (I guess I haven’t discovered all of them yet, so I can’t make a definitive judgement). The place is called Victoria and Montague and it has awesome wines, but also has Asahi Black in cartons. Why do you care about this? Well, I don’t, but my partner was so excited to find this out that I felt it was worth mentioning to you.

An excellent midweek blend

So my friend stopped by and got a wine from here for us to drink, and it was so awesome I wanted to share it with you. It was the perfect midweek drinking wine because it wasn’t trying to be more fancy that it was, and was just incredibly drinkable. The reason I wanted to write about it is sometimes for me it’s hard to find midweek wines, especially as our wine storage is full of wines that we are aging and aren’t ready for drinking on the weekends, much less on a Monday night. So it is always good to have a couple of wines you can count on when you really need a vino, and this is one of them.

Why I enjoyed it

I’d never heard of the winery before, but I love their label. It made me think that it was macho and tough, or a wine with a bit of a punch to it. It is the Vinaceous Red Right Hand, which is a blend of Shiraz, Grenache and Tempranillo. If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll know I am quite partial to a good tempranillo, and will often seek it out if there isn’t an italian variety that catches my eye.

This wine is a bit different to your regular Tempranillo due to the Shiraz and Grenache. These heavier grapes mean that this wine is a lot heavier and full of punchy flavour. Normally I’m not a huge shiraz drinker, but I think the mix of the other grape varieties in this wine toned it down a little, and what you got was a great middle ground of delicious wine.

What to enjoy it with

I loved how drinkable this wine was despite it being on the heavy side. It went so well with our Italian meal, but I think it would really go well with anything. I’d actually love to have it with a nice steak, as I feel like it wouldn’t overpower the flavours in the meat whilst also complementing them well.