Y stands for Yalumba, at least in Australia it does, with the Yalumba winery started by British immigrant Samuel Smith 170 years ago.
The Yalumba winery is located near the town of Angaston, South Australia in the famous Barossa Valley wine region. Samuel Smith emigrated to Australia with his family from Wareham, Dorset in August 1847. Upon arriving in Australia in December, Smith purchased a 30-acre (120,000 m2) block of land on the settlement’s south eastern boundary. He named his property “Yalumba” after an indigenous Australian word for “all the land around”. In 1849 Samuel Smith, along with his son Sidney, planted Yalumba’s first vineyards, beginning the Yalumba dynasty. Today Yalumba is Australia’s oldest family-owned winery.
To promote Yalumba to Thailand the DeVine Wine Club at the Royal Cliff Beach Resort provided one of their superb Wine Dinners in the Grill Room and Yalumba sent two of their favorite sons in Tim Herrmann (the Regional Sales Manager Asia) and Adam O’Neill (Executive Director) to Thailand to introduce the Yalumba label to the Pattaya wine aficionados. (Adam came from the same area as me in Australia, so we understood each other immediately.)
The exposure to Yalumba Y Series began with the reception wine, a very pleasant Sauvignon Blanc 2018. A wonderful palate cleanser.
In the Grill Room, the ‘mix and match’ began in earnest with Chef Peter presenting a grilled vegetables and goats cheese terrine on mesclun leaves, mated with a Y Series Pinot Grigio 2018. This was a quiet beginning to the dinner, but the next course upped the tempo.
This was a sparkling green pea soup with smoked trout fillet enjoyed with a Y Series Viognier 2018. This white wine was excellent, and universally popular.
For those who have not been exposed to Viognier before, it is a white wine grape variety. It is the only permitted grape for the French wine Condrieu in the Rhône Valley. Outside of the Rhône, Viognier can now be found in regions of North and South America as well as Australia, New Zealand, the Cape Winelands in South Africa and Israel. In some wine regions, the variety is co-fermented with the red wine grape Shiraz where it can contribute to the color and bouquet of the wine.
This co-fermentation wine made the next course very memorable, which was a bacon wrapped monk fish in a curried mango sauce, beets and spiced chick peas. The Y Series Shiraz Viognier 2015 was nothing short of sensational. Everyone raved about this wine, and I was no exception. This was the wine of the night.
There was still two courses to go and the next was a slow cooked marinated rump of lamb on a light wasabi mash with herb reduction and roasted roots. The wine to go with this was the Y Series Cabernet Sauvignon 3017, very pleasant but the Shiraz Viognier was still the top wine.
The final course was a Jansz Premium Cuvee Brut, Pipers River, NV, lots of bubbles did make this an amusing wine and a great finish for the evening with the Royal Cliff’s own chocolate pralines.
