![]() ![]() REVIEWS ON WINE FOR MAC MACHere’s everything you need to know about the Mac & Eats booth, including reviews, photos, and our must-trys. ![]() Who knows if we’ll feel the same this year, but we’ll soon have more thoughts to share about the items in 2022. Last year, we loved the Lemon Hazy IPA and the Truffle Macaroni and Cheese. Important: Mac & Eats doesn’t open at the start of the 2022 festival on July 14, but the booth is slated to open on August 15.ĭo you remember the macaroni and cheese booth at the 2019 Food and Wine Festival? Well, this is pretty much exactly that. The booth usually sets up shop near the Creations Shop and Mission: SPACE. There’s sometimes even an awesome plant-based option. You can order a variety of macaroni-and-cheese combos here. *The 2019 single-vineyard Mac Forbes wines will be released on May 1st.Macaroni and cheese lovers, ‘gather round! The Mac & Eats booth is especially for you at Food and Wine. Sadly, there isn’t much of them, just two or three barrels of each were made because 2019 was a very low-yielding year. And there should be a place in the world of fine wine for this style. If there is an issue, it’s in mouth-feel or ‘extract’. There is no problem with ripeness: the wines don’t taste green. Look at any Burgundy label and you’ll see they’re always in the 12.5 to 13.5% range, certainly never as low as 11 or 11.5. In Burgundy, winemakers traditionally add sugar to the fermenting must in order to boost the alcohol to 13 or 13.5%. He stopped because he felt it was interfering too much with the naturalness of the fruit. Forbes doesn’t chaptalise (add sugar), although he has experimented with it in the past. There is some opinion that the alcohols are too low, and perhaps some criticism that such low alcohol wines lack the mouth-feel and texture they could have if there was more alcohol. “We never know what the alcohols are till the results come back from the lab.” I asked him if he has a low-alcohol philosophy? Does he make these wines deliberately? He replied in the negative. “Mulching is not just about soil moisture, it’s also about keeping the root-zone temperature cool.” This helps preserve the soil moisture and keeps the earth cooler. The Ferguson Vineyard at Woori Yallock-the source of Forbes’s top-priced pinot and chardonnay-had its water turned off from 2014, and under-vine mulch introduced. He’d also like to think the quality is better-but the jury is still out on that question. He is a firm believer that unwatered vines develop deep root systems, and this gives them better resistance to heavy rain at the wrong time of the season as well as to drought. Part and parcel of Forbes’s method is that all of his top vineyards (he doesn’t own them but has arrangements with their owners) are dry-grown. The four wines are all from the higher-altitude end of the Yarra Valley, places such as Gladysdale, Hoddles Creek and Woori Yallock. In more than one way, this wine reminds me of a lighter Chablis. As well, the wine has a smoky, ‘struck-flint’ aroma. And it makes the wine all the more interesting. To me, this is neither a positive or negative feature. Modern wine tasters rave about the mineral saltiness of such wines, a term I seldom use, but this one reminded me of mineral waters, especially those with a high sodium content. I’ve tasted few chardonnays that better display what many would term ‘mineral’ nuances. It is off the late Dr Tony Jordan’s vineyard, on deep red basalt soil at 300 metres altitude. Of the two chardonnays, the Spear Gully Vineyard Hoddles Creek wine is the most restrained. ![]() This, at a time most Aussie pinots are in the 13.5 to 14.5% range. Mac Forbes is releasing his 2019 single-vineyard range*, two chardonnays and two pinot noirs, and none is over 11.5% alcohol. “Croser, you’re getting so refined that one day you’re going to disappear altogether,” he spluttered. In fact, he reminds me of the comment the then chairman of Petaluma Len Evans made about chief winemaker Brian Croser when Croser was also embarking on a ‘refinement’ campaign in the 1990s. There has been a push in the Yarra Valley for several years towards earlier harvesting and lower alcohol wines, but few push the envelope as far as Forbes. Mac Forbes is releasing his 2019 single-vineyard range, two chardonnays and two pinot noirs, and none is over 11.5% alcohol. He is probably the arch-proponent of low-alcohol wine. If you’re concerned about your alcohol intake but you love pinot noir and chardonnay, you need to know about Mac Forbes. Part and parcel of Mac Forbes’s method is that all of his top vineyards are dry-grown. ![]()
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