A Summer Afternoon At Tilbrook

By Chris Bearman

As Jane and I walk into the cool dark interior of the cellar door, James Tilbrook, a large man with greying hair and an English accent, welcomes us with an exclamation of relief. “Oh, thank God it’s you guys! He’s been rushed off his feet all morning serving wine and making pizzas for a winery promotion event. The detritus of hectic activity is evident. Empty bottles and glasses cover every available surface and dirty plates and cups are piled high in the sink in the small kitchen.

The cellar door is in a large white painted shed, which is part of the Old Lobethal Woolen Mill in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia. The shed serves James as both a winery and a cellar door with a counter full of bottles of James’ latest vintages fronting the round oak barrels and wine making equipment behind.

“We’re the 1pm booking.” Since it’s ‘Us’ James relaxes, brings out a large wedge of pungent blue cheese (made in another of the old mill buildings next door) and fetches a bottle of wine from a shelf hidden behind a red curtain. This is James’ own private stock.

The bottle doesn’t have a label and James can’t remember what grape the wine is made from. We spend the next hour trying to guess what it is. Typical of Tilbrook wines it has a lovely rich fruit with well-rounded tannins.

Straight out of the bottle the wine is a bit ‘tight,’ the tannins are predominating. The wine has a very black inky look to it, although it’s quite dark in the cellar door. I hazard that it might be a Shiraz. Jane is unconvinced. James thinks I might be right, but says it doesn’t quite taste like one of his Shiraz.

We have another taste. James thinks it might be from 2005-06. Jane is starting to think I might be right in my Shiraz designation but I’m starting to become less convinced. We dig into the cheese which has a pleasant creamy quality that complements the wine nicely.

James thinks the wine might be Cab Sauv. Jane thinks he might be right. Now the wine has been open for a while the tannins have softened a bit and the wine has opened up, revealing rich fruit flavours of plum that might be a cab sauv. I think I can also detect a hint of purple around the edges of the wine through the murky light of the tasting room.

We swirl the wine around the glass contemplating grapes. Some other people come into the cellar door and James shares the wine with them, asking them what they think the grape is. They’re not sure and happy to go with our latest hypothesis.

James pours out tastings of his current range for the newcomers, while we sit on stools nursing the unidentified wine. Mid-pour James stops. It might be one of the Cab Sauvs that I added Sangiovese to. I did a little experiment around that time and this might be a bottle of that wine.

We re-examined our wine. Was there a hint of Sangiovese? I couldn’t taste it. Neither could Jane. We weren’t convinced. “Just a thought” said James and returned to pouring out the other wines.

After the other people had gone, James made a pizza for us in his wood-oven in the small patio area outside between the faded old brick mill buildings. When the pizza’s ready we sit down together at one of the plastic outside tables in the bright summer sunshine enjoying the food.

Ben (who runs the local market) joined us bringing a bottle of wine from another local winemaker for us to try and a large apple pie.  James brings out a bottle of his Reserve Shiraz. He’s not happy with how it’s drinking. In the sunshine, with convivial company and a lovely wood-oven pizza, the wine seems excellent. But that’s the nature of wine.

Wine tasting is both a bottom-up and top-down taste experience. The bottom-up experience is what the glass gives you in terms of the flavours of the wine. The top-down experience is what you bring to the glass in terms of how you feel, the mood you’re in, whether you like the people and how hungry you are.

Another way to look at this is in terms of  ‘set and setting’, to quote the words of Timmothy Leary, a psychologist with an interest in the effects of a rather different substance. Set refers to the internal state of the individual while setting refers to the external environment in which the drug is taken. So, if you are in a happy state and with a pleasant company, you’re much more likely to enjoy the wine.

Back in the dark interior of the tasting room James wants us all to taste some wine that he’s not sure about. He wanders off among the oak barrels that are stacked up behind the counter while we sit on the old red sofa chatting. Eventually, he returns with wine in a plastic jug, which he pours into our glasses. We swirl the wine around the glass and it has a funky chemical small. We taste the wine. It’s oxidized and undrinkable. “Oh well” says James reflectively. “You can’t win them all.”

© Chris Bearman (2012). A Summer Afternoon at Tilbrook. Wine Rambler Magazine.