2010 By Jingo! Nero Rosso

Review from Philip White 12th March 2013
http://www.drinkster.blogspot.com

By Jingo! Adelaide Hills/McLaren Vale Nero Rosso 2010
$30; 14.2% alcohol; screw cap; 94+ points

The reclusive Field Marshall John Gilbert, Ninja, First Duke of the Blazing Siding, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS, known affectionately as either Gilly or Jingo by the
officers of his inner cadre — depending on the time of night as much as one’s rank — made this luxurious wallow.

He has teased Grenache grown on the special terroir of the clifftops above the nudists’ reserve at Maslin’s Beach, McLaren Vale, and Montepulciano and Zinfandel from his unearthly vine orgy, the site of many a weird voodoo chicken ritual near Mount Barker in the South Mount Lofty Ranges, which somebody once tried to rename the Adelaide Hills.

As Yamomoto wisely wrote all those centuries back, “an
officer who is not prepared to die at any moment will
inevitably die an unbecoming death.”  But if one nobly lives life in constant preparation for death and wants one’s red dripping black and silky and slippery as a twice-plunged samurai sabre here it is.

If you prefer it black as the kid leather and red as the
grosgrain lining in a pair of Churches slippers cut to die in, here it is.  If one wants it as easily licked as high-class nipple polish on one’s last night out, that’s here, too, by jingo.  The damn thing’s multi-purpose.  And all I’ve yet mentioned is the macho-martial approach.  A more
feminine ascent to its heady glory would unleash a perfect mess of opposites, and maybe even the odd risky tendril twining like a teasing finger ’neath the officers’ mess door. It’s friggin delicious.  It smells like piquant summer dust as much as compote of red grapes, blueberries, black
currants, goji, maraschino cherry and a crême de
framboise, with a mega-cool miso umami. And it tastes just sicko in its comfort and unction, its chubby
generosity, its fine tight acid-tannin taper, and its wicked over-the-shoulder wink as it saunters darkly off down your little red lane, daring you send down another.

If there’s still a restaurant in Chinatown which serves chopped duck on the bone, take this here damn wondrous thing  there with the most beautiful person you know. They’ll go all runny in the middle the moment they see the label.  Let them drink it, and they’ll be gone forever.