2002 Two Hands Shiraz Bella’s Garden- Australia, South Australia, Barossa, Barossa Valley (6/8/2009)
Purchased recently, so I don’t know how well this was stored. The wine was perplexingly not like most of the reviews of this wine. On the nose: beef blood, some savory notes akin to soy sauce, vanillin oak and sweet fruit. More Rhone-like than most Aussie shirazes. This did improve on day 2 to become more expressive and pretty enjoyable, but days 3 and 4 were much like day 1 - interesting, but not very expressive, and nothing that I could see here to justify 95 and 96 point professional ratings. This bottle did show some age in the color and flavor, unlike an 03 Torbreck Struie I had recently that showed no age at all. It may be that this bottle is an awkward phase along the road to tertiary flavors. It was not cooked, but also possible that this was very low level corked? No off flavors, just nothing to distinguish this. Right now, it ranged from high 80s-ish to low 90s-ish, if I had to rate, but I won’t officially rate given the unknown provenance.
It is my experience and now my belief that these wines were made (some might argue manipulated) to show well young and that they fall apart after three or four years. They are best when young.
Interesting observations. I have heard several Aussies offer the opposite explanation saying that these need some time to strut their stuff. I really don’t have a clue. I have an 05 that I have been hanging on to and was planning on letting it go for another 3-4. Thanks for your insight.
I’m hesitant to draw strong conclusions based on this bottle because I hadn’t stored it myself. Assuming it’s not a bad bottle, I think this wine could go either way - it shows some interesting notes that are not unusual for a Rhone varietal, and some development that could be a ways down the road toward secondary flavors. I’d love to hear people’s experiences with this wine over time.
I was into the Two Hands brand in a big way from the 2002 - 2004 vintages, owning wines from their entry level “Face Series” through the “Garden Series” and up to the Ares Shiraz. The wines all showed well young – lush, up front fruit, ripe, soft tannins, and yes, lots of “hidden” alcohol. Then I heard about the business model for these wines (“let’s start with an end product the US market will like and then let’s work backwards to find out how to make these types of wines”) and how the wines were in fact made (again, some would use the word manipulated) to fit this model. Big juicy, up front wines which scored big with you-know-who and which showed well young. Then – you know what happened? After a few years the wines began to fall apart into their components – tannins, fruit, alcohol, and most distressingly, acids. They were not closed but began to fall apart! As one UK oenophile famously said when tasting the 2002 Ares in October 2006: “It tastes like vodka in purple grape juice.”
Don’t get me wrong – the wines I tasted were indeed delicious when young, but they were never meant to age, and at the prices they crept up into, I wasn’t buying any more. Great for the USA restaurant trade where wines are served young and big.
Thanks Alex - that certainly does give me a pause, as I too find the wines to be pretty tasty when young… and I’ve got a few Two Hands Coach House single vineyard wines that I’ve been aging. I may not wait quite as long to pop them open after all.
I wonder if you can elaborate on what people are calling “manipulation” though. I see ripe fruit (seems pretty natural for Barossa’s climate), oak for sure… do you mean overextraction or reverse osmosis to make the wines even more concentrated or something?
While I am not a winemaker, I understand that wine can be manipulated after the grapes are crushed by not only the techniques you mention, but also by the addition of other “ingredients” like acids, etc. Again, from what I understand, these wines were developed using a business model for the US market, wanting to obtain a desired final product and in essence reverse engineering to come up with it.
I do appreciate Australian wines and I am a big fan of d’Arenberg, for example, in existence for almost 100 years and who make wine in a more traditional manner.
Nothing wrong with a wine made to show well young, but again, at the higher price-points in which these wines began to creep, I decided to spend my wine $$ elsewhere.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Alex. I like D’Arenberg too - visited them last year and I can really see how their wines would stand the test of time.
The winemakers can answer this better then me, but I have a feeling that in the effort for ripeness, A LOT more wineries add back acid to at least some of their wines than we may think.
I’d also be interested to hear others chime in, not just about Two Hands, but any wines that in their experience don’t last. I think I remember Max arguing the same thing about the new-style Spanish wines a while back, I’d love to hear more about the details of what people think is the formula. We’ve covered some of the more obvious characteristics here but I wonder about what else there might be.
Alex is pretty spot on with his analysis. We used to import 2H, and out of the gate they are great—the 05 Branson Cab was, despite the 18% alcohol, one of the best Cabs I’ve had in years. Now, its a mess—the last two bottles have been wood & alcohol & (seemingly) grape juice extract. Not pleasant.
Michael Twelftree has a great palate, and they are very judicious in their acid addition, and the 02’s were made by Rolf Binder & not Matt Wenke, but there is just something about some of the 2H wines that lead me to believe that their shelf life is relatively short (ditto Mollydooker & similar styled wines).
I never really thought about the “falling apart” aspect, but I certainly know that all of the Bella’s and Lily’s I have had have been best between 1 and 3 years, and disappointing after that. I used “confused” and “disjointed” as descriptors, without thinking of the underlying mechanisms that are happening. Heck, the 2004 Bella’s was my WOTY and held that position since having it early in 2008, and I wouldn’t even have bought it when tasted again 14 months later (now going on 5 years old). I appreciate this new way of thinking about it, and I especially appreciate that I have many bottles of really nice wine to drink sooner rather than later.
Eldon - disjointed totally captures what I was feeling about this bottle of Bella’s. I wouldn’t presume to write it off as a wine that won’t develop into something nicer again down the road, but the experiences that people here seem to have had have now convinced me that it’s not the worst thing in the world if I drink up my Two Hands wines sooner (when I know I’ll enjoy them) rather than later.
Well, curious after stumbling upon this thread, I opened an '03 Lily’s last night and drank it down. Pretty tasty stuff, and not in any sense disjointed. Never opened a Lily’s prior to this, yet did try one of my '03 Bella’s a year ago and it profiled quite similar to when I first opened one in March of 2005.
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