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Welcome Licorice Pizza (LP) lovers! Setup guides and Vinyl FAQ.

Not my field

Some go to what seem to be ridiculous lengths - Arthur Salvatore has been known to insist that is you don't have the VTF accurate to .01g you are not going to hear what he hears. Since a 1 degree difference in ambient temperature is bound to have more of an effect than such a small extra force I find this claim frankly incredible.

If by "tart" you mean lean, dry and acid balanced, one wine to seek out is riesling from one of the premium regions: the Eden Valley, the Polish Hill River district of the Clare Valley or the extreme south of WA (Porongorup etc). One absolute standout is Geoffrey Grosset's Polish Hill riesling but it's allocated and pricey ($40+ locally).

A local specialty is semillon from the Hunter Valley which is even leaner and drier when young, can be a bit on the battery acid side but when mature (5 years minimum) they are truly great wines. Tyrell's Vat 1 is a standout, also McWilliam's "Lovedale". A word of warning - I used to use a young and an old version of these in my wine class. 80 - 90% of my students actively disliked the old version, rising to 95% for the young version. Those few who "got it" were, however, hooked for life. This is also an expensive wine, the mature version is $40 - 50 locally.

Something cheaper, light dry and very interesting is Tahbilk's marsanne - at one stage they had more than 50% of the entire world's marsanne plantings. The ordinary version is good when young but excellent at 5 to 15 years and is about $10. They also make an "old vines" version which is released at about 7 years age and is superb but more expensive.

In general Australian winemakers are very fruit focussed and most cheap wine comes from warm areas inland so lean and racy isn't a big feature of the local scene. Some of the chardonnays from the cooler areas (Yarra Valley, Tasmania) in cooler years (2002 a standout) can be excellent, almost steely wines but too many are made too alcoholic so it's hard to make generalisations.

Mark Kelly


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