d’Arenberg “The Laughing Magpie” – Shiraz Viognier – 2004
This is a rather nice combination of the ever delightful Shiraz with the usually rather not my taste white Viognier, it is much darker than you would expect from a Red/White blend in fact as dark as any Cab or Shiraz out there.
It has a very pleasant mix of the spice of a Shiraz and a lingering astringency which I can only assume was driven by the Viognier variety. The bottle seems to have lots of gold medals out there (which I did not see when I was at the cellar door where I picked this one up), so the experts seem think its allright, but personally I love it, I would recommend this for drinking for the sake of drinking and would do so, before, after and during food, although you’d want something spicy I would think to eat with it – Thai Beef Salad perhaps?