CHAPTER 17 | 1930–1938 – The Dead Dog Bounce
Minchinbury Vineyards, Western Sydney, New South Wales, 1939. [SLNSW Home and Away – 19664]
1938 CHÂTEAU REYNELLA VINTAGE RESERVE BURGUNDY (DRY RED) Reynella, South Australia
Max Lake recalled the 1938’s ‘deep red colour’. It also possessed ‘the complexity of bouquet and bigness of flavour with balance that distinguish the majority of wines of this vineyard’. The distinguished Australian wine writer Walter James wrote in his 1952 Wine in Australia: ‘Reynella has produced limited quantities of excellent vintage Burgundies, that of 1938 (made from shiraz) being outstanding’. Wine collector and grazier Kenneth Crawford possessed 30 bottles of this wine in 1956. In his cellar book, he describes the 1938 as ‘beautifully proportioned wine with a long way to go to reach its peak. A big, robust wine which reflects considerable credit on its maker because it is not always that the balance and tannin finish of this wine can be achieved with such size.’ His wife, Lydia (née Reynell), wrote in the same book in 1966, ‘This is a magnificent wine and will still be so, long after we’re dead’. The wine was tasted with Max Lake in 1965 at their Mount Annan property, near Holbrook, in New South Wales.
The beautiful rolling countryside around Reynella, once a small township that was carved out of John Reynell’s original land grant, began to yield to the sprawling suburbs of Adelaide. This urban pressure did not intimidate Château Reynella, which was a significant wine producer during the 1930s, with vineyards at Reynella and Lyndoch in the Barossa. In 1938, Château Reynella produced a commemorative Vintage Reserve Burgundy, one of the finest wines of the era.
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