Zonte’s Footstep Super Trooper Shiraz Cabernet 2019
- 92
- $30
- Drink by: 2023-2031
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First, allow us to call the team on what is obviously a failed attempt to divert attention with the name. They claim that the moniker refers to a car. No one is buying that. Clearly, they have an ABBA fan in the marketing team. The fruit is a mix of Langhorne Creek Cabernet and McLaren Vale Shiraz. Fermentation is in stainless steel and also open fermenters, before the wine spends a year maturing in a mix of new and older hogsheads. A lovely deep maroon. Notes of plums, cherries, warm earth and dried herbs, fresh beetroot, chocolate and tobacco leaves. An appealing and attractively fragrant nose. The texture is smooth and supple with soft tannins and a lingering finish with a nice flick of acidity. Good value, this will drink well over the next five to eight years, and is a lovely wine. One might even say a wine shining like the sun, if one had any familiarity with ABBA lyrics. Which one does not.
Ken was born and bred in Brisbane, Queensland. He had a non-trendy, perfectly happy childhood, in a family convinced alcohol meant instant condemnation to Hades. But a break fishing on the Great Barrier Reef, and some good wine, started a serious obsession that eventually took over. It did not stop Ken being chastised later for drinking Pol champagne, disgusted he’d drink anything made by a Cambodian dictator. Now, Ken mostly writes on wine, champagne and spirits for various newspapers, magazines and books, but is perhaps best known for his work in The Courier Mail. He also has a little sideline writing on cigars, fishing, travel and food. When not writing, fly-fishing for trout in NZ or bonefish on the flats of Cuba, travelling or smoking cigars, he is no doubt following a variety of sporting teams – the occasionally glorious Queensland Reds rugby, the dysfunctional Washington Redskins, the dodgy Arsenal and especially revels in the world restored to its proper axis with the return of the Ashes to their rightful home.
