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Jacques Lurton, a member of one of France's most famous winemaking dynasties, splits his time between Bordeaux and his second home on Kangaroo Island, where he makes a range of extremely interesting wines under the Islander Estate label. This is the bargain basement offering; an unlikely but very impressive blend of malbec, cabernet franc, shiraz, grenache and viognier (Bordeaux meets the Rhone in South Australia). It's a wine that is extremely comfortable in its own skin, savoury and structured with a foot in both New World and Old World camps. Well worth a look. $20. www.iev.com.au.
The Costieres de Nimes is the most southerly vineyard region in the Cotes du Rhone - and surrounds the beautiful former Roman city of Nimes. It's a region where eating and drinking well is de rigueur and local red blends of syrah, grenache, mourvedre, carignan and cinsault offer reliably good and savoury drinking. This is a terrific everyday drinking red from a good local co-op, the Vignerons d'Estezargues, made from just syrah and grenache. It's rustic and unfiltered but also modern and clean. It's a wine that tastes of the Camargue, the wild region where it was grown, but also has some sassy sophistication. $20. Imported by Marcus Gniel of Ce Soir Wine. www.cesoirwine.com.
Lindsay McCall at Paringa Estate on the Mornington Peninsula has a track record of producing excellent cool-climate shirazes. This is a single vineyard wine (effectively the winery's reserve shiraz) that simply oozes class. Dark pepper and plummy notes on the nose lead to rich plum, cassis and spice notes on the palate, which has intriguing textural elements. The wine spent 18 months in French oak that has been beautifully integrated. It has power, elegance, and great structure, and will cellar well for a decade or more - although there was not a drop left in the bottle I sampled the other day. $80.
