This event includes a pre-dinner tasting session before the wine dinner starts.

6:30 PM - Pre-dinner tasting; 8:00PM - Wine dinner

Vintages will be served:
(23 bottles in total)
Pre-dinner tasting: 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997
Wine dinner: 1996, 1995, 1994, 1993, 1991, 1990, 1988, 1987, 1986, 1978, 1977, 1976, 1975

If the headline got your attention, please be quick to avoid missing out on this one. It is one of the most important verticals of Australian wine ever to be conducted in Hong Kong. The event spans 23 vintages, covering 4 decades of one of the greatest, longest lived, and most sought after Shiraz made in Australia. If you know this wine, your eyes will pop out of your head when you see what is in store at this event, yet, more likely, you will never have heard of this Clare Valley icon.
 
If you look at Langton’s classification, the Wendouree Shiraz ranks amongst Australia’s top 21 wines in the ‘Exceptional’ category, while all four of Wendouree’s other wines make it into the next tier of 53 wines rated ‘Outstanding’. This is, in others words, one of Australia’s most consistent, long-standing and greatest estates.

But this wine is not distributed via retail or restaurant supply channels, and none of it is exported. All of it is sold via mail order direct to private customers in the domestic Australian market. What I mean is that the annual order form marked with crayon goes out, by mail, to the lucky few customers on the list. And only the crayon-marked forms returned by mail are accepted back.
 
What is Wendouree’s website, or email address you ask? Neither exist. You write to them, you know, like we used to in the 20th century. When I wanted more information I telephoned Lita Brady and spoke to her.
 
All this, I suspect, adds to the mystique of the Wendouree label, but the wine behind it is grounded. Wendouree has some of the best, and oldest vineyards in the world. Nineteenth century planted bush-trained, super low yielding vines, followed by fairly straightforward winemaking. The wines are super long-lived, pure, often very intense, and reminiscent, in a way, to the likes of Château Lafleur, or Henri Bonneau’s ‘Célestins’ (at least that’s the way fans like me see it!).
 
Wendouree is the work of Tony and Lita Brady who have farmed and produced these wines since the mid-1970s.
 
I have been collecting these for some years, and this 23 vintage vertical is the result. The key came a few years ago when a good cellar containing the Brady’s earliest vintages came on to the market. It would be very hard to put this together without that opportunity having arisen, and so, very difficult to ever repeat this event.
 
For more information, I suggest this article written by Jamie Goode. 

Meanwhile, please do secure your seats early. This is a small gathering, single bottle event, with half the vintages presented in a pre-dinner tasting, and the other half paired with an Italian menu in the private dining room at 208 Duecento Otto.