Forgive me, I’m a bit behind. This was supposed to come out in March and we’re already halfway through April.

The month of March started with Avalon wine’s first official wine tasting. It was held between the hours of 4 and 7 pm at Le Pont, Clareville. There I stood, armed with a bottle of chilled Avalon Rosé, ready to accost any customers. It had been a hot day and it seemed beer was top of the list for many, but I did manage to steer a few my way and I was very happy to see that nearly everyone who tried it liked it. And most of them liked it enough to buy a bottle, or more. I won’t bore you with tasting notes – you can find out for yourself, and while this is a shameless sales plug, what I wanted to share was the strange sense of time travel I went through. It must have been over 33 years since I’ve stood in a shop, feeling awkward proffering wine, but it felt like yesterday. Really. I couldn’t remember the last tasting I did, but the shadow of it was so very present. Or is it a sign of getting old???

The next tasting was much further away and the wines much newer. We were in South Australia to sample the 2023 Avalon wines, yes wines as our Rosé has two siblings, a red and a white. Instead of a bottle, we were drinking them from the tank, unbottled, unfiltered, un-anything really. The grapes were certified biodynamic and organic, and the chief winemaker was arguably Mother Nature.

The rosé is a very different wine, made with Tinta Barocca, an Iberian variety. It’s a fresher, lighter style, with hints of orange peel and savoury up front. Young as it was, I could have happily poured another glass from the tank.

Next up was the white, a blend of more Iberians, Fernao Pires and Vermentino. Again, young as it was, the wine was very drinkable, the vinous equivalent of a cool breeze on a hot day. We promise to have this ready for spring.

More surprising was the red, or tinto. It’s not a big, muscular old-school one like many Iberian offerings, but something more nimble, like a well-made Beaujolais. Snr Corbett has crafted this one with a blend of Graciano, Mencia and Prieto Pecudo. All biodynamic and organic. There’s plenty of complexity, but it’s accessible and ready for drinking.

The next wine we tried came from a bottle and had a cork. It was a 2019 Jean Foillard Morgon Cote du Py. Yum. It was a reminder that a great Beaujolais can also be a great wine. Gamay maybe overshadowed by its Burgundian cousin Pinot Noir, but when it’s good, it’s good. It was also a lesson. If you’d asked me who the ‘Gang of Four’ was, I would have mentioned some other reds, the Chinese Communist Party. Turns out there’s another gang in Beaujolais who, appalled at the commercialisation of Beaujolais in the 80s – think Hooray Henrys doing a Beaujolais run to London – adopted minimal intervention, harnessing old vines farmed with organic practices, fermentation with natural yeasts, along with limited use of sulphur to get the Beaujolais terroir to express itself. If you ever come across a wine by Jean Foillard, Marcel Lapierre, Guy Breton, or Jean-Paul Thévenet, try it.

You will have to pay more than $20 for the privilege though, unless it’s by the glass.