It’s pretty hard for a little bear to get to the liquor store, so sometimes I ride along in my mum’s coat (which is no less humiliating than my friend Scarybear watching Avatar from inside a purse). From behind my mother’s lapel I can scan the bottles and wallow in nostalgia for my days as a party-animal charity bear.
There is this really great consultant dude at my local store. He approaches in an unassuming way, with this crazy, unidentifiable accent, and immediately intuits what your budget and tastes are. He’s a wine superhero, really. And on our last visit, he pointed to CHOOK SHED.
He was on the money about our budget. At $14.99, CHOOK SHED is in that magical price zone where wine occasionally sings.
When you think about it, price is a great first reference point when shopping for a wine. A while back my parents had a friend over to dinner who is pretty much always a pretentious dick. For these types of people you need to spend $15. That way you can find a bottle that will keep them guessing what you spent on it. Unfortunately for all at dinner that night, the wine they shared was not CHOOK SHED; it was some overrated cab (to be reviewed another time). Fortunately for Liquorstore Bear, my parents brought out the CHOOK SHED when their loser friend had gone home and I was allowed into plain sight.
It’s just that I sometimes embarrass them. If I’m in the room they talk to me, and then guests get weirded out. They try not to, which used to hurt my feelings but bores me now, but inevitably they keep looking my way and next thing you know it’s LB wearing the lampshade and telling stories.
Anyway, CHOOK SHED. Their tool of a friend having gone home, we broke it out and relaxed. Slightly less serious and considerably more of a fruit orgy than the previously reviewed NEXT OF KIN, this shiraz delivers on everything the Barossa Valley is about: soft, layered fruit with symphonic contributions of vanilla, pepper, tannins, and just enough oak.
With its splendid mouthfeel, lasting finish, and respectable 14.7% alcohol content, I have no idea why this shiraz is only $14.99. You could easily pass it off on a boorish dinner guest as something special from your cellar.
Buy a couple of bottles, pound them while watching TV, and tell me what you think.
Liquorstore Bear 
Cooked shit ?
Dude, you must be drunk — welcome to my world. Only I would never refer to a wine so fine as excrement. Certainly there are wines out there with a fecal aroma, but this is not one of them. Silly Spartacus, don’t you know a chook is a chicken? And chickens hang out in sheds. Which has as much to do with wine as any other random wine label.
What’s your favourite wine, buddy?
I doubt that the progeny of exiled criminals could produce anything that doesn’t taste like a cross between Single Vineyard Villafañe 2008 is a good start .
Aborigine sweat and Ostrich droppings .. I prefer a wine with a less ” recessive ” quality .Trapiche Malbec
I like ostriches. They’re tall. They’re not exactly native to Australia, although there are some feral populations descended from birds introduced a couple of hundred years ago. Are they ostrich droppings you detect, or perhaps emu? What other bird droppings have you sampled? I may have to bring you on board as a guest taster.
Any time , Liquorstarebore . I also do Bar mitzvahs , but alas Kosher wines are a bit too kvetchy and whiney . Bottoms up .