Huon Hooke in The Real Review: Collector's artistic wines

There’s an infinite number of ways to name wine. Call them after your family members, like Owen Inglis of Sidewood in the Adelaide Hills (Cassandra, Isabella, Chloe), or Western Australian orchids, like Ferngrove of Frankland River (Dragon, Cossack, King, Majestic, Queen of Sheba—all beautifully depicted on the labels).First rule: choose a theme that’s unlikely to be copied.The 2024 vintage of Marked Tree Red, a delicious drink-me-now shiraz, is to be released this month. Alex McKay, winemaker and proprietor of the Canberra District’s Collector Wines, takes the cake for wine names. His are themed after a local Canberra artist, the late Rosalie Gascoigne—whose most recognisable artworks are composed of sawn-up slices of yellow roadwork signs, and soft-drink crates.

Alex’s Tiger Tiger Chardonnay, perhaps Collector’s most consistently outstanding wine, takes the title of a famous Gascoigne ‘road sign’ work. Produced from Tumbarumba grapes, it is a masterpiece of complexity and richness allied with finesse. Art lovers might like to know this work is currently on display in the restaurant at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and the 2022 vintage of the wine is on the list.

Collector’s riesling is titled Jim’s Picnic—a reference to a favourite picnicking spot of Rosalie Gascoigne’s friend James Mollison, the director of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, at the time.

Overland Barbera is named after another Gascoigne assemblage. The 2025 vintage of this wine is from Peter and Cath Mullany’s Ballinaclash vineyard in the Hilltops region.

The everyday-drinking shiraz, Marked Tree Red, is named after Marked Tree Road, an actual road in the Gundaroo district which has views from the escarpment out over Lake George, and was one of Gascoigne’s favourite places.

Rosalie Gascoigne lived at isolated Mount Stromlo Observatory while her husband Ben was an astronomer there and the city of Canberra was not yet built. A late bloomer, she had her first exhibition at age 54 and made art till she died at 82.

The 2024 vintage of Marked Tree Red (AUD $38), a delicious drink-me-now shiraz, is to be released this month and towards the end of the year we can look forward to one of the finest reds yet seen from Alex McKay: the Collector Reserve Shiraz 2024, an AUD $96 wine made largely from the highly regarded and fully mature Kyeema Vineyard. It’s a gorgeous shiraz and will be reviewed here six months before it goes on sale...

To read the full article, go to The Real Review.