A beautiful view: 360 degrees atop d’Arenberg’s storage tanks, McLaren Vale

I arrived in Perth, Western Australia yesterday having spent a couple of days in McLaren Vale exploring its (unofficial) sub-regions.   

The region’s producers are going red hot at it themselves.  They’ve recently released a geology map plus 17 wineries have just launched the first wave of Scarce Earth wines, all 2009 single block Shiraz. 

I tasted a fair few Scarce Earth wines on Tuesday which demonstrated sometimes dramatic differences between one block and another (as did a couple of new single block Grenaches made by d’Arenberg). 

Watch this space for my impressions of the wines and, if you’re local, until the end of the month limited edition Scarce Earth wines will only be available from McLaren Vale cellar doors so why not go and check them out for yourselves?

And if you’re not local, here’s a video  which gives you an idea of the lie of the land.  It’s taken by Nick James-Martin of d’Arenberg atop their (very high) storage vats.  Here’s hoping Nick doesn’t get the sack for forgetting to identify the Seaview (Beautiful View) sub-region right under his nose!