Tahbilk Shiraz 2012

W Tahbilk 2012Shiraz from Nagambie Lakes, Australia

100% shiraz

13.7% alcohol

Opened 26 Dec 2017

els: 9.0/10

Australian Wine Companion: 92

Wine and Spirits: 91

Robert Parker: 90

The Wine Front: 90

Cellar Tracker: 89

Tahbilk established itself in 1860 as the first winery in the Goulburn Valley of Central Victoria, Australia, and is one of the oldest wineries in Australia. The Daung-wurrung, a Victorian aboriginal clan, in their native language called the area tabilk-tabilk or the ‘place of many waterholes’, so named because the local Goulburn River dried up periodically and left isolated bodies of water: ‘waterholes’; in the river and along its billabongs. Reginald Purbrick purchased the winery in 1925 and 5 generations of family have been making wines there ever since.

The Shiraz vineyards encompass about 75 acres and contain vines planted between the 1930s and 2000s. The vineyards are situated less than 500 feet above sea level experiencing cool nights of about 50 degrees Fahrenheit and the days hover in the low 80s during the growing season. Rain is sufficient at about 1.5 to 2.5 inches per month. The soils are sandy.

The wine is fermented in open-topped oak barrels and aged in 100 year French oak barrels.

This is a brilliant, garnet colored wine with a pale pink rim. Aromas of red fruits and dark berries, with a hint of oak. Very nice tasting, balanced, medium bodied and smooth, with thick tannins; producing a long, dry, satisfying finish. A classy girl of a wine, reminiscent of long, perfect legs, anchored to glossy stiletto heals, and, unfortunately, partially retiring inside a white silk dress, slit long on the left thigh; the dress continuing upward along luscious curves  with a single, lonely strap across the right shoulder.

An outstanding wine. Serve with beef, lamb or wild game. Decant and aerate for one hour before drinking.

$13.99  wine.com

Kill and Die–Order Not Important

24 Hours to Live  (Theaters-2017; Streaming-2017)  Rated: R  Runtime: 92-93 minutesM 24 2017

Genre: Action-Mystery-Thriller

els – 5.5/10

IMDb – 5.8/10

Amazon – 3.6/5 stars

Rotten Tomatoes Critics – 4.2/10

Rotten Tomatoes Audience – 3.0/5

Metacritic Metascore – 38/100

Metacritic User Score – 5.8/10

Directed by:  Brian Smrz

Written by:  Zach Dean, Jim McClain, Ron Mita

Music by:  Tyler Bates

Cast:  Ethan Hawke, Rutger Hauer, Paul Anderson, Qing Xu

Film Locations:  South Africa, Hong Kong, USA

Budget:  NA

Travis Conrad (Hawke) is an assassin, on sabbatical or as he states, a ‘hiatus’ from Red Mountain, a mercenary and security firm; a fictional representation of the real world Blackwater. He is re-activated by the company for an urgent time-sensitive task. His new mission is to eliminate a former Red Mountain employee who is going to testify against his employer; stating under oath that Red Mountain conducted Mengele-like medical experiments on scores of South African subjects.

The experiments were attempts to bring the dead back to life, and they succeeded, although success was bought with a costly, and gruesome, high body count.  Conrad, while tracking the rogue employee is killed, but is re-animated by the same back-from-the-dead procedures that Red Mountain has pioneered.  The catch is that there are some rather unpleasant side effects and the process is only good for 24 hours at which point he dies again.

This is a fun movie with lots of shooting, bullets, and bloody deaths. No hidden messages except the usual boiler plate of corporate boogeymen and anything for a buck, but that’s really not hidden; it’s full on in your face. This is Brian Smrz’s sophomore attempt at direction and he keeps it coarse with no frills, no long drawn out drama scenes to distract from what this movie is: an action movie.  The story holds together, it’s sparse and the actors give all that it takes to keep this movie going without any cringe worthy line delivers. The only negative is that Rutger Hauer was under utilized.  He could have brought more color to the film’s main sequences but the writers left him in a side story role, which was too bad.

Grand Forks, ND Housing Market

Trends from the previous month:

  1. The overall market is experiencing a price drop in single family homes, not only in the absolute price of average and medium homes values but in the price/sq.ft. The price drop is totally due to homes selling for less than $500,000. Homes above this value are posting a slight increase in value but the sample size is likely too small be statistically significant.
  2. There are approximately 14% fewer homes on the market in December.
  3. All houses are experiencing a significant increase in the days on the market before selling.RE Housing Dec 2017