Winer writer RICHARD CALVER feels he was inexorably led, by an almost supernatural force, to write about Nero d’Avola. 

APOPHENIA is the phenomenon where individuals perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things. 

It is also a term to describe a propensity to unreasonably seek definite patterns in random information. 

This patterned happenstance is the start of my story about Nero d’Avola, a red wine grape that is vitally Italian, but grown in Australia since the late 1990s. 

Its origin is Sicilian and it’s named after the town of Avola, which is located in the far south of Sicily: the name means the black grape of Avola. Why did the Mafia cross the road? Forget about it!

It started at the tennis club where one of the women described her recent trip to Sicily where she remarked that wine from this varietal was available in supermarkets, was remarkably cheap but good drinking and she knew that it is the most widely planted grape for red wine production on the island as it thrives in the hot, dry climate. I don’t think she appreciated my statement that I thought I was Italian in a pasta-life. 

Later that week, mate Tom and I stopped in to say hello to John Ings, of Canberra Wine and Spirit Merchants, on the way home from lunch in Civic. John offered us a range of Mallaluka wines that had been on taste the night before, but which he kindly revisited. 

I especially liked the Nero made by young winemaker Sam Leyshon, who has taken over the family’s vineyard in the Yass Valley. The Mallaluka label has become his own and the range of wines is interesting, with the Nero d’Avola my favourite: bold, yet smooth despite the varietal having a reputation for high tannin content. 

The Mallaluka is medium bodied yet mouth filling. Even though it’s the 2022 vintage, it’s drinking well now but I’d reckon that this is a keeper with the structure allowing five or more years storage. 

This is not a budget wine (as the woman from tennis would have me believe): I paid a nudge over $33 for the bottle. This is one to put away for a rainy Wednesday a few years from now.

The third occasion was at the recent Canberra and Region Wine Show trophy presentations where there were an overwhelming number of good local wines on taste. 

Here there were three local Neros on taste. The best two were the Tumblong Hills Table of Plenty 2022, which won a bronze medal, and the Eden Road 2023 Gundagai. 

The Eden Road won top gold and was judged the best red wine of the show, a considerable feat given the quality on display. Eden Road is in Murrumbateman and is headed by Parisian-born Celine Rousseau as winemaker and manager. 

The Gundagai-sourced fruit produces a wine that has depth despite its youth. It had a bouquet garni and vanilla nose with hints of raspberry, the fruit flavour that was also dominant on first taste. 

The mix of vanilla and a savoury rather than an acid or fruit finish makes this an intriguing wine obviously exposed to oak and gratifying in its complexity. It is available for $35 from the winery and is good value at that price, a wine that would also benefit from storage for at least five years. 

None of these events have anything to do with each other except that they reveal something about the events of my life in retirement. Put together though they led inexorably to me being required, by an almost supernatural force, to write about Nero d’Avola. 

“I’ve never had paranoid delusions. Somebody told me I did, but I know they’re lying.” –Anon