GRAPEVINE

KATHRYN McWHIRTER ON SURPRISES FROM AUSTRALIA AND SOUTH AFRICA

THE STUNNING scoop of the Australian promotion being run by Wine Rack, Bottoms Up and Thresher until 20 Sep-tember is the 1988 Kirri Billi Coonawarra Merlot, Rosemount (at a mere pounds 5.99 down from pounds 12.29, Wine Rack only). It has glorious ripe blackberry fruit, oak, a streak of treacly flavour (but not sweetness) and lovely balance. Supplies are limited to three cases at each branch. A range will be open for tasting at Wine Rack and Bottoms Up at weekends during the promotion. "Buy two, save pounds l" offers at all three outlets include an attractive 1993 Red Cliffs Estate Victoria Colombard Chardonnay (pounds 3.99 down to pounds 3.49), very good for a two-year-old, and a lushly fruity, toasty 1993 St Hallet Chardonnay (pounds 7.99 down to pounds 7.49).

NOT reduced but worth snapping up from Wine Rack's huge Australian range are three other wines, two from Tim Adams in the hilly to mountainous Clare Valley 80 miles north of Adelaide: 1994 Tim Adams Semillon (pounds 8.99; also in Bottoms Up, The Australian Wine Club - tel: 01753 594925, and selected Tesco) a stunningly fruity wine with concentrated flavour that you go on tasting for ages after you have swallowed. It's delicious now, but could age and develop new flavours for five or ten years. 1994 Tim Adams The Fergus (pounds 8.99 Wine Rack; also from The Australian Wine Club) is made from a curious combination of grapes: mostly Grenache, plus Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Shiraz and Malbec. It's impressive now with its lovely mint toffee flavour and intense, damson-like fruit, but it should be even better in a year or two, or more. The Grenache grapes were grown by Tim Adams's neighbours, Ferg and Viv Mahon, hence the name. The other wine is another Grenache, the big, super-ripe 1994 Samuel's Bay Barossa Valley Grenache (pounds 6.49 down to pounds 5.99), made by Adam Wynn, a red bursting with cherry and raisin fruit - and a generous dollop of alcohol.

AN Australian snip at Oddbins is the delicious, dry 1989 McWilliam's Eden Valley Rhine Riesling (pounds 3.99). This fresh, intensely limey and honeyed white could justify a much higher price. Fullers have a superb, big, ripe, toasty-oaky 1994 Devil's Lair Margaret River Char-donnay (pounds 9.99), which is delicious now but would improve for a year or two if left - and you can't say that about many Austral-ian Chardonnays.

SOUTH Africa's Chenin Blanc grapes tend to make easy, unsophisticated, everyday drinking wine. But the 1995 Winelands Bush Vine Chenin Blanc, Stellenbosch, Kym Milne (pounds 4.49 Wine Rack, Thresher, Bottoms Up) is rather finer than most, dry and quite concentrated, with flavours of honey, apple and herbs. Australian consultant Kym Milne brought in a Frenchman and a New Zealander last vintage to make, among other wines, this special Chenin Blanc. The grapes came from selected old vineyards where the vines, nearing the end of their useful lives and still trained in the old fashioned bush shape rather than growing on modern wire trellises, gave very low yields of flavour-rich grapes.

HOW much would you pay for these? A winey friend waved two anonymous glasses of red wine under my nose. Both tasted like classy, rich Pinot Noir, and at pounds 11.99 I guessed pounds 5 too high. 1993 Sterling Vineyards Winery Lake Pinot Noir, Carneros (pounds 6.99 Oddbins) is Pinot without pain - without the sometimes bitter tannin of Pinot Noir from Burgundy, and minus the high price. This one comes from the Napa Valley and has lovely, savoury, spicy flavours and strawberry fruit, subtly overlaid with oak. 1993 Franciscan Pinnacles Vineyards, Monterey Pinot Noir (pounds 6.99 Oddbins) is very nearly as stunning, a little fatter than Burgundy but nevertheless a fine, elegant red, with raspberry perfume and the classic savoury flavours of Pinot Noir. Look out also from mid-September in Wine Rack, Thresher and Bottoms Up for an even better Chilean: 1994 Valdivieso, Pinot Noir, Lontue (pounds 5.99), which has really rich and concentrated savoury and raspberry flavours.