Rolf Binder Winery makes some of the best Australian wines. The Rolf Binder Hales 2003 is one of their serious Shiraz wines. I can’t think of better Shiraz than that coming from the Barossa Valley of Australia, and this one is an outstanding example. Rolf Binder Hales Shiraz has a powerful berry aroma out of the bottle. You can almost touch the fruit with your nose. You also smell the flowers and alcohol hiding behind the berries.

The cigar is lit and the wine glass is allowing the oxygen to penetrate the wine as I swirl it around. A little sip gets me ready for the wine’s flavors. As I smoke the cigar a few minutes pass and even though I know that I should let the wine air for a longer period of time, I can’t help it and start drinking. The rich blueberry taste comes through right from the start. It’s thick with sweet undertones of cream, blackberries and flowers. I can still taste touches of alcohol under the flavors but that’s probably my fault for not allowing the wine to air-out longer. It opens up as time goes by and the wine settles. Smokey flavors start to appear in the background, along with more pronounced flower notes.

The Shiraz is extremely smooth and the flavors keep building. You feel the wine getting thicker by the minute. It matches the J.L. Salazar Maduro Churchill I’m smoking as though they were made for each other. The rich smoke from the Salazar Maduro, combined with the interludes of Hales Shiraz, play with one another. They both have a floral background that allows one to flow to the other as though they came from the same terroir.

The cigar is past its halfway point and the wine coats its residue flavors as it flows past the tongue. I was somewhat concerned that the Shiraz wine may overpower the Maduro cigar, but that concern quickly vanishes. They were made for each other.

It’s almost an hour and by this time I’m sharing the red wine with Jose, another wine and cigar lover. My bragging about how the wine complements the cigar, and visa versa, leads him to light one up. His description of the pairing is very similar to mine. Validation is always good. It’s unanimous, this is one of the best cigar and wine match that we’ve ever had.

I opened the refrigerator and pulled out the chilled bottle. I setup the wine glasses and asked a friend to join me. We talked about the cigar that would best go with this wine. After rummaging through 4 humidors, we decided that the taste of a Don Kiki Brown Label cigar would probably complement this exquisite wine. Don Kiki Brown Label is one of the best medium to full bodied cigars out there. The fact that they only cost about $2 each is an extra perk. You just can’t find a cigar this good at this price. My friend had a chance to see my previous post on the Opus Opus match and made it clear that I should have never paired the Opus X with the Opus One. Where was he yesterday?

We both lit the Don Kiki Brown Labels and started puffing them. He smoked a Churchill and I smoked a Toro. Rich clouds of smoke quickly covered the room. The smell of Nicaraguan tobacco, with its characteristic floral notes, blanketed the room. No one complained. As we started drinking the wine, the cigar’s tobacco taste started to develop. It went from earthy to licorice and cocoa. The Toro smoked beautifully and his Churchill started to burn a little too fast on the left side (his left). We quickly noticed that he had turned on the air purifier when I initially told him that we were smoking cigars, and the clean air from the purifier was hitting him on his left side. Fixing the burn issue of his Churchill was easy. We turned off the purifier and the cigar started to even out. We expedited the fix-up with a torch lighter.

The Opus One wine tasted a little different than it did yesterday. Some acidity was noticeable but not much. My buddy couldn’t sense it, but since I had drank it yesterday I was able to compare the wine’s taste from one day to another. The blackberry and smoky tobacco taste of the wine was still there, and went perfectly with the cigar. The cigar’s taste had developed into a complex combination of cocoa cream and toasted nuts. This paired well with the wine’s lush mouth-feel and deep dark berries taste. What a great combination.

As my Toro got shorter, the flavor intensified and was so smooth that I decided to put it down to saver the moment. Figuring that since my cigar is shorter than his Churchill, I needed to pace myself. We compared notes and his Churchill had a mild spice taste that I just couldn’t pick up in my Toro. It could be that since I tend to chew the cigar’s head a little and he doesn’t, I was picking up the stronger flavors that were being condensed as a result of my cigar’s wet head.

Savoring the wine, I proceeded to empty the bottle evenly between us. He gave me crap about his cigar being longer and therefore he deserved more of the wine. Since I had put my cigar down for a while, I showed him that we were down to about the same size. That’s a normal exchange between us. We tend to outwit each other to see who wins. It was my wine and my cigars so I won.

A Brown Label’s finish is a bittersweet moment. The taste intensifies and gets smoother, but on the other hand you know that the experience is about to end. Having finished the cigars, we drank what was left of the wine and both agreed that it was a very good match. We also decided that while this cigar and wine match was excellent, it may have been better with a cigar that has a creamier taste profile. We agreed to meet next week and see if this match can be outdone.