Alternative Wine Show Tasting 2006

Mildura hosts the Alternative Wine Show and the head judge this year was Max Allen.
I went along for the open tasting and tried a range of Sangiovese, Pinot Gris, Viognier and a few other varieties that took my fancy.
I made a mistake right at the start by tasting a Nebbiolo wine a friend handed me which then left my mouth feeling puckered from the tannin for the next half hour.
The wine was 2004 Arrivo Nebbiolo and had been awarded a gold. It was a big wine and of course full of tannin.
I then went and perused the Sangioveses, but unfortunately most of the gold medal wines were already gone. They were the 2005 Pizzini Sangiovese and the 2005 Brokenwood Sangiovese. I did find one great wine amongst the others which was the 2004 Castagna La Chiave Sangiovese. It had more fruit weight with cherries, mint and liquorice. It was also not as oak dominated as the others. In general many of the sangioveses were quite dusty.
My palate was already quite tired at this stage so I didn't have the patience to go right through each variety. I tried the Dal Zotto Barbera and then the Nepenthe Zinfandel. I think I've tried both before, but neither was that great.
I then tasted a gold medal wine which was the Ferngrove Wines King Malbec 2004 from Western Australia. It was pretty good. Really rich fruit with plums and bosenberries with a rich balanced palate with good length.
I then did the best I could at cleansing my palate with a cracker and some water before tasting the 2006 Viogniers. In general there was no distinct style amongst the Viogniers and a lot of them were all over the place on the palate. Some were sweet or phenolic or too oily. I tried a few from different regions and producers. Overall I thought the Riverland wines had the most aromatic viogniers, but once again the gold medal wines were all gone. Yalumba is always consistent as well. The Tahbilk viognier was more like a sauvignon blanc with more tropical melon characters. The Little Wine Co Olivine Viognier 2006 was quite nice, but none of the viogniers really stood out.
Then went on the the 2006 Pinot Gris. Once again these all blended in together as many of them were quite similar, but much more consistent quality than the viogniers. The best Pinot Gris I tried was the Henschke Innes Pinot Gris 2006. This was a well balanced tight wine with straw, apple and peach aromatics. The palate had good weight with fine acidity. The Pike and Joyce Pinot Gris 2006 was also quite good.
Overall, the standard level of wines has really lifted in the last few years and there are so many more producers making alternative varieties, but at a much better quality. The same producers are obviously still setting the benchmark though with Pizzini and Henschke always taking out golds for the sangiovese and pinot gris.
I was a bit disappointed I didn't spend more time looking at classes like Durif and Barbera and some of the new stand alone varieties, but I was a bit sick of tasting wine and most of the gold medal wines were gone anyway.