PARACOMBE ROCKS BESIDE THE GORGE

Paracombe Adelaide Hills Holland Creek Riesling 2014 

$20; 13% alcohol; screw cap; 92++ points 

It was red that introduced me to Paracombe. It was the first Adelaide Hills Affair about two dozen years back. In a crowded room in Hahndorf I sat tasting a long line of glasses when a great fist thrust through over my shoulder, offering me another. It was Paul Drogemuller. I took a sniff and suggested ironstone must be in the vineyard and we've been mates ever since. The vineyard's peppered with shotgun ironstone. And  that was a beautiful Shiraz. 

Conversely, on my first visit to Paracombe soon after, it was obvious Paul's nose was enticed by elegant fizz. We kicked barrels in the tractor shed and he showed me some lovely reds, especially a stunning Cabernet franc, but when the fizz experiments came out of the bins and he did a quick frothy disgorge of 'em I was a goner.

Para means beside. A combe is a steep gully or gorge. There were great Shiraz vineyards up there in that freak basin/plateau above the Torrens Gorge early in the white colony. Such fruit was the basis of John Davouren's first Penfolds St Henri experiments in the 'fifties. He'd basically pinched the recipe developed at Kanmantoo St George's cellars in the late 1800s by the great French winemaker, Edmund Mazure. I like to think the ancient Shiraz vines Paul bought from a disinterested neighbor, dug up one by one and transplanted beside his house once contributed to St Henri. It's that style, but Paul picks it real ripe now to make the majestic Paracombe Somerville.

Big Droggie has gone on with his wife Kath and two splendid offspring, Sarah and Ben, to build an impressive and highly-respected winemaking business in that same upland basin above the Onkaparinga Gorge.

While the reds are always good and frequently really delicious, they've often been much bigger and more alcoholic than I'd expect of an upland vineyard. That's Droggy giving his customers the stuff they like. Not that he doesn't make more elegant reds: his beautifully-balanced 2009 Ruben blend was the highest-pointing wine in an entire Royal Melbourne Wine Show.

The whites are always delicate beauties.

This Riesling comes from a friend's vineyard deep in a nearby gully. It's all gentle musk and lime in the fragrance division, with just a touch of red dust sprinkled on top, reflecting the mudstone of the vineyard: it's like the water-retentive Reynella siltstone which provided half the contents of the mighty early Granges, beautiful McLaren Vale ground now covered with friggin houses. The only bit of this precious geology left in the Vales is at Seaford Heights, which the Labor government is still determinedly covering with dormitoria and tupperware villa rash.

Sorry. Off the track. Take a schlück, and the palate is more fleshy and comforting than most of the tough slide-rule austerities of Clare and Eden, which need years unless you have a slide-rule palate like mine. This  texture is limy and comforting and creamy and fleshy, after the German Mosel style, where there's similar geology, although the mudstone there is slightly more compressed and slatey. Oops, I did it again.

The wine winds off into a tight lemony finish, but each time you think it's gone, it's back, leaving a feeling like a lick of slate in he middle of all that fine custardy cream. This is what makes you very hungry, and yearn for the sort of wok-cooked seafood that Big Droggy simply can't stop cooking. Drool. 

Paracombe Adelaide Hills Sauvignon Blanc 2014 

$21; 12.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92 points 

Droggy's was the first Adelaide Hills Sauvignon blanc that really slew me. It's always better than most of its local rivals, and more delicate and rosy than the savagely grassy buggers from Niew Zillun and the rest of the Adelaide Hills. This one's exemplary: musk and roses and lime pith ooze up with comforting confection and unscented cosmetic cream aromas. The texture's not at all sharp or cutting like your average Kiwi model, but very slightly buttery and satisfying. It's a calmative as much as a stimulant. I reckon that without being servile, it swerves to suit your mood. It appears to be low in methoxypyrazine, which supplies the tomato leaf greenness which we have come to expect from Marlborough Savvy-b. Like a gentle balm this one sits in the mouth, eventually giving rise to extremely fine, gentle, dusty tannins that go on and on within its smooth comforting unction. Bring me a slice of fresh star fruit with a dollop of young goat's curd on a thin slice of rye please Philip. Okay. Yes. Immediately, the writer tells himself, thoughtfully.

The Droggies a few years back

Paracombe Adelaide Hills Pinot Gris 2014 

$20; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 90 points 

These Paracombe whites are like three pastels lying side-by-side in the middle of the big collection. As a colourblind synæsthete, I'm hardly reliable about which section of the pastel box, but if you find the bit where they look a bit like the colour of flushed English cheeks I reckon you're close. Maybe some freckles are in order. I know! It's Kath! I don't mean to intrude in a marriage I respect, but suddenly, after all these years, I suspect Paul makes white wines which reflect on his eternal addiction to his beloved. Who is, of course, of German descent like Droggy, although she comes from Lobethal, all the way across on the other side of the Torrens Gorge.

Damn. I can't help myself with this habitual anthropomorphisation. The act is as boring as that ugly damn word. So forget that bit.

This wine's the most viscous of the three, and is immediately more melony and fleshy, like nashi pear and honeydew melon. Its delicious texture is what makes it: if drunken chicken came with it, I'd knock off now and accubate.

It's a long, viscous, drooly wine. Perhaps more north Italy grigio in style than the more austere Alsace gris. Dudden madder. Best bit is that like its beautiful siblings, it's rudely modest in the price division. Don't think. Go, buy, drink. It's spring! 

DISCLAIMER: This might be indulgent, but it's Droggie and me having fun and it might help you realise what a big bastard he is, lovely boy ... his fist is nearly as big as my head: just right for holding the footy

CASTAGNA'S 2014 RELEASE: 12 AND 13

Still pushing the boundaries:

Castagna makes rad 13 whites

and tight 12 reds for the cellar

by PHILIP WHITE

Julian Castagna was Australia's first biodynamic winemaking hero. There were others of the faith, of course, but when the first serious wines emerged from the Castagna Vineyard at Beechworth in 2001 it was immediately evident that the bar would suddenly be set very very high.

Castagna's Genesis Syrah was a radical beauty. It came out of nowhere. The 2009 was the clear winner in the Top 100 I conducted for years in The Advertiser. I seem to recall several thousand wines and about 400 Shiraz entries and ringing this bloke I didn't know to ask him how he'd done it and he whispered “Do you really want to know?” and without much of a pause: “... It's biodynamic.”

Castagna went on to dominate that competition for years. One year I gave the top gong of the whole damn outburst to his rosé.

Now, with his wife Carolann and son Adam, he's jumping around at the forefront of revolutionary or reactionary whites, depending upon your point of view. While it's common to sing great operas about his reds, I reckon a lot can be learnt by spending a few days with the four whites he released at his Northern Alps vineyard on Saturday.

Castagna Growers' Selection Beechworth Harlequin 2013

$35; 13% alcohol; DIAM cork; 85+++ points 

Coppery-gold from extended skin contact in amphoræ, after the ancient Caucasus style, this is as close as white wine gets to red. It's shy, even a wee bit sullen to sniff, which is why the makers suggest cellar temperature and a decanter. But wave the shotgun at it and it begins to cast off its slumber and mumble to rub its gurry eyes. It smells of autumn. Decay. Worzel Gummidge. The very last pears and quinces of the season, dropping soft from their boughs. Kingston black cider apples. It has the forceful texture of a well-balanced red, with that sort of dusty tannin. But the flavour is not at all red: it's more like soft-candied orange rind as much as those over-ripe pears and apples. 

So you know what I'd do? I'd stuff a brawny chook with whole cumquats, like peel on, lumps of fresh ginger and garlic cloves, just cut in half. Some chunks of dried ciabatta might make it a little more conventional. And some fresh herb, like tarragon and sage. Stuff it all in so hard the cumquats squash and bleed a little. Sew your bird up good and tight, baste her with with some rock salt and roast her slow. If you forgot to pluck her, give up at this point. 

Put a bottle of this Harlequin in a decanter for a day, then put the decanter in an ice bucket for fifteen minutes before serving. Let it warm in the glass and it's suddenly a 90-pointer plus. If this combination results in any children, you could name them after the varieties mixed herein: Roussanne, Sauvignon blanc, Semillon and Viognier, in descending order of volume. I reckon that'd be a first.

Egg-shaped amphoræ fermenters at Castagna ... all photos Philip White

Castagna Growers' Selection Beechworth Chardonnay 2013 
$35; 12% alcohol; DIAM cork; 86++ points 

Made earthy and get-down with a little Burgundian vendageur sweat, this is a cheeky devil of a wine, and tough. It has that sharp reek of cracked stone - granite in the case of Beechworth - and then you think you're nearing a smell of fruit and you get that cheesy picker again. The wine is quite solid of frame; stocky and firm without chub. It reminds me of bitter melon (Momordia chirantia) and isovaleric acid, the powerful pheromone which is predominant in humans and valerian - IVA can occur in secondary ferment. And maybe it reminds me of tarragon. Then comes the standard grape acid: tight and stroppy and as dry as bone china. The wine leaves a tidy little lozenge of ginger and pear smack in the middle of the tongue. This is the sort of structure that drives me straight toward crayfish on the flame. So I grab that naughty picker and jump the TGV to Marseilles for crustaceans on the wharf, where you can still get a waft of Gauloises or Gitanes on the right day, mixing with that acrid reek of Africa. Another three or four points are due after 24 hours of air.

Castagna Growers' Selection Beechworth Roussanne 2013

$35; 14% alcohol; DIAM cork; 93+ points 

Röst gefr ödlingr iastar

- öl virdi esvá – fyrdum.

Thögn fellir brim bragna 

- biórr forn er that – horna. 

Máls kann mildingr heilsu 

- miödr heitir svá – veita. 

Strúgs kemr í val veiga 

 - vín kallak that – galli.

Immediately recognising this as a Viking wine, I grabbed for my Edda, Snorri Sturluson's primer on how poets should address kings in early 1200s Iceland. This Roussanne has something very ancient about it, almost mystical, but in a framework and template that is as cool and considered and icily deliberate as modern Norse design. Or really good vodka. 

Not that I mean cold. For this wine is full of warmth. It has a burnished Golden Syrup hue, almost as if the Jarl wanted everybody to know what it was like to drink from his golden cup. It has really sexy honey notes, approaching sweet mead, and then there are waves of crême caramel and the insinuation of so much sugar that you can easily see yellow peaches poaching in sauternes. 

So Edda came to mind, and I stepped once again through the viking drinks menu with Snorri, just to be totally satisfied that this is the choicest of cups. Roughly translated, the verse above says "The King gives currents of yeast (that is what I adjudge ale to be) to men. Men’s patience is dispelled by surf (that is old beer) of horns. The Prince knows how speech’s salvation (that is what mead is called) is to be given. In the choicest of cups comes (this is what I call wine) dignity’s destruction."  Tilsagt verse, Snorri Sturluson, Skalholt, Iceland 1179 – 1241 

This wine is not sweet. It's gorgeous. It gives you all those golden feels and ends up as fine and dry and chalky as a geometry teacher.

Slice some abalone steaks about as thick as a Granita biscuit. Fold each one in a linen tea towel, put it on timber and smack it firmly once square on with a steak hammer. Once. Grill 'em quick in a real hot iron pan with salt, fresh pepper and ginger. And/or garlic. Hit 'em with some lime juice and eat 'em like biscuits: devour each one with a skölful or a horn of this beautiful threat to your dignity.

Carolann, Alexi, Adam and Julian Castagna with respective adoring hounds

Castagna Beechworth Ingénue 2013 

$55; 14% alcohol; DIAM cork; 95 points 

This smells like some mysterious midnight cream for the neck, from Guerlain or Lancôme. Like you can hear her putting it on, but you never get to see much more than that throat with just a line of moonlight along it where the fingers stroked. It's just disgustingly sensual. It smells like the flesh of the magnolia petal, or that of the jasmine, without the overwhelming fragrance of the pistil.  I don't think the Ingénue name applies this vintage: there's nothing simply endearing or innocent about this. You know you're in trouble from the start: it's just sicko lush and leaden. And I know everybody thinks Viognier should taste like apricot but that's just not here. Maybe some would report a few slivers of white peach with a blush, but that's not right, either. If we must speak of fruit, it's nashi pear. But even that's to pass it off. It's more creamy. And now I've whacked half the bottle and haven't once thought of food. Easily the best Viognier I know. 

Castagna Beechworth Un Segreto 2012 

$75; 13% alcohol; DIAM cork; 94+++ points

It would seem this recipe is pretty well set in the granite stone of the Castagna vineyard now. Not only does Julian know which patch of the block is best included, but he seems certain in advance how much Shiraz should go in with the Sangiovese. 

This new release, like the best 2012s right across the south-east of Australia, is freakishly tight, and highly reluctant to let many hints loose about exactly where it's thinking of going should you happen to leave the back door open and the leash off. But it has what I call the Plucking Day whiff of the chookhouse, which takes me straight back up the back steps into the kitchen. Mum's got her sleeves up and her pinny on and because she's got stuffing and gizzards up to her elbows she says "Oooh I'm glad you're home! Can you just push this hair back out of my eyes?" I find this unusual, rustic - but to me endearing - aroma in many favourite Sangioveses. Especially the best Italian ones, if they haven't been Super-Tuscanned to death, with Merlot and Cabernet and extravagent raw oak and whatnot. "Westernised," I call that. It's like putting pineapple on a pizza. 

Now forget that dusty feathers smell, and think about a blueberry based drink with ripe juniper and bilberry; all velvety flesh but no sugar. And then stop thinking completely while you stack a sixpack in the coolest cellar you know for at least five years. This wine will blow your mind. Just go drink something else for awhile. 

Castagna Genesis Beechworth Syrah 2012 

$75; 13.5% alcohol; DIAM cork; 94+++ points 

Paris, Texas, right? The bit they missed. Harry Dean Stanton stops marchin across the desert like a madman and marries Nastassja Kinsky who stops whorin in the perve booths and everything works out all right and this is their baby. 

By the time the 2012 Grange and other wilder wonders like the Roennfeldt's Roads come out in 2016 and 2017, I shall be completey over apologising for and making promises about the stubborn, intense, yet elegant offspring of that vintage. Bad luck. It's one of those years. 

Better quality if you wait. 

So here we have a Genesis which is nothing like the juicy, electrifying one which sprayed my brains all over the ceiling at the Top 100 Tasting all those years ago and ended up winning the whole damn thing. That got me thinking about biodynamics, I tell you. Nope, this wine is a generation beyond that still-delicious forerunner. The vines are older: they're well into probing the tiniest cracks in that rock. And then you've got a year with its eyes on the horizon and its boots on its feet. So it's a dry, ungiving lickblock of velvet and dust we've got here; in a sublime autocompressed structure, with all that stoic chin up stuff and fruit so dry it will deter many until it starts to melt and dribble in a decade. 

Perhaps more than any other Castagna, this one proves to me this vineyard's unassailable right to join the best of Australia's Shiraz gardens. So is it moving from the left wing to centre? Nope. It's simply growing up. Stopped whorin. Stopped marchin crazy cross the desert.

Castagna Vineyard at Beechworth, on the clean and breezy northern side of the Australian Alps in Victoria ... this photo by Julian Castagna

CRITICISING WINE CRITICISM

 
There's a lot of bristly haggling about the role of 'wine writers' lately. I've always preferred to call  myself a wine critic and get on with it.

Ten years ago, Eric Beecher and Jane Gribble ran a hot little half A4 stapled weekly called The Reader. Deputy Editor Jane Nethercote called and asked about the nature of writing on wine. I was delighted at the accuracy they'd employed in publishing the quotes. That's rare. Anyway, given all the current hubbub about its politics, I dug this ten year old interview out.

I don't think any changes are necessary. All that's gone is the newspapers. And I don't attempt to taste nearly so much average wine these days. 

The Reader became Crikey and, in a way, InDaily.

Funny, eh? Nope? 

Philip White, Wine Writer 

The Reader, Friday 22 October 2004

Philip White is a wine writer, editor and broadcaster who has contributed to many Australian newspapers and magazines here and abroad. He has written the wine column in Adelaide's The Advertiser for 16 years. 

What do you think about the standard of wine writing in Australia and beyond? 

There's too much thespian vanity; not enough imaginative, attractive, intelligent writing. There's no poetry. The glossies are repetitive gastroporn. Nobody admits that alcohol's a deadly drug. Publishers want lists of brand names in bold face. Who writes about organics, or wine, environment, and salinity? Industrial grapeyards threaten our river and ground water like cotton and rice do. Surely water's gastronomically important? 

Is the wine writer's job just to find and recommend good wines, or is there a wider role to educate, inform, editorialise and entertain? 

The job is to sell newspapers by doing all that reliably. Few take your advice if your writing's not attractive. 

What do you say to people who say they can't understand a lot of wine writing? 

Who'd blame them? English lacks words specific to flavours and smells, unlike our vocab for colour. Winos revert to confounding, exclusive language. Like film crews: they develop a patois that gives them privacy on the set. I could talk about 'yeast autolysis' and nobody'd twig. But call a Krug 'nipple polish' and most readers get my drift. 

Speaking of thespian vanity .. photo Steve Hardacre, from  Made In Adelaide - The People - Including the Satchell Tapes (Marie Appleton, Savvas Publishing 1987)

What are your credentials? 

My mentors were all great winemakers: Max Schubert, David Wynn, Gerard Jaboulet, Jack Kilgour. All dead and gone, while their wines live on. In the '70s I was a thirsty writer, who gradually discovered my good memory for aroma and flavour. Now I taste over 6,000 wines a year, and constantly travel the vineyards. I have to get out and taste the dirt. 

Why become a wine writer? 

My lovely brother and cousin were killed on the way to my grandmother's funeral, so I stayed in the pub for four months. Eventually a mate suggested I apply for a job editing a wine magazine that wanted a writer rather than a wine snob. They pointed me at a bench of all the Jimmy Watson winners and asked me for my descriptions. I got the job. I could work and keep drinking. 

What are the most over-used adjectives in wine writing? 

Buzz words come and go. Mineral and minerality are currently over-used and abused. Which mineral do they mean? All minerals taste different. Once it was mercaptan, which nobody could define. When Bob Haupt was editor of The National Times he pinged me for using herbaceous, becuse it wasn't 'user friendly.' So for months I recommended only user friendly wines. 

Do you ever buy wine, or do you just drink all your freebies? 

I'll start the day tasting a dozen or so free samples, before dressing, and progress from there til I'm shagged. It all goes down the sink. It's lonely work. I can't wait to get to The Exeter for a drink at the end of the day: Campari, gin or vodka with bitters in the summer; whisky in the winter, maybe a wheat beer. I buy wine for special meals, or to accompany specific dishes. 

With so much free wine, and so many invitations to enjoy the hospitality of wine producers, how does a wine writer stay independent? 

The moment I recommend inferior drinks, my reputation wilts. The premium wine community is very small, and nothing escapes attention. I rarely accept free trips or attend extravagent launches - you'd get arse cancer from all that magazine food. Independence is elusive while you're friends with makers of the best wines internationally. 

How do you feel about wielding your critical power? 

Nothing pleases me more than seeing success bless a winemaker who's done it responsibly, cleanly, intelligently, and modestly. I search for them relentlessly, and urge my readers to share my joy in a glassful. Conversely, I hate cheats and greed, so to hell with those. 

Do you ever get sick of drinking wine? Can you afford to? 

I can't afford to swallow most of the mono-cultural, industrial, refinery-made wine which 'makes the industry what it is today.'

photo The Advertiser - Celebrity Fridges - 1990

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THE VINEYARD IS COMING OVER THE HILL

I put the little Sony on the table at the local boozer, The Royal Oak at Clarendon, pointed it across the road, pushed the button, and got this snap of the vineyard coming over the hill. There'll be no more green after this; just in the last two days, everything's turned brown.

A QUARTET OF POSH CHARDONNAYS

Kooyong Faultline Mornington Peninsula Chardonnay 2012 

$60; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap; 92 points 

There's not much of your actual fruit to sniff here: no peach or melon aromas or much of what you'd normally expect to find rising from a glass of your actual Australian Chardonnay. Hang on: Maybe there is some melon: the crinkly skin of the canteloupe, the rock melon which is what the Americans call a muskmelon. Oh yes, it also smells like rock, or at least the guano rock of Nauru: dry, sharp and acrid. Dusty, dry hessian. Burlap. Hemp. The palate is slender and edgy, with a hint of that melon. No, it's not canteloupe, it's more like honeydew flesh. Maybe a very creamy pear. The acid is not so sharp as to dominate that sinuous, almost brittle sensation; it's more of a squeeze of lemon on that fresh-sliced pear and honeydew. It's a perfect, staunch drink for chicken or snapper baked soft in their own juice or stock with a handful of fresh tarragon. Its sister, the Farrago ($60; 13.5%; 91+), is along the same lines, but perhaps not so crunchy and a little more lime-and-lemony, with a comforting whiff of grilled cashew. Both wines are best served cold from a decanter: it's really entertaining to watch them unfold and swell as they warm. 

Oakridge Guerin Vineyard Yarra Valley Chardonnay 2013

 $36; 13.4% alcohol; screw cap; 93+ points 

This Guerin Vineyard is rock'n'roll: its Pinot is outstanding, and this white's distinguished, to say the least. It has that edgy Nauru/burlap/superphosphate reek, like the Faultline, but more immediate flesh along those pear and lime/lemonjuice lines. It's more sensuous, without being fat. Somewhere between what seems to be increasingly called curvy, and what was once called slender, back when Australian humans could still boast a touch of that condition. It's fine of flavour, almost fragile, with pithy tannins leaning on the citrus acidity, and a really neat, slightly waxy texture. Once again, it's cut to accompany big baked fish or pale fowl, but it would also swim tidily beside the sort of toasty leatherjacket or brown-grilled garfish Shazza and David presented yesterday at the sublime Fino. Oooh hell that little Willunga joint rocks! But, really. Let's think of Chardonnay. These wines are near the top of what Australia makes of this tricky, lazy Burgundian white. I don't think they're close to either of the supreme Penfolds' multi-vineyard blends just let loose, like the Yattarna or the Reserve Bin 13A Adelaide Hills wine, but they're very good. Which makes me wonder: if this is the best we can do thirty years after the ebullient bulldog, Len Evans (below) announced that "Chardonnay will be the vanilla of the Australian wine industry" and urged its planting from everywhere from Burke to Blanchetown and even Piccadilly, from Hoddle's Creek to Horror Gulch, way down there in the Badlands,  well what? Why? The Oakridge Funder and Diamond Drive Block model ($75; 13.4%; 93++) is finer and longer, but fairly, ummmm, spendy. So what am I saying about Chardonnay? Unless you're growing it in the coolest bottom bits of southern Victoria or Western Australia, the highest of the Adelaide Hills, or Tasmania, you might be better off growing muscat or hemp. Forget bloody vanilla.  

     

THE BIRTHDAY OF ANNIKA BERLINGIERI

Today I lunched with two very important people: the tomato fetishist and Snotra of the wood oven Annika Berlingieri (left) and recyclatron artist Annabelle Collett, who made the trippy woven plastic artwork with the spoons and stuff. We went to our favourite restaurant, the astonishing Fino. Please go there and be healed ... photos Philip White

SCOTCH TOO SWEET? ADD VODKA

As the current whisky sales boom continues, and in value (not volume) the USA sales of all whiskies appear to have surpassed vodka, there's one thing you can be assured of: To feed the growth, the enormous barrel stacks of ageing scotch in Scotland are being pillaged, so quality gradually drops as more compromises are made and we see many new brands suddenly appearing, sometimes at obscene prices. To cover the lower than ideal quality of many of these blends, it seems to me that the factories are adding caramel like never before. Caramel is permitted as a colourant. Handy, eh? - it makes a sweeter product for the bogan and costs a lot less than good oak. I've been adding a little neutral grain vodka, like Absolut, to the disappointing ones, in the hope it breaks that sweet additive down. It usually does, but if you try it, I reckon you'll find that sometimes the vodka makes the caramel seem even more obvious. Most scotch whisky, malted or not, and Irish whiskey is, after all, not much more than barrel-aged vodka. Have a play. On the other hand, within the UK, whisky sales are falling as vodka increases, perhaps influenced by this increase in simple caramel sweetness in blended whiskies, be they malted or not. Don't panic on behalf of the UK, however: The Guardian reports that scotch whisky exports are currently bringing the British economy £135 a second.

WE SMELL THROUGH ALL OUR ORGANS

Treeferns at the falls in Possum Hollow in the Mount Worth State Park, Strzelecki Ranges, South Gippsland, Victoria ... photo James Mead

 The falls of Possum Hollow: 

it's a feeling more than a smell

and it goes in through our skin

by PHILIP WHITE 

An apocryphal yarn has the linguistically fastidious, but physically filthy 18th century English writer Dr Sam Johnson entering a carriage to sit beside a noblewoman. 

"Dr. Johnson, you smell," she politely complained. 

"No, Madam," he said. "You smell. I stink." 

Bold new science is revealing that the human body is riddled with the sorts of olfactory receptors which we always thought were limited to our nasal cavities. Now we know these stink detectors are all over us and all through us, as common as the Doctor's offending sweat glands. These clever little aroma laboratories constantly monitor our condition and our safety: it appears that as they smell and sniff, they play a major part in monitoring and controlling all our major organs.

Victoria's South Gippsland was a highly aromatic place to spend one's first decade. Given the acrid heat of this dusty old continent, those wet Gippsland hills were almost un-Australian.

Our farm, on the edge of the Mount Worth State Park in the Strzelecki Ranges, was an organoleptic orgy. Vegetable and decorative gardens after the British style, cattle, orchard, swamp, bracken, horses, dogs and florid Blackwood coppices offered a sensual rainbow of fragrance. Annual rainfall was between 1200 and 1500mm; summers rarely dry enough to see pasture brown off. It was moist, comforting, and heady - often too damp for cut pasture to become baling hay. We'd make silage instead, fermenting the grass to make a moist stockfeed.

One enemy of silage is oxygen, which causes buttery butyric acid to form. I find this acid alluring in tiny volumes in, say Hunter Semillon, but horrid when it overwhelms a poorly-made red. 

And there I was, detecting it as a toddler in cow tucker.

When we'd climb into the old Cyclops Rover and head over the range into the incredible Mountain Ash forest in Possum Hollow, with its floral canopy a hundred metres above, and its lyrebirds, treeferns and mighty waterfalls below, the smell knob wound right round to eleven. 

But even as an infant on my grandfather's mighty shoulders, I seemed to realise that the sensation offered by such a lush environment was more than aromatic. It was a rich, overwhelmingly natural feeling that came in through every pore. Its hypnotic seduction did more than explain why little boys tended to wander off through the dense understorey in search of that secure, mystical nirvana called Lost. 


Few such intoxicated, curious pioneers came back.

Fifty years later, the opposite feeling, the one that makes me cranky and wish like shit that dear old Pop would appear and carry me out, is the wine show hall. As my organoleptic receptors reach the peak of their analytical proficiency, that heady cacophany of fruit, wood, ethanol, industrial chemical additions, cardboard, tea towels, detergents and whatnot is an assault I'll do anything to avoid, even without the sophisticated stink of other people. It is not natural, and has nothing to do with gastronomy. And it is not just a smell that goes into the nose. It is indeed a feeling. It is all over me.

Take Canberra. Man, that joint might mount an impressive annual Floriade, but if you climb from the flying cigar tube through the airport lounge into a taxi and thence to any government building, like say, the Federal Parliament or the National Gallery, you'll smell a wall of chemical stink so toxic it'll make a man's balls shrivel.

No wonder our National Capital is swarming with madmen.

Following organoleptic science for 35 years has been frustrating: there's a dearth of good research. Fine art, architecture, urban planning and such have devoured a good slice of financial attention to please our eyes; the symphony and the incredible complexity of digital recording and playback is only the start of what we do for our ears; the textile industry, plastics, carpentry and so on are perfect indicators of how we reward our sense of touch ... and yet we know little of the two organs which just happen to be smack in the middle of the front of our heads: the mouth and nose.

Perversely, we now spend more time photographing our food than we allocate to the science of how we grow, make, absorb and enjoy it. Rather than properly learn about the building blocks that give us flavour and sustenance, we convert food to a digital currency that pleases and teases only the eyes. This is delusional, and the trigger for my 1980s invention of the terms 'magazine food' and 'gastroporn.' Perving on food photos does no more to help us understand flavour, smell and sustenance than a sesh of sadoporn assists inadequate males to understand women.

There could be a touch more honest punksterfication in modern gastroporn: the author savouring the coq au vin he made from a troublesome local rooster ... photo Satanika

But things are coming on in aroma science. In a discovery that gives me a rush of excitement nearly as good as the falls of Possum Hollow, Dr Hanns Hatt and his Ruhr University Buchum team in Germany have discovered olfactory receptors all over the human body. Those body management switches we normally imagine to be somewhere up our noses are actually in our hearts, lungs, livers and brains - all our major organs. Which includes the biggest organ of them all: our skin.

There was a frisson of juvenile excitement when Hatt's team discovered olfactory receptors in human testes and sperm. Once confirmed, I reported this here a year back, missing the simultæneous news of the USA National Academy of Science publication of a paper that showed that taste receptors in the testes of mice were so sensitive to destructive chemicals in the environment that they directly affected fertility by slowing sperm production.

Dr Hanns Hatt: smelling with his nose for a change

So Big Pharma and Big Agrochem can directly limit population. Combine all this with the lastest from Dr Hatt, and we're getting closer to understanding why Possum Hollow was a turn-on for little Whitey, and why the Royal Agricultural and Horticultural Society of South Australia's wine show hall feels like such a threat to the bigger one. 

As Alex Stone reported last week in the Science section of the New York Times, Jennifer Pluznick, an assistant professor of physiology at Johns Hopkins University discovered in 2008 the vital role played by olfactory receptors in the kidneys of mice: they manage blood pressure and blood filtration rates in reaction to the smell of the blood.

There's more to smell than meets the nose ... illustration by George Grainger Aldridge from Wines of Great Depth (Evidence of Vineyards on Mars, Aldridge and White, 2013)

Amongst these and many other wonders, Stone reports that in June 2009, the USA National Library of Medicine/National Institutes of Health Journal of Biological Chemistry published a paper that showed that when exposed to the odorant beta-ionone, olfactory receptors in human testes reduced cancer cell proliferation. Beta-ionone is a primary factor in the bouquets of roses and violets, aromas which I just happen to find in some of the most beautiful wines.

Emory University's Grace Pavlath has shown that Lyral, a perfume made to smell like Lily of the Valley, influences olfactory receptors in human muscle to the extent that it causes stem cells there to convert to muscle cells and build new tissue. And now Dr Hatt reports that Sandalore, a synthetic perfume that mimics sandalwood, hits one olfactory receptor in human skin with such a blast that it hastens the repair of broken tissues.

All of which bolsters my suspicion that aromas go into us everywhere, and are much more important to our survival than the stuff that gets in through our ears and eyes. It begins to explain asthma, and how a few drops of lavendar oil on the temples and forehead can soothe headache and induce slumber. It will unlock the secrets of aroma therapy massage, and confirm the direct threat that ancient herbal and aromatic medicines present to Big Pharma.

Brilliant scientists like Hatt will explain why we pay such high prices to enjoy the thrill of certain wines and foods. [A $1-per-snap tax on food photographs would pay for their research.] They'll explain why the best way to enjoy great wines is at a picnic in their healthy, petrochem-free vineyards, where the whole body feels and inhales the entire locality's ambient aromatics, and combines those with what's in the glass, and what's in our bellies, infesting the bouquet of our blood, and surging it around the whole big stack of bones, meat and aromatic receptors which is what we call us.

Prepare for the post-nasal trip.

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