HOT GLOVE GIVEN AT TOP DECK CHINWAG

FYEO CASA BLANCA CATERING BULLETIN: their people have released this idigikit image of the dude our people lost reams of brown paper and miles of string tracking ... while juggling the boss's nuclear football in a Riedel Sommelier Burgundy Grand Cru box, big deco dude's been gloving the Washington/NewYork drinks/stemware for Ms USA, Ms China, Ms Russia and Ms Vatican and the lasses ... let's face it, this is where the business hits ... but does anybody know who he is? ... our people are striving to secure the breakfast, lunch and dinner wine and bevvy lists and whatever the national parcels tippled extraneously and like later, apres chewz ... suppliers chains ... BAT chain pullers ... CONFIRMED: Havana Club was big when the gals hit the Pope Frank suite ... Swiss Guard on the way out! ... in the now, company bits of the bonnie HiDec Gen all welcome in the skresh dump box ... FYEO : LK7g45a(iii)VII(c)09-INSERT-M [normal codewasher quickest]

BIGGEST WINE REGIONS IN OZ: NOT VIABLE

Riverland grapegrower and staffer to local right-wing Senator Ann Ruston: Henry Crawford, a diligent defender of his vast region and its irrigation, but not above a drink of Grange, which he cannot grow and the  Riverland cannot make ... photographed here by Milton Wordley, photographer and publisher of the multi-award-winning  A year in the life of Grange, which I wrote of this good drink, which seems to be remaining viable.

 

"Growing grapes in the driest state, on the driest continent, on the edge of the outback, seems incomprehensible, let alone possible," says the Riverland Wine website.  

"However, Riverland wine grape growers ... are passionate, diversified, professional experts who utilise leading edge technology to deliver, with precision, quality grapes. They are, after all, producing up to 30% of Australia's annual crush! 

Some facts about the collapse of viable viticulture in Australia's biggest wine grape regions

by PHILIP WHITE

 

Henry Crawford had a bit of a spray on Twitter. 

The South Australian Riverland grapegrower and shotgun rider/friend/advisor to the local conservative Senator, Anne Ruston, was pissed off with my InDaily piece of September 15th, which discussed Murray-Darling viticulture.

After my editor avoided a major Riverland/InDaily crisis by deciding to publish Henry's response In defence of the Riverland Wine Industry, Henry voiced his "disappointment and frustration at seeing someone who clearly has a passion for wine and the wine industry sink the boot into the Riverland." 

I think that musta bin me.

He then refocussed his tweeting to congratulate Andrew Hastie "on a terrific victory in Canning!" 

Obviously a very busy man, Henry.

Without mentioning any by elections in Western Australia, Andrew Weeks, business manager of Riverland Wine, the leading regional wine industry body, wrote a similar response in The Week That Was.

Andrew complained about my theorising around Murray Darling water use and abuse. He rightfully suggested that in regions of high rainfall, you'll need less irrigation to grow and make a litre of wine, duh, but the ratio of water, whether irrigation or rain, to a resultant litre of wine is about the same in cool regions as in the dry hot inland.

He did not mention washdown water for cleaning and rinsing in the winery. Between one and five litres of washdown water are needed to make one litre of finished wine. In the desert, most of this washdown water comes from the river. In the Hills, it comes off the roof.

That aside, both Henry and Andrew missed my major point. I usually write about the irrigated Murray-Darling wine business in response to its constant whingeing about its failure to make a profit. I was not sinking the boot gratuitously. I wrote in response to those pissant industry leaders who always want more government millions for promotion, more impossibly cheap water, and an ongoing distorted tax sytem which favours plonk over premium.

Like seriously, if you attempt to approach it logically, there is none here in the bullshit arcane structures and stage scaffolds these marginal Australian plonkmongers, with hillbilly politicians for protection, have somehow conspired into ersatz growth.

Like how dumb is that? And we believe it? They expect the poor bloody growers to believe it. Over-supply is essential when you're fighting for space on the least-profitable shelves of the transnational shop.

In its 2015 Vintage Report, the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia (WFA) revealed a 1.67 million tonnes national winegrape crush, "marginally lower than the seven-year average and slightly down on last year’s 1.7 million tonne estimate and 2013’s high of 1.83 million tonnes."

WFA Chief Executive Paul Evans reported a 5% increase in grape prices, but added "This is an industry average and many producers in the warm inland regions in particular continue to experience enormous challenges. Our analysis shows that 92% of production in warm inland areas is unprofitable."

Take a look at the WFA's 2015 Production profitability analysis ... the information in its pie diagrams is indicting as much as devastating.

Amalgamated, Australia's "cool climate" regions, which, in the WFA's estimation mysteriously include the warm Barossa and McLaren Vale, incurred a 43% loss in 2015. These figures compare the cost of growing the grapes to the prices achieved.

Last tasted a few years ago: the back label of the first ever Jimmy Watson Trophy winner, Henry Martin's 1961 Metala Langhorne Creek ... this bottle was brutalised by the piece of cursed bark from Portugal

Moving up along the Murray from its constipated sphincter, we first hit Langhorne Creek, where 77% of the fruit grown sold at a loss, and the average yield per hectare since 2006 is 9.2 tonnes.

The Riverland's next, with a 92% loss at 20 t/ha. 

Get to Murray-Darling-Swan Hill and it's 88% loss at 19.4 t/ha. The Riverina, home of the glorious YellowTail, scores a 97% loss at 14.9 t/ha.

This is Australia's major river system. Its water resources are always stretched. It flows through a desert. We've spent decades and billions investigating it and plugging its leaks and hoping that dredging its estuary will make it run into the ocean while we have more meetings and elections. 

But regardless of how much of this country's strictly limited freshwater they use, these viticulture regions remain insolvent, and still howl for millions of government dollars to help them with their international marketing. 

Marketing!

Which leads me to quality. If your product is of a good enough quality, and there's a demand for it, you'll find a buyer who'll help you trade at a profit without leaning on the taxpayer, whether for cash or impossibly cheap fresh water. Which should be worth more than cash in the driest State in Earth's driest continent.

Generally, modest yields are a good start on the long, uphill road to quality. You get lower yields, and less water in your wine, by using less of it.

Compare those figures above to McLaren Vale, where 34% of the fruit grown made a loss, but the average yield was 6.8 t/ha.

On Mornington Peninsula, only 2% of the crop made a loss and the average yield was 5.1 t/ha.

Given Andrew Weeks' numbers showing that the total volume of rain and irrigation needed to make a tonne of wine is about the same in cooler and warmer regions, it's obvious a great deal more water is wasted on loss-making in the ailing Murray-Darling.

And sure, McLaren Vale also depends partly on irrigation, but most of that comes from recycled, cleaned water from the seaside suburbs. Unlike Clare and the Barossa, which both have private pipelines direct from the River, McLaren Vale uses no Murray-Darling water. And that stack of unprofitable fruit? I'll bet most of that's grown on the wrong geology for the wrong reasons by the wrong people.

One of the most significant independent measures of the quality of Murray-Darling wine - red, at least - is a major trophy whose entry template seems custom-built for the sorts of wine in which the hot irrigated regions purport to excel.

The Jimmy Watson Trophy was set up for the 1962 Royal Melbourne Wine Show so the independent judges could find the best one-year-old red in the show, in order for Watson's wine bar to continue the deceased Jimmy's habit of serving great fresh young reds to table in cleanskin, decanter or jug, direct from barrel.

Such bargains made Jimmy Watson's the legend it is.

The author with Brian and Judson Barry at Brian's 84th in 2011... Brian's not been well

Other than that Stoneyfell Metala Langhorne Creek 1961 blend which won the very first Jimmy Watson trophy, wine from the Murray-Darling has won it on only one other occasion in 53 years. This was Brian Barry's brilliant Berri Co-operative Winery and Distillery's Cabernet Shiraz Dry Red 1972. I shared the last known bottle of this with its wise old maker four years ago, and while its cork looked like a drowned mouse, the wine still afforded us a flicker of its former vivacity.

This dearth of premium quality is locked in a deadly embrace with the price people dare pay for really hot region wines: there's little glory in competing in the international discount bins when the world is awash with cheap wine and there's no water left in your river system.

Bill Moularadellis's Kingston Estate, pride of the Riverland, is the sixth-largest winery in Australia. Its 30 million litre capacity can handle an 80,000 tonne annual crush. While it takes fruit from many regions, 95% of its product goes offshore in bulk.

Bill recently told ABC Rural the prices his winery paid for grapes unfortunately had little to do with how much they had cost to produce.

"We're responding to international market opportunity, and international markets dictate the prices," he said. "We're totally dependent on the export market, so we're exposed to those cold winds of market reality."

Breathing the cold winds of market reality: the author speaking the truth in the very bad Wine Press Club war room with the king hell operatives, including Bill Moularadelis, left, who obviously disagrees, Stuart McNab (since suddenly vanished from his frontline attack role at Treasury, but out there plotting something somewhere) and emcee Brenton Quirini, Empire Liquor ... photo AAAgent Davise

Which pretty much says it, but Riverland Wine's Chris Byrne added further advice. Unlike Bill, Chris doesn't own any 30 million litre wineries.

"Growers and winemakers alike have been trying to grapple with the harsh reality of being part of a global trading business," he said. "If growers can't  become more competitive, they'll need to try something new. We've been saying that now for a good seven, eight, nine, 10 years. We've been saying, know your numbers. If you don't take the trouble to know what your own numbers are, then you may be getting further and further into debt or becoming less and less sustainable."

Since 2010, about 200 Riverland growers have uprooted their vineyards. But if all the figures these great bodies present are reliable, we still face the reality that of the fifty or sixty-plus thousand tonnes of wine the Riverland annually produces, no more than eight per cent of its contributing fruit is grown at a profit.

If you're an ethanol dealer using riverwater and naive human goodwill to mine the desert for sugar via high yield viticulture you could learn a lesson from the miners, admit the boom is over because no-one wants your produce at the price, and get on with improving your plans for your comeback with a more attractive, profitable long-term product.

Besides, we need the water to grow food.

.

NASA SCOOPED: EXCLUSIVE: BRIAN MARTIAN

Meet Brian Martian, the head publican from The Red Planet, the Mars bar chain NASA has spent years negotiating with for joint sponsorship of the first trafficking of isolationist individuals, poets and other troublesome minority groups from Earth. NASA is expected to make this announcement at a historical press conference tomorrow morning, Earth Time ... This is another inter-planetary scoop from DRINKSTERINK ... photo by George Grainger Aldridge, from our Evidence of Vineyards on Mars 2013 expedition ... reports FYEO

GRENACHE: A DAY OF BLOOD AND ROSES

Weddings, funerals, Grenache symposiums ... Sophie Otton, the author and Charlie Whish at Serafino Wines McLaren Vale ... thanks for the lend of the Deuce ... photo Rusty Gallagher

Symposium of seraphims sings glorias to Grenache at Serafino: it was the international day for it

by PHILIP WHITE

International Grenache day wasn't so much an exploding firecracker as a gentle wash of cherries and rose blossoms, as much colour as springtime fragrance with broad-brush strokes of autumn.

We tasted thirteen splendid Grenache wines in a masterclass at Serafino in McLaren Vale.

The masterclass soon developed into a full-blown symposium.

I agreed with Sophie Otton, my co-presenter, who said some of them smelt blue. I smell a tough glinty gunbarrel blue while I suspected, maybe stupidly, that Sophie was referring to a more impressionistic smudge of E minor seventh blues that rose from the table with all those blood-soused fruits and petals.

photo©Milton Wordley

But I'm colourblind and anyway the conversation quickly rolled on to more Euclidian topics than interpretive and sensual, before swirling back through sensuous to viticulture, biochemistry, geology and the oak forests of France.

However you absorbed it, it was a total sensory mess after two hours. Heady. An ocean swell of delight so smooth and huge and overwhelming there was no time to take notes. If not drinking, talking.

Sophie, a Willunga winesleuth who became very famous indeed running the monster Rockpool cellar for Neil Perry, is now Australia editor of the Hong Kong Le Pan magazine. She and I selected the wines. Drew Noon MW, local Grenache grower/maker was to lead the discussion with us. When he fell ill Serafino winemaker and McLaren Flat grape grower Charlie Whish took his seat. Drew's fine now.

None of us had before tasted those thirteen wines together. It was a knockout to compare our presumptuous anticipations of how they'd appear with what eventually oozed from those bottles.

I'd graded my selections from across a spectrum my brain had filed as 'silky to rustic'. My memory had even ranked them.

Silky is that glissando, that seamless gossamer sheen that polishes the maraschino and morello fruits below. This texture, this feeling, this fruit, occurs more as winemakers show Grenache more sensitivity, and perhaps pick it earlier, but it's by no means a modern invention. Nor necessarily a regional thing.

My rustic is where the lumps of country life overcome the chrome. Bits of leather and lignite, burlap and schist, panforte and conserve poke through in varying manners. Blacker berries; smooth to coarse. All welcome!

photo © Milton Wordley

I believe some of this graduation relates to background humidity. High relative humidity tends to produce the shinier, silkier tannins. Being right on the Gulf, McLaren Vale has higher relative humidity than the Barossa. As their geologies and altitudes repeat to a great extent, this change of humidity stands as one of the few really significant differences. Some of the cherries common in, say, McLaren Flat or the sandy vineyards to its north at Blewett Springs tend to fade into the smells and flavours of barns, bakeries and charcuteries when you move to Barossa Grenache.

Of course when I first saw the wines poured together they did nothing like I'd imagined: the differences were much more complex and confounding, and my predetermined order was certainly no simple gradient from silky to rustic.

Similarly, the differences between the wines Sophie selected and my lot were not as great as the range of extremes within each selection.

Sophie Otton and the author ... photo ©Milton Wordley

 

This was no wine race; there was no discussion of scores or rank, but rather a communal ride of that giant gentle wave of delight.

Apart from habitually drinking what would have been predominantly McLaren Vale Grenache from  flagons in my earliest days of ethanology, I didn't really hit great Australian Grenache wittingly til the mid-eighties, when I moved to the Barossa. Before that, I'd known more about the Grenache blends of Spanish Rioja. In an act of brilliant Greek confidence, Peter Paulos had bought the main pub in Tanunda and opened the cellar to discover a great hoard of Chateau Reynella McLaren Vale 'Burgundies' from the 'sixties. These would have been more or less the GSMs of their day: a rarity when you consider that most of the old Grenache was still going into sweet tooth-loosening port.

Over a couple of summers, the smartest local winemakers drank this trove very observantly. Shit it was fun. But also desperate: another little drop in the total brew of knowledge and rage that eventually put an end to the Vine Pull Scheme, where the majority of the old bush vine Grenache of McLaren Vale and Barossa was uprooted and burnt.

A few years later in France I discovered a personal songline. In Champagne, Pinot noir makes white wine. Go south; it gets warmer; you get red Pinot in Burgundy. Keep southerly, through Maçon and the Gamay of Beaujolais and you're soon hitting patches of Grenache, which is the rosiest of the three major reds of the south - with Shiraz/Syrah and Mataro/Mourvèdre - all the way down the Rhône Gorge to its vast delta and the Mediterranean.

Where, in the summer, you can smell Africa with your bouillabaisse and the turkish delight/pashmak rosiness of your Provence rosé.

There's little science in it, but in this organoleptic journey, fine Grenache to me is closer to the Pinot of Burgundy than to the leathery blackness of Mourvèdre or Syrah.

There was a temptation to insert a bottle of a darker, more tannic than average Burgundy amongst these wines to prove a point. But to argue with myselves which Burgundy we'd set with which South Australian Grenache is dumb, and became much more dumber once those thirteen glasses had got to their powerful seduction.

Event organiser Russell 'Rusty' Gallagher of Serafino ... photo©Milton Wordley

The luxurious Wirra Wirra Absconder 2012 sure had the shiny silk I expected, but in the months since I last drank it, it had grown a whole range of glowering complexities. The Serafino 2014 comes from close by vineyards in similar ground, but had more rustic tannin and more obvious oak, not surprising given its youth and it being half the price.

It was very hard to believe the Twelftree Schuller 2012 came from just across the road from the Yangarra High Sands 2012. Same sand, but the Twelftree was bright maraschino joy, the Yangarra glowering complex marello and spice, with real moody tannins.

Steve Pannell laughed when I selected his 2014 vintage. He reckons it's the most Pinot-like Grenache he's made, but when I ponder it, I wonder which Burgundian vineyard he loves most. Like his wine was much more sinuous and tight than the Longhop 2013, from Adelaide Plains and One Tree Hill. From similarly aged vines, these were chalk and cheese, the Longhop half the price and more like the big dark tannic Burgundy of say Domaine de l'Arlot than the taut modern raciness of the S C Pannell.

Paul Carpenter's silky morello Longline Albright 2014 comes from ancient pre-Cambrian geology on the Onkaparinga Gorge: very similar to that of the Greenock Creek Cornerstone 2014, but similarities end there. The Greenock wine's all panforte, with nutmeg, ground coriander and dried fruits.

Grenache grower and Serafino Winemaker, Charlie Whish ... photo©Milton Wordley

And on we went. Yalumba's Tri-Centenary from the 1880s vineyard that set the highest price yet paid for vines per acre in Australia when Rob Hill Smith bought it in the 'nineties: complex with fruitcake and nutmince a bit like the Greenock; contrasting against the bright high country confectionery and essence of The Willunga 100 2010.

Marco Cirillo's The Vincent 2014 sat similarly opposite Tom Carson's Heathcote Estate 2012, the hearty cured meats and fruitcake of the Barossa against the silky confectionery and high country fruit essence of the Victorian wine.

And then, John Duval's Annexus 2013 from the Barossa and its uplands, an intense sombre wine for the cellar, with a dash of Shiraz in it. Which makes it more of a John Duval than a Grenache, which means it's a cracker nevertheless.

It's days ago now, but that tasting's still rattling round my head, knocking corners off old theories and picking splinters out of others while the whole thing swirls round like a delicious technicolour syrup.

Australian Grenache has changed gears. No other country on Earth could set up a rainbow slurp quite like this. Growers and winemakers, take a bow. 

everyone brought their favourite Grenache to a fine slow long table lunch
top photo Rusty Gallagher photo below ©Milton Wordley

G-SPOT S&M: TASTING THE ACRONYM

Rusty Mutt Rocky Ox McLaren Vale GSM 2014 
$28; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points 

From Bernard Smart's ancient bush vine vineyard - his personal one - high above the Onkaparinga Gorge, which presents a splendid southerly vista over the whole of McLaren Vale to the Gulf St Vincent, patron of viticulturers, the base wine here is about as good as Vales Grenache gets. Winemaker Scott Heidrich has added bits of Shiraz and Mataro to add a sinister gunmetal glint to both the colour and bouquet of that rosy morello cherry Grenache.

It's added black flavours, too. The wine is as slick and sensuous and as deadly as an asp. It has jet swarf rather than tannin, after steely whiprod acidity. It actually tastes shiny and black. It is neither rusty nor muttish, but more your polished hybrid.

This wine is a delicious, vibrant example of the difference between Grenache and the old GSM blend first labelled so at Rosemount in the 'nineties. All these ingredient wines are first class examples of their style, so it's a pure and true blend. But these darkening tones contributed by even the smallest percentages of Shiraz and Mataro quickly move you from the strawberry field and cherry orchard to the blacksmith's forge. Which, let's face it, is a more traditional place to be for the older Australian wino.  Even when it's this silky and shiny. It'll probly entice the shiniest, silkiest, most slick-backed drinkers. Turf Cork-tipped smokers. Or Craven A.

Flamenco dancers.

 Tea-smoked duck and shiitake eaters. 

Stanley Mouse for The Grateful Dead

Whistler Stacks On Barossa Valley GSM 2015 

$35; 13.5% alcohol; cork; 90+ points 

A whole year younger and $7 more spendy? All of winemaker Josh Pfeiffer's painstaking, organic growing, foot-treading, wild yeast and whatnot - what bounty does it bring?

First, it shows that whether you're in the Barossa or McLaren Vale, the best old Grenache vineyards tended in the most respectful loving way will readily give you a cold hard shiny tuxedo/latex/gunmetal wine as soon as you start adding Shiraz and Mataro. The S&M very quickly overwhelms the cheery cherry sensitivity of the G-spot, turning out a black zipleather Gimp in suss haste.

This is intense silky wine beneath that gunblue, extremely polished and shiny; almost impenetrable.

It has studs in its collar and pierced everything and beads of sweat and it's slick and polished like black chrome rather than aromatic leather - that'll hurt - but still can't help showing some sensitivity even if somewhat reptilian. And that'll hurt some more. Ouch. Ew. I promise.

Okay, okay I'll eat it now. Whatever it is.

Funny how the shine dims before the bottle's done and the finish goes furry and soft. That's a relief.

Since the International Grenache Day masterclass at Serafino, any Grenache I've tasted with Shiraz and Mataro in it tastes like a waste of perfectly good Grenache. I'm sure this hissy will pass and I'll live to love lovely GSM mixtures like these again and regret confessing this, but at the moment, such clever snaky blends look a little like old-fashioned movie cyborgs, clunky, maybe brittle beneath their beautiful sheen. 

Put simply, I poured these wines at precisely the wrong time.

This week, such sophisticated blending interferes with the cheery freckled honesty of great straight Grenache. Apologies to both makers. Let's see what happens next.

Stanley Mouse for The Grateful Dead

BEYOND THE BLACK STUMP

Black Stump Clare Valley Viognier 2010 

$26; 14.8% alcohol; screw cap; 89 points 

I'd not seen Tim Mortimer since the days when Nicholas Binns was publican at The Exeter, and the eight-ball table was still there by the fire. I was drinking a rustic Bulgarian red from the list when the bloke I'd been chatting to said he'd made it. The wine. Next thing, what? Twenty years later, same bloke rocks up with a selection of wines so truly eccentric that they made that Bulgari oddball look mainstream.

Like this beefy Viognier from Clare. It's one of those wines that floods the table with aroma as you pour it: all those pear and peach and apricot aromas spill across the room, but with the mellowing,  burnishing turn of a big white wine at five years of age: it has an alluring autumnal reek.

Looking at those alcohols, and that heady perfume, I expected a much thicker wine than I got: after all that fanfare, the palate's much tighter and more focused than you'd think. It's still big, but it's a slick, steely, polished spear of a wine, very much like some of the more mature Viogniers of Condrieu, but perhaps lacking some of their distinctive phenolic tannins, which makes it a little more like an ageing white Burgundy, and perhaps more approachable than a typically feral Condrieu.

It makes me dribble in the general direction of a hearty chowder (a la Bombora Café, Goolwa) or a seriously complex bouillabaisse (Marseilles). 

Exeter publican Nicholas Binns with Gabriella Bertocci, 1996 ... photo Victoria Straub

Black Stump Nebbius 

$26; 9.8% alcohol; screw cap; 93 points 

A non-vintaged blend of Clare Nebbiolo and Moscato bianco, this slightly fizzy, sweet rosé is a serious peg closer to proper hearty country wine than most of the raspberry-simple Grenache pinks Australian winemakers seem to think we deserve.

It smells a little of raspberry, but I suspect that's a subliminal insinuation induced by that outrageous rosy hue. After a proper sniff, I find lemon pith, pomegranate juice and blood orange: grown-up aromas. There's also that husky, dusty smell of burlap sacks stacked in the barn. Together, this rustic ensemble makes me hungry.

The wine's so chubby and viscous it's almost fluffy. While all those flavours indicated by the fragrance simmer along in order, the tiny pixillations of the fizz tidy the tongue up, leaving it shampooed to best appreciate the see-saw of acid and sugar the two varieties then provide in perfect proportion. It leaves a fleeting insinuation of marmalade.

This is the Piedmont/Po Valley pink you have at eleven, with a thin slice of panforte or an almond biscotti, before the shortablack and the rollie with the grappa di moscato.

It's also wicked on big clunky ice with a slice of orange, a mint leaf and a splash of soda. 

Black Stump Nebbius Forte 

$26 - 375ml; 16.5% alcohol; Diam compound cork; 90 points 

Clare Riesling fortified with brandy spirit and flavoured with a squeeze of Riverland mandarin concentrate? Why not? Given the volumes of wasted fruit this wine business grows, you'd think more winemakers would be trying their hand at pleasing aperitifo tinctures like this.

The bouquet's close to that rosé, with mandarin replacing the blood orange, and that raw whiff of spirit widening the nostrils.

It's sweet, citrussy and nutty, like grilled cashews - a character which probably comes from a year on yeast lees - and it's just fine to have short, chilled; not so short, warmer, or by the standard glass at room temperature with a chunk of ice and soda.

Bravo Black Stump! It's very cool to see somebody nudging the boundaries without making a turgid hippy mess of everything.