ZERRUTTI: WORLD'S BEST PRO SNIFTER?

CLICK ON THE FALLING MAN FOR REVIEW OF DRINKSTER'S FAVOURITE TASTING GLASS AND REVELATION OF Dr WHITE'S PATENTED HOLD FOR FALLING ASLEEP WITHOUT DROPPING IT!

2011: 2ND BEST WORST WETTEST VINTAGE

STOP PRESS:  
Mollydooker Wines FaceBook 15 April 2011 posted two images on their wall: one a vineyard which had been harvested, across the road from their block, which means nothing, and another of their own block, with the following caption: "Both of these photos were taken yesterday:one is our vineyard and the picked vineyard is over the road. We are watering to keep the sugar levels down and the canopy flourishing so that the Mollydooker grapes can continue to bask in the beautiful Indian summer sun. The vines are maturing and sending ripe tannin signals to the grapes, which gain extra flavour and richness every day. Exciting news - we have already got argh- cut me off...should read- Exciting news - we have already got two blocks at VELVET GLOVE level!"

Well, they sure look velvety. A close look at this image shows grey, velvety, botrytis-and-mould-riddled berries. So what is Mollydooker doing? They're watering? The vines are sending ripe tannin signals to the grapes? Which gain extra flavour and richness every day? If the silly buggers up the River had only called Sparky Marquis for advice there would now be hundreds of thousands of tonnes of grapes making the Velvet Glove grading, no? Not to mention the Barossa, Clare, the Adelaide Hills and McLaren Vale, no? Watering? Those leaves are falling off, for Bacchus' sake!

So is it, or isn't it Aussie's best year ever? Select your preferred degree of propagandist bullshit!
 
by PHILIP WHITE - a version of this was published on INDAILY, and the shorter version published here previously has been deleted


This is a bad time to be a wine writer.

There’s far too much competition.

At the climax of a vintage as horrid as 2011 there’s a parallel peak of nonsense spoken by those who know their wines will not be as good as usual.

The astute observer will have already recognized the formation of little twists of spin which look promising to those who somehow utter them. By the time the wine is clarified and packaged, these seminal stutterings will have bloomed into gushing back label texts and blurbs that can be cut and pasted by idiots for centuries.

My opinion of vintage 2011 is largely formed. The vintage is well over half way through. I have toured vineyards and tasted grapes, ferments and wine in enough places to get a fair idea of what happens when you have the wettest vintage in thirty-seven years.

EDEN VALLEY RIESLING KING, COLIN FORBES, WHO HAD BEEN CONTRACTED TO MAKE THE DRY-GROWN BUSH VINE KARRA YERTA RIESLING FOR MARIE LINKE LINKE, RIGHT, WON'T BE PICKING A GRAPE SINCE THE CROP WAS BUTCHERED BY BOTRYTIS AND OTHER MOULDS photo MILTON WORDLEY
 
There are those, of course, who are disarming in their honesty. The tiny-scale Barossa Ranges Riesling aces, Bob McLean (McLean’s Farm) and Marie Linke (Karra Yerta) have stated quite simply that their heavily-Botrytised Riesling is not worth picking. But while their write-offs are symptomatic of the year, their frankness is not indicative, unfortunately, of the general industry spin.

EVEN THE FASTIDIOUSLY HAND-TENDED ORGANIC NEVER-IRRIGATED RIESLING BUSH VINES AT McLEAN'S FARM ARE SUFFICIENTLY DAMAGED BY BOTRYTIS AND OTHER MOULDS TO PROHIBIT PICKING

The summer of 2010-11 was, in fact, the second wettest on record for Australia.

"Nationally we averaged 354.7mm, 70 per cent above normal and second only behind the infamous summer of 1973-74 when 419.8mm was recorded," said Tom Saunders, meteorologist at The Weather Channel.

“Victoria’s had its wettest summer on record,” he continued. “Western Australia recorded its second wettest summer. South Australia recorded its third wettest summer. New South Wales recorded its fifth wettest summer. Queensland recorded its sixth wettest summer. Northern Territory recorded its eighth wettest summer, and Tasmania recorded its seventeenth wettest summer.

THE RAIN AND FLOODS CAME VERY EARLY IN THE VINE CYCLE, AND PERSISTED UNTIL A GREAT VINTAGE WAS UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE ... THIS IS A NORTHERN VICTORIAN VINEYARD

"And after a decade of drought, The Murray Darling Basin also recorded its third wettest summer," he concluded.

Just as a perfect vintage, ideally dry, slow and cool, deserves recognition in the odd chance that it may occasionally occur, so do record numbers like these. These are not matters of opinion.

Neither are the simple facts evident to anybody who knows vines well enough to jump over the odd fence and identify Downy Mildew, Powdery Mildew, and Botryitis cinerea. Botrytis not only rots the skins of grapes, but it also attacks the stems of the bunches. When you stand in highly regarded vineyards and watch the vibrations of the mechanical harvesters shaking bunches onto the ground before they even reach those vines, you know something’s wrong. When you watch bins of mouldy slurry, rather than your actual grapes, arrive at winery hoppers, you know this is not what the wineries would like their drinkers to see.

BOTRYTIS CINEREA ON SHIRAZ BERRIES photos by JAMES HOOK, CONSULTING VINE SCIENTIST AND PROPRIETOR OF LAZY BALLERINA WINES, McLAREN VALE.

The need to recognize and identify mere opinions intensifies once frightened winemakers wheel out their most trustworthy employees to tell us that everything’s much better than it is. Such phenomena are not determined by the size of the business, other than in the sense that little guys can bullshit more convincingly than big guys because they’re little.

Troy Elliker, viticulturer for the big McLaren Vale vineyard management company, The Terraces, may feel a little sheepish about calling it too early when on February 19th he said “We've had a very good season and it looks like we are going to have a good year … There will be some really good quality fruit, hence quality wines, coming out of McLaren Vale for the 2011 vintage ... It's a bit later this season because of the weather conditions ... This summer we had cool nights and warm days, which was great for growing grapes down here."

Baron of Barossa, Louisa Rose (below), chief winemaker at Yalumba, warned against calling it early. This Barossa winery takes vast tonnages of fruit from the Riverland, and lesser amounts from the more premium vignobles in the ranges and interstate. At 31,600 tonnes, it is ninth on the list of the biggest Australian wineries measured by winegrape intake.

I could feel poor Louisa squirming when she told The Advertiser "The wines that are going to be made for the 2011 vintage are going to made from very good grapes and those wines are going to be very good drinks."

See the back label forming?

“Ideally cool conditions produced beautiful fruit of good natural acidity and elegance,” a good spindrifter could write, more or less along the lines of what winescribe Max Allen wrote in The Australian. You could easily stretch this to insinuate that 2011 was the closest Australia gets to the general vintage conditions of, say, Bordeaux, strangely reflecting what Clare Riesling hero Jeffrey Grosset told the same paper, about a fortnight after I’d facetiously suggested it on DRINKSTER.

Not to suggest the astute Ms Rose would extend her spin so far. She had already stated "Too many people assume that the whole vintage has been ruined and that's not the case … It's far too early to make bold claims as to what the vintage is really going to look like. Making big claims about the success or failure of a vintage while grapes were still being picked was a foolish exercise … While there had been some sad individual cases of growers with disappointing harvests, that did not tell the story of the whole vintage.”

From a winemaking family famous as champions of positivism at all costs, Neil McGuigan (below) of Australian Vintage (157,000 tonnes) told the influential industry business e-mail newsletter, The Key Report:

“Vintage has been very challenging across Australia with the Hunter and WA both having excellent vintages. The irrigated districts were ‘under the pump’ but those vineyards that were managed correctly and had a bit of luck were able to harvest most of their fruit. Some rejections did occur, and some varieties were adversely affected by Downy Mildew. Barossa looks good but the SE of South Australia has been adversely affected by the weather as well.”

So you have a choice in the Barossa. Either you believe that it “looks good”, or you give ear to the champion grapegrowers’ representative, Baron of Barossa Leo Pech, who said this was the worst vintage he’d seen in 61 years, as reported here at the beginning of vintage.

Judson Barry, of Brian Barry Wines (less than 100 tonnes) more recently told DRINKSTER “I can speak first hand for the Clare district. The Riesling and Shiraz grapes that I have crushed and seen crushed thus far are 1st class quality. A higher than usual amount of fruit has indeed been left on the vine however, due to poor quality arrived from disease. Harvest is approximately 1/2 complete. One must take into account that it is not just fruit quality that determines the final result of the wine quality. This depends heavily on the particular winemaking method that the fruit is subject to. Winemaking techniques or methods are infinite!”

THE GREAT CLARE RIESLING ACE AND MASTER WINE JUDGE, BRIAN BARRY, THE AUTHOR, AND JUDSON BARRY AT BRIAN'S RECENT 84TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS

In the Murray Valley, organic wine grower Michael O’Donohue of Tom’s Drop (less than 20 tonnes) insists he has very good fruit ripening calmly. Another organic Berri company, 919 Wines (less than 100 tonnes), was slightly more specific when Jenny Semmler reflected Judson Barry’s opinion.

“Quality has been marvellous when the fruit comes in clean,” she said. “This vintage will be a test of the winemaker - his or her skill at working closely with the viticulturalist to ensure the fruit is picked at the appropriate time.

“We’re generally finding the fruit is ripe at lower Baumés than usual this year, but with delightful flavour/sugar/acid/tannin balance. Then of course, a good winemaker will be able to be a good custodian of the fruit ... there are traps for unwary players, however.”

TOP-QUALITY EARLY-PICKED SHIRAZ FROM OLIVER'S TARANGA, McLAREN VALE

Closer to home, Inkwell (under 20 tonnes) proprietor Dudley Brown, of McLaren Vale, reports ideal ferments. His neighbour, Paul Petagna (under 10 tonnes) has a winery full of calm, clean ferments. These tiny super-premium local heroes are joined by Roger Pike, of Marius (under 20 tonnes), who says one of his ferments is a bit tricky, but the other two are more or less ideal. Oliver’s Taranga, which picked early, has magnificent wine.

In the Barossa, Tim Smith (right), who will soon be the former winemaker of Chateau Tanunda as he pursues his own revered brand, insists there are some very fine parcels of fruit in that district, while admitting it has not been ideal for many.

So take these claims as you wish, and prepare to see them reflected, or not, on the back labels of the 2011 bottles, if not the bladder packs.

But if it’s forensic accuracy you want, you can’t go past Louisa Rose’s forerunner at the winemaking helm at Yalumba. Brian Walsh, now director of strategy and business management there, wrote a vintage report that is blistering in its honesty and precision.

“The wettest growing season [of the post WWII period]” he stated “being the second wettest year on record. The rain and cold conditions extended right through vintage leading to big losses from disease and produced mostly thin wines from unripe grapes … growers suffered severe losses (as high as 40%) from Downy Mildew due to the wet season – in fact Peter Lehmann did not make any red wine suitable to bottle … ”

Trouble is, Walshie was talking about 1974*.




FOOTNOTES

1. *This quote is from BAROSSA (Barossa Valley – Eden Valley) Vintage Classification 1947 – 1998 (authors: Peter Fuller and Brian Walsh; publisher: Barossa Wine And Tourism Association 1999).

2. A much shorter version of this story first appeared here. I have deleted it, but saved the comments already posted.

Marie Linke from Karra Yerta said...

“About to catch up on your latest posts, Philip. I lapsed into a coma last night for eleven hours which was probably a good thing. Bad thing was, when I woke up, it was still vintage.” April 5, 2011 5:15 PM

Anonymous said...

“There is Barossa Shiraz that has already been graded Grange by the Penfolds team!!

“Both Barossa Merlot and Cabernet are the best we have seen in years.” April 5, 2011 5:31 PM

Jenny said...

“Quality has been marvellous when the fruit comes in clean. This vintage will be a test of the winemkaer - his or her skill at working closely with the viticulturalist to ensure the fruit is picked at the appropriate time. Generally finding the fruit is ripe at lower baumes than usual this year, but with delightful flavour/sugar/acid/tannin balance. Then of course, a good winemaker will be able to be a good custodian of the fruit.

“Traps for unwary players, however.” April 6, 2011 5:33 PM

Cam Haskell said...

“Great stuff Whitey.

“A few points. McGuigan thinks some of it's going to be alright. Which begs the question as to why so much of their wine will be so boring.

“The rainfall in WA figures are a tad misleading. Sure, we got a shedload up north, but down here (in Margaret River) we've only just got some yesterday after super tinder-box-dry conditions since Jan, when we had one day of rain. The fruit I've seen has looked AMAZING, and I think this will be a breakout year for Margaret River shiraz, in particular.

“Your point about trumpeting every vintage is bang on the mark. Vintage variation is real, and it's foolish to suggest that, no matter how judicious, selective and pernickety a producer is that it might match up to a better year. It's irritating and largely mendacious in my opinion to go around treating climate as though it is something that can be overcome in the winery. Absolute bobbins.

“As for fruit being graded as grange, given they make this wine every year, what does that mean? Anything?

“In any case, keep up the good work. Best of luck to the rest of yer still picking and crushing.” April 7, 2011 10:25 AM

Anonymous said...

“This vintage should not be the test of the winemaker, unless he is forced to take fruit with laccase problems. This growing season was surely the test of the viticulturist: his/ her sensitivity, forethought and diligence (and in all likelihood budget) in carrying out cultural operations proactively. This year, perhaps winemakers will actually be stewards of fruit for once, since the requirement for bags of acid and the old culebra negra is vastly dwindled?” April 7, 2011 12:36 PM

CLICK BELOW TO READ OTHER COMMENTS AND ADD YOUR OWN

BAROSSA FINALLY GETS ROCKS IN ITS HEAD

LOUISA ROSE, CHIEF WINEMAKER AT YALUMBA, HOST OF THE 2010 BAROSSA TERROIRS TASTING: A RE-ASSURING CONFIRMATION OF LAST YEAR'S INAUGURAL SHIRAZ TASTING BASED ON GEOLOGICAL TERRANES

Getting Below One's Roots Rockstars 2nd Year Hit Yalumba Tasting Bites Paydirt

by PHILIP WHITE - A version of this story appeared in The Independent Weekly ... an expanded, more inclusive and detailed version will appear in place of this piece soon.

Barossa staged a tasting last week that history will regard more profound than most attendees will realise.

This year, hosted by Yalumba - who loaned their beautiful tasting chamber and numerous inestimable members of their staff - sixty wines were served blind in eight groups, according to their geology. A similar event was held at Seppeltsfield a year ago, but to garner support from the region’s constituents, that nervy exploratory fixture was held mainly for famous wine critics from around the world, some of whom got the point.

It's a tragic reflection on Australia's dumb forelock-tugging mentality that it seems no wine region can get a project up unless there are humans from foreign shores to endorse it before it starts. This happens too, in McLaren Vale, where local press, who understand the detail of the deal, are forced to take back seat to, or be replaced by, overseas hacks, or peanuts from dumb glossies, because such humans impress the paying members sufficiently for them to agree to proceed, regardless of whether anybody understands it or not.

The winemakers who observed last year’s Barossa event, but didn’t participate, have had twelve months to ponder. We then tasted shiraz wines from 2008, from older, neutral barrels. This year it was 2009s, to establish the foundations of a database which will, after further decades of tasting, suggest descriptors unique to each vague sub-region. Twelve tasters, including twitchy industrialists, ticked four pages of boxes for each wine, covering its spectrum of flavours, aromas, styles and strengths. This will be compiled statistically by the astonishing Louisa Rose and her crew at Yalumba, isolating words that re-occur frequently for future use in describing each zone’s characteristics.

In spite of vintage variation, my responses almost identically matched last year’s.

TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP OF THE BAROSSA, WITH THE ALTITUDE GREATLY EXAGGERATED TO MAKE THE HILLS APPEAR SUDDENLY TO RESEMBLE THE SWISS ALPS ... AN ACCURATE GEOLOGY MAP IS BEING PREPARED BY THE TEAM WHO HAVE FINISHED THE SAME TASK IN McLAREN VALE, AND AWAIT PUBLICATION. CLICK ON IMAGE TO MAKE HILLS EVEN BIGGER.

The first set came from the higher vineyards between Williamstown and Lyndoch, and a few from the older country over the Para around Gomersal. These are largely in alluvial sands laid down in the last million years or so, overlying the micaceous schists, siltstones, calcilicates and quartzites of the Upper Burra group, all older than 540 million years. These were perfumed and fragrant delicacies with hints of fennel, aniseed and wintergreen over their elegant cherries and dark berries. They were generally of moderate alcohol and acidity; concentrated, yet modest and pretty, reminding me of the floral cuties from the schist of northern Beaujolais.

Next, the western piedmont of the Barossa range, from Rowland Flat north through Bethany and Vine Vale, along the Stockwell fault to Saltram. Most of this is sediment of sand, gravel and clay, younger than 1.8 million years. These, too, were perfumed, elegant wines, musky, juicy and delicate over their cherries and blackcurrants. Fleshy rather than mineral, with meaty charcuterie hints.

The bracket from north of there, in similar geology, from Nuriootpa past The Willows and Light Pass, was quite different, with a touch more acidity and alcohol, and classic Barossa chocolate adding to their rich fruitcake and leather. In these ethereal, juicy, wines, dried apple, an aroma typical to the more westerly vineyards, began to emerge. Some showed the minty influence of eucalypts.

Across the range, the wines of the High Barossa - from McLean’s Farm atop Mengler’s Hill, south past Mountadam to Eden Springs and east to Craneford - rocked. This geology - metasiltstones, metasandstones, slates, gneisses and granites - is 490 to 545 million years old, when sluggy critters, arthropods and trilobites were evolving. With stony mineral basenotes perfectly reflecting their source, these were stacked with marello cherries, blackberry jam and prunes, in ethereal, juicy, bouquets; below lay charcuterie meats and earth. The alcohols seemed modest, as did the acidity, but the latter looked natural, which always beats shovelled tartaric!

The wines from north of Eden Valley town, out past the Henschkes, were more boisterous, minerally and stony, with blackcurrants, blackberries, dark cherries, prunes and sinblack jams abundant. Milk chocolate appeared here, and more charcuterie; even metwurst. The tannins were earthy, yet sinewy.

Back to the Moppa: the flats north of Nuriootpa, where the great old vines of Ebenezer and Kalimna somehow live in dry alluvial sands deposited 1.8 to 50 million years ago, with bits of more recent wind-blown sand on top. These were what I’d call classic, mighty, fruitcake Barossa: black and thick with prunes, cherries, mulberries and cassis, with dark chocolate, and meaty, leathery tones glowering below, and higher alcohols to match. The tannins were soft, yet earthy and mineral.

South then, and west to Greenock, Seppeltsfield and Marananga, and the Valley’s strongest, most complex wines: packed with jams and fruitcake, prunes and figs, dried apple and pear, leather, cooking chocolate, and walnuts. The rocks north of the Marananga Church to the by-pass highway are schists, siltstones and quartzites from the Upper Burra Group, from away back in the Neoproterozoic (545-1200 million years), when multi-cellular life was beginning. Climate and altitude aside, this is where I dream that the older, more complex rocks give flavours to match.

THE NEOPROTEROZOIC ROCKS IN THE HILL AT GREENOCK CREEK VINEYARDS AND CELLARS' ROENNFELDT ROAD VINEYARD ARE MUCH OLDER THAN MOST OF THE BAROSSA FLOOR GROUPS - LEO DAVIS PHOTOGRAPH

And so to Stonewell: the ironstone south from Marananga to Tanunda. Some of these wines smell like a blacksmith’s shop, with hot coke burning below horseshoes glowing on anvils. You’ll find aniseed, walnut, fig and leathery aromas here, with much of the Greenock character, contrasting in a more elegant, creamy structure, somewhat akin to chocolate crême caramel, towards the softer custardy textures of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

While the winemakers who entered wines in this event were brave, showing unfinished produce to so many fusspots, I bow to them, very, very deeply. They will be remembered. Too many others failed to attend the next day’s event, when everything was on display. They’ll slip off the map.

THUS SPRACH THE LORD

Tony Lord photographed in Chesser Cellars by Philip White 1982

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by PHILIP WHITE - Interview in WINESTATE July 1982

Tony Lord is the editor of the prestigious British wine magazine, Decanter. In Australia recently, on his way home from New Zealand, Lord delivered some scathing criticisms on the way Australian wine marketing is conducted abroad, especially in London itself.

Lord believes that since the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation closed the Australian Wine Centre in London, an invaluable twenty years of effort in promoting Australian wines there has been almost entirely wasted.

Pointing out that the number of cases of Australian wine imported into Britain escalated steadily from 11,000 in 1977/78, to 48,000 cases in 79/80, Lord is particularly reproachful of the fact that this figure dropped to 33,000 cases in 80/81, neatly comparing the situation to the number of Californian cases imported: that figure has jumped from 40,000 cases to 400,000 in two years.

Explaining that the established European wine producers are almost operating at their maximum production levels, with very little room for expansion, Lord believes these suppliers have little choice other than to charge higher prices for their shrinking market share, and is adamant that the gap will be filled by wines from the New World countries, like Australia, California, South Africa and New Zealand.

However, Lord explains, Australia, unlike the others, appears now to be disproportionately focusing its attention on the much more difficult markets of the USA and Canada, both areas requiring relatively massive investments for the slightest market share.

A jovial expatriate Australian, Lord displayed a rare and irreverent candour when confronted with the Winestate microphone, and fairly large chunks of his dissertation proved far too spicy for these pages. A pity, but there’s plenty here:

Will we have to send our best wine to Britain to establish a market?

It’s always better to start at the top and work down, but given the quality of the wine selling there now, the wines like the ones Yalumba are shipping are very good flagbearers.

If you look at what’s happening in Australia at the moment, you’ve got a glut of wine and you’ve got price discounting. Everybody’s moaning about there being no profitability in wine, but those companies that are exporting are making money. Any company that’s built up a substantial export base, even on a modest scale, at least they’re getting some reasonable profitability with their wines, which may help the subsidise the furtherance of what they’re doing.

I was talking to Max Lake the other day, and he’s firmly committed to exports, and he said ‘It might be that I do have to cut down the amount of wine that I release in Australia’, but, he said, ‘I just can’t rely on the Australian market for my livelihood if we’re starting to get these price discounting problems with people undercutting and stuff selling for a buck a bottle’.

All the smart people in this industry are the ones who are exporting. In the future, and I’m certain that in the not-too-distant future, there’ll be a huge wine glut in this country again, and in the next minute we’ll see Boeings full of Ockers coming over to London and trying to offload what they’ve got in their warehouses, with little regard for the poor bloody importer who wants continuity of supply, and this time the people in Britain certainly already know what they can expect. They’re not gonna touch these guys with a bargepole. But they will go for the companies like Yalumba and Rothbury and Petaluma, and those companies that have been in Britain for five or six years, and all release a certain quantity of wine to that market each year.

See, that’s very important. The poor bloody importer. I just heard the other day about two companies from Australia that have been exporting to Britain and have decided not to send them any more wine. They’re getting top dollar over here, but when they’re not getting top dollar, they’ll be back over there, and that’s stupid short-sightedness. It really is.

Is there any way around the problem of trying to attack a big market like that with four or five pallets of cabernet?

If the maker finds a good importer and he’s prepared to say ‘Yes, I’ll let you have a thousand cases each year”, and if they’re honest about it ... you see Whitey there’s far more possibility for consistency here because of the climate, if for no other reason.

If the importer gets a duff one, he’s gonna make a decision what he’s gonna do about it. The first and foremost problem is that most of the poor buggers who are in London trying to sell Australian wines – and there are some of them who are putting far more effort into it than their profitability would ever justify – what they want to know is that they are going to get wine. I mean, one of the people who have pulled out rang up the UK importer and said ‘Look I can’t let you have any wine for the next two years’. Well now, what is the importer expected to say? He’d been building this thing up, and he’d had the winemaker over. He’d been holding lunches. He’d been getting press coverage, and then he gets this telephone call. He only wanted two or three hundred cases!

But you need about two or three thousand cases there to start with, to make any sense in terms of profitability, and there are very few wineries here that are even prepared to let an export market have that much wine. And they’re silly. The Californians will let you have as much as you want. They realise what the future is! The South Africans will let you have as much as you want.

The New Zealand industry thinks far better about the future than the bloody Australians!

See what they don’t realise is that London’s a prestige market. The Californians aren’t there to make a noticeable profit within five years. It’s a prestige market. They’ve got to see you represented. Every decent wine merchant in the world goes to London, if only because it’s the stop-off before you go to France. But they see your wine, you’re talked about, and the West Germans feed off it, the Belg feed off it, the Scandinavians feed off it, and the Dutch feed off it. And it’s a very big deal to be there.

The north-west Americans feed off it very heavily, too. But the Australians have got tunnel vision. And this is where I ... well, for a highly-placed person in an Australian wine corporation to say, effectively, that Poms wouldn’t know a good bottle if it hit them over the head, is just the end. If they think it privately, keep it to themselves but you don’t go saying it where it’s going to be quoted back at you in an influential trade publication. If the wombat’s doing these things, you bury him in a very large hole!

There are no marketing skills within the industry that apply to the international market that I’ve ever seen. If you’re dealing with Canada, you must have somebody who understands that market. If you’re dealing with America, you’re dealing with a totally different market, and you need somebody who understands that market. And ditto for Germany and the UK. But what we have here is a Coca-Cola salesman who goes around and thinks he can apply Australian marketing techniques in four totally disparate markets. And what he’s doing is – they open the door and they see this turkey coming from ’way back.

There’s an advertising agency in Toronto who are I bet are still laughing at the rip-off they got over Kelvin the Koala. Jesus, they must be bloody in hysterics! “Half a million in your pocket? Great, we can do you a beaut one!’ And, of course, what everybody forgot was by putting this French-speaking koala on the market was that they immediately alienated all the English-speaking Canadians who thought they had a strong bond with Australia through the old Commonwealth. And I mean that’s just a fundamental marketing mistake.

If they can’t see such elementary mistakes, God knows what happens when they get down to the fine print with dealing with these Americans who are so bloody sharp that they’ll eat you before breakfast. In fact, that’s probably when they got this bastard, before breakfast, and tied him up then. You know, while he was still half asleep. They’ve all had a jog and a shower and a jacuzzi and a screw and they’re into the office at seven-thirty in the morning, bouncing and raring to go.

You know me, and any Pom I know, we stagger and say ‘Jeez, I need a glass of good bloody Champagne!’ And you know, these Americans: ‘While you’re signing the documents we’ll open the Deutz, Sir’.

What do people in Britain look for on an Australian wine label?

Well, the varietal name. Area definition, and perhaps a little back label information about the product. It’s getting to the point now with these bloody EEC bureaucrats that by the time you’ve got all the crap that they want on the label, you’re lucky to be able to fit the producer’s name.

Fundamentally, what they want is attractive labelling, and like every other market, there’s just ... well you take a Wolf Blass label. There’s eye-catching shelf appeal, with the varietal name, and the area information, and the vintage. Varietal name and vintage are the key things at the moment because they imply immediately that this wine is quality wine.

It doesn’t necessarily follow-through in the bottle, but, at the moment, anything that hasn’t got a vintage date or a varietal name in Britain is considered real cheapo junk.

But what about an indication of style?

There’s a fine balance in Britain now. You’ll find that, say compared to ten years ago, there’s far more descriptive stuff on labels. “Dry red’, ‘medium white’: very much more indication to tell the consumer what’s inside. People make automatic assumptions in Britain now that if they buy cabernet they expect a certain style of wine. 99.9% of the time they’ll get it. But if it’s a blended wine, like say cabernet-shiraz, you can do that on the back label. But the only thing you don’t want to happen is to go to the California extreme where they literally tell you what socks the winemaker was wearing when he made the wine. I think that’s the sign of a fairly unsophisticated wine-drinking market.

The primary considerations must be shelf-appeal. Eye-catching visual stuff. The South Africans, say, might just call it ‘premium dry red’. We’re not allowed to use the pejorative name in England, but you can in some other markets. You know, in Belfast the soldiers think it’s a good day if they get hit on the head by a bottle that says ‘premium’.

What about the state of Australian wine writing?

I think the wine writers here pussyfoot around a bit too much. There should be much more criticism, because no industry’s going to really top if it’s not criticised, and if it’s not criticised constructively.

There’s this stupid Australian insularity problem. Australians know they’re making good wine. Some of them mistakenly think they’re making brilliant wine. There’s a person I went to university with who’s now a winemaker, and he’s going to charge $14 a bottle for his next release of cabernet sauvignon. Now, this guy’s a doctor. Well, he’s a butcher at medicine, and his winemaking’s even more execrable.

Now it’s awkward. I’m a magazine editor, like you, and we’ve been criticised because we don’t mention bad wines. But a newspaper journalist who has no problem with that sort of thing can come out and say ‘Look, this wine’s been released at $14 but in my humble opinion it’s just not worth the money ... I went down to Chesser Cellars and bought a bottle of Lindeman’s riesling as well as a bottle of so-and-so for under $14 and I think the money was better spent’.

They can’t do anything about that.

What can we, as an industry, do to correct some of these problems?

I’d like to see a lot more of the Wine Board bringing down good journalists and good people from around the world, who know what they’re talking about when they’re talking about wine. More scribes and trade people from different countries. You know, you should be saying ‘OK, the biggest wine buyer from the biggest wine chain in Germany is coming to town, and if anyone in the trade wants to come and meet him for lunch, come along, because he’s going to talk about how to sell wine in Germany’. That’s the sort of thing you should be doing more of, instead of giving your boys first class air tickets to go and whoop it up in the ritziest hotel in New York, wasting growers’ money, when they bloody well need it back here.

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East Coast Glossy Joins Mega Discount Plonkmonger To Shine Up Sunny South Winos

by PHILIP WHITE

Australia’s Gourmet Traveller WINE, a shiny gastroporn monthly, in association with the enormous Sydney-based liquor discounter, Kemenys, has awarded three South Australians in its annual Winemaker of the Year Awards.

The Winemaker of the Year 2008 award, “which recognises excellence in the Australian wine industry”, went to Louisa Rose of Yalumba in the Barossa.

The Kemenys Medal, which “encourages up-and-coming winemakers in the pursuit of excellence”, was awarded to Helen McCarthy of Taylors in the Clare district.

The Len Evans Award, “celebrating the importance of leadership in the industry” was presented to Robert Hill Smith, the owner and chief executive of Yalumba.

“South Australia is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to good winemaking, so it’s particularly fitting that all three winners hail from the southern state,” said Judy Sarris, editor of Gourmet Traveller WINE. "We’re absolutely thrilled to celebrate the outstanding creativity and hard work of these people who help make Australian wine among the very best in the world.”

Louisa Rose was selected for “impeccable quality of her flagship viognier, Yalumba The Virgilius, and Pewsey Vale The Contours Riesling ... Louisa has been experimenting with shiraz – looking at the impact of site, variety and clone – and releasing some single vineyard wines”, the Gourmet flak said.

The Len Evans Award went to Louisa’s boss, Robert, for his “era of remarkable growth and innovation ... His highly assured leadership is what drives Yalumba and the other entities that fall within his reign, especially Hill Smith Family Vineyards and Negociants International. Within this large organisation, teamwork is considered vital and decisions are the result of consensus rather than being handed down unilaterally. The leadership shown by Hill Smith and Yalumba in releasing their Old Vine and Reserve charters in 2007 is all too rare in the industry. By entering the realm of practical philosophy, they sought to promote discussion and address consumer confusion that arose from the loose use of the terms.”

For DRINKSTER’S opinions on or discussions of any of the above, hit Len Evans in the search box above, read Reserved For Whom? or check the viognier file on DRANKSTER.

The Kemenys Medal went to Helen McCarthy, who worked at Barossa Valley Estate and Penfolds before becoming senior winemaker at Taylors.

“McCarthy has made an excellent start with wine judging too – she’s accurate, confident and ready to defend her opinions” said the flak.

The awards were judged by the magazine’s regular contributors, Huon Hooke, Andrew Caillard MW, Nick Bulleid MW, Peter Bourne, Sophie Otton and Peter Forrestal (Chairman).

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Shiraz viognier: gluggy dumb muck

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by PHILIP WHITE - This was published in The Independent Weekly on 26 September 2008

Something really scary is happening to shiraz.

Since vintage, I’ve tasted thousands of barrels, tanks and bottles of this great Australian staple in various stages of undress. The wines, I mean. Although I am guilty of conducting the odd early morning tasting without pants – the palate’s fresher sans culottes – the wines I’m discussing here are being prepared for market, and are still awkward, unfinished, and uncovered.

Suddenly, unbelievably, it’s really hard to get a taste of shiraz that has not been adulterated to some extent by viognier.

In the northern, cooler part of France’s Rhone Valley, the shiraz is often pale, lacks tannin, and resembles cranberry juice more than, say, a hearty Barossa or McLaren Vale job. So they add a little viognier, the white grape that was so unpopular its total world plantings were down to six footy grounds before Yalumba bravely chose to make it famous twenty seven years ago. Now viognier’s all over the joint. Not quite the weed that chardonnay became, but threatening.

Genetically, the French viognier is very close to that tannic red mystery from over the Alps, nebbiolo. Very few Australians have the pluck and nous to grow or make good nebbiolo, as its confounding raft of tannin seems somehow disconnected from its elegant cranberry/raspberry/strawberry fruit. Wisely, they avoid it.

So, since white is much more difficult to make than red, why the hell did these boofheads suddenly pretend fluency in viognier, the white nebbi?

When shiraz is on the weaker side of elegant, you can bolster it with the raft of tannin cool climate viognier supplies. You need only one or two per cent of co-fermented viognier to give the red finishing weight and extra aroma, often along the lines of apricot. Apricot and cranberry, see? Makes some sort of sense.

My scant biochemistry makes it risky for me to attempt to explain what the mealy viogner tannin does to the pale colour of such wines, but it’s safe to say it somehow changes the anthocyanins of the blend, enhancing the blues and purples of the wine. A dribble of viognier, or a night or two on viognier skins, makes pale shiraz deeper in hue.

But in Australia, where we can’t seem to pick shiraz below fifteen per cent alcohol, so it’s black, and stacked with natural shiraz tannin, and packed to the gunnels with dense-to-impenetrable blackberry, prune, dried fig, licorice, salt and whatnot, I simply cannot see why anybody would want to add apricot.

It gets worse. The really stupid add over-ripe viognier to over-ripe shiraz. Once it’s above, say 13.5% alcohol, viognier ceases to smell and taste of the almost-elegant apricot, and suddenly becomes the thick dull syrup you get in a tin of peaches. It loses its drying, savoury tannin. It’s gluggy dumb muck. The shiraz needs water and acid, not alcoholic syrup.

Now they’ve planted so much sicko viognier in the wrong places and finally realise they’ve fluffed it, they’re all tipping it in their shiraz, and hoping nobody notices. They think they’re hiding it.

Which leads me to fiano, the white from Italy’s Campagnia, where they make awful oxidised plonk and plug it with a piece of Portuguese bark. But at Coriole, in McLaren Vale, the new plantings produce an ethereal, vaporous wisp of a drink that seems to float off the palate like a cloud, leaving a neat little coating of powdery, mealy tannin on the tongue. This excites the appetite and turns on the epicurean quarter of the sensory tent. Try Coriole’s 2008 vintage, and you’ll immediately get my drift.

Mark Lloyd agrees with much of the above, sufficiently to show the whole damn lot of us that there are gastronomically intelligent alternatives. So when he pointed his Coriole team at its first serious fiano in 2006, they took the wine off its skins much earlier than the Italians do, in order to achieve that lighter, ethereal style. But the skins had enough of the right phenolic tannins and aromatics to set Mark thinking about how that would influence shiraz.

So the Coriole Shiraz Fiano 2006 has about three per cent of the latter in it, co-fermented, to stunning advantage. The fiano somehow brightens the lighter red fruit spectrum of the shiraz, enhancing the raspberry and strawberry aspects which are usually hidden in all that blackberry and prune. So you have this lovely intense shiraz prettied up and lightened with vivacious raspberry, musk and marshmallow sugar. It’s as cute as all get out. And then the mealy, powdery tannins of the fiano somehow render the wine’s finish a lot more entertaining and savoury than normal shiraz.

Not to mention all this highly abnormal, deformed shiraz that reeks of viognier, and which will be sold without any label even vaguely mentioning the v-word or its inclusion. These mugs are buggering the flavour of Australia's most significant red, hoping nobody will notice. Very, very stupid.

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