KIWI RECORDS SMASHED; NO PANNELL BEATERS

PRESS RELEASE FROM STEVE PANNELL

Good News Story #1

Tonight, the title ‘Best Sauvignon Blanc’ has been wrenched from the hands of the Kiwis after a six-year strangehold, with the epithet awarded to Stephen Pannell and his S.C. Pannell 2007 Sauvignon Blanc.

The annual Tri-Nations Wine Challenge is a tough competition chaired by three judges who represent the who’s who of wine sovereignty in their respective nations – James Halliday (Australia), Bob Campbell MW (New Zealand) and Michael Fridjhon (South Africa). They choose just seven wines in each of the 15 categories, totalling 315 wines for judgment. The wines are entered by invitation-only, making these awards unique by world standards.

With Sauvignon Blanc being the signature variety of the New Zealand wine industry, this loss presents a crushing blow. Stephen Pannell, owner and winemaker of S.C. Pannell wines, strongly believes an Aussie win was long overdue. “The Kiwis won the Best Shiraz trophy yet again this year, so quite frankly the judging panel has assigned a little bit of justice. And we need to win something - it’s clearly not going to be in the cricket,” remarked Stephen.

The win also demonstrates that sauvignon blanc can reap some sound rewards with a little more time in bottle. Unlike his friends across the ditch, Stephen chooses to release his sauvignon blanc a year after vintage.

Good News Story #2

The Alternative Varieties Wine Show, held each year in Mildura is arguably the most exciting and intriguing show on the wine calendar. It aims to cultivate emerging varieties and styles, and is a true discovery ground, bringing to the fore the type of wines usually marginalised at mainsteam wine shows. It now attracts some 600+ entries from throughout Australia and New Zealand. The show has just wrapped up, and the panel led by Chair Max Allen reckoned the S.C. Pannell 2006 Adelaide Hills Nebbiolo an absolute stand-out, and was the only wine awarded Gold in its class.

Good News Story #3

On a recent trip to London, Stephen was hosting a dinner with renown Barolo producer G.D Vajra whom Stephen had also spent some time working with in 2004. It was the usual, very serious wine affair, with eight of London’s top Italian restaurant sommeliers in attendance. In one of the wine tasting brackets, guests were served the 2004 Langhe Nebbiolo from Vajra and S.C. Pannell’s own 2005 Adelaide Hills Nebbiolo. The wines were masked and the guests were told that one wine was an Aussie, the other an Italian, and the challenge was set for them to guess which was which.

Out of all sommeliers, only one of them got it right.

About Stephen Pannell

Stephen Pannell grew up in the wine industry as a member of the family which founded Moss Wood in 1967. Stephen’s extensive knowledge and experience has been garnered over many years working with some Australia’s iconic wineries (including Wirra Wirra, Hardy’s Tintara and BRL Hardy where he was Chief Red Winemaker from 1999 to 2003) alongside numerous overseas vintages at such places as Domaine des Comtes Lafon in Burgundy, Chateau Mouton Rothschild in Bordeaux and G.D. Vajra in Barolo. Other highlights in Stephen’s career include winning the title of International Red Winemaker of the Year at the International Wine Challenge in London, winning the Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy at the Royal Melbourne Wine Show, twice winning the Max Schubert Trophy at the Adelaide Wine Show as well as being listed as one of the 50 most influential contributors to the world of wine by Decanter Magazine. In addition to establishing his own label, S.C.Pannell, Stephen has a wine consulting business withclients in Australia, Argentina, UK and Spain, and is a member of the Qantas wine selection panel. “This is a label which is well on the way to icon-status.” - James Halliday, The Australian Wine Companion 2008.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 21 November 2008

For further information and images, please contact: Llawela Forrest - RUN FORREST. M: 0400 586 991. E: llawela@runforrest.com.au

FOOTNOTE FROM PHILIP WHITE:

The new Pannell wines will soon be reviewed on DRANKSTER. The nebbiolo is from Frank and Rosie Baldasso's PROTERO vineyard between Gumeracha and Lobethal in the Adelaide Hills. For the latest PROTERO knockout, read the article below.

COMMENTS

Lord Byron said...

"They choose just seven wines in each of the 15 categories, totalling 315 wines for judgment. The wines are entered by invitation-only, making these awards unique by world standards."

While I quite like Steve's wines, and am growing sick and tired of over-cropped industrial Marlboroughs, I find the above quote very interesting. Is there any such thing as an honest blind wine competition anymore?

November 24, 2008 7:50 AM

AND ANOTHER ONE:

How many more of these claims are we gonna get from this tasting these three blokes had of wines they’d nominated themselves? This is the spin from McWilliams:

Press release

AUSTRALIA’S GREATEST WHITE WINE

AUSTRALIAN WINE THAT BEAT THE KIWIS AND SOUTH AFRICANS RELEASED TODAY!

An Australian wine which has garnered international attention and critical acclaim will be released in Australia today. Mount Pleasant Lovedale Semillon 2003, which won three trophies including ‘Best Wine of Show’ at the Tri Nations Wine Challenge, can now be found in limited quantities on shelves across Australia.

The wine’s ability to reward cellaring for up to 30 years is a rarity with Australian white wine and has been appreciated by international critics and wine show judges for more than five decades, however Mount Pleasant Lovedale Semillon is still relatively unknown among most Australian wine drinkers.

Described by leading UK wine critic Matthew Jukes as, “…the finest single vineyard Sem in the

world,” Mount Pleasant Lovedale Semillon has also been named a ‘Landmark Wine of Australia’

and is rated ‘Excellent’ on the prestigious Langton’s Classification of Australian Wine IV.

“Mount Pleasant Lovedale Semillon represents a style unique to Australia and the Hunter Valley, from a very special piece of soil in the region. I’m pleased that these distinctive elements have been recognized. It is also pleasing to see Australia once again demonstrate why we’re such a powerful player on the international wine stage,” Mr Ryan said.

The 2003 vintage of Mount Pleasant Lovedale Semillon – released today – won the Best Other

White Trophy, Best White Wine Trophy and Best Wine of Show Trophy at the Tri Nations Wine

Challenge, announced last Friday night. The wine has also won a gold medal at the International

Wine and Spirit Competition, in London, and a gold medal at the Melbourne Wine Show.

The Tri Nations Wine Challenge sees wines from Australia, New Zealand and Africa compete to win trophies in several categories. Wines can only be entered after receiving an invitation by an

esteemed group of judges that includes UK wine critic Robert Joseph, James Halliday (Australia), Bob Campbell MW (New Zealand) and Michael Fridjhon (South Africa).

Due to the tight criteria for entry and the status of the judging panel, the competition has quickly

established a reputation as one of the most challenging and demanding to win.

Overall, Australia – supported by the success of McWilliam’s Mount Pleasant Lovedale Semillon – was named as ‘Country of the Show’.

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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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