KOLTZ SHIRAZ AMARONE: SINISTER PAGANS

KOLTZ WINEMAKER MARK DAY SMELLS SOME DEEP DARK GUNMETAL IN HIS AMARONE SHIRAZ ... PHOTOS BY KATE ELMES, INDEPENDENT WEEKLY

Pagans From The Vale Italianate Aussie Shiraz
... As Made By Jesus!
by PHILIP WHITE - A VERSION OF THIS APPEARED IN THE INDEPENDENT WEEKLY

“In ’03 we hardly did anything. In 04 we dropped two bins off the front of the forklift and the Ducati was sitting there in four inches of amarone.”

That was Mark Day reflecting on life as a winemaker. The “we” includes his partner, the revered wine scientist Anna “Koltz” Koltunow. The “amarone” is a winemaking technique named with the Italian word for bitter or sharp. More precisely, the technique is called appassimento, and the wines are called passito, from appisire, “to dry”.

There’s a certain irony in the proximity of these words to others like amare and appassionare, because appassimento requires at least as much love as determination.

Bit like a Ducati, really.

I fully understand why Mark calls his amarones The Pagan, but it’s probably the winemaking technique Jesus learned from the Italian occupying forces as he grew up, appassimento. In that fleabitten wilderness, there was no refrigeration. Villages like Qana had somehow to keep sugar and fruit, so raisins, sultanas, currants, figs, prunes, and dates were dried and stored with the best water and honey in the cool of the local grange.

Shagged after their clambake down the beach with all that Damascus rosé, the lads crawled for hours up the dusty track to the wedding. Jesus’ mum met them in the road, complaining that there was no booze left. There was no drive-in, and a wedding lasted about a week, but she knew her boy could do something about it.

“Mother, what am I to do with thee”, he hissed, and then got straight down to it: haul the waterpots out into the sun; stack in some dried fruit; let the local yeasts get active, and they’re straight back into it.

For years Sam Wynn, founder of the Wynn’s wine empire, travelled annually from his home in the Polish ghetto to the Black and Caspian Seas to buy dried grapes which he’d take all the way home and then make kosher amarone for the Jews.

Nowdays, in northern Italy, Amarone is actually an appellation of the Valpolicella district, restricted to wines made by appassimento. Mark goes here annually to make wine. And as the wet Ducati could testify, he also makes it here, in the scrub and sand and ironstone of Blewett Springs in the McLaren Vale district.

Last week he presented all his Koltz The Pagan passito vintages, from 03 to a barrel sample of 09. And a dandy pagan ritual it was.

“A lot of this is about texture”, he murmured into his glass. “We pick the Shiraz early so it starts with a lot of acid, and that gets concentrated more as the grapes shrivel. So they’re quite acidic. But the texture just gets me.”

The bunches are picked carefully onto drying trays which are stacked in a humidity-controlled Ducati shed. A close eye must be kept for the six or seven week process: you don’t want too much overt shrivel, and bunches which develop moulds or rots are removed.

“It’s all local Shiraz off the sand”, he says, “but I always add a little bit of Adelaide Hills Cabernet.”

The grapes are finally crushed and put into open fermenters with some freshly-picked must, which is of course sweeter, with less acid. Off it goes. Long, slow ferments – 25 days – gentle basket pressing, and presto: amarone!

The Pagan 03 said it all, really. It smelled like a spinache and ricotta salad with figs. There was a glowering composty base tone, too, but those greens are still fresh and zippy, and the viscosity’s just perfect. 89++ points. 04 was more organized and fresh, with chocolate crème caramel flesh over a mess of moss and silage, all the nightshade leaves, juniper, Marveer, and dried sweet figs and dates. Jeez it was good. 93+

And on we gurgled, through the astonishing 05 (93+++) with its blackpowder and smoked figs, and impenetrable intensity and poise, to the triumph of the night (sorry Ducati, but the Poms make motorcycles, too) in the 08 (94+++). This majestic compote of ground-up gun barrels (Weatherby) roast capsicum, and Ditters’ best dried fruit mix (prunes, apples, pears) is a confounding glory of a drink that will cellar brilliantly. Or chug-a-lug with a slab of good aged parmigiano reggiano.

One thing is certain: as we moved into the younger vintages, these gunmetal characters increased, and the wines were tighter. They’re obviously better with a few years dungeon.

Mark also opened one of his favourite Italians, Tommaso Bussola’s BG Amarone della Valpolicella Classico 07 ($150; 90++). Made mainly from the thick-skinned Corvina variety, the smaller-berried Rondinella, and perhaps some Molinara grapes, this wine seemed simpler and much less tannic than The Pagans ($55). The Koltz wines are a sort all their own.

We also tasted passito style wines from other Australian producers, but these lacked the determined intensity of the Shiraz grown on those Semaphore sands of Blewett Springs, and the Maslin Sands ironstone that lies beneath.

Speaking iron, the iron horse has changed. The Duke’s been replaced by a snazzy Moto Guzzi, which Mark reckons is a sign that he’s getting older. He hasn’t washed it in amarone. Yet. But it’s surrounded by racks of Shiraz, doing its neat appisire. Maybe the Moto Guzzi wines will be softer.

That’d be a pity.

KOLTZ WINEMAKER MARK DAY, LEFT, WITH ESTEEMED UTAH YEAST SCIENTISTS Dr. JANET SHAW AND Dr. GARY DREWS, AND AUSTRALIAN CSIRO WINE SCIENTIST Dr. ANNA KOLTUNOV, RIGHT.

BAROSSA BIRTHDAY: ALL BOZOS ON THIS BUS

Wilma Kills A Year Secret Sausage Ritual In Barossa Three Top Cellars

This was one of those days, away back before a near-perfect vintage: stunning clear weather ... wicked company ... a safe bus driver ... three great wineries ... and a crew of thirsty devils loose in the Barossa on the occasion of Wilma McLean's birthday. These photographs are by the ace, Milton Wordley, a regular contributor to DRINKSTER, and a man who can hold frame and focus in the most savage and challenging conditions ...

Dr. White, tour leader, with the crew in the Karra Yerta vineyard atop Flaxman's Ridge in the high Barossa. James and Marie Linke and their boys are perfect Barossa hosts up here in the cool near the 500 metre mark, where the weather is often not quite so beatific. Check those old vines: with a neighbour, they share-farm Semillon, Shiraz, and Riesling here, in 600 million year old sandstone and micaceous schist.

The ancient hand-hewn Barossadeutscher barn and stables at Karra Yerta: James Linke pouring a round of killer Karra Yerta Riesling; Daniel Linke on guitar. The floor tiles are short redgum logs buried, up-ended in sand, the ceiling burlap. The Linke boys always turn on some very cool original music.

The high, wild, seven-year-old dry-grown bush vine vineyard of Big Bob and Wilma McLean, north of Karra Yerta, at McLean's Farm, smack on top of the high Barossa at Mengler's Hill. This is the schmick view from the winery apron. Wedge-tailed eagles are common on this ridge, the site of many gastronomic crimes.

Designer, sculptor and fabric artist Annabelle Collett loses her head doing the limbo beneath a six foot Barossa garlic mettwurst. Big Bob and Wilma turned on a classic lunch of Barossa meats, smallgoods, crunchy loaves, dill pickles and cheeses. Not to mention the crackerjack McLean's Farm wines.

Robin Wordley, lifestyle co-ordinator at Mixmasters Studios hits a lower note ...

Birthday girl Willie does it without spilling a drop. That's McLean's Farm Dry-grown Riesling, after all!

So blessed, the great wurst is carried aloft to the dining table ...

Big Bob sings the tenor part of Au Fond Du Temple Saint ...

... and then tells us grace: "Over the lips and over the gums, lookout guts, here she comes; knives and forks as sharp as razors, praise the lord and go like blazes ... "

Uberrieslingmeister Colin Forbes, with Marie Linke of Karra Yerta. Colin does tastings of his wines by arrangement at McLean's Farm.

The birthday girl attacks her spectacular McKuchen already.

Next stop: two Annabelles shopping for Shiraz at Greenock Creek Vineyards and Cellars, near Seppeltsfield. The underground tanks provide constant cool storage.

Taking a breather on the Greenock Creek open fermenters. This is one of the high temples of Shiraz, internationally. Michael, a master stonemason as well as ace winemaker and brilliant viticulturer, built the winery. The fermenter walls are good and thick, providing reliable insulation to prevent sudden changes of temperature. That's Peter Fraser of Yangarra Estate with the legs. He's a Shiraz and Grenache king, too, but in McLaren Vale.

"That's enough! That's enough!" Mick Wordley of Mixmasters Studios attempting to avoid drinking too much Greenock Creek Roennfeldt's Road Shiraz. Hardened experts know this to be a totally futile exercise.

Annabelle and Michael Waugh: custodians of some of the most revered Shiraz and Grenache vineyards in the world.

... and a few cold Trinnie's pales to seal the deal. This is the bar of the hallowed Greenock Creek Tavern, which has been in the hands of the eminently hospitable Schluter family since 1870 - probably an Australian record for continual country hostelry. Wolf Blass blended the first wines to bear his name in the stables at the back of this pub, and is still a member of the luncheon club.

Thanks again to Milton Wordley for the cool photography. As you can see, Milt specialises in the wine business, which he's been photographing for thirty years. If you need photographs of Australian wine, contact him through his website.

AUSSIE PLONKMONGERS LOSE THE PLOT

Ethanol Floggers Flog On ... Oz Pollies Taken For Suckers Again ... Forensic Enquiry May Shake These Dangerous Tendenciesby PHILIP WHITE - a shorter version of this appeared in The Independent Weekly


There is no better metaphor for the Australian wine industry than its National Wine Centre, which has finally become a busy pavilion for weddings. It lies there, ribs poking skyward, its drying gizzards wriggling with brides.

I have no statistical evidence to suggest the success of these marriages is any different to the national average: one in three generally ends in divorce.

It's all tiresomely suburban.

The Wine Centre’s biggest publicity – ever - followed the incident when Rick Phillips went in there and whacked our Premier, Mike Rann, about the face with a rolled-up Winestate magazine.

Phillips pled guilty, while his ex-wife, Michelle Chantelois, who’d been a barmaid in Parliament House, repeatedly claimed she’d maintained a sexual affair with Rann who repeatedly denies this, while publicly apologising for any distress it has caused her or her family.

And now, as if to complete its transformation from National Wine Centre to wedding and celebrity divorce factory this troubled facility is even flogging its wine collection.

Smart observers knew, when $50+ million of taxpayers’ money snuck that corpse into our sacred Botanic Garden a decade back, that this industry, its august councils, and the politicians it seduced, all deserved forensic scrutiny.

Who are these people? The hairdos have gone from Brylcreem combovers to spiky and shooshed, but the mentality is as constant as the suits.

They cannot halt the wine industry holocaust. For their shareholders, they encouraged it to fester, at the expense of our water, our environment and civic amenity, the salinity of our soils and aquifers, our public health, and our economies: national, town-sized, familial and individual.

The glittering refineries they inflicted on our rural vistas frankly reflect the chrome pillows blowing like leaves about aboriginal lands.

They built an industry that - by vast chemo-mono grapeyards - mines the arid Mallee for sugar, which is used to make ethanol, a highly-dangerous depressant and recreational drug. Over half the Australian business depends on this formula, and in bladder packs or cleanskins sells sweetened ethanol - which is three times the strength of your average beer - at about the price of bottled water. Or less.


They built an industry in the Australian desert which depends upon endless supplies of virtually free water, an international clientele with a constantly-intensifying addiction, and a pathetic Aussie dollar.

It also lacks basic gastronomic intelligence, expects the same of its clients, and presumes the absence of any smart competition from other countries.

Like, say the countries adjacent to the Andes, which happen to be full of snow which melts to make irrigation water. These grape regions are populated by peasants who work for almost nothing, and whose laws lack the scant environmental restrictions which somehow survive in Australia.

A telling gauge of how this industry’s authorities are respected is the advent of the Family First Winemakers. As this new coalition of the great wine families – Peter Barry, Hill Smith, Taylors, Tyrrells, Brown Brothers, d’Arenberg, McWilliams et cetera – barges forth to promote the “heart and soul” of the Australian business internationally, they attempt a task which the bodies they were implicit in creating have obviously failed to perform.

Who else gets a gong? Oh yes. On February 7th, Dr. Brian Croser AO (left) made a hissy speech blaming the big companies for mucking everything up. This was reported widely.

The Australian Winemakers Federation Croser established helped shove the Wine Center upon us, only to see it slide two years later, virtually bankrupt, into University of Adelaide hands for $1 a year.

When he was determinedly pushing the Wine Centre into the Garden, I questioned Ian Sutton, then Chief Executive of the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia, Wine Australia Pty. Ltd., Australian Wine Foundation and the Australian Wine and Brandy Producers' Association. I asked about the strangely optimistic business plan, and just how much consulting had been done to get the true feeling of the industry, much of which seemed a tad embarrassed about the whole thing.

"My job's not to consult the wine industry”, Sutton snarled. “My job is to represent the wine industry".

Croser was the University’s deputy chancellor at the time, determinedly pushing his agenda to have what was the fusty old winemaking school at Roseworthy fully absorbed by the glittering Adelaide campus. "Technologising", I heard one boffin describe it at the time.

Big companies? To the tune of hundreds of millions, it was Croser’s Petaluma group that slid through Lion Nathan into the hands of the mighty Japanese Kirin Brewery under the caress of his Petaluma accountant Andrew Cheeseman (right), who now heads the Australian Wine And Brandy Corporation.

Just days after his spray at the Big Guys, Croser made another speech: he’d suddenly discovered that Jacob’s Creek Chardonnay was much better than he’d previously considered.

His initial blast at the big companies would have infuriated people like Phil Laffer of Pernod-Ricard, the French families who own Jacob’s Creek, whose company secretary, Kate Thompson, sits on the board of the Australian Wine And Brandy Corporation. Along with Dr. Tony Jordan, antipodean lieutenant of Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey.

Croser made the Adelaide Hills wine region. He planted the Piccadilly Valley with Jordan, and set forth preaching his gospel for decades, adding great value to his Petaluma. Over endless lunches at his Bridgewater Mill, he encouraged Dr. Ed Tweddell of Fauldings to invest massively in the hills, by setting up the Nepenthe viticulture company that planted vast swathes of vineyard whose fruit ends up now in Jacobs Creek or the carcass of McGuigan’s Australian Vintage. If Kirin doesn’t want it.

The latest top yarn concerning this lot is the Rabobank report of senior analyst Marc Soccio (left). It says the industry’s crook, although he thinks it’s not so much the buggered Riverlands, but cool places like the Adelaide Hills which are far too slow to uproot.

Like the river grapeyards, too much of this upland planting was committed by the wrong people in the wrong places for all the wrong reasons, like tax advantage, or fashion. Many of these doctors, lawyers, and wealthy retirees who dared, with the persuasion of people like Croser, to compete directly with seasoned generational growers in McLaren Vale and the Barossa, should never have entered the industry.

Tragically, we can't ask my good friend Dr. Ed Tweddell about this, as he committed suicide in 1995 (CORRECTION : 2005; not 1995). His son James, who ran the vineyard development company, now runs a nightclub in Queensland.

Rabobank seems confused about gradings of wine quality. Like the freshly-re-enlightened Croser, it obviously regards Jacobs Creek as premium. You can’t blame them: as Croser and his Petaluma chairman, Len Evans, ran the Australian wine show system for decades, megabulk brands like Jacobs Creek won bounteous bling.

Croser would never enter Petaluma in the wine shows. There are still people who remember his rage when he discovered his marketing manager, Bob McLean, had quietly entered Petaluma red in the Melbourne show. While the Petal was notably failing to win the Jimmy Watson Trophy inside, where Croser vented his feelings, ace Wolf Blass red man, John Glaetzer, was crawling around the bushes out the front, yelling “Where’s the dummy? Where’s the dummy?”

Glaetzer could afford to joke: he’d already won a record three Jimmies, and went on to win a fourth.

Individuals aside, this crazy amalgam of savagely competitive ethanol dealers needs a new sheriff. Those responsible for the current carnage should be forced to withdraw, never to play with such power again.

But the blithe refusal of the Rudd government to accept treasury official Ken Henry’s perfectly logical and fair excise regime for all alcohol taxation is crisp evidence that the ancien regime still rules: its lobbyists have been very hard at work reinforcing the constipating inertia extant. Henry’s proposal would have finally and sensibly rendered most of the unsustainable arid land grapeyards unprofitable, but bolstered the chances of small, premium producers.

The frisson of delight at the dribble now oozing down the big rivers proves there is no change, and no change likely. The same old suits sniff a new wave of dirt cheap Riverland premium. Maybe the piddly prices the National Wine Centre gets for its wine collection will best reflect just how premium all this premium really is.

While they’re saying twenty per cent of the national vineyard must go, it’s time somebody admitted the figure should be more like thirty or forty per cent. In lieu of any smarter method of devising the number, they could follow the success rate of the weddings in their National Wine Centre, loaded with an index locked to the tumbling prices of that premium wine collection.

But with all dread seriousness, the vine pull formula should be based on the number of jobs and dollars each litre of irrigation water creates. In places like Barossa and McLaren Vale, this ratio is normally exponentially ahead of any part of the Murray-Darling Basin, which now seems to extend to include the Limestone Coast. Not to mention the Adelaide Hills.

The glut these industrialists created sees professional growers, some four to six generations strong, suddenly being paid $300 a tonne instead of $3000. You don’t need so much premium fruit at $3000 now that you’ve decided the desert produces premium at $300.

Anybody taking water from the Murray-Darling should be forced to pay real prices for it. A litre of water should have a price. Period. Irrigators should pay a price a helluva lot closer to the amount that an Adelaide resident is expected to pay for what manages to ooze from the mains.

If you’re growing truly premium grapes in a unique place like McLaren Vale, where much of the irrigation water is recycled waste from coastal housing estates, you should be encouraged to remain in the business.

But the percentage of vineyard currently for sale in the Vale simply serves to prove that in the eyes of these industrialists, true quality, continuity and professionalism, let alone the environment, simply do not matter. The casual investor, the shareholder, is king.

The politicians are simply inept in addressing this. The only one to poke his head up with a sensible suggestion was Leon Bignell, the Labor member for Mawson, which includes McLaren Vale. The great Rudd/Wong/Rann triumvirate has failed to convince anybody. Tellingly, against all the pundits’ great wisdoms, after his statement, Bignell actually increased his margin in the recent South Australian election. Much greater egos saw their margins shrivel, and seats disappear.

When the wool business, the miners, or the wheat board makes a mess like this, there’s a very prompt independent enquiry. Heads roll. People are stood up and expected to explain their actions. Heros emerge.

Before Croser comes back to save the wine industry, there should be an independent judicial enquiry.

GRANGE MAN DOES IT AGAIN FOR PENFOLDS

PENFOLDS WINEMAKER PETER GAGO IN THE PRICELESS 1888 KALIMNA VINEYARD IN THE MOPPA, NORTH OF THE BAROSSA; THE OLDEST CABERNET SAUVIGNON ON EARTH IN CONTINUOUS PRODUCTION

Penfolds Lights Fosters Path ... Gago's New Grange All Go ... Gail Kicks Butt For Little Guys
by PHILIP WHITE - a version of this was published in The Independent Weekly

Busy week at the Gago household. One of the Honorable Gail’s five cabinet ministries is Consumer Affairs, so there she was cleaning up the liquor licensing act to make it easier for little guys to sell their wines and bar staff to refuse service to drunks in pubs. Very cool.

At the same time Peter was launching the new Penfold’s super-premiums at Magill, with every wino’s gimlets focused on the new Grange, the 2005.

They don’t need kids, these Gagos. Gail (right) raises smart legislations like offspring. And of the regular annual fixtures on the Casa Blanco calendar, none is better anticipated than the day Pete lines up his new tribe.

Which he did this year at the grand old Kalimna vineyard in the Barossa. Block 42 there is the oldest Cabernet sauvignon vineyard on Earth to be in continuous production. Planted in the Moppa – the flat triangle of alluvium north of the Barossa – in 1888, this is ten precious acres indeed. Grey wind-blown sands sit atop riverine alluvium, and the old grey trunks of the troopers always make me think of Napoleon’s army being snap frozen on the way home from St Petersberg. Biggest difference is, these guys are still fighting, and it’s drought and heat they’ve battled, and wave after wave of owners and corporate geniuses with bad ties.

Gago’s quietly determined restoration of the old farmhouse there looks precisely like the sort of thing you wouldn’t see too much of going on in the way of Fosters these days.

It’s a slomo revolution.

A few years back, Peter complained about how every year for twelve in a row he’d had to re-write his meaning of extreme vintage conditions. Since that alarming utterance, there’s been extreme records broken every year, so it’s almost divinely reassuring to sit down at a table heavy with such vinous reponsibilities and discover they are still mighty Penfolds wines.

“Authority and composure” are words which reappear through all my notes this year. No other big winery on Earth has such an authoritative and expansive range of treasures.

It normally takes four to six dozen wines for me to find something to recommend with more than ninety points. My average over a week of new releases is around seventy, often below. So to gaze confounded at these notes of about thirty wines, including unfinished and unbottled ones from recent years, and see that they fall below ninety on three occasions is, well, can I say comforting?

First wine on the table 94+++. 2005 Reserve Bin Riesling. Opulent, majestic wine more like a mighty Chablis than Germanic Riesling, even at only eleven per cent alcohol. 2009 Koonunga Hill Autumn Riesling, 93: the genteel, autumnal aromas of grannie’s handbag and strawberries in a pleasant off-dry old fashioned style to match the label. 2009 Bin 51 Eden Valley Reserve. Austere and steely: mighty stuff to dissolve that Austrian moustache wax. 93+++. All bases covered in the Riesling dept., see.

And on it went, variety after variety. All bases and styles worth noting are covered. In that unchallengable Penfold’s manner: there’s the sort of reassuring arrogance about them that you like to find in your monarch, especially when times are tough. These may be polite wines, but they’re not shy.

Tellingly, there is no Sauvignon blanc.

Harcore plonkies regard Chardonnay as a sort of gay brother of Riesling, but these four Chardonnays were a lot more Navratilova than Nureyev. Maybe the Thomas Hyland (92+) strayed over toward the younger Bardot, and the Yattarna’s a bit more Catherine the Great (95++), but the forearms are all Martina’s.






















The 08 Cellar Reserve Sangioivese (93+++) smelt like a Tuscan kitchen with a big wood oven; a forthcoming 09 Pinot, just bottled and not yet for release, smelt like Penfolds had exploded all over us. Try “black tea, aniseed balls, Choo Choo Bar, juniper, blueberry, beetroot, sour cream, borscht”.

Peter’s ongoing mission to moderate the raw American oak in brands which depended upon it, without letting them lose a splinter of their Penfold heritage, is best seen in the stunning new Bin 707 2007 (93+++), a totally Australian Cabernet of incredible intensity and finesse. The 06 Cellar Reserve Barossa Cabernet (94++) seemed even more woody, but it’s had 100% French oak. The superiority of 06 over the difficult 07 is most evident here.

And oh yes, the Shiraz. Oh Lawdy. A sicko-plush 06 St Henri (93+++) like a Hispano-Suiza J-12. The charcuterie blast of the 07’s: Magill Estate (92+++) and RWT Barossa (93+) the former with a lollyshop next door; the latter so disarmingly open and neat, like the bucherie of the great Max Noske in Hahndorf. (Sorry Barossa, but we got Germans down this end, too!)

And then, of course, the Big Cheese. Grange. You can read my praise of this marvel alongside, and more detailed notes of all the wines on drankster.blogspot.com. I only wish there was a Peter and Gail blog.


Penfolds Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet sauvignon 2008
$9; screw cap; 13.5% alcohol; 80+ points
I simply cannot imagine why you’d risk fewer dollars on cleanskins of dubious provenance when you can buy this for the price of two schooners of beer. It’s an audacious, cheeky, sassy wine: a brash brat from the Bash Street Kids. The fruit cannot be contained. The stylish oak tries to wrap that fruit up, but it leaps off again and there you go after it, glass after glass. I thought at first the wine had been made like a Beaujolais, with carbonic maceration, but no, Peter assures me, it’s straight down the line conventional winemaking in the Penfolds style.

Penfolds Grange 2005
$650; cork; ??% alcohol; 95+++ points
I gave the 2004 Grange a point more than this, because of its seductive streamlining and silky feminine sheen: Morticia Addams stuff. This is more a cross-dressing Heathcliff. My notes: “Pretty Polly! Wet hessian. Sap: raw sawn wood. Cordite. Incredible bowl of fruits: currants, blackcurrants, red currants, raspberries, nectar, strawberries, cranberries, medlar berries, salmonberries and watermelon. Musk. Civet. Banana lollies. Paper. A chip off the old block. Shit. Cowshed. Milk. Chaos!! Perfection!! Fractal!! In this church, they’re still trying to recognize the congregation.” Which is not to say this wine will not eventually mellow to become one of the best ever.

RUM TIME IN RUM TIMES: TA MARTINIQUE!

RHUM J.M DISTILLERY ON MARTINIQUE IN THE SOUTHERN CARIBBEAN

Certainly Not Bacardi Falling Grace Hits Casa Blanco Gill's Immaculate Rumbustulations

by PHILIP WHITE a version of this story appeared in The Independent Weekly

While any hard-core rum sot will tell you that the dark, wood-aged molasses-based rums are the only true sugarcane juice for the aficionado, the immaculate Gill Gordon Smith arrived at my door the other day with a bottle or two of paler beauties which instilled me with rumbustion.

Still being the operative word. Rum is made by brewing a rough wine from the sugar cane or its byproducts and then distilling this in traditional copper pots like those used in Cognac or Scotland, or in the more modern continuous stills that you see standing like great sentinels at any oil refinery. (As they refine oil to make your petrol, their byproducts in turn fuel the petrochem industry which makes the poisons and sprays and fertilizers which perpetuate modern cane farming and most other monocultures.)

Rum was the grease that oiled the slave trade. They called it the Golden Triangle, or the Eternal Triangle. Regardless of how briefly they survived, it must have felt like eternity for the poor bastards who were its prey. Swap rum for humans on the African coast, swap humans for molasses with the cane farmers of the Caribbean, swap molasses for rum up the east coast of the USA, where the biggest distillers were, then back to jolly old Africa. Yo ho ho.

Most rum was distilled molasses: a side product of the sugar business. As the traders worked their way north, the last unsold barrels full of the thickest, oldest molasses were dumped at bargain rates to the fishers of Newfoundland, Labrador and the Bay of Fundy. The tough locals there still drink a fearsome rum made from this sludge. They wisely call it screech.

The other end of the trade, quality-wise, was where the best, freshest slaves were swapped for the finest freshest molasses, in the southern Caribbean. The planters there were sufficiently well endowed to afford to make rum straight from a ferment of fresh sugar cane juice, which, to this day affords the superior appellation agricole.

Gill’s drinks were rums from the tiny French Caribbean island, Martinique. Two came from Rhum J.M, an ancient distillery about the size of Rockford wines. The Rhum J. M Agricola Blanc was a glorious blonde which steered my reflection to the days of the cold war, when Russian vodka was verboten. The unoaked white spirit market was full of rum, notably Bacardi, which fled Cuba when Castro nationalized the business.

I loved the exquisite Goddards Gold Braid rum in those days, a lightly-oaked pale gold British East Indies product imported and bottled by Clelands. Cuba still sells all its lovely rum under the Havana Club brand; only the advent of Gorbachev unleashed the vodka business, which rules to this day.

But these Martinique beauties are certainly not Barcardi, I assure you. The blanc (50% alcohol; $66.50; 94 points) is a delicious, swervy dance of a drink. The distiller’s entrapped a range of aromatic esters reminiscent of butter, banana and rose petal at the fatty end of the spectrum, through to coconut husk and fresh sugarcane leaf at the greener extreme. Add a drop of water, and it becomes Turkish delight. I could sup on it all day, neat, with maybe one small block of ice, but it would also perfectly mix with any tropical fruit juice.

More brooding, but still not dark, was the Rhum J. M. V. O. Reserve Speciale Agricole (47% alcohol; $120; 95 points), which had spent four or five years in old American whiskey barrels. Strong spirit tenaciously tears flavours from even old oak. Occasionally the best cellars learn to entrap a delightful citrus twist, which I have also seen in infant Scots single malts from new American oak. So this wicked tincture, which is about the colour of Curacao, has wound that citrus round its buttery esters to make a bouquet like a Terry’s Chocolate Orange. The oak has also left whiffs of nutmeg, clove and coconut. It’s exquisite. You need no water.

The St. James distillery is more along the size of Penfolds. Its Rhum Agricole Royal Ambre (45% alcohol; $60; 91 points) has the dustier end of the oak spectrum prominent, with old spice box, nutmeg and gingerbread. There’s still some citrus, but even that’s more like dried peel. Let it air, and it starts to smell like a burnt orange crême caramel. It’s a neat sipper for the malt whisky nut.

But if you really wanta rock with the style pirates, it’s the St. James 12 ans Agricole (43% alcohol; $120; 95 points). A dozen years of oak has raised a salacious doll of a drink with hair the colour of rusty roses and the aroma of a freshly-polished brass giardinere perched in a woody gentleman’s club, stacked with a trifle made from honeycomb toffee, fudge, orange marmalade, fruit mince, and butterscotch sauce. The lads are pouring in through the windows; Drambuie and Benedictine are voluntarily walking the plank.

GILL GORDON SMITH AT HER BUSTLING FALL FROM GRACE WINE BAR, BESIDE BLESSED CHEESE IN THE MAIN STREET OF McLAREN VALE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA; LICENSED TO HOLD FOURTEEN SOULS

Le Père Jules Poiré
$22; 2.8% alcohol; cork; 92 points
This stunning mouthful of pears seemed to be the hit drink which lubricated the McLaren Vale vintage: it was the preferred drink of many exhausted hose-draggers and winemakers. A classic pear cider from Normandy, it’s only 2.8% alcohol: hardly a heady threat in the strength department. Instead, its strength is in its honest entrapment of the essence of pear juice in its most invigorating, lively form. Just lightly petillant from bottle fermentation, it’s a healthy, zippy, delicious refreshment which comes under a champagne-style wired cork. It works perfectly with or without ice. For outlets call Gill Gordon Smith at Fall From Grace.

Roger Groult Calvados Pays d’Auge Vénérable
$300; 41% alcohol; cork; 96 points
Another triffic product from Gill Gordon Smith’s formidable arsenal, this ancient Norman spirit is made from a blend of around twenty varieties of cider apples which are fermented, distilled, and barrel-aged for many decades, then “freshened” with apple eaux-de-vie of about twenty years of age. It smells like the perfect apple tart, complete with nutmeg and cloves, soused in some magical liqueur and a dollop of fresh cream. It’s a transporting, ethereal, totally seductive and disarming drink at a great price. If anything this old and characterful ever escapes from Cognac it’ll cost you an extra thousand. The perfect birthday present!

TIM SMITH ROCKIN IT AT CHATEAU TANUNDA

TIM SMITH ON THE SHIRAZ HUNT

Quiet Triumph At Tanunda
Smithy Grabs Gold For Geber
And Makes One Personal Best
by PHILIP WHITE a version of this story appeared in The Independent Weekly
There is a mist and a wind-driven shoosh of sideways rain and up on the ridges where I prefer to be, the vintage is being scrubbed by brush and hose from tank and fermenter and people don’t know what to do because it’s over now and there’s not much of it left.

I kicked tanks in Chateau Tanunda this last week, which is on a sort of a ridge there above the cricket oval and Lot 1 Moorooroo, the first block in the Barossa to be surveyed. But it's really pretty close to the bottom of the Valley, topographically, while master winesmith name of Tim scours the upper ridges for the very best old Barossa vineyards. He has been known to do this on his classic Triumph Bonneville. He also plays drums in a rock band. He is also one of the best winemakers I know.

Of course there’s lots still to attend to vintage-wise: a shred or tonne or bucket of this or that are likely to emerge from here or there if the weather’s right. And then the wines which are finishing their ferments will gradually wriggle through the arcane twists and turns they persistently fizz, tick, or simmer through. There are barrels to wrangle and secondary ferments to steer, and fining and blending and polishing and whatever, but for a moment, the work is done.

Smithy was quite literally putting the last of the Chateau’s harvest through the fermenters. We sniffed and spat this and that, and I apologise to Joel Matchoss, who stuck his head out of the bottom of a vat with a brush in his hand and asked me to pass him a hose. I got a shock.

This is one of the very best vintages I can remember. I think that as individuals we can recall accurately maybe ten or twelve years of vintage reality: the essence of the flavours eventually fades from the vivid memory, and while one might still draw with great accuracy this and that from great old wines, and great old recollections, most people who were there when it happened forget the real flavours of the vintage before it matures. There is much braggadocio, and often remorse, but little true memory.

But I will remember the 2010 wines.

Some of the last fruit was Mourvedre. What we used to call Mataro, after the name of a town in the south of Spain where no Mataro grows. For some reason we didn’t call it Monastrell, which is its Spanish name, but now use the French name, Mourvedre. Amusing.

The prickly French stopped us using the name Hermitage for Shiraz, because they said we were passing the grape off as a French product. We respectfully called it Hermitage, like in Grange Hermitage, because our original cuttings came from the Rhone Valley vineyard of that name. But the Frogs have no qualms about us using their name for a Spanish variety.

As the Australian weather gets hotter, Mourvedre’s likely to be one major grape which takes some pressure from Shiraz, which seems to get too ripe and jammy far too readily with ordinary Barossa or McLaren Vale viticulture laziness.

In the south of France, in places like Bandol and Minervois, Mourvedre rules the roost, often blended with Grenache and Shiraz, but usually over-ruling them in the blends, as its flavour is more intense. In some cases, I think it’s far more interesting.

I saw great Mourvedre last year, in site of the blistering heatwave, and here it was again from a cool, polite vintage: one tank bright with the smell of Morello cherries, another with the sinister gunmetal glint of swarf and carbon. They will make a great blend, these two components. The former tank reminded me of the wines of the Mornington Peninsula wizard Sandro Mosele. It could almost be Pinot noir. I mentioned this to Tim. “I went through uni with him”, he said. “We sat together. He’s great winemaker.”

The second tank reminded me of the mindblowing wines Edouard Labeye helps to make in Mirnervois, near Sete, on the Mediterranean. “He’s awesome!” Tim said. “I’ve met him in France. He’s a great winemaker.”

This is how vintage goes, always reminding me of how few great winemakers there really are, and how the top of the great squishy wine pyramid, the pointy end, contains so few true heroes. Smithy’s got the touch. He’s in my top thirty Australians. To rub that in, we now have over 2,400 wineries. And as if show awards were something to boast of, the Barossa paper calls him Tim Goldsmith. He'll be a true local when they start calling him Goldschmidt.

He poured me the first of the finished - bottled and released - wines I’ve had from 2010, the Chateau Tanunda Barossa Tower Moscato. Eight per cent alcohol, $15, and perfect to settle that bleary vintage visage at about ten o’clock in the morning. It’s sweet and ripe and gently fizzing with estery banana, rose and musk. “It needs to be chilled”, Tim said, nose down. “And while people might think it’s a simple sweet thing, it gets all the proper respect. This is from thirty year old vines.”

Get your shiny bottom up to the astonishing Chateau Tanunda now, and buy a case of this delight. Then wrap your sensories around the new Terroirs of Barossa Shiraz wines: one from Lyndock, one from Ebenezer, and one from Greenock. Smithy’s golden touch is beginning to emerge in maturing Chateau Tanunda wines like these. At last John and Evelyn Geber’s multi-million dollar restoration of Sir Samuel Cleland’s mighty stone Chateau has some wines to match the vision and endeavour of such admirable capitalists.


Chateau Tanunda 100 Year Old Vines Eden Valley Shiraz 2008

$95; 14% alcohol; screw cap; 93+++ points
It’s a bit silly putting points to a wine of this provenance in such an infant stage, but we do it. This is mighty. It has Tempranillo-like Parade Gloss bootpolish tones in its confounding depths. If its vineyard was not quite so venerable, it would fit perfectly in the $48 Terroirs trio, as it’s not like any of those. It has posher French-coopered oak, because it deserves no less. Between that spicy decoration, and the schisty, stony tannins which glower below, there’s layer upon layer of fleshy, intense, devilishly seductive Barossa Shiraz of the highest calibre. Cellar.

Tim Smith Barossa Mourvedre Grenache Shiraz 2009

$28; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap; 94+++ points
This is Tim Smith’s best wine yet, which is saying something. It pulls you up. Great noses which generally sweep over glasses are suddenly brought to a dead halt when they hit this one. It’s harmonious; perfectly formed and alive, with all the right stuff in abundance: the nightshades, the carbon black, Smithy’s forge, prunes, Morello cherries, dried fig … buy some quickly, but drink it slowly: it needs a decade of dungeon or a day with the top off. Forget Bandol and Chateau-Neuf: this new Australian sets a standard that renders your regular GSM null and void.

CONSTELLATION SEEKS HARDY FLAK

RAZOR WIRE AT CONSTELLATION'S AUSTRALIaN HEADQUARTERS. THE VINEYARD OPPOSITE IS THE 162 YEAR OLD PATCH OF JOHN REYNELL, SOURCE OF THE FAMOUS REYNELL SELECTION CABERNET SAUVIGNON. CONSTELLATION SOLD THE VINEYARD TO MAKE WAY FOR A YUPPIE GHETTO photo KATE ELMES

Group Public Relations Manager - Constellation Wines Australia

Description

Constellation Wines Australia (CWAU) offers a diverse portfolio of wines from key growing regions around Australia. CWAU is part of the world's leading premium wine company, Constellation Brands.

Working in a dynamic, fast-paced environment, you will take a leading role in developing, managing and implementing public relations strategies that drive the company's positioning domestically and internationally. As the expert, you will lead your team in developing and building productive relations across media and other key decision makers.

You will have excellent interpersonal skills which will enable you to develop and maintain strong relationships while adding media value. Whilst solid wine industry experience is preferred, success in a similar beverage, FMCG or agricultural sector will be considered favourably. Strategic planning strengths as well as excellent written and verbal communication skills are essential. Tertiary qualifications are considered necessary.

For a job and person specification, please visit www.hender.com.au and for further information on our client, please visit www.cwines.com.au

Contact

Applications in Word format only should be forwarded to Wayne Kinner by e-mail to 12675@hender.com.au Telephone enquiries are welcome on (08) 8100 8812.

Job posted on My Wine Job on Monday, 19 April 2010