NO FURTHER POINT IN POINTS

photo Philip White

Stars, bling, bullion, gongs, points, numbers all getting a bit too average as serious ratings

by PHILIP WHITE 

I'm sick of stars and numbers. Back when Johnny Rotten was growing bumfluff and I swapped writing about rocks and rock music for rating wines on the magazines, I inherited the standard five star system, which was no big deal.

There'd be three expert judges feigning independence whilst pointing out of a possible twenty and we'd average their scores and convert that somehow to stars which were implicit mechanisms of the business model. Many publications' basic income was dependent upon selling the winemaker the opportunity to have the wine's label displayed beside its review, and nobody'd do that with fewer than three stars out of five so the wines reviewed ended up with one of only three gradings: three, four or five stars.

As if there was nothing more subtle on the rack.

Need less money? Go tough on the scores. Need more? Take advantage of the two mushy bits: the judges' average could easily be influenced by ganging up on anybody who dared to point low. Then the editor could make another fudge turning that fluffy number into stars, as if the punter couldn't work out what 15/20 meant.

As managing editor of Wine and Spirit Buying Guide, the major Australian booze glossy of the early 'eighties, I attempted to straighten this out by recommending only wines that scored an average of sixteen or more out of twenty. Sixteen scored one star, seventeen two, eighteen three, nineteen four and only the near-perfect wine gonged five. Then the poor spaceflogger had to call the maker and explain why they were getting fewer than three stars and beg for money. That didn't last long. Friggin' business models, see?

I was always annoyed by the standard show judging system, where many judges really award one of five ratings then convert that, consciously or otherwise, back to points. Faulty wine, the vast majority, scores below 15.5/20. In another word, nothing. Sound wine scores bronze, meaning 15.5-17/20. Good sound wine lives where silver glimmers between 17 and 18.4 ... 18.5 and higher brings gold bling, maybe even a trophy once all the arguments are had. In other words, the wine shows award their equivalent of one to five stars.

In lieu of them ever handing any actual gold medals out - they never do - they might consider following our Minister for Foreign Affairs' tweeting example and move to emojis. That'd save all that infernal adding-up and rubbing-out.

Knowing that there was a lot more complexity in the drink, I happily switched to the hundred point system when that first hit, mainly to escape the suffocation of the arcane imperial method of the Royal Shows.

But that didn't work either. People thought I always pointed high, without realising that I'd fill a wheelie bin with rejects to get one or two wines worth more than ninety.

95 was about as high as I'd go. I seem to recall awarding a couple of 96ers but I balked at giving the perfect hundred in case I then encountered a better wine than one I'd thought was perfect. Unlike many of my wealthier colleagues, I gotta keep that top door open.

But the perception then put my precise efforts eerily close to the five star system. As I struggled for years to find wines worth 90/100 or more for recommendation it broke down to ninety looking a lot like one star; 91, two stars and so forth ... while in any typical week, my average score over the duration of the wheelie bin was between sixty and seventy points.

As I've developed an allergy to vineyard pollen atop my appalling reactions to olive pollen and the golden bloody wattle that's the emblem of our land, I was recently kicked to death in the hooter by a fortnight of hayfever.

I could drink, but be buggered if I could perform anything so fine as to award a meaningful score.

So I stopped. And I ain't going back.

Put very simply, whether it's the wine shows or the shiny mags or books, the system of scoring wines has not done much to improve the average quality of the wines made in Australia. Rather, the scores are awarded according to fad, fashion, and what needs to be sold, usually as dictated to the judging teams by their chair.

Judging teams are usually winemakers who have overwhelming vested interests. If they fail to recognise their own style, or indeed their own wine, they shouldn't be judging. If they make wine of a style and don't reward such wine with high points, they shouldn't expect us to drink it, or expect that we should respect their prescence at the judicial bench. Simple.

My colleague and friend Max Allen has earned a certain infamy amongst habituees of that shady realm by refusing to score wine. Flat out. Max has filed columns in both The Australian and Gourmet Traveller - for 18 and 11 years respectively - without scores.

Max has a thrash on Bill Monroe's porch

"Refusing to score wine has lost me precisely one freelance commission in all that time," Max says, "and that was only very recently – the same magazine subsequently commissioned a feature, so it was hardly professional suicide to stick to my guns.

"And not one of the (ahem) award-winning books I’ve written over the last two decades has included scores," he explained. "The closest I got was in the annual Quaff guide, which had three ratings: 'pretty good,' 'good,' and 'bloody good' ... indeed, the most successful of my books, Red and White, didn’t even include the names of any specific wines!"

Which reminded me that nobody seems to have noticed that there's not one tasting note in  A year in the life of Grange, which I wrote with photographer/publisher Milton Wordley.

Along with that piece of outright Maxism, I'll be writing about wine until about three weeks after my death, without stars or scores. After that, I'll be hangin' out with the Morning Star.

Proper book shows still give out real medals ... the author and Milton Wordley with gongs (for A year in the life of Grange) from the Independent Publishers' Association awards in New York ... photo by Gail Gago

The temptation is to here commence another essay, in response to Andrea Frost's elegant discussion on the blog of British critic Tim Atkin MW. Titled Wine and anthropomorphism, this tenderly nudges the matter of writing of wines as if they were people.

Such carnality is common in this cement mixer of senses I think must be my brain.

The lexicon of English words specific to aroma and flavour is an empty book. We use metaphor and simile and some of us use people. Andrea says some icon wines can taste "like a big, ripe, warm mouthful of money." 

photo Philip White

Most folks, of course, use numbers. I suspect there are more people in the wine industry that can subtract than there are working as writers. This seems to preclude their chance of having anything much along the way of your actual writing going down so it's probably a good thing, their numeracy.

For them, pithy and clinical's the safest place to be if it's honest.

Those who think they're Sam Orr should get straight off the back labels. Sam wrote for Gordon Barton's Nation Review in the early '70s, with Michael Leunig doing the toons. Sam was mad. His real name was Richard Beckett. Richard was mad too. Mad geniuses. Sam used to rank wines according to the influence he thought they'd have on the many types of farm dog common to this country, like "kill two black dogs," or "drive six brown dogs to drink."

from Richard Beckett's The new dinkum Aussie dictionary with thanks to Bob Merlin

 

That was long before everyone hit the winery dog porn books. I can't recall Sam recommending any poodles but I'd warn anybody off trying to swell to fit his uniform. If you're not a daggy hayseed Ocker don't try to be one. Which is almost science: like it's not there until it is. Good luck if you already is.

When a point including science need be made I promise I'll at least try to use some of the numbers that matter which means right there that I've made the compromising decision of one with deeply vested interests.

Like I'm a glutton for a good drink, whoever I think it is. Some of them have vital statistics.

THE STATE OF RELIGION BY GEORGE

DAWN OVER IRONHEART COTTAGE

from my kitchen window while I brewed the first coffee of today ... those baby bush vines are learning to live in hard stone, but they're good at producing a bunch or two of incredible flavour each year now ... they'll get there ... brave little buggers ... photo Philip White, who's lucky to rent a living ironstone cottage window like this on Yangarra ... sure beats TV

MORE SMALL CHANGE AND ONE FINE FIANO

Ballandean Estate Wines Granite Belt Messing About Fiano 2015 

$30; 13.5% alcohol; screw cap 

Most Australian wine regions are suddenly planting Fiano, the oily, fairly coarse grape of Sicily and Campania. They seem to think it might help replace the Kiwi Savvy-B that smites them with deep paranoia and jealousy; or the horrid clumsy hot-to-warm climate ocker Chardonnay they poured on us for decades.

Fiano has whipped up a feverish evangelical mob around McLaren Vale, which is bemusing were it not so risky: too few winemakers have any idea how to make a fine wine from it. Like the most overt members of the vast inbred Muscat family, it carries an array of monoterpenes which give it an oily bouquet and feel, which can quickly grow a stale petroleum ugliness if it's not planted in a cool enough spot or picked earlier than the majority of South Australians are game to pick.

Grown away up in the cool at around 900 metres altitude in the Granite Belt, this Queenslander comes from a winery first set up in a tin shed by Salvatore Cardillo in 1932. It caught my nose because it's more elegant than most of the presumptuous and fatuous southerners: beneath that acrid, nose-tickling edge of smashed granite there's a little of that oil, but not too much. Let's say there's just enough to comfort one.

It has a mild reek of rosehip jelly and some of the nuttiness of good nougat. After twenty minutes in the ice bucket it reaches that point where the acid and tannin dance daintily with that modest viscosity.

It's really damned hard to match a wine with the vinegar and oil of a dressed salad. I can think of no better one than this: rocket and lettuces and your favourite greens with some little cubes of fetta and dark olives ... it'll even handle those bitter tannins of whitloof with some walnuts, walnut oil and balsamic. Given its provenance, I should also say a proper full-bore Caesar salad would work very well. 

Small Change White 2015 

$18 per bottle by the dozen; 12.3% alcohol; screw cap 

Australia's Verdelho cuttings came largely from the Atlantic isle of Madiera, where it was used for a sweetish, high-acid, long-living fortified until the vineyards were killed by the dreaded  phylloxera. On the Iberian Peninsula it's largely used for bucket-grade sweet white. At Langhorne Creek, it can make a rather spritely elegant dry white a little after the style of Chenin blanc, if not quite so steely in the acid division.

The Small Change crew wisely adds a tiny dollop of Adelaide Hills Gewürztraminer to the Langhorne  Verdelho to give it that measured dash of homely oiliness and viscosity. A little of the rose and musk of Gewürz adds interest and comfort to the peppery cress-and-chicory verdancy of the Verdelho: the wine is wisely modest in alcohol anyway.

This is a bright, cleverly-planned wine built for that ice bucket in the sun, stack of salt'n'pepper squid right beside it. It's been made for our climate and our seafood. In a sense, it's a better Fiano than most of our Fiano: more clever, and quite a lot less spendy.

On the other hand, because it's not nearly so green-grassy as the abovementioned Kiwi Savvy-B's, I think it's a much more satisfying schlück than the vast majority of those catty buggers. Especially with that squid. 

Small Change Red 2015 

$18 per bottle by the dozen; 14% alcohol; screw cap 

Another of the new wave - I like to think it's a wave more than a ripple - of reds made from the Bordeaux varieties, this is a Clare Valley/Langhorne Creek assemblage of Merlot, Cabernet franc and Malbec.

From the start, it's obviously been planned and designed like the Small Change White: intelligently built to a specific purpose: early, inexpensive drinking without the duh factor. Moreover, the makers have achieved that and more. There's no wavering from the clever template.

While its alcohol carries its prune and cherry with just the right amount of viscosity, the pretty Cabernet franc brings an insinuation of musky florals to the moody, mossy earth of the Merlot. Malbec brings its serious finishing tannins and that hint of macho gunblue.

What we have is a lovely blend that's neither too junior nor too condescending and serious. It's not gloopy but elegant and edgy in the savoury sense. It'll handle your ordinary snacky mousetrap cheddar as well as the Sunday roast, and makes a highly satisfying companion to pizza or pasta. In fact, if you're thinking Italian, I could list many imports three and four times this price which would do no more than a similar job.

This duo is the third release from Small Change. Both wines rock. All six of their wines rock.

And if you're not in the mood for Italian, you can always take 'em all to Wah Hing ... 

 photos Philip White

FINO'S ROMEO WINS TWELFTREE AWARD

The fabulous Sharon Romeo, manager and maitre d' of Fino, last night won the Howard Twelftree Award for her significant and lasting contribution to the gastronomic life of South Australia.

Here she is with her co-owner and head chef, David Swain in the kitchen of the famous Fino in Willunga, McLaren Vale.

The award was presented by last year's winner, Duncan Welgemoed, of Africola. 

"For a couple of decades Adelaide has been blessed by one true star of the waiting realm," Duncan said, "a person who understands the art and craft of the garden, the kitchen, the cellar and the people who pay for it all: the customers. 

 

"Sharon seems to have remembered every tiny lesson she's learned in her intense  gastronomic life ... Through her father's understanding of gardens and game - from a distinctly southern Italian point of view - her mum's cooking, and on through a life of amazing gastronomic experience, Sharon has developed a dazzling understanding of the beauty one can put on a plate.

"She has an acute awareness of the flavours of wine that best suit the intricacies or simplicity of any fine dish ... She's never afraid to take a risk ... a perfectly measured risk in her case. 

"She remembers her customers and better than any, knows how to make them feel totally welcome and comfortable ... SPECIAL!

"Which all adds up to them waking next day with the fondest memories and a desire to be back there as soon as possible," Duncan said. 

The awards were presented at the rave launch of The Adelaide Review's Hot 100 in South Australia's oldest surviving theatre, the 1841 Queens, in Playhouse Lane. The win was an immediate hit with the several hundred guests. 

Those of us who live in McLaren Vale feel a bit like it's Barossa 1, McLaren Vale 0 since Sharon and David were lured to the Barossa to their brilliant new Fino at Seppeltsfield. The original, at Willunga, still runs perfectly, with David dividing his head chef attention between the two while Shaz devotes her full time to the incredibly successful Seppeltsfield Fino. The dynamic duo are looking for somebody to take over the Willunga business.

One bonnie afternoon at the Hickinbotham Clarendon Vineyard ... vineyard manager Michael Lane, winemaker Shelly Torresan, David Swain, manager/winemaker Peter Fraser, Shazza atop Chris Carpenter, the Napa Cabernet winemaking giant who regularly comes to Australia to oversee the Hickinbotham wines, and winemaker Charlie Seppelt

Backstage at Fino Willunga ... flowers for the memory of many great gastronomic adventures in this much-awarded rural restaurant ... and the anticipation of many to come ... get along there quick! ... all photos except the pie by Philip White ... JUST IN: this one below by Milton Wordley ... typically, the unwitting Shaz was flat out compiling two new wine lists and was the only one who wasn't there, so I was honoured to collect the award, on her behalf, from Duncan ... what a delight! ... dear Shaz has picked up a lot of stuff after me!

TINTARA NOT FOR SALE - KEITH TODD

Accolade boss Keith Todd ... photo Philip White

"The company will never sell the facility as it's the home of Hardy's."

Rumours were on the fizz around some parts of the wine business that Accolade was selling Hardy's Tintara to Warren Randall. Accolade is spending millions restoring and renovating the old heritage-listed winery in McLaren Vale's main street. 

When DRINKSTER asked Accolade General Manager - Global Operations Keith Todd about this he shot back:

"I heard that too but it's totally untrue. It's quite funny I had to meet with Warren and Steve Pannell to get Steve to sign a beam in our new tasting room at Tintara. We're acknowledging our former winemakers. Some folks saw us and put two and two together and made six." 

BASKET RANGERS: EARLY HILLS ANGELS

Phillip and Mary Broderick: amongst the first few vignerons in today's Adelaide Hills vignoble

by PHILIP WHITE

One good way of learning how a person regards their home patch is to notice which parts of it they really want you to know about. When Phillip Broderick showed me his view of Basket Range, where he's been growing grapes with his wife Mary since 1980, he proudly showed me the school, the oval, the home of the local sculptor, and the fruit co-op cold store. All these are on hilltops.

And then, of course, there are his vineyards, which start on hilltops and plunge down into the deep, steep gullies of that bonnie upland fruit bowl, the traditional heart of Adelaide's apple, pear, cherry and berry industries.

It's a basket, really.

"I first planted down at the old place, down in the gully," he told me as we wound around those hillbilly goat tracks. "I first bought it because I wanted to live there. I was talking to Steve George and Peter, Peta van Rood's father. He'd put in a vineyard up around Clare. He said 'this is the same height above sea level as Clare. You could get away with red here.' And the penny dropped and I thought oh well I'll do that. He was really helpful, old Peter."

The Brodericks' Basket Range brand now adorns some of Australia's very best blends of the Bordeaux varieties: sublimely-perfumed, perfectly elegant red wines. They're on a par with the beautiful Blue Poles blends from Margaret River.

"I put the grapes in just slowly," he explained. "I put Malbec, Merlot, Cabernet, a bit of Cabernet franc and that was it. We gradually put in small patches of grapes until about 1987. That last bit was '90: some Petit verdot. I thought if that ripens in Bordeaux, like Carmenere, it'll work here. It's a blender, a finisher for the good years. I like it. I've planted more of it.

"Not that I knew much about Bordeaux wine," he chuckled. "I was so bone ignorant I remember they started a little bit of a wine show at Uraidla which has now evolved into the Adelaide Hills wine region. We used to go to the Uraidla Aristologist at the time of the show, and we were all standing 'round in a circle and we'd have dinner there with the Hillyers and the wines would come out and they'd have a guest judge.

"You were the guest judge one year," he reminded me. "And you know, they were the days. Henschke was there. Croser was there. You'd stand around and you'd talk about the wines. Anyway one year one of the judges said--I think he was from Orlando or somewhere--and he said this wine's--it was a 1989 or something--he said this wine almost tastes like a St. Emilion. And I thought who's Sondra Millyon? No shit. His girlfriend?"

Peter van Rood was only part right in his daring presumption. Phillip found it tricky getting those first crops ripe in the depths of the gully.

"Down there the sun often didn't get on them 'til nine o'clock in the morning and it ripened really late. And so you were like a Blade Runner with ripening ... it  was the classic 'Come on everybody, come and pick the grapes,' over a weekend or a couple of weekends, and you know after a couple of years everybody'd got Tuscanned right out and it was a nightmare in the shed. But that was great. You know, family and friends and stuff.

"The first mob of vintages were from about 1986 which we won't speak about. Barrel in the back room with Steve George [who by that stage was making wines at his Ashton Hills vineyard, just across the range]. 1988 was the first time we had stuff worth a label."

Enough fear of those chill dark gullies eventually drove the Brodericks to buy their own hilltop, the closest one, smack in the middle of that fruit basket. They made a handsome home there, and during 2001 and 2002 planted more vineyard.

"Up here ... once the sun's up at six it's on all day. I've put in more Pinot, more Merlot ... the first vintages from here were '06. It just changed things. Everything ripened. The fruit set was better. You weren't battling the cold. We finally got some good--well you can see what it's like now. It's good set and it just sits quietly and I'm really sparing with the water and I've always kept to the minimum with the sprays. Largely, if I can get away with sulphur and copper I will. If the shit's gonna hit the fan, then I'll take steps."

 

Catharsis: Phillip pinches himself ... I was there the day he sold his lovely truck

"When I told the bloke who used to run the Ashton Cold Stores - he'd been there for fifty years - I told him I'd bought this place, Doug Watson's, and he said 'Watsons grow the best apples in Basket Range.' 

"This place is a blessed site because it grows great fruit. Anything here is blessed. It's good apple country. Good pear country. Good cherry country. And they fit well, and grapes come in just at the end. Basket Range was quite renowned. It grew wonderful berries. Wonderful cherries. Wonderful apples." 

While Phillip has been very quiet about his wines and the fruit he sells to highly appreciative rivals, one felt obliged to ask him about some of the young local winemakers who have earned much feverish praise for their so-called 'natural' wines. 

He was reluctant to take that plunge. Eventually he did:

"Natural wine? I think it sort of goes into factional schools rather than your actual natural. I'm not quite sure what natural wine is. Or the natural wine movement. It's a question. What I aspire to in actual farming is to bring it back to the farming practises of 1945. The basics. Before the chemicals came.

"For example: all the apple crops 'round here had rhubarb growing 'round them," he explained. "So the cash crop was rhubarb, but the rhubarb also knocked off the Codling moth. The way you could work it was just a very nice balance. That's the idea. You get horse poo and cow poo, you shove it in with your chooks. What do the chooks do? They eat every seed out of it so then when you spread it in your garden you don't bring weeds in with it. That's what you do. Very simple. That's my idea of nice balanced farming.  Use what you've got intelligently and to apply and interfere the least you can."

"I assume that's what natural winemaking aspires to. But how they can get away with basically this 'Shove it in the shed and walk away and come back and it's all made' mentality I'm not sure about. You do need to work it, and obviously you've gotta plunge it and that's what we do here. I don't use introduced yeast. I used to. I don't anymore. So in one sense I suppose I'd call myself a natural winemaker but I'm classified as not by most people in that regard. I don't know how you could be any more natural. I'm not using glyphosate this year for the first time. I'm gonna give that [abstinence] a good run and see what it does to the soils. I'd like to be able to stay away from it. These soils need to get more life back into them."

The next tricky question concerned a more obvious problem: bushfire.

"Fire?" he retorted. "My favourite season has always been winter. Apart from autumn, which is just beautiful. But what's summer? Summer in the Hills, and in lots of other places, is basically the fear of nuclear war, which can break out at any time. And snakes. Brownies. That's what you've got to watch. They're the kurdaitcha men. They're there when you don't expect them. And they scare the crap out of you. But you never go hunting them. They've been here a lot longer than I have."

Another obvious question: how does he pay for it?

"I'm a magistrate," he explained, "and I'm currently in the Youth Court. That can be pretty interesting. It gets a bit gothic in there sometimes. A bit of criminal; a bit of child protection."

Before that, he'd worked for years with isolated Aboriginal communities. In a similar lifelong commitment to public service, Mary is a full-time nurse at the Stirling hospital. So how do they find the time to run a winery?

"We're lucky because we've got this lovely team of Laos people who've been with me for ten years," he said.

"Always employ Buddhists. They do the pruning. Shoot-thinning they've just finished. They're there on the knocker. They're there rain hail or shine. Always smiling. Very generous, very honest. Very hard working. They're adroit. Very fast pickers. I just have enormous respect for them. Without them I couldn't do it. The country here is very steep. On a hot day, it's no picnic."

Tractor work? "I use local contractors. They do the slashing and the spraying. I've only got weekends. And you've got to have a life as well, so it gets a bit round-the-clock at vintage. You've gotta do pumping out and plunging and whatever. It just sucks your day. Mary's been pretty bloody patient, frankly."

Praise Bacchus and Pan for that.

All photographs by Philip White ... I'll add some tasting notes here soon