CHANGING THE GLOBE BY GEORGE

"How many Whites does it take to change a change a light globe?" George 
Grainger  Aldridge asked when I told him I'd miss lunch with him, Valmai
Hankel and Philip Satchell on account of braining myself and falling off the 
friggin steps ... "Stick to my patented light red, Whitey!" was his good advice.

CHINA THREAT: "REPLACE AUSTRALIA"

The most convivial, honest and transparent Sino-Austral wine dealings I know have happened during 30 years of Saturday lunches in Adelaide's T-Chow ... he we are a decade back at the retirement of co-founder So Hon Huang (Chef So, left, with the author and culinary genius Cheong Liew) ... photo Milton Wordley


US-Oz-China tiff: Trump-triggered trade war or dirty water skirmish?
by PHILIP WHITE


Bacchus only knows how much to-and-fro business has gone on between Australian wine leaders and politicians and the authorities and wine buyers of China in the last fortnight. 

Since I first wrote of this, the in tray has fizzed with triumphant PR nonsense from the winemakers who went to Hong Kong for Vinexpo. But trade wars and rumours of trade wars have been rife on the home front, where such things tend to be given a different level of public reportage. 

Which didn't stop the tellingly-named China mouthpiece, the Global Times adopting a stern Murdoch tone on 23 May when its editorial warned "When it comes to wine and beef, China can easily import those items from the US, replacing Australia." 

Within hours of sending a billion-dollar quiver through Australia's politicians and wine operatives, this specific threat was removed. It was replaced by a softer tone, still loaded with condescension, but calling us "Aussies" instead of "Australia". 

Underlined by a wharf slowdown, still to be accurately measured or reported in litres or money, the message had done its job. 

Even the ousted Australian Border Force boss, Roman Quaedvlieg, a self-professing "geo-political dilettante" who has "fought crime a lot" and knows "a little about border security, national security and trade issues" entered the fray. 

Quaedvlieg, left, with Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott ... photo Glenn Hunt

"In the age of free trade architecture, Single Window trade processing, blockchain, cognitive AI computing, high-speed barcode scanning and automation, the old school non-tariff (NTB) barrier of 'go slow' works a treat to put instant, precise and painful pressure on trade flows," he tweeted. 

While reluctantly mentioning the Opium Wars, which some Chinese regard as happening just a few months back, I suggest Quaedvlieg knows a lot more than most of us about the drug trade. Policing it has been his business. 

The opium ships in Lintin, China, 1824, by William John Huggins 

These current political realities, whether actual or dreamed, seem slightly less sinister than fair dinkum hot wars wars with dead people. There are fewer horrid photographs to start with. But of course the two are entangled increasingly as tariff and blockade threats and counter-blockade threats twist and turn. 

It's mainly virtual trench warfare so far, pushed along by Australia's right-wing government's delight at such a grand opportunity to scare its electorate into a 'fifties-era reds-under-the-beds panic. 

There's an election coming soon.

As a convivial mayor in a major China province once advised me, "We are a mercantile people, Mr. White. For five thousand years." 

It was revealing to see Trade and Tourism Minister Steven Ciobo sagely advise the National Press Club yesterday that only one - count 'em: one - winery had met with him for assistance in clearing the backlog of Aussie booze building up on Chinese wharves. 

It remains to be seen whether this was to get the Grange and Bin 707 flowing  or wine more along the lines of Murray-Darling stuff. 

That short fortnight ago, China began putting long-range nuclear bombers and missiles onto the islands it's built in the South China Sea. Sixty per cent of Australia's exports ship through there, most of it to China. This deployment triggered and/or coincided with much tone-deaf trumpeting and missile-rattling from the White House. Not to mention India joining our western allies' war games in those oceans to our north. 

Which in turn followed a gradual stewing of Australian discontent about the Communist Party of China attempting to unduly influence our way of life, beginning in our hallowed halls of academe: the brain farms our government has defunded to the point that they exist largely on selling retail education to Chinese folks. 

So new we have the Feds of both parties co-operating to tighten the Espionage and Foreign Interference Transparency legislation to focus more tightly on foreign government operatives. 

For fear of appearing soft-cocked, to look as tough as the hard-right Liberal-National Party coalition, the opposition Labor Party blindly supports most of their scare tactics.

All this while the Australian wine councils began to learn what it means to offend important Chinese, like those morally and politically miffed by Senator Ruston's statement  - on April Fool's Day - that Wine Australia would now decide who was a right and proper person to export Australian wine. 

Right and proper people inspiring the world  ... South Australian Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development Tim Whetstone, former Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and Senator Ruston ... photo from Wine Australia

"There will always be unscrupulous people seeking to make easy money from reputations carefully established and built by legitimate Australian wine producers and exporters," she said, avoiding mention of any particular nation. Or Penfolds. China knew who she meant. 

"Wine Australia can now ensure the bona fides of potential and existing exporters before issuing export approvals." 

This was intended to put a stop to the sort of counterfeiting I'd blogged about in March: exporters like Willunga Estate Wines, Lot 21, Main Road, Willunga (a storage shed since vacated), who put BinFu Thriving VIP407 on Chinese shelves, wearing livery that even some Australians could mistake for Penfolds. 

That was obviously a McLaren Vale wine address. The shed's still there. 

While it seems to me that direct Chinese investment in Australian wineries and vineyards is concentrated in our most famous and profitable vignobles, Murray-Darling operatives have been excited to report that their troubled region is seeing vineyards sell for three or four times the amount they were getting just a few years ago. 

The A$50 million last year given by the Feds for grants to encourage winery tourism facilities, especially in the Murray-Darling, are aimed directly at Chinese investors as much as drinkers. Riverlanders simply see their land values increasing as China drinks more. 

Which is about as short-sighted and unreal as talking of drought in the past tense, which the rivers water authorities currently do as they reallocate environmental flows to irrigation. The Australian Department of Agriculture and Water Resources forecasts and reports show that the current drought covering much of the Murray-Darling will only worsen and temperatures are increasing. 

Given the confounding chaos of the administration of water flows and irrigation permits already extant in the Murray-Darling Basin, can we be so naive as to imagine we can continue planning the export of big irrigation wine at about the cost of bottled water? 

While the Coorong and the estuary dies? 

The Murray Mouth, back in the days when when it flowed into the sea without dredging

As South Australia's own Senator Ruston, Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, is a dyed-in-the-wool Riverlander, maybe we should begin to expect her or her boss, Minister David Littleproud, to finally relate their highly-contentious Basin management plans to the drought forecasts their Department dutifully releases. Maybe then they could have a bit of a chat to Trade Minister Ciobo and let us know whether all this fuss is largely to do with Australia selling vast amounts of inland water we don't have to China, with 14.5 per cent ethanol in it as a free novelty? 

At a minimum ratio of 1200 litres of water to make each litre of wine, what does this really cost, or earn for Australia? And China, for that matter ... is that vast nation's water shortage the main handicap on the expansion of its own giant wine industry?

The author talking wine in an early Australian trade delegation in Yangzhou ...  and below, in a less formal mood with the beloved Yiu Lai Shuk, my adopted Grandma, who's trying my hat ... Grandma, her daughter Dora and grand daughter Gi Gi were the first folks to bring classical teochew 潮州菜  regional cuisine to Adelaide, with chef So ... that's GiGi's partner Chris Sykes, centre ... GiGi took the photograph in Park Lok ... dear Grandma lived one hundred years.

CONTAINS TRACES OF CERAMIC EGG

Collage by Marcelo Monreal, Brazil 

Ravensworth Murrumbateman Riesling 2017 
($38; 12% alcohol; screw cap) 

Pretty much the most vibrant Riesling bouquet to tickle this old smell box in years, this baby's just jumping with pretty meadow florals and something like a transporting lemon and white pepper pickle: it's tropical and wondrous in its complexity. 

Milton Wordley brought this bottle back from Bryan Martin and poured me a glass, which I was content to just sit there sniffing for half an hour. Twas almost as if to drink any would be to waste that swoony perfume.

"Fermented wild and warm in ceramic ovum, left on-lees for the rest of the year," the label advises. That worked!

I've guarded that magic bottle opened now for two days and the end of it's still singing that same fragrant gloria. Drink, and the creamy texture reminds one that below all those pretties and appetising savouries in the bouquet, there are also the comforting aromas of smooth pink flesh. 

If you chill the wine - careful! - a drier, hazy whiff of burlap wraps it up. I like just a touch of that so recommend drinking it at Casa Blanca kitchen-windowsill-in- the-wintry-afternoon-shade temperature. 

Speaking of windows, I refer one to the scene in Louis Malle's Atlantic City where the Susan Sarandon character comes home from a shift shucking oysters to wash her upper body in lemon juice. 

No wonder the damn thing sold out. 

If you need any convincing of the rare gastronomic intelligence of this special viniculturer, winemaker and chef, who is also winemaker at Clonakilla, where this wine was made, check his gorgeous cookbook Tongue & Cheek.

NEW GRENACHE FROM S. C. PANNELL

Stephen Pannell in his new shed ... photos Philip White

Delivering a tighter Grenache gospel: finer, less porty, much more serious
by PHILIP WHITE

It's dangerous to get too dogmatic in a revival crusade. About the nature of the message, I mean. If The Word is working, and the souls keep hitting the sawdust trail and coming to the front, it's best to keep some unity in your movement, and arguments about the finer points of doctrine tend simply to lead to splinter groups. 

Like you'll soon have Foot-washin Baptists over there, the Snake-handlin Baptists up the front, and the Poison-swallerin mob yelling hallelujahs to attract more swallerers to their Amen Corner. 

It's been a bit like this since the commencement of the Grenache  revival: sure, the flock's on the move to the repentance front, and the preachers and stewards are fairly united, but few yet seem sure about the message, or the rules. 

At the wine shows, you often have judges who've never made a good Grenache floundering to understand where they're going to steer the faithful with their selections of whatever they think are best. 

Personally, I see two major schools emerging thus far: there are the fragrant morello cherry fruitbombs of varying elegance, say of Blewett Springs, and then the more tannic ones, conventional, if you dare, made like standard Shiraz. 

At the danger of confusing the issue, but improving it and honing it, there's another move afoot as the elders of the movement, folks like Stephen Pannell at S. C. Pannell, and my landlord, Peter Fraser at Yangarra, are now making tighter, more serious versions of the wine. 

S. C. Pannell McLaren Vale Old McDonald McLaren Vale Grenache 2017 
($60; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap) 

75-year-old bush vines are a good start. Big oak vats rather than barrels and some whole berries in the ferment are the next step. 

Stephen thinks this could be the best Grenache he's made. 

As an intense baby trapped under the cool clean safety of the screw cap, this wine really behaves better with some air. This bottle has now been open three days and it's little chest is still opening for song. Where at first it was a tight, mysterious, confounding drink of impenetrable, almost metallic intensity, it has now got its shoulders back and the music's settled to a smoother, more fruitful melody. 

This wine will last and bloom for many years in a good cellar. It smells now of berries more than it did: but in a complex chorous of leaf and other juices: tweaks of pomegranate and blood orange with laurel and maybe even a curry leaf. They're enticing, welcoming, tantalising aromas unwinding and swirling and simmering. The flavours are snaky slender, polished to black chrome, retaining some of that original sinister glower. As no harsh pressings were included, the wine tapers off to a long tendril of pure glistening fruit without much more than a gentle dusting of very fine tannin. It's long and slow and teasing. 

At this early stage, it make me reach for a piquant, crumbly, tart cheese like aged Blue Wensleydale. 

Wayne Smart and his father Bernard in the Grenache Bernard's father planted in 1921 ... note the grey æolian (wind-blown) sand

S. C. Pannell Smart Clarendon Grenache 2017 
($60; 14.2% alcohol; screw cap) 

Made from Bernard Smart's legendary south-facing vineyard atop the southern ridge of the Onkaparinga Gorge, this is another beast again. It seems to have references to all the insinuations and facets of the McDonald, but with extra flesh, like the paler charcuterie meats. And that blue-black gunbarrel glint is perhaps even more sinister, always there in the background. 

While in this its callow yoof the wine seems a little shorter than the McDonald, with tannins perhaps a little more granular and drying, those extra components will need more time to properly harmonise, which will be well worth the wait. 

In the meantime, this Grenache is better suited to harmonious food rather than the contrasting acid and fat of the cheese recommended above. So juicy veal, like saltimbocca, or smoky barbecued pork ribs glazed till they caramelise a little, or a stack of meaty mushrooms in butter will sit it up just dandy. 

S. C. Pannell The Vale McLaren Vale Grenache Shiraz 2016 
($40; 14.5% alcohol; screw cap) 

Here we see why for years it was so easy for winemakers to hide their unpopular Grenache in Shiraz. The G-spot had no magic in those days when the vines were still being bulldozed. No more of that! 

We also see how quickly Shiraz can dominate and cover the more elegant Grenache. 

The overt flesh and awkward big-boned, beefy nature of the Shiraz benefits from the more elegant, less tannic Grenache, but the balance is critical. 

So whatter we got here? A slightly peppery, spicy wine that's simpler and more immediate, for starters. Those piquant edges are quickly enveloped in a rise of simple comforting flesh that coddles and soothes and generally provides calm reassurance if you're drinking rather than thinking. 

In other words, it's more typically the type of McLaren Vale red that in the 'seventies and 'eighties earned such wines the title "the middle palate of Australia". 

Which is never to suggest you can't discuss it. In fact there could be few better comparisons to sit and chew over if you found five or six friends, shared the cost of these three bottles and got those decanters humming. Give it a day, or even better, a whole weekend. It will hard to avoid seeing just what sets the finest Grenache apart from the thick-set 24 stone tattooed bruiser called Shiraz.

"Hullo," it says, crushing your handbones in its great gentle paw, "the name's Bubba. Welcome to the fold." 

Still waters don't always run deep.

FISHY MYCENǢAN AMPHORA

Warning: this wine may contain traces of fish ... from the transparency collection of The Palestine Exploration Fund ... Mycenæan vessel found in Ugarit, Syria in 1930

GRRRRRANEY CLARE & CO AT THE WHEATY

RUSSIA, ARTFULNESS AND ALCOHOL

Artful deception: Arkady Babchenko was not shot after all ... Kiev Police photo 

"There were small bottles of wine or cognac in the café." He didn't drink.  
by PHILIP WHITE
 
While there seems little doubt that Arkady Babchenko, the journalist critical of Russia, was not shot in the back and murdered by the secret services in his apartment in Kiev after all, Russia this week triggered a similarly complex crisis at another press conference in Moscow. 

Unfortunately for wine drinkers and art lovers, the Kiev exercise overshadowed the Moscow business. 

Igor Podporin (above - TASS photo) from Voronezh was in the Zamoskvoretsky Courthouse for attacking and damaging a painting of Ivan the Terrible cradling his dying son Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, whom Ivan Snr. had just bashed in the temple with his sceptre. The painting, Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on November 16, 1581 by Ilya Repin, is very important to many Russians. 

After the assassination of the reformist Tsar Alexander II, Repin painted the work in 1881, in recollection of other gruesome horrors of Russian history. In itself, the painting was an act of abhorrence and protest. Repin's portrayal of the mad Tsar's eyes are said to drive viewers mad; Tsar Alexandar III disliked it enough to have it removed from view. 

In 1913 Abram Blalshov had slashed the canvas three times with a knife, shouting "enough death, enough blood!" but perhaps because there was no gallery bar, he was simply declared mad and sent to a gulag. Repin was still alive to help restore his work. 

This time, witnesses observed Podporin use a restraining bollard to smash the protective glass and bash three holes in the canvas. He could get one or two year's gaol for each hole and an A$64,000 fine. Experts say the restoration of the invaluable painting could cost over A$200,000. 

"I came to look at the painting," police reported Podporin saying. "I wanted to leave, but then dropped into the buffet and drank 100g of vodka. I don't drink vodka and became overwhelmed by something". 

"Luckily, the most valuable images, those of the faces and hands of the tsar and prince, were not damaged," Tretyakov gallery director Zelfira Tregulova said. "There were small bottles of wine or cognac in the café. We’re going to talk to the café and ask them to remove them". 

In the court, Podporin denied the liquor bit, claiming the "falsehood of the historical facts depicted on the canvas" was sufficient. He seems to think the painting's a set up as artful as Arkady Babchenko's fake murder. 

"This painting is inaccurate," he said "he [Ivan the Terrible] is numbered with the saints," claiming that both police and gallery staff had pressured him to admit to drinking. 

Choice - Stanislav Plotenko

Which leads me to the matter of art mixed with alcohol. Bacchus only knows how many times I've been tempted to take up a bollard and attack the walls of some galleries, not so much because the art made me do it: usually it's the damned booze. I can't believe how many gallery directors expect their customers to gratefully slurp utterly detestable plonk while we consider spending thousands on the  works of our artists. 

This is how it works. A painter slaves away for months, even years, shivering in some studio shed with a bladder pack and a can of sardines, making enough paintings for an exhibition. They find a gallery. The gallery sends out the invitations. Then it rings somebody like me to find out which winery will suddenly donate a few cases of wine to lubricate the wallets. You know, donate. For free. Uh-huh. 

Unlike Blalshov and Podporin, winemakers are not necessarily sensitive to works of fine art. 

Those who do donate tend to send their bottom shelf, for which they can't be blamed, as the invitations and price lists are usually already printed with no mention of the grog or its provenance. Of course I speak generally: not all winemakers, painters, gallery directors and punters suffer such disconnect. I don't recall, for example, ever being handed a glass of execrable swill - even half-hearted squirt - at an exhibition directed by Kym Bonython, and he didn't drink alcohol. 

Kym Bonython with the author, early 'nineties ... photo Julie Bonython

Kym got it: expect our eye time, our adoration and our wallets? Treat the punter with due respect. You wouldn't see Kym as ready as the Tretyakov's Tregulova to blame exhibition failures on the tinctures proffered. 

Stand back and consider, and the logic of all this is as strange as the notion of a winemaker giving cellar door tasters a few free paintings every time they visit, whether they buy wine or not. 

I joked recently with Stilgherrian, the journalist and internet expert, about the nature of ranking things. He'd suggested ranking the hours of the day, like 1 o'clock is worth four points, 2 - 3 points; 3 - 6; 4 - 7 and so on. My retort compared such futility to the ranking of wine. Tempted to ring out another personal diatribe about how dumb such an exercise can be, I, we, were saved by Babchenko and Podporin, who have rekindled my idea of a better method of communicating the actual quality of the various drinks available. 

Until we see art critics ranking paintings with a score out of a maximum  one hundred, why can't we adopt a wine ranking system relating each drink to the sort of gallery you'd expect to serve it. Like the new Rotted Waftage Shiraz from Weeping Bigot Wines? I'd expect Legs Larrette to be serving that next time they hang works by Harried Arthur-Smock or whoever at the Shattered Wall Picture Centre.

Francis Bacon photographed in his Soho studio by Carlos Freire in 1977 ... at least by this stage Francis was making enough money to drink champagne, which was always poured at his exhibitions ... there were dozens of empty Krug bottles in that studio, which has since been painstakingly reassembled in Dublin

If however, we learned to make the viewing of art more of an experiential tourism event, we could work to close the gap between artist, exhibitor/dealer and prospective purchasers by serving those customers the plonk the artist could afford to drink whilst shivering for years in the shed with all that mess and a can of sardines. 

Goonbag in battered old Starbucks cups, usually.

While this may not be much poorer in quality than what the art buyers already get, at least this would likely see more gallery visitors show the sort of passion some of these Russians unleash when confronted by great art. 

Like, consider the publicity! I'll bet you'd never even heard of Illya Repin til now. 

On the other hand, I know a few painters who'd just as likely take up a bollard and help you tear the shit out of some of their more commercial work if you bothered to pour them something exceptional.

Edvard Munch - Self-portrait with bottles, 1938