It's In The Middle Of Your Face

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by PHILIP WHITE – This first appeared in The Advertiser in November 1990

“Mummy it smells!”

Therein lies one of our biggest deceits.

To the white man, smell is a dirty word. Not only do we train our children to believe this lie, but we live our lives maintaining it. We feel awkward discussing smells. We have very few words we can comfortably use to describe and discuss them. People who wouldn’t write a letter in a fit suddenly up and off nervous notes of ridicule when I honestly report the bouquets of wines I want to share.

Somewhere between now and that strange dawn by the swamp, when first we stood up on our hind legs, raising our noses from mushroom-snuffling height, through handy genital-sniffing levels to superior, fully erect, Apollonian majesty, we began the tragic denial of our most refined, acute and sensitive sense. Now we pretend the world of aroma belongs solely to dogs and cats. Fools.

The human schnozz can detect and identify some aromatic compounds, like methoxypyrazine¹, the prominent smell in under-ripe sauvignon blanc and cabernet sauvignon, at levels measured in parts per trillion, and even the smaller US trillion has twelve zeroes. That’s like detecting and identifying one grape in the entire Australian vintage. With your nose.

Ours is vastly superior to the smelling ability of most animals. While our tongues taste only four things – sweet, sour, salt and bitter² – our olfactories work with millions of smells and combinations of them. They comfortably, continuously shuffle through a range of units so vast that it makes music and tone, and the variations of them, look tiny.

This is miraculous – a thing to be marveled at and investigated with great determination.

But it’s not. In fact, through the advent of Christian and Islamic stifling of almost everything fleshy, suddenly resurgent in the wowser epidemic, strangely combined with the neo-fascist preoccupation with perfect muscle tone and the getting of heart rates down to zero through obsessive exercise, and the opportune threat of exotic poxes such as AIDS, we have almost cut our noses out completely.

Think of the squillions spent on the enhancement and entertainment of our other senses. We have great industries and academies devoted to colour, line and form and the pursuit of things orderly and pleasing to the well-trained eye. Painting, architecture, packaging, fashion – this is not only a big education number, but a mammoth business, and a naive attempt at the taming and reshaping of the messy vagaries of nature.

We have great halls of learning devoted to the development and adoration of music, and enormous industries built upon its reproduction and sale.

Language is an even bigger game, and its presentation and storage aspects are as big as big gets on our little planet.

But smell? Apart from those relatively minor industries devoted to its modification or denial, such as deodorant manufacture, smell has never openly figured in the west’s broad-form indulgence stakes. People hate their noses, jammed there like blights, smack in the centre of their otherwise beautiful faces. Yeccch. It’s a nasty reminder of primæval nights sniffing for love or danger in the cave, long before we tricked ourselves into believing we’d finally got nature firmly strapped in a harness so it could pull us around, and that smell would no longer count.

Considering our ridiculous rigmarole in hiding from sight the anatomical bits not favoured by clean white people, like the anus, it’s surprising we don’t wear some ornate form of nose brassiere to keep this ugly, most intrusive of organs, out of sight.

I can see a huge future in designing, manufacturing and selling a thousand lines of nose bra. You know, the saucy Chantilly lace job with the cheeky cutaway sides and the unique charcoal lining to preclude all aroma, or the gentleman’s sports version with the chrome cover and inverted ram tubes to concentrate the whiffs of racing fuel, rubber and grease, but filtered to remove totally all fresh vegetable and meat smells.

Human smells, for heaven’s sake.

But despite all this ignorance and denial, there are a few genuine nose freaks out here willing to sell the house in pursuit of things that smell good. Like fine food, fine perfume and fine wine. It’s a shock to most folks to discover that the most expensive of all these things, the rarities in the greatest demand, are the ones which smell like the most intimate bits of humans.

Truffles, morels, fresh oysters, malossol caviar, ripe creamy cheese, smoked salmon – these are the wicked foods. Mature Champagne, the best Burgundies and Bordeaux reds are the wickedest wines. The compounds which give these exotica their unique, most desirable aromatics are often very similar in molecular structure to wonderful things called pheremones, which are airborne compounds similar to hormones. They trigger involuntary physiological reactions in creatures which may not always be aware of their smell.^3.

Not all pheremones work in overtly sexual ways. Scientists in the UK, for example, are synthesising one which appears to settle agitated people down. Called Osmone 1, this molecule of steroid musk, shaped very much like the hormone testosterone, is also closely related to five-alpha-androstenone, linked in turn to boarfish, truffles, celery, parsley, cedar and sandalwood. They impregnate a little cube with it, so patients can sniff it at will.

It seems likely to be used in the place of calmative, hypnotic and sedative drugs. The best description of the smell? In this concentration, clean mother’s breast, or armpit. Lovely soft, creamy flesh. The smell of great aged merlot from Chateau Petrus.

There are other wines which smell like high concentrations of androstenone, as it approaches the musky, urinous fragrance of sweat and sex. Some great Champagnes smell like pyrroline, the smell of carob beans, semen, corn on the cob, persimmons and caviar.

A smell like that of isovaleric acid, one of the most womanly aromas, can hike the price of a great Burgundian pinot noir into the nether regions. Paraaminobenzoic acid, the most prominent smell of many skin creams and hair conditioners, occurs naturally between your toes in the most secret creases of your skin, and has very close parallels in some of the finest and most expensive wines.

So. You see why we play these wine games, eh? Good. All this excitement is enhanced by the knowledge of the machinery of smelling. Think of your nerves. Every nerve ending in your body is thoroughly shielded, carefully packed away to prevent the sort of pain you get when this shield is broken by a razor or waddy. But there behind your honker lie 20 million stark naked nerve endings, swaying like seagrass in a thin layer of mucous, their short roots poking straight through into your brain.

An aromatic tickle of these can bring back the most vivid memories of childhood, the most sensuously erotic imaginings, terrible hunger, or the name, vintage and maker of a wine you drank with your Mum on the beach at Victor in the spring of 1967. And we’ve been trained to shun them.

After the weirdo Samurai writer Mishima ritually disembowelled himself twenty years ago in Japan, curiosity led me to study his warrior’s meditative breathing technique. It changed my life, because in it I discovered that our noses smell too when we breathe out.

In the west, we think to smell is to inhale, short, sharp and simple, and we believe a breath first involves inhaling, then exhaling. We start it empty and dead; there is a typically brief western climax, then we finish it empty and dead.

Mishima taught it the other way round. You start on the plateau, packed full of life and air, and gradually force it out, carefully examining your exhalation for the smells of yourself. These will include the food and wine in your belly; the smell of your blood. Your lungs, after all, are a flimsy layer of wet tissue paper with your blood on one side and the sky on the other. Fully exhaled? Empty? Pause and consider. Here is the typically inscrutable eastern anti-climax. With careful practise, this becomes the point at which you can fall asleep at will.

But then you inhale, filling yourself with new life and wonder and the smells of all that surrounds you. Put a glassful of immaculate twenty year old fermented grape juice which reeks of all your favourite things in there with everything else, suck it up til even your shoulders are full, and you begin to wonder whether something went wrong with poor old Mishima’s nose. Full of fresh air and bouquet now? Good. Pause and consider. Here endeth the lesson.

Unless, like me, you want to do it all again. Architecture? Deodorant? Order? Give me a smelly old romp in the primordial swamp any day of the week. And let’s discuss the smells, all the smells, as we go.

FOOTNOTES

1 - METHOXYPYRAZINE

This compound is produced by cabernet sauvignon and sauvignon blanc – and some other grapes - to deter predators which might damage the grape before its seed is ready to germinate. Once the seed is ready to germinate, the grape ceases to produce methoxypyrazine and acid, and instead produces sugar, which is an attractor. In the case of the cabernet, the berry even changes colour, from the green which usually indicates tart bitterness, to a pretty, bright red-purple. The predator eats the berry, and by the time its stool emerges, the seed has sprouted. Methoxypyrazine is the prominent smell in tomato leaf, pea shells and bean skins. It occurs in many grasses, often alongside oxalic acid. When these grasses are dried and oxidised, as in hessian or burlap sacks, their aroma is like the methoxypyrazine in a slightly oxidised wine. I find it highly attractive.

2 – SWEET, SOUR, SALT AND BITTER

We have known since the 1940s that the standard school map of the human tongue, with distinct areas each designated to detect one of these basic flavours, is balderdash. We also know that the human mouth can detect many other things. Chilli, for example. Water. And, of course glutamates, or umami. To investigate this, click on Nairupa Chaudhari, the world’s leading expert on glutamate receptors.

3 – PHEREMONES

While many pheremones have no discernable aroma, they are frequently accompanied by other animal excretions that do have distinct aromas, which, when inhaled and detected, trigger an involuntary anticipatory excitement in the reciever. Pheremones have their own detector, in the nose, but separate from the aromatic olfactories. These are tiny tear-duct-like openings on either side of the septum, just a short distance up the nostrils, called Jacobson’s Organ. Their signals travel to a completely different part of the brain to that which receives aromatic signals.

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Biodynamic, bold, and beautiful

by PHILIP WHITE – This appeared in The Independent Weekly in December 2007

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When I was a little kid at Nairne primary school, I spent years gazing from my desk, out over the jumping green fields toward the summit of Mount Barker, knowing that this was good country. Away over there, around the big Chapman house, lay some of this state's best farming dirt. It spread from the piedmont of the Mount down across the Bald Hills Road to the west, including the verdant swathe of ground on which my woodwork teacher's dad had first isolated and developed the clover he named Mount Barker Subterranean, which kept the district's dairy cattle full of goodness and milk for nearly a century.

Today much of that ground is covered in some of the most graceless villa rash imaginable. Thanks to the genius of greed and the idiocy of planners who'd love to be developers, we have turned that glorious garden into a wretched suburban sprawl fit to make Brian Burke proud - the stuff of a future Four Corners expose.

But there's one good stretch of it that seems securely determined to remain horticulturally productive. This is where the German founders of Jurlique first planted their biodynamic gardens to supply the ingredients for their natural wellbeing and skin care brand. They'd scoured the earth from California to here, searching for ground that was fit and healthy, and devoid of DDT.

Since they sold and moved on, they've left behind the beautiful Ngeringa biodynamic vineyards set up by their son, Erinn Klein, and his wife, Janet, over the last six years.

Biodynamic? You mean all that mumbo-jumbo about full moons, natural manure mulch and preparations made from cow's guts in buried horns? You bet.

"We'd eat our cow manure", said Erinn, grinning proudly last week, as we tasted his first wines, in a spotless winery stacked with glistening, impossibly fresh and aromatic vegetables. The cows are biodynamically-grown Highland cattle, with their huge horns and curly coats, and the produce? Well, start with the pumpkin they gave me. I cut a hole in the top of that heavy shiny brute, scooped its seeds out, filled it with cream, yoghurt, onions, garlic, chillis, mushrooms and herbs, put the lid back on, and baked it. It was so dense it wouldn't bloody cook. After three hours, the first serving fed four. Then we sliced the remaining flesh, baked it again, and tried to mash it in a blender. It nearly mashed the blender. Eventually we bashed it into another, more conventional soup, which fed six. The remainder's still swelling, like the Magic Pudding, in the big iron pot. There's enough there for another eight serves. Biodynamic plants seem to have twice the cell density of stuff conventionally grown. And at least twice the flavour.

This goes for grapes, too. The first Ngeringa wines are drop-dead gorgeous. There are two tiers, J.E and Ngeringa, the latter appellation being reserved for only the very best produce from their own vineyards. The J.E Chardonnay 2005 ($25; 93++ points) being as good an opener as I know. It's more Chablis than Burgundy, being wonderfully tight and lithe, with the perfect creaminess of a Chinese custard, flavoured with the slightest hint of honeycomb and spiced by a whiprod of the very best oak.

There's a J.E Pinot with a lovely fluffy, spongy texture, and a range of flavours from black cherry through roast cashew to sweet baby beetroot, crying out, like any exemplary Burgundy, for a confit of goose, or mild cassoulet ($25; 92++); and a J.E McLaren Vale Shiraz 2004 ($20; 92++) jumping with vitality and organic health; beginning with plump, fleshy berries and finishing with tannins that set your happy cheeks agush.

Then comes the Ngeringa Syrah 2005 ($40; 92++) which is more a Rhonish Hermitage Hill than almost any other Australian shiraz, explaining the syrah nomenclature. An astonishing concentration of sweet perfumed fruit and earth, this essence dawns ever so gradually, a little like that magic pumpkin. My bottle has been open for days, and it's only beginning to sing.

That housing's gotta be stopped.

For reviews of Ngeringa's latest, hit DRANKSTER.

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GOOD EVANS, IT'S LEN!

Take Some Essence Of Oak Chips, Add Weeds And Vanilla ...

by PHILIP WHITE - This first appeared in The Independent Weekly in May 2008

“Chardonnay will be the vanilla of the Australian wine industry”, the late Len Evans, OBE, preached for thirty years.

Who? This feisty ex-Mt Isa Mines storeman eventually ran Rothbury Estate, owned Evans Family Wines, chaired Petaluma, controlled the national wine show ring, became a highly influential mentor to hundreds of adoring winemakers and critics, et al. Like Sir John Falstaff, Evans smudged the boundary between ebullient and bumptious, and, after port, was borborygmic.

In Champagne, chardonnay’s used for champagne; in Chablis it makes lean, unoaked chablis, and in Burgundy, it’s used to make creamy, extravagantly oaked white burgundy. Like chardonnay, all these words sound nice, and while it was all fabulously expensive, fabulist Len loved shunning expense at the table.

But it snows in those places. Apart from bits of Tassie, like the Upper Tamar, and tiny slices of the mainland - high Orange or Tumbarumba - we could never grow chardonnay vaguely like the great French vignobles. So why chardonnay? It doesn’t snow along the Murray. Then, Len never drank much Murray.

Locally, Romney Park proves that on one tiny ridge near Hahndorf, you can make delicious chardonnay, as Ashton Hills does near Summertown. Penfolds makes mighty stuff from other Hills vineyards. Mountadam’s returning from a ten year slump. There’s Evans’ ex-pet, Lion Nathan’s Petaluma, with its alluring bunch of Riverland doradillo on the front label. After that I’m scratching.

Scarce cool country is not the only problem with Australian chardonnay. From the start, back labels invariably claimed this new variety was lovingly fermented and matured in new French oak, oak being the only thing available to legally impart vanillin. But as I wrote in 1991, when Len’s sermon was reaching crescendo, France typically harvested enough oak to make only about 250,000 new barrels – about 800,000 short of the amount of Burgundy-sized barrels needed to contain the juice of our 20,000 freshly-planted hectares of chardonnay. If indeed they eventually grew a berry. Forget barrels for the reds, or for the rest of the world. Or for the French, for that matter.

Luckily, Len had an attitude to oak that didn’t always require barrels. At a tasting at Rothbury in May 1983, I sidled out for a smoke when a courier arrived with four large plastic drums of liquid. Rather than interrupt my host, who was inside preaching, I signed for it, then read the chit, which said “Essence Of Oak Chips”. That’s cheaper than chips!

Evans’ acolytes and disciples always rather contentiously insisted that the customer demand for chardonnay was insatiable. Only a few years back blokes like Phil Laffer and Stephen Millar, bosses of Pernod-Ricard/Orlando/Jacob’s Creek and Constellation’s BRL-Hardy, were urging more plantings.

As these come into production, we now have 32,151 hectares, mostly in the wrong places. We might as well irrigate weeds. Constellation’s retreating from the River, and Fosters and Pernod Ricard have just told growers there that demand for the vanilla of Australia is plummeting. So the punter is not a mug.

Chardonnay’s not dead: Penfolds paid $5000 a tonne this year for cool district grapes for its top example, the Yattarna, and Chablis and Burgundy sales are soaring. Champagne’s so popular they’ve just made the district bigger. But while their new price for River chardonnay, $300 a tonne, might be rather fortuitous for the transnational winemakers, it won’t cover the grower’s costs.

One of the world’s oldest wine merchants, Berry Brothers and Rudd, last week released a report suggesting the Murray-Darling will soon be too hot for fine wine production, and - surprise, surprise - that the future lies in expensive luxuries from cool places like Tassie. This was timed to lob explosively in the middle of the London Wine Trade Fair.

Even more practically destructive was the CSIRO’s announcement that our own Rudd’s budgetry idiocy will close the vital Murray Valley viticulture research establishment, just when Stephen Strachan, boss of the Winemakers’ Federation, was busy reassuring everyone that “the industry’s doing a lot of research around climate change”.

The poor old River couldn’t take deadlier hits below the waterline. Alley juice for our bladder packs is already coming from third world vineyards where wages are miniscule and environmental controls non-existent; now our bottom-end bottles are threatened.

As for Berry Brothers and Rudd’s forecast that China will be the world’s major wine supplier in fifty years? Anyone who’s believed my musings since Remi Martin helped China plant its Dynasty vineyard - in a place where it snows - way back when Len began his vanilla sermon, would have to agree that the real number’s now about ten years.

I don’t gloat over the agonies of the gullible and unfortunate, but it’s becoming increasingly tempting to say “I told you so”. If only the Chinese had planted chardonnay and oak, Australia could have avoided much terrible grief. And saved quite a lot of water.

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

by PHILIP WHITE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Aussie Plonksters Crack Wine Yeast Genome

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News Release from the Australian Wine Research Institute, Adelaide, 8 October 2008:

In a world first, scientists at The Australian Wine Research Institute have cracked the genetic code of a wine yeast.

The breakthrough paves the way for development of improved wine yeast – a key ingredient in winemaking.

“Availability of improved wine yeast will put winemakers in a stronger position to control fermentation and develop wines with the right quality, character and flavour” said Dr Anthony Borneman, a Senior Research Scientist at the AWRI.

“We’ve laid important groundwork for further sequencing and comparative analysis of other wine yeast strains.”

“We have made a significant breakthrough in understanding wine yeast,” said Dr Paul Chambers, Research Manager of AWRI’s Biosciences team. "We will soon know where to look to find out why some wine yeasts can be troublesome and we will be better placed to improve and tailor them for production of particular wines for target markets.”

Using the latest technologies available through the Australian Genome Research Facility, the AWRI’s sequencing project took about six months to complete. This is quite amazing in light of the fact that just over ten years ago, the first yeast strain to be sequenced took 70 laboratories, 10 years and cost millions of dollars.

“Today, we are unlocking the potential of yeast for winemakers, using genes to our advantage, without resorting to genetic engineering,” said AWRI Managing Director, Professor Sakkie Pretorius.

“By understanding the biology of yeast and the chemistry of wine we can use science to give the Australian wine sector an opportunity to innovate and maximise its market potential.”

NEWS RELEASE ENDS

PHILIP WHITE: I asked Prof Pretorius how he could explain the difference between “sequencing a genome” and “genetic engineering”. Here’s his response:

SAKKI PRETORIUS: “Sequencing a genome is different to genetic engineering because it does not require the alteration of DNA in a living organism. In genome sequencing we simply extract genetic material (DNA) from an organism and analyse it – we do not return any of this DNA back into an organism, so nothing is engineered (ie nothing is reconstructed). It is a bit like taking a biopsy from someone for medical analysis; tissue (e.g. blood) is removed and analysed in the laboratory, and never returned to the body it was removed from (or any other body, for that matter). Nothing is engineered or altered in the process.”

PW: When will winemakers be able to purchase proven yeasts which have resulted from your discoveries?

SP: “Wine yeast strains that make less hydrogen sulfide (a chemical compound that sometimes forms during yeast fermentation and makes wine smell cabbage-like) have been commercialised. Non-genetic engineering strategies have been used during the past year to develop novel yeast strains with the ability to ferment robustly while producing minimal or undetectable quantities of hydrogen sulfide. Two of these strains have been commercialised under the names Maurivin Distinction® and Maurivin Platinum®.

“Research into the benefits of co-inoculation strategies has contributed to development of commercialised blended yeast products: Anchor Alchemy I® and Anchor Alchemy II®. Fermentation trails with mixtures of specially-selected yeast strains confirmed that wines resulting from co-inoculation are different, in chemical composition and sensorial attributes, from wines generated using single yeast strains or wines produced by post-fermentation blending. Preliminary consumer trials demonstrated a preference for Sauvignon Blanc that was made using co-inoculation, compared to the single strains by themselves.”

Short cv of Professor Sakkie Pretorius

Sakkie Pretorius graduated from the University of the Orange Free State (South Africa) and obtained his PhD in Molecular Microbiology under the supervision of Prof Julius Marmur from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York in 1986. Previously, he was the founding Director of the Institute for Wine Biotechnology at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. Currently, he is the Managing Director of The Australian Wine Research Institute in Adelaide. He is also an Affiliate Professor at the University of Stellenbosch and the University of Adelaide.

The main focus of Sakkie's research has been on Wine Microbiology and Biotechnology. He has published more than 200 research papers and book chapters, and delivered more than 500 lectures at conferences and research seminars. His viewpoint is that wine research should be directed toward increasing fundamental understanding in a context responsive to the applied needs of producers and consumers at levels of both problem selection and experimental design. Therefore, he believes that wine research inspired by both the quest for understanding the fundamentals and by considerations of future use, promises to be the most powerful dynamo of technological progress that would support the cost-effective production of wine with minimised resource inputs, improved product quality, increased health benefits and low environmental impact.

KEEP AN EYE ON DRINKSTER FOR FURTHER DETAILS
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Cork Wars: Australian Putsch Bottles Up Portuguese Rear

by PHILIP WHITE - This story appeared in The Independent Weekly as "Cork Comes Unscrewed" on 3 October 08

If I suddenly disappear, it’ll probably be the Portuguese. Silly buggers haven’t learnt much in our thirty years of warfare.

When José Lopez, of the Portuguese company, Amorim, opened fire on my recent spray against cork on The Independent Weekly website his first shot was a complete fizzer. Amorim’s the world’s biggest rubber and cork trader. José suggested I’m on the take from the screwcappers. Read The Olympics Were Corked in the September archive below and you’ll get the whole grim PR disaster.

The screwcappers have no reason to pay me. I support them for free. Screwcaps are a zillion percent better for keeping wine fresh, and my responsibility is to my readers, who deserve the best. So I hate cork. I hate its trichloranisole taint, which arises when the chlorine used to beautify and sanitise it reacts with microbes living naturally within it. And I dislike the way cork lets wine oxidise.

I’ve been this dangerously subversive since Coca Cola abandoned the cork wafers beneath its crown seals in the ’sixties. The pharmaceutical business soon followed suit. Corky soft drink and cough medicine may still be available in Portugal, but we’ve had none here for thirty years. Although Adelaideans smell TCA most times they take a shower, thanks probably to chlorination.

There was more incoming. Mai Nygaard lobbed a big grenade, but forgot to say she’s Business Development Manager of Normacorc. Then I thought they’d subbed Carlos the Jackal to wipe me, but it turned out to be Carlos de Jesus, José’s boss at Amorim, with a glib disclaimer. Perhaps he’d read up a touch of Australian libel law, or remembered that Amorim had for years employed Brian Croser (deputy chancellor of the University of Adelaide, which runs our wine education and research) and Len Evans, who was chairman of Croser’s Petaluma. Both were doyens of Australia’s wine show system for decades.

Some synthetic plugs are improvements on cork, but they still don’t get it. I want to carry a corkscrew/bottle opener everywhere about as much as a friggin crank handle. Even the Portuguese sardine industry worked out decades ago that they couldn’t expect fish lovers to carry a special tool around just to get the fish out of the tin. Aussie brewers were next to abandon the tool kit.

If you’re a blingster who just loves something clunky to jangle on your keys, I reckon the Diam compound cork is the best excuse to carry a mechanical tugger. In many thousands, I’ve found only a few Diams to be duds, and this was mainly due to irregularities in the bottle neck. Much stiffer than corks, Diam plugs sit tight, but don’t swell as well to fill depressions or seams within imperfect necks, so wine gets out and oxygen gets in. And they’re so hard to get off the worm, somebody should invent another gadget to help with that.

Of course TCA comes from sources other than corks. Pat Conlon’s new trams smelled corked when they were new, probably something to do with the aircon filters being sanitised with chlorine. The international entry lounge at Darwin airport was corked for thirty years, probably due to well-intentioned cleaners ensuring there was no tropical mould in the carpet. I always thought of Portugal when I came through. Some cheese is corky, too. Chlorine is used to sanitise cheese factories, and the French wrapping used to package white rind cheese is often bleached with chlorine compounds.

Cork lovers who preach about natural always being better should abandon the chlorine completely and leave the poor old cork trees alone. Respect the sacred ecology of the natural microfauna in the bark. Get straight back to the old wine skin. Pig is best. You seal ’em with a leather thong. I don’t know whether St. Matthew was a practising Jew, but remember his advice from God’s Word: “Neither do men put new wine into old skins: else the skins break, and the wine runneth out”.

Dislike overt sulphur? Anyone who seals a wine high in sulphur beneath screwcaps will soon learn they’re so effective they preserve faults as well as attributes. Want cork because you desire the sort of oxidation cork permits? Winemakers who seek oxidation should permit a little oxygen in the headspace below whichever closure they choose. But for me, polymerisation without oxidation, please. Screw it!

When me old China suggested Australia's "a proven failure as a wine producer, producing a soda kind of drink", I almost sympathised. Like China, we still use table grapes for wine production. And as for China being "the milenar culture which privileges natural material for the food product whose consumption is developing most in the last years is indeed a deep, intelligent one"? Mate, pull out the cork and have a nice big glass of milk, there's a dear.

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