An Education in Australian Wine

I have at least 50 books on various aspects of wine in Australia, and I know there are at least a dozen or more sitting in the library of a relative in Australia. Plus there are quite a few that have been loaned, never to return! But even that number is far from a complete collection of the books that have been written. The Australian wine industry has a long history, and has grown so much in size and diversity in recent decades that its hard to recommend any single book as a complete treatise. But I do have one recommendation that is worth looking at. A set of four DVDs from Panorama International Productions titled Wine Trails of Australia.

Wine Trails of Australia won’t make you an instant expert on Aussie wines but it will give you an excellent introduction to the various wine regions and winemakers that contribute to the diversity of wines on the island continent. All the major regions, Barossa, McLaren Vale, Coonawarra, Clare Valley, are covered, and that is just South Australia. Unfortunately after that things get a little confusing. The regions are then addressed mainly as either states (Western Australia, Victoria) or cities (Sydney, Melbourne). But the biggest problem is that the four DVD set has been complied without any thought given to organizing the regions either in terms of location, importance or history. So Volume 1 gives you Barossa, Riverina, Queensland and Canberra, and the latter has footage and commentary from the Orange region mixed in. This will be more than a little confusing to those with no knowledge of Australian wine regions. But you are more than compensated by excellent scenery and a wealth of history in terms of the region or city as well as the wines.

Several winemakers provide commentary about their wines in each of the 14 episodes and some might consider some of the statements as shameless advertising of their own products. But the wines are their livelihood so if anyone has the right to self-advertise they do! More enticing are the snippets of history that run throughout the episodes. They don’t all relate to wine but I guarantee you that you will learn something new. And even if you do consider yourself an expert on all things pertaining to Aussie wine you might end up learning a few interesting bits of wine trivia. For example, Yellow Tail started out expecting to sell 25,000 cases of wine into the USA but sold 7, 000,000 and all by word of mouth, no advertising! Or that the winemaker at Katnook, Wayne Stehbens, tools around in a power blue Bolwell MKVIII, also known as the Nagari, with a monster air intake over the engine.

With a series like this you might expect there to be a web site with material that didn’t make it into the finished product or even out-takes from the original filming. And at the end of every episode you are encouraged to visit http://www.aussiewinetrail.com/. But don’t get too excited because such a site does not exist.

The DVD set has a release date of October 29, 2007 but it is not clear when the footage was actually shot. The best buy is the complete set at approximately $40USD from Amazon as buying the individual episodes will set you back $18AUD each and then you only get 13 of the 14.

Bottle Shock

Bottle Shock is very loosely based on George M. Taber’s excellent book “Judgment of Paris” in which Californian wineries win a 1976 tasting competition against French wines from Burgundy (white) and Bordeaux (red). The story in Bottle Shock centers on Jim and Bo Barrett of Chateau Montelena and their 1973 Chardonnay that won the white wine tasting set up by Steven Spurrier of the L’Academie du Vin in Paris. But that is where any serious similarities with history end.

The 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay was only the second vintage after Jim Barrett (and Ernie Hahn) had purchased the winery and Barrett was still practicing law. Virtually ignored in the movie is Mike Grgich, the actual winemaker at Chateau Montelena. Grgich appears several times in the movie but is not identified and if you did not know that he wore a beret you would not know who he was. He is the person standing next to Jim Barrett in the winery when Barrett exclaims “Crap. Mike, its not clear”. And then tells Bo that the wine will need to be racked again. Even the discoloration of the 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay, a tragedy in the making in the movie and the reason for the movies' name, is a bone of contention. Barrett says that it did happen but Grgich has said that the 1973 was “perfect from the very beginning” and that the 1972 wine had a temporary discoloration.

Bottle Shock comes on the heels of two recent movies that feature wine, Sideways and A Good Year. Bottle Shock has none of the (black) comedy, romance, music, or wine lore of Sideways. It also fails to measure up to A Good Year which, like Sideways, has a fictional storyline. And some quite passable comedic acting by Russell Crowe. The failure of Bottle Shock to succeed may well lie at the feet of those who thought they could rewrite history for the “silver screen”. Hollywood rarely does well at transferring non-fiction to fiction; too much is lost in the conversion.

One aspect of the movie that is difficult to understand is that while a number of the real life personalities are left out of the movie the French wine judges are described in great detail. Eight of the judges noted in the Appendix of Taber’s “Judgment of Paris” are correctly identified. Missing is Michel Dovaz who taught wine courses at the Academie du Vin in Paris. Also missing is Patricia Gastaud-Gallagher who was a director at the l'Academie du Vin and who was also intimately involved, with Spurrier, in organizing the Paris tasting. It has been stated in other reviews that the movie is a poke in the eye of the French and this very accurate identification of the French wine judges would seem to support that possibility; the outcome of the tasting was so embarrassing for the judges that at least one, Kahn, asked for her scorecard back.

Additional Features on the DVD include four deleted scenes, An Underdog’s Journey: The making of Bottle Shock, Chateau Montelena: One winery’s search for excellence, and audio commentary by the cast and crew. To be brutally honest none of these add to the movie or the true story behind the Judgment of Paris. If you want history read Taber’s book. If you want a movie woven around wine buy the Sideways DVD.

What can you expect from SHIRAZ for 2009?

First, Happy New Year to one and all.

Now, what can you expect from SHIRAZ for 2009? Well hopefully more than the last couple of years! Through 2007 and 2008 the posts here at SHIRAZ have been pretty infrequent. That was due to a decision to stop posting material that was simply a rehash of what was appearing elsewhere on the web. What I wanted to do was put more of my own opinions and commentary on SHIRAZ. Unfortunately that type of posting takes considerably more time to put together than writing a few lines to accompany a link to a newsy piece on an online paper or webzine or tapping out a tasting note. Plus I do have a real job that occupies 9-10 hours five days a week. For instance for the first 6 months of this year I’m already committed to reviewing research grant applications for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), writing a lengthy scientific review for a peer reviewed journal, and writing two, maybe 3, research grants. And all that is in addition to directing the research in my own laboratory as well as writing research papers. Come to think of it, why am I even continuing to post on SHIRAZ? Well simply put I love wine and I like to write, in that order!

But changes have to be made because the traffic here at SHIRAZ has fallen dramatically in the last two years and if I keep going the way I have been then the only person reading this blog will be me. So I’m setting some goals, New Year resolutions if you like.

Wine Travel blogging and Newsletter: At the end of each year Miranda and I travel downunder to visit with relatives and to do something involving wine. I do blog on this but usually in a much abbreviated form. However I have lengthy notes and a mass of collected literature not only on where we visited and what we tasted but all manner of information on wine in Australia. So what will happen this year is that I will post in detail on our recent trip through six different wine regions and this will be compiled into a PDF document that can be down loaded, free of charge of course. I am also thinking of going back and compiling PDF documents on our visit to New Zealand in 2006, Mornington Peninsula in 2005 and the Barossa in 2004. Fortunately the last two should not require too much work as fairly complete coverage of them did appear on SHIRAZ. There is also material on a visit to the UK last year that could be put together. And there are plans to visit Napa/Sonoma/Russian River Valley later in the year which should provide good fodder for an informative piece.

Drinking with SHIRAZ on Saturday: When I can escape from the list of household activities that Miranda fires at me for the weekend I head over to Vintage Wines for some wine tasting. Some of this material used to appear on my other (no, not defunct) wine blog Tasting Notes. The Saturday tastings at Vintage are usually structured around a wine theme, region, variety, etc. and I hope to be able to expand on the weekly event to provide information, and opinion, on the topic of the week. I don’t plan on doing this every week although that would be the ideal.

Reviews of Wine Books, Movies, DVDs: I don’t know how many books I have on wine but there must be a dozen or more just on my bedside table. Plus there is an increasing number of DVDs appearing for movies on wine as well as educational DVDs. One example being a copy of Jancis Robinsons’ Wine Course that arrived earlier this week. Expect reviews on as many of these as I can get though.

Naturally there will continue to be posts on topics of interest to me with perhaps more focus on the academic/analytical aspects of wine appreciation. And then there are all those tasting note books that have yet to disgorge their contents into the Tasting Notes blog.

Of course all this depends on me being able to find the extra time to devote to completing these tasks. I also have to start exercising again as well! Ah the joy of resolutions for the New Year.