Australian Wine is Boring

Perhaps its just because I’m Australian that I find myself scratching my head in frank puzzlement when someone says that “Australian wine is boring”. Its just so hard to believe. Such a statement cannot come from someone who has tasted across the diversity of Australian wines, can it? It must be because there has not been enough exposure because the variety that comes from 50 plus wine regions and thousands of wineries is simply mind boggling. How can I be sure? Well I’ve tasted wines from regions in South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, The Australian Capital Territory, Western Australia, and Tasmania. Reds, whites, desserts, sparkling, warm climate, cool climate, high elevation, and low elevation, mass produced and exclusive boutique. With such variety its just too hard to make everything boring!

Who would say that French wine, or Italian wine or even Californian (let alone the whole of the USA) wine is boring? Wine from any country covers a spectrum from undrinkable to nectar, so how can one country’s contribution be boring. I suppose if you were just drinking a narrow spectrum of very similar wines then you might begin to think that everything tastes the same and get bored with the similarity. And its quite possible that if you buy your Australian wine outside the island continent that you do suffer from a lack of choice. Its also possible that some Aussie wines from South Australia especially those from Barossa and McLaren Vale do have a sameness about them. But isn’t that to be expected? Those two regions are not that dissimilar, especially when compared with the Grampians, or the Pyrenees, or Mornington Peninsula.

There actually is no simple way to get a true idea of the diversity of Australian wine without visiting the country itself. But the next best thing might be to look at what wines Australians collect. The Wine Ark among other things stores wine for Australian wine collectors and it has cellars in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Sunshine Coast and Perth. That means they cover the largest population areas of the country and so would have a pretty good sampling of what is popular in Australia. They have just surveyed the more than 3,000,000 bottles of wine in their cellars that comprise over 8500 collections across the country to discover Australia’s Most Collected Wine. It comes as no surprise that the most collected wine is Penfolds Grange but the other 49 wines in the top 50 are likely to raise some eyebrows especially here in the USA.

From my point of view the most interesting list is that of the Top 10 Collected Shiraz wines, seven of which come from South Australia which has all those hot nasty regions producing all those syrupy, goopy wines. I’ve tasted all ten wines with the exception of the Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier. You could do a whole lot worse than build a collection of Aussie Shiraz around the wines listed. Mind you I have only one in my cellar, the Penfolds St Henri Shiraz, but then I do have a bunch of other Shiraz that cover the full range of diversity if not regionality.

Here are the Top 10 Shiras by ranking and region.

1 Penfolds Bin 95 Grange Shiraz -Various Regions - SA
2 Penfolds St Henri Shiraz -Various Regions - SA
3 Rockford Basket Press Shiraz - Barossa Valley
4 Penfolds Bin 28 Kalimna Shiraz - Various Regions - SA
5 d'Arenberg The Dead Arm Shiraz - McLaren Vale
6 Penfolds RWT Shiraz - Barossa Valley
7 Jasper Hill Georgia's Paddock Shiraz - Heathcote
8 Henschke Mount Edelstone Shiraz - Eden Valley
9 Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier - Canberra District
10 Dalwhinnie Moonambel Shiraz - Pyrenees

The survey resulted in Top 10 Collected lists for Cabernet, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Riesling and Semillon. Take the lists to your favorite wine shop and see what they have. I’m currently drinking the 2005 Petaluma Piccadilly Chardonnay from the Adelaide Hills of South Australia that I picked up for the ridiculous discounted price of $12.99USD.

A word of warning. Don’t rush out and buy the recent vintages of these wines to consume tonight because the list is of cellared wines which often show their best, depending upon the wine, after a few to many years of maturity. And remember this is just 60 or so of thousands upon thousands of wines, so if at first you don’t find what you like keep looking!

An Inauguration Wine

A new beginning. An about-face from ineptitude, secrecy, embarrassment, and hopefully no more mind numbing mistakes. What wine do you select to celebrate such a moment in history? I doubt that I have ever thought so long and hard about any wine selection. Should I pick something old, something expensive, perhaps elegant, unflustered, or maybe big and bold, something foreign or American? I became a US citizen in October 2008 but I am allowed to retain my Australian citizenship, so perhaps something from Australia. I searched my cellar row by row until I picked up a bottle of Jim Barry McRae Wood Clare Valley Shiraz, turned it over and read the blurb, and I knew I had my wine.

Miranda cried tears of joy on Inauguration Day and her tears still come easily whenever President Obama appears on the TV. I’m not immune to moments of emotion myself. We live in more than just interesting times, these are generational times, times that will turn into page turning history. And history flows over recent events like the sweet icing on a great and wonderful cake because on the day before President Obama’s inauguration the nation celebrated one individual whose speeches do move me to tears, do so now just typing his name. We will never know the joy with which Martin Luther King Jr would have greeted the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States had he been allowed to live. He would have been just a few days over 80 years old. His assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee took all future joy away from him and from a nation. But an assassin’s bullet cannot shatter a dream, even time could not shatter the dream. The dream has now been carried on Dr King’s shoulders all the way to the White House. A day after he is celebrated a nation celebrated Dr King’s dream.

Why pick the Jim Barry McRae Wood Shiraz as my Inauguration wine? Quite simply the parallels of history. There is no other wine that I have that fits so well. Just like the election of President Obama the seeds for the McRae Wood were planted by a pioneer and visionary in the 1960’s and now the fruits of that labor can be celebrated. It is more than just a suitable wine because as is written on the bottle an inspired choice was made in the birth of this wine, just as Dr King’s dream inspired a nation to rise up and put hope and change above fear and secrecy.

In some respects it may seem trite to compare a winemaker’s accomplishments to that of Dr. King but in truth we all, at least I hope we all, strive to achieve greatness in our own way. Perhaps more poignant is the fact that so many can share in the success of that greatness. The 2003 Jim Barry McRae Wood Shiraz is one of those wines which tasted on any other day might have just been extremely good, but on the night of January 20th it was superb. Deeply colored, richly flavored and powerful, its vibrant acidity made it soar over its supporting firm powdery tannins to a lengthy finish. It’s a wine that has promise. It could last a few years. Its drinking window could be 8 years, easy!

The Devaluing of Australian Shiraz in the US

A winemaker makes a wine, sells it to an exporter/importer who sells it on to a distributor who then sells it to a retailer who then offers you the wine at a competitive price. Or so the theory goes. But in reality many things influence the competitive pricing of wine. One of these is the inability to sell the wine for its recommended retail price, a not uncommon event in the USA with Aussie Shiraz these days. Another is when an importer/exporter is revising their portfolio. Combine the two and you get a fire sale.

Such seems to be the case with wines under The Grateful Palate umbrella. The Grateful Palate has recently reduced its portfolio to about 25 producers from a high of 70 a few years ago. Its not clear whether producers have been dropped or have left Grateful Palate but the result has been deep discounts on Australian wines. Take, for example the deals I was offered today. McLean’s Farm 2002 Shiraz (Barossa Valley) which sells retail (according to Wine Searcher) for $23.99 to $29.99USD, but offered to me for $8.99. Or the 2004 Gibson Old Vine Collection Barossa Valley Shiraz, $99.99USD retail on Wine Searcher, but I was able to purchase it for $44.99. The most recent vintage sells for $96AUD mail order from Gibson’s.

Some say that Australian wines in the US need to drop their prices to more reasonable levels after the big increases that have followed with the extravagance of high Parker points. This may be true, but there is another story that may be building behind this and it is that importers/exporters, distributors, and retailers are seeing significant losses in profits with the selling of Australian wines. When you lose money you tend not to want to expose yourself to the same position again. And so when a major importer/exporter has a fire sale on Aussie wines the question that needs to be answered is who would want to build a portfolio of Australian wines when they see others having problems selling the wines unless they have dramatic reductions in prices?

Does Aussie shiraz taste different from different regions?

Its unfair, but irrespective of its diversity Australian Shiraz very often gets tarred with the same brush. More often than not they are called big, oaky, fruity wines that have outrageous levels of alcohol and come in bottles invariably labeled with some animal. Those with this opinion almost always have very little knowledge or experience of the diversity of wines that the Shiraz grape can produce in Australia. It is also quite obvious that those who hold this truly naïve opinion do not live in the land down under. That gives them an excuse because only a few rays of the full spectrum of Aussie Shiraz ever leave the shores of the island continent.

Fortunately attempts are being made to change this narrow perception of Australian wine. You can navigate your way around Wine Australia’s discussion on the Regional Heroes of Australian wine. Its not specific to Shiraz but you are guaranteed to learn something about Australian wine, or you can listen to Australian wine writer Campbell Mattinson talk about the regional characters of four Shiraz wines from different regions. The best part is that all four are under $20AUD. Less exciting is the possibility that most are unlikely to be available outside Australia. It can’t be helped. Australia does not export all its best wines.

Able Grape - a wine knowledge search engine

The ever expanding world of cyberspace is truly a spider’s web. Probe it for items on Shiraz and you are just as likely to be stuck with hits for Shiraz, Iran as you are for the grape of the same name. If you want an example of this just click on the Google SHIRAZ NEWS tab to the right of this page. Wouldn’t it be handy if there was a search engine restricted to wine related material? Well there is, or at least there is a site that is in Beta that proclaims to be a wine search engine for learning and research. Called Able Grape it came about through a need to have up-to-date, trustworthy wine information from the web that would help in passing WSET exams. Still a work in progress, Able Grape consists of 32,000 sites and some 10 million pages. That’s serious wine content.

Just how friendly and effective is Able Grape? When I first tried to search its contents I was led to a page with the following -

You are getting this message because your browser is not a supported configuration. At present, Able Grape supports:
• Safari 2.0/3.0 (best experience; Mac)
• Firefox 2 (best experience; Mac/PC)
• Internet Explorer 7.0 (good experience; PC)
Javascript must also be enabled in your browser. We truly apologize for the inconvenience. As we grow, we hope to support additional browsers more gracefully.

After updating to Version 7 of IE I was off and running. The search mechanism is still a little clunky, which is why there is a help page. I found the best approach, at present, is to type in your search word(s) and then refine the search using the TOPIC and REGION filters on the left of the page. My first attempt was with decanting Shiraz, which brought up 1,779 hits. That is a lot, but its way less than the 80,000 hits on a Google search. Refining by limiting my search to South Pacific reduced the number to 241. Then I got serious and limited myself to Australia (215 hits; I guess they don’t do a lot of decanting in New Zealand – must be all the Sauvignon Blanc), then South Australia (72 hits), and then Barossa Zone for 25 hits. Most of the hits were for Jacob’s Creek Centenary Hill Shiraz. But the link I found the most satisfying was the very first hit on my initial search. It was The Frugal Oenophile’s post on The Great Decanting Debate. I particularly liked the conclusion -

So what do we make of all this? First, decanting is not a fool-proof solution to anything except the elimination of sediment. Also, aeration appears to negatively affect the nose of the wine, making the wine dumb. Aeration will not necessarily soften tannins or make the wine rounder either. Although a two-hour rest may appeal to some people, no aeration period seems to be ideal; anything from 0 to 24 hours appears to pass muster.

This experiment involved one wine, from one maker, from one region, from one vintage, decanted according to one person's idea of how it should be done. At every turn I tried to eliminate variables, and yet the results were far from conclusive. My tasters managed to come up with a definitive answer. After a brief discussion (while I was out of the room), they decided: There is no answer. Not what I was hoping for.

So it would seem that decanting is not a given. There are no clear-cut reasons for doing it, but apparently no real reason not to. I will continue to use my decanter for cut flowers, as I've proven to myself that I don't like what decanting does to wine, unless I hit some sediment, of course.

I finally know what to do with the decanters I have!

Judging Syrah, and the Syrah Ripening Curve

Geoff Kelly, the noted New Zealand wine academic and writer, has updated his notes on Judging Syrah, and the Syrah Ripening Curve. Anyone interested in Syrah/Shiraz will find this little contribution overflowing with information on Syrah, not only as it relates to New Zealand but Syrah/Shiraz in general. His listing of the aroma profile of Syrah as it ripens to physiological maturity should be memorized by all Syrah lovers, and detractors as well!

Its no secret that Geoff Kelly is Eurocentric in his wine preferences – he would say he favors the “mellow beauty” of wine. This makes him no lover of Australian Shiraz, but this in no way detracts from the knowledge readers can gain from his all too infrequent writings.

The Great Decanting Experiment – Wine #8

For the next wine let’s go back to South Australia, to McLaren Vale and d’Arenberg’s The Dead Arm Shiraz. I’ve been able to source half bottles from 2002, one of the stellar vintages in recent years. The Dead Arm is partially barrel fermented before further maturation in American and French oak for around 20-22 months. It’s a blockbuster Shiraz style that has only been in bottle for a little over three years. Surely it needs some air, or does it?

Wine #8 2002 d’Arenberg The Dead Arm Shiraz, McLaren Vale, South Australia ($30.99USD, 375ml), 14.5% alcohol.
One bottle was splash decanted and the other left unopen; both in the cellar at 56 degree F. After 2 hours and 15 minutes the second bottle was opened and the two wines poured randomly into three marked opaque glasses while I was out of the room.

Glass A: A potpourri of stewed fruits over very ripe blueberry, toffee, coffee and olives. Full bodied, with big, firm tannins. Not a lot of flavor carry but well structured.

Glass B: As for glass A, not quite as open but more of a toasted aroma. Very much like glass A on the palate, but with more evident acidity.

Glass C: Quite like glass B in not being as open as glass A and again there is the presence of a toasted aroma. Palate as for glass B.

My opinion: A is from the bottle and B and C are from the decanter.
Reality: A is from the bottle and B and C are from the decanter.

Conclusion: While I’ve tasted better wines from the 2002 vintage, The Dead Arm is still really a baby and needs its rest; at least another 5 years. But if you do open a bottle what it doesn’t need is to sit in a decanter waiting for you to drink it. But then perhaps you prefer toasted, smoky notes that detract from more attractive fruit aromas? Do you think that d'Arenberg know something when they say of The Dead Arm Serve after decanting as an older wine.

Score: Wines tested 8, Decanters 0, Non-decanters 2.

The Great Decanting Experiment

I’ve posted previously on decanting wines in order to enhance their appeal, so called aeration. Its something I do not do as I don’t believe that it has a positive effect on very many wines. Others, of course, disagree but when comparisons have been made between decanted and undecanted wines its usually the undecanted that have proven fresher and more attractive. The noted French oenologist Emil Peynaud describes a comparison between a decanted and freshly poured 1962 Médoc Cru in his The Taste of Wine: The Art and Science of Wine Appreciation. The decanted wine had lost “finesse and elegance” even though decanting had made it seem fuller, while “the undecanted wine was livelier, fresher, less thick but also less fleshy”.

Decanting, in order to allow a wine to reveal more of its character following exposure to air, is different from allowing the wine to reveal itself in the glass by swirling to expose the wine to air. Decanted wine is usually left to sit for a period of time so that a large surface area of the wine is exposed to the ambient environment. Decanted wine may or may not be sampled during this time to see if aeration is having the desired effect. Pouring wine into a wine glass has one aim, that of consuming the wine in an appropriate container and so the wine, if free from fault, is usually sampled until the glass is empty. Wine tasted over time from a glass, especially if its well made, may change its aroma/bouquet. In fact lingering over a glass of wine is done in the expectation that it will reveal more of its complexity. My concern with decanting, especially for hours, is that the chance to appreciate the evolution of the wine in a glass may be lost. This assumes that a wine will change over time, many do not.

Testing whether decanting has a positive or negative effect on the appeal of a wine is not a straightforward procedure as there is no standard protocol for such an experiment. After having given it considerable thought I’ve arrived at the following approach as the most practical (for me) to test the hypothesis that decanting wine does not improve its aroma/bouquet and/or taste. Two bottles of wine are used; in most of the tests to be done these will be half-bottles (375 ml) simply to reduce expense. One bottle is opened and poured into a decanter (Reidel) and the other is left unopened. After a period of time the second bottle is opened and the decanted and freshly opened wines poured into opaque (black) tasting glasses. I’ve chosen opaque glasses as its possible that the period the decanted wine will be left to sit may be as long as 24 hours, and its my impression that many wines darken with such lengthy exposure to air. The opaque glasses will hinder the influence of color change on the assessment of the wine.

Seeing as I am the taster in these tests and because I have a stated bias, (I do not believe that decanting affects wine in a positive manner), three glasses (labeled A, B and C) of wine will be poured. The pouring will be done by my able assistant Miranda (my wife) and she will pour the wine while I am out of the room. She can pour the wine in any combination she chooses as long as one glass has decanted wine and another undecanted wine; the third can be either decanted or undecanted wine. Miranda must record which glasses received which wine before I am allowed to taste the wine to see if I can determine which glass contains which wine. I decided on using three glasses because it means that if there is a difference I have to be able to detect it in two of the three glasses. I have to declare what wine I believe is in each glass before the order is made known to me.

Wine #1 2003 Turkey Flat Shiraz ($17.99USD, 375ml), 14.5% alcohol.
The first wine to be subjected to the great decanting experiment is the 2003 Turkey Flat Shiraz from the Barossa Valley of South Australia. The wine was decanted for 2 and half hours.

Glass A: A little subdued with rich blackberry, licorice and smoky oak notes. On the palate, this is a very astringent wine with nice juicy acidity but little carry of flavor.

Glass B: Similar to glass A but with added presence of stewed prune, tar and plum aromas. Palate very similar to glass A but there is more carry of flavor onto the palate.

Glass C: Aromas are very similar to glass B with more blackberry. Palate the same as glass B.

My opinion: A is undecanted and B and C are decanted.
Reality: B is the undecanted wine.

Conclusion: Although the differences were not pronounced I was quite confident that I had correctly differentiated between the decanted and undecanted wine. However it seems that you can decant this wine for a few hours without ill effect, or you can simply pop and pour!

Score: Decanters 0, Non-decanters 0