Decanting - The Answer for Hidden Terroir!

In a recent piece over on Appellation America Dan Berger wrote the following

“one of the key factors in all great wine - evidence of the terroir - is easily obliterated early in a wine’s life, and the only way to access it is to decant the wine and allow air to work its magic.”

OK Dan, I’ll bite. Before you arrived at this enlightened moment of wine truth just how many wines did you find that revealed their terroir following decanting? And by that I mean performing a triangulation test with one bottle decanted for a few hours compared to a freshly opened bottle?

I have no doubt that Berger is correct in saying that some wines can exhibit sulfur (and other) odors soon after a cork is pulled or a screwcap ceremoniously removed in the Helm manner. And these odors can mask the depth and complexity of the wine. But for exposure to air to reveal hidden terroir is bunkum. Just like any other aspect of wine lore aeration produces effects that can be entirely subjective. If you don’t believe me get a couple of bottles of one wine and a few friends together and do your own triangulation test.

What is a triangulation test? In essence it is a test to see if a taster can distinguish between two wines (or as I have used in decanting experiments here on SHIRAZ - decanted versus non-decanted wine). Two glasses receive one wine and a third the other wine. It is the task of the taster to identify which glasses contain which wine. And because two glasses have the same wine it shouldn’t be all that hard, right Dan!

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!

San Diego Restaurant Week - Part Two

Miranda decided that we would bookend San Diego Restaurant Week and so our second restaurant visit came on the last day of the week long event, Friday January 16th, at Mille Fleur. This is a restaurant we had wanted to sample for some time because it has been described in glowing terms from coast to coast. So we braved the traffic disaster that is described as the 5/805 merge and then wound our way via Del Mar Heights Road, Via De La Valle, Via De Santa Fe to Paseo Delicias. It you are thinking that is a bit of trek to find food you are correct but it beats traveling further north on the I-5 during the evening rush hour. Mille Fleur is in Rancho Santa Fe, a rather exclusive enclave of San Diego County where homes fetch multiples of seven figures. In fact the median price of a home rose 2.3% in 2008 to $2,430,000! So when there is a chance to mingle with the rich and famous over a 3-course meal for $40 its simply not polite to say no!

Mille Fleur
I love polished wood and this place has plenty. The service is also polished, although Miranda was convinced that out waiter/sommelier was out of the French castle scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I actually thought he looked like Manuel of Fawlty Towers but he was far from disorganized or confused, although he may have been a little Spanish. We settled on a mix of French and Spanish. Whether he was Basque or not he was attentive and expert in opening the bottle of 2006 Lagier Meredith Syrah (Mt Veeder, California) that I have extracted from the cellar for our meal.

Each of the three courses had three choices or you could, for quite a reasonable price, select from six additional courses. We stayed with the fixed menu. I started with the Assorted mushroom and truffle risotto, which came with arugula pesto, watercress and pea tendrils and then had the Trio of Colorado Lamb:leg,chop and sausage with flageolets beans and savoy cabbage as my main course. Miranda started with the Leek and potato soup with smoked salmon, asparagus confetti, horseradish and dill followed by the Black pepper "onglet" hanger steak accompanied by gruyere spaetzle, and caramelised onions. We both had the Warm apple-brioche pudding with currants, cinnamun, rhum sauce, ice cream for dessert.

The food was something special, especially my main meal. I’m originally Australian which means that I rarely go further down the menu than Rack of Lamb. The reason is that the meat is often sourced from either Australian or New Zealand and I’m at home with that. But the Colorado lamb was mouthwatering and perfect with Lagier Meredith Syrah which was more typical of the elegant style of Aussie Shiraz than the full blooded styles that cross the Pacific to USA wine shops.

Drinking with SHIRAZ on Saturday - Half Bottles

This is the first of a new series of (hopefully not irregular) posts in which I will take you to my favorite wine shop for some wine tasting. I have been gladly burdening my credit card at Vintage Wines in San Diego for over 20 years simply because they provide great value, service and knowledge. And they also put on some great wine tasting events. The most regular is their Saturday tasting which, if you have the stamina, has three parts. For those looking for wine bargains, seemingly more and more winos these days, there is the $2 Tasting which consists of between 4-6 wines of $15 or less/bottle. Next is the $5 Tasting which consists of 6 wines selected around a theme such as a region, variety, or wine style. Finally there is the Wine Bar which consists of 12 wines (usually 6 white and 6 red including at least one dessert style) which is changed every Friday afternoon.

My Saturday visit to Vintage Wines always includes the $5 Tasting and a selection from the Wine Bar. I try to do the $5 tasting single blind, that is I know what the theme is but not the wines. This is not done to display the depth and breadth of my wine knowledge to anyone else who might also be in the tasting room, but rather to reinforce to myself the total lack of ability I have at identifying wine. The truly sad thing is that I continue to taste blind every time I go to Vintage Wines.

Half Bottle Tasting (January 10, 2009)
The world is in an economic tailspin. There are daily headlines of woe everywhere. Its enough to drive a person to drink. But can you afford to? And would all that alcohol consumption be good for you anyway? If you are looking for ways to cut your wine consumption to satisfy either economic or health concerns or both, then I have the answer for you. Half bottles are the way to go.

There is an argument that the wine in half bottles ages faster than the much more conventional 750 ml bottle. Careful readers might have noticed that I used the word age rather than mature; if you don’t know what I mean by that compare Bridget Bardot in her 30’s with her appearance now; in her 30’s she was mature, now she is aged.. Aging, so the argument goes, is accelerated in half bottles because the neck and ullage are similar between 375 and 750 ml bottles and so there is potentially more oxygen per milliliter of wine in the half bottle and thus oxidation occurs at a faster rate. Of course all this depends entirely upon whether air or an inert gas (such as nitrogen) has been pumped on top of the wine during bottling and also on the amount of air the cork allows to ingress into the bottle during its life in the cellar. If you are worried about premature aging in half bottles the best bet, as always, is to go with bottles that have a screwcap.

The only real problem with half bottles is that there are too few wines that come in this size. Their scarcity has made them hard to find in both wines shops and restaurants although this seems to be slowly changing. For those interested in finding a good supply of half bottles look no further than the end of this post. For those who want to know what your local wine shop might have on their shelves in half bottle format read on.

Vintage Wines has a fairly small but quite diverse range of half bottles and it was immediately obvious from the contents of the six glasses that José put in front of me that the half bottle tasting was going to cover a good range of the wine styles they had available, including one that should have been more familiar than it turned out to be.

First Wine
Clearly a bubbly. Lightest straw in color with a faint hint of honey brown. Attractive doughy/yeasty nose, that turned to a more baked bread aroma with air. Bottom notes of beeswax and marmalade. Light weight with a nice fizz on the tongue. Very refreshing with the flavors carrying well onto the palate and providing good length to the finish.
Score: 2, 2, 3.6, 9.8=17.4/20, 87/100.
Drink: Now
Wine: Non-vintage Gosset Brut Excellence, Champagne, France
Closure: Cork
Alcohol: NA
Price: $18.99USD

Second Wine
Straw gold in color with a clear edge. Quite nutty with a toasted oak note and a little beeswax and truffles and a hint of musk. Developed the aroma of orange dominant marmalade with time. Full bodied, oily, nice flavor carry, supported by juicy acidity and attractive length. A well structured Chardonnay, might even be from Burgundy.
Score: 2, 2, 4.0, 10.0=18.0/20, 90/100.
Drink: Now-2010.
Wine: 2004 Steele Chardonnay, Steele Cuvee, California.
Closure: Cork
Alcohol: 13.5%
Price: $7.99

Third Wine
Light cherry red with a pink edge. Ah, Pinot Noir. Top notes of cherry and strawberry with bottom notes of dry earth and spices; not California. The rich red fruit aromas are enhanced by a little air. Soft and supple entry with a very silky carry across the palate to a lengthy finish supported by firming tannins. A nice little wine that should improve over the next few years.
Score: 2, 2, 4.0, 10.2=18.2/20, 91/100.
Drink: Now-2012.
Wine: 2006 Domain Drouhin Pinot Noir, Willamette Valley, Oregon.
Closure: Cork
Alcohol: 14.1%
Price: $19.49USD

Fourth Wine
Deep, dark cherry red with red edge. Dusty oak, a little banana skin with a middle note of cassis and a hint of blackberry. This is very young Cabernet but its quite appealing. Medium to full bodied in weight it has bright acidity that melds well with the fine but gritty tannins. It’s a nicely structured wine that needs time to throw off its excesses.
Score:2, 2, 4.1, 10.1=18.2/20, 91/100.
Drink: 2010-2016.
Wine: 2004 Rubicon Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, Cask, Rutherford, California.
Closure: Cork
Alcohol: 14.2%
Price: $19.99USD

Fifth Wine
Deep, dense, cherry red with red edge. Very closed with a hint of smoked meats and a little smoked oak and a bottom gluey note hinting at incomplete malo. Livens up with a little air. Full bodied with firm, aggressive tannins, clean acidity and nice length. Not sure what this is! This will also need some time to show its character.
Score:2, 2, 3.8, 9.8=17.8/20, 89/100.
Drink: 2010-2018.
Wine: 2004 Ehlers Estate Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley, California.
Closure: Cork
Alcohol: 14.7%

Sixth Wine
Golden yellow with a clear edge. A mélange of spices, raisins, apricot, and butterscotch. Full bodied, viscous and luscious tending towards being a little cloying due to the lack of crispness on the finish. It’s a nice wine, its just not all that it could be.
Score: 2, 2, 4.2, 9.6, 17.8/20, 89/100.
Drink: Now 2020.
Wine: 2004 Nittnaus Gruner Veltliner Eiswein, Austria
Closure: Cork
Alcohol: 9.5%
Price: $17.97

Tasting wine is always a learning experience. Only a week previously the Ehlers Estate Cabernet Sauvignon had been part of the Vintage Wines aborted “Hair of the Dog” tasting, AKA The Half Bottle Tasting. Yes, in two weeks I had been served 13 different half bottle wines and I couldn’t even recognize the one wine that had been served both times. But I have an excuse because the earlier tasting seemed from a completely different wine. In that first tasting The Ehlers was rich and ripe with blueberry and blackberry, spices, cherry and a trace of licorice. It was tightly wound but well balanced with upfront acidity and firm tannins. All in all nicely structured with excellent length but still too young at this time. Score: 2, 2, 4.2, 10.1=18.3/20, 92/100. Sounds like a completely different wine and that is what can happen when different bottles of the same wine are consumed. The wine at the second tasting with its smoked aromas looks a little like its aged prematurely perhaps due to poor storage or heat exposure. I have a couple more bottles in the cellar that, once opened, might tell us which is the real Ehlers. Stay tuned to these pages.

I guess you are wondering why the tasting on January 10th has been called the Half Bottle Tasting when it is really Part II. Well there is only enough time in this week to catch up with one tasting. But if anyone wants notes on the other 5 wines I have them.

Interested in trying a few half bottles, perhaps building a half bottle collection? The largest range that I know of is available at Half Wit Wines, an online wine shop that specializes in half-bottles. You can get anything from the 1999 Chateau Musar Rouge Bekaa Valley from Lebanon to a 1978 Chateau Margaux. Oh, and just as an FYI a split is not a half bottle (375ml), it’s a quarter bottle or 187ml. Don’t worry, I’ve made that mistake myself.

From the Wine Bar
As usual the Wine Bar was replete with offering from all over the wine world. I tasted the wines in bold and all were excellent to outstanding but I’m only going to talk about one.

White: 2006 Dechant Gruner Veltliner, Alte Reben, Austria, 2008 Matua Sauvignon Blanc, "Paretai", Marlborough, NZ, 2006 Matanzas Creek Chardonnay, Sonoma Valley, 2006 Conn Valley Chardonnay, Napa, 2005 Meursault les Narvaux, Vincent Girardin, 2004 Nittnaus Gruner Veltliner Eiswein, Austria.

Red: 2006 Morey-St. Denis la Riotte VV, Olivier Jouan, France, 2006 Nebbiolo delle Langhe, Prod. del Barbaresco, Italy, 2005 Ch. Lascombes, Margaux, France, 2003 Castello di Meleto "Rainero", IGT, Toscana, Italy, 2006 Conn Valley "Right Bank: Red Blend, Napa, 2006 R Winery Shiraz "Boarding Pass", Australia.

2006 Morey-St. Denis la Riotte VV, Olivier Jouan, Burgundy, France. $47.99
I like Pinot Noir, but then I like just about every wine grape. My problem is I don’t understand Burgundy, how the vineyards are laid out and named. All those small parcels of vines, all with seemingly endless names. How does one keep it all memorized and understandable? A great example is the Olivier Jouan Morey-St. Denis La Riotte. Morey-St-Denis is a village in the Cote de Nuits and Oliver Jouan has a total of about 20 acres but only 0.74 acres comprise his La Riotte vineyard; the map in this Burgundy Report on Morey-St. Denis gives you a great idea about how fragmented Burgundy vineyards can be. The Jouan La Riotte vineyard is rated as Premier Cru (1er Cru) and this 2006 is a wonderful little wine. Its cherry red in color with a pink edge and has a very distinctive nose of cherry and strawberry, spices and sweet geranium, and a bottom note of bathroom salts – the know, the ones the lady in your life uses to make herself smell beautiful! It’s a little shy on the palate with super-soft tannins and clean balanced acidity. Beautifully structured, this is really nice Burgundy. Score: 2, 2, 4.4, 10.4=18.8/20, 94/100.

Image © iStockphoto.com/Valentin Casarsa: No this is not one of the gathered throng that drinks with SHIRAZ on Saturday, I just thought it might help to grab your attention. And I was right, wasn’t I?

San Diego Restaurant Week

Now in its fifth year, the San Diego Restaurant Week (January 11-16, 2009), provides the opportunity to pick from 3-course menus from over 150 restaurants. Prices vary from $20, 30 or 40 per person; but there are a few restrictions such as “Beverage, tax and gratuity not included. No splitting or sharing.” Miranda and I have taken part in Restaurant Week for the last 3 or 4 years and its has always been a great opportunity to sample new and/or unusual restaurant fare in the San Diego area for very reasonable prices.

The Marine Room
The Marine Room, on La Jolla Shores, was one of the first restaurants I visited when I came to San Diego in the early 1980’s, just after it had been restored following damage from the sea in 1982. Back then it was one of the places to be seen, usually at a Sunday brunch or having a drink and dancing to the piano in the evening. The food was always good but usually not great.

Its biggest claim to fame is that at high tide the water laps at the windows and at least twice has come through the windows and wrecked the place. But there are few better places in La Jolla to enjoy the ocean at night as the lights play on the waves breaking on the beach, and you sip on a cool beer or glass of wine. I had not dined at the Marine Room since the 1990’s and when walked in last Sunday night it was obvious that the place had changed little in that time. The sun had just set but there was enough light to see the very calm ocean throwing up some baby waves. You couldn’t say the same for the table we were given. Where were the lights? Romantic lighting is one thing, enough light to see the menu by is something else. Even so the place was packed, the staff busy and our orders were taken quickly and the wine we had brought opened. Bringing wine to the Marine Room has never been a problem but these days its a real treat as they began a program almost a year ago of not charging corkage if the wine is 5 or more years old. That is a very enlightened approach that should appeal to wine lovers.

For an appetizer I had the Berber Agrume Spiced Prawn Duet with Tancello Bulgur Tian, Ancho Chile Aioli, and Amaranth Pomegranate Reduction, and a main course of Peri Peri Spiced Maine Diver Scallops with Boniato Timbale, Vanilla Braised Leek, and Peppercress Lobster Corail Butter. Miranda and her mother both had the Royal Trumpet Mushroom Bisque with Pancetta, Verbena Fromage Blanc, and Truffle Oil for an appetizer and the Muscat Kalbi Glazed Mid Western Filet Mignon with Wasabi Chive Potato, Shiitake Butter, and Pickled Cipollini Plum XO Reduction as a main course. We all had the “Trilogy” for dessert which consisted of Kona Kahlua Espresso Torte, Macadamia Amarula Pot de Crème, and Honey Crystal Peach Sorbet.

The prawns were excellent. I cut off half-inch pieces layered each with some bulgar (a mix of wheats) and spread on some of the sauces. It was all gone too soon. The scallops were also extremely good. Very soft and paired well with the leek and sauces. The small piece of filet that I managed to beg from Miranda was mouthwateringly soft and complimented beautifully by the shiitake butter. Its a shame I don't like my meat medium-rare.

All this was consumed with a bottle of 2002 Dutschke Oscar Semmler Shiraz from the Barossa Valley. Approaching its 7th birthday this wine sings a beautiful line and length on the palate. The tannins are resolving beautifully against a backdrop of vibrant acidity, smoked, roasted meat notes and a hint of Christmas cake. There are three more bottles in the cellar and each deserves to live for at least five years more than its sibling.

More Deals on Australian Wines

I’ve posted previously about the discounting of Aussie wine in the US, in main these close-outs are coming from one importer in particular – The Grateful Palate.

Last weekend I was offered a few more. How about Geoff Weaver Sauvignon Blanc for $3.99USD? This wine retails for about $24USD so $4 sounds pretty good! OK the catch is that its 2004. No one in their right mind would buy a 5 year old Sauvignon blanc? So I got a case. Well it is under screw cap which Geoff Weaver claims “helps retain the fruit intensity and freshness and guarantees the wine will age well.”

The proof is in the taste. This little cracker is a very light straw yellow with lemon, grapefruit and oddly a hint of kerosene and the faintest hint of reduction. The palate is light weight with refreshing acidity, nice balance and good length of flavor. A little herbaceous note comes up with some air. Easily 87 points. It won’t live forever but with Spring/Summer just around the corner I bet we can get through a dozen bottles with some enjoyment.

Another wine is the Burge Family “Renoux”, a Barossa blend of Cabernet (54%), Shiraz (32%), Merlot (14%). The sale price was $8.99USD for a wine that retails around $40-45USD. Being from the 2003 vintage there is nice bottle age on this and it shows in the orange/brown edge. Its earthy and spicy with the aroma of an old ink well in a wooden school desk thrown in to remind me of the days I learned to write with pen and ink. Its quite attractive in a feral kind of way. There is loads of juicy acidity, chewy tannins from all that Cab and great flavors on the palate and finish. Its got a few more years left. A good 90 point wine, so another excellent value quaffer.

The third wine is the 2002 McLean’s Farm Barossa Reserve Shiraz. The retail on this is around $30USD. A wine Halliday gave 94 points and a drinking window out to 2012 in his 2006 Companion. I paid $8.99USD. I’m currently sipping on it and still trying to figure it out. There is pretty prominent sulfur (dioxide maybe – burnt match) on it which seems to be going way; its under cork. Underneath that is some really nice spices, tobacco and damp earth. Its well balanced with fine tannins and clean acidity. But its still warming up from the cellar and so to seal from J P Donleavy its bouquet is shrinking back into the glass from the cold. Might have to buy a few more just to see if there is any bottle variation!

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.

An Enviable Selection of Australian Wine

Where do you buy your wine? From the cellar door, a mailing list, a specialized wine store, or a supermarket? I buy from a mixture of sources, although the majority of my wine purchases are from a specialized wine shop. The reasons for this are quite simple. The selection is outstanding, the knowledge of the staff is vast and the prices are very competitive. The only problem is that much of the wine for sale is current vintage, there is a back room of earlier vintages but the selection is not all that extensive. More importantly it contains very few Australian wines. So if I want an Aussie wine with some age on it I’m forced to buy the wine and let it mature. Not ideal when you want the wine now. However I think I may have solved that little problem, at least for those times when we are in Australia.

Its all thanks to my old mate Ted. He lives at Warrimoo in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales (NSW) and Miranda and I almost always spend a week or so with him tooling around the little towns that dot the highway between Penrith and Lithgow. On our recent trip we found ourselves in Leura, a pleasant little town of about 4000 people. We had spent part of the day doing the Scenic Railway, Walkway and Cableway and decided to take a look at a few bookshops and pick out a place for dinner. For dinner we would need some wine and Ted suggested we drop by Leura Cellars. Now Ted is not a wine tragic. He certainly likes the odd glass or two and has a few bottles laid away for a special occasion, like when we come to visit. But he would be the first to say that wine is not one of the major interests of his life but he knew of Leura cellars and their wine selection because this shop in this little town caters to a wealthy clientele of mountain drinkers who know their wines.

Leura Cellar is on the wonderfully picturesque Leura Mall. The street level is a conventional Aussie bottle shop filled with recent vintages. It’s the stairway which descends to the lower level that holds the surprise. The lower level houses the Vintage Cellar, and its not just a few dusty, old bottles of wine. Here you will find Penfolds Grange from 1965, Penfolds St Henri from 1968, McWilliams Elizabeth Semillon from 1984, Petaluma Riesling from 1985, De Bortoli Noble One from 1982, and a host of others. This truly is a wonderful space to wander, picking up a bottle here and there of wine 10, 20, or even 30 years old. I defy any true wine enthusiastic to walk back up those stairs empty handed!

So what did we chose for dinner? A bottle of 1996 Mcwilliams Maurice Shiraz from the Hunter Valley for $50AUD. We dined in the courtyard at Café Bon Ton with individual appetizers (mine was the Crisp Fried Lambs Brains with Pecorino and Herb Crust, Black Pudding, Sauce Gribiche and Quail Eggs) and split the house specialty of Slow Braised Pork Cheeks with Star Anise, Cassia Bark, Root Vegetables and Shitake Mushrooms, which paired wonderfully with the Maurice O’Shea Shiraz (Corkage: $5AUD/person). It won’t take a fortune teller to predict that we will be visiting Leura again.

The Complaints against High Alcohol in Wine – a little history

They never seem to stop do they? It’s a pity most of the complainers know very little of history, at least those ranting against Australian wines. I was remained of this again last week on a note over at GLUG. In reply to the growing argument, primarily by UK wine merchants, that Australia make wines lighter than 13-14% alcohol David Farmer quotes from H.E. Laffer’s "The Wine Industry of Australia" (1949). Lafer discusses the complaints of a Dr. Thudicum. "In records of the trade round about 1870 there was a good deal of discontent among shippers because some of the wines imported were said to be over 26% proof spirit (this equals 14.85% alcohol by volume), and were therefore charged one shilling and sixpence a gallon extra duty. Dr. Thudicum claimed that these must have been fortified, because it was not possible for that amount of alcohol to be produced by natural fermentation. The controversy raged through the columns of the daily Press, both in editorial and in letters from correspondents. The learned Doctor based his assertion on the claim that it could not be so "because it would simply upset the whole scientific facts hitherto established throughout the world."

Dr Thudicum is rebuffed by a letter on 18th December, 1873, from P.B.Burgoyne which states "There is one remark of Dr. Thudicum's which I take leave to dispute. He says, 'If Australian wines have to pay the half-crown duty on importation into England, it is because they are brandied.' Now, although I would not pretend to say, nor do I believe, that all the Australian wines that have come under my notice are without brandy added, yet I can, and do most positively assert, that the 'Tintara' grown by A.C.Kelly, M.D., which wine has been made the scapegoat by Dr. Thudicum (vide the Journal of the Society of Arts, December 5th, page 48) does generate 26 degrees proof spirit in fermentation and no brandy is added.....".

A good dose of alcohol has always been, and will always be, in the wines from the hotter regions of Australia like the Barossa Valley. The real story, if the international critics want to make note of it, is that the cooler regions of Australia do make the wines they prefer. The problem is that very few, if any, of these critics make the effort to taste those wines. And so they continue to complain when all they really need is a little history lesson and the initiative to seek beyond what is put in front of them. Even Robert Whitely agrees with that.

Wine in Plastic

If you are more than just a casual drinker of wine you know that there is a whole industry producing glasses so that you can savor your favorite wine. Should you wish to you can purchase a seemingly endless array of wine glasses of different shapes and sizes to draw the most out of your Shiraz or Zinfandel, or Chardonnay, or just about any other variety. There are even glasses made that supposedly suit wines from different regions. There are completely opaque glasses that hide the wine from view to glasses that lack both the foot and stem of the conventional wine glass. And, of course, all this can come at considerable expense. Plus you have to wash them and if they are expensive that means hand washing with special detergents and drying clothes to preserve their pristine appearance. And then someone drops one and all you are left with is a mess to clean up. Why doesn’t someone make a shatterproof, durable, dishwasher friendly and cheap wine glass so that I don’t have to worry about how much longer my good glasses have to endure mistreatment by those who don’t really care about either the wine or the glass?

Drum roll, Cue curtain. Enter the Govino shatterproof wine glass. These glasses are stemless and made from Polyethylene Terepthalate Glycol (PETG) which has uses in blister packaging and plastic bottles. My order of Govino shatterproof wineglasses arrived last night and so we put a couple through their paces (see below). I purchased the glasses through the Govino website and with UPS ground shipping and tax the final cost came out to a little over $4/glass. Each glass comes in its own plastic sleeve and there sitting on top of all of them was a printed note advising that they be hand washed because of the variability in dishwashers! Whether they will survive our usual dishing cycle will be tested soon because I really don’t feel like hand washing a $4 glass.

First the “glass” itself is extremely light and very transparent ("crystal clear") so viewing the color of a wine is no problem at all. And the nose and taste of the wine we drank last night (Carlisle 2005 Knights Valley "Pelkan Ranch" Syrah, 15.7%) was the same in both the Govino and a similarity shaped and inexpensive stemless glass from Crate and Barrel. And the alcohol in the Carlisle didn’t melt the Govino on contact. Yes, I’m being facetious but it is worth pointing out that PETG is apparently quite durable, although it can be scratched. I would think that dropping the Govino onto a hard surface would cause little damage in terms of breakage. Miranda wouldn't let me test that on our stamped concrete floor.

An indentation at the widest point of the glass does help hold the glass because it is quite firm at this point. However the top of the glass can be compressed by simply squeezing your fingers together. Fortunately the plastic is so thin and flexible that it springs back into shape. The real problem is the lip. For some reason the lip has been made to curve slightly into the glass. It’s a small curve, probably less than a millimeter, but you notice it as soon as you put the glass to your mouth and take a sip of wine. It may be that without this curl the plastic lip would be quite sharp but each time I took a sip of wine I thought to myself that it would be quite easy to cut your own lip if you were bumped while drinking. Miranda liked the Govino, didn’t see the lip as a problem, and thought I was being more paranoid than normal. Her argument was that I've been bumped while drinking from glasses with very thin lips and I'm still here with my lips intact, in fact not even scratched.

After we had our wine I simply rinsed the Govinos with cold water and let them drain overnight. This morning they were water stained (as is usual with San Diego water) but unlike their cheap glass cousins from Crate and Barrel the Govino cleaned up nicely with a simple wipe using a soft cloth.

So is the Govino a quality wine glass? No. This is not the glass to use for a dinner party or even as a cheap replacement for wine tasting. But I can see it as a good alternative in situations where there is the possibility of having your quality glassware mistreated and broken, like at a gathering of folks who simply want a glass of wine and don’t care what the glass or wine is. Or for when Miranda’s mother visits; she is the only person in our household to have broken a glass while drinking. So the Govino will get a run at our next BBQ or informal gathering of non-wine tragics. One thing is for sure we will be able to leave them out to drain overnight without worrying about whether the cats have smashed them onto the kitchen floor during their own social event.

How To Taste Wine

Before I get into vivid, mouthwatering descriptions of some of the wines we tasted during our trip to Australia I thought I would share a post or two on a few wine related gems from downunder. The first involves a little book that I purchased at Shaw Vineyard Estate. The Shaw Vineyard estate is at Murrumbateman, about 30 km north of Canberra and is part of the Canberra wine region. It is also one of those wineries that bears a unfortunate resemblance to Frass Canyon winery of Sideways fame. Lots of glitz and kitsch but not much personality. We were there on the weekend when the region’s wineries have their Wine Roses and all that Jazz celebration, and so Shaw had a quartet playing right in the packed cellar door which is also attached to a restaurant that was full of noisy patrons. Not exactly ideal circumstances when it comes to a quiet taste of a few wines.

So after the mad scramble to get a little taste of Riesling we amused ourselves by looking over the merchandise that was for sale. Hidden way at the end of the counter in the cellar door, almost out of sight was a little display of books titled “Len Evans – How to taste wine”. You little beauty, a small treatise by the man Hugh Johnson described as “the finest judge of wine I know”. This should be full of invaluable tidbits of tasting lore. And it is, as long as you are not expecting enlightenment on the mechanics and physiology of wine tasting. The advice is of a different kind. Its the wisdom of a sage among wine judges.

“How to taste wine” was written just before Len Evans died unexpectedly in 2006, the very last paragraph of the text, in a section called Reflections, sums up his philosophy of wine, and so I quote it verbatim.

“What I really wanted was to sit at the foot of a great palate, the most
knowledgeable wine guru, the ultimate taster. Unfortunately there was no such
person around at that time, nor is there one today. All one may do is scratch a
bit here and scratch a bit there, trying to put enough together to achieve some
sort of understanding of this most wondrous of drinks. And I do hope some of the
above helps, even if all it does is open some minds to the possibilities of the
subject. “

There is, of course, more in this little book. Evans devotes 30 pages to the assessment of wine, covering the areas of color, nose, entry, middle palate, after palate and finish. But there is no technical detail, just observations gleaned from 30 plus years as a wine judge. His strongest recommendation? Smell a wine deeply for "a great deal of what is to be learnt of any wine is there, 'on the nose' ". Perhaps paradoxically Evans is not a devotee of describing the aroma/bouquet of wine. His explanation is that he has “neither the olfactory range or the inclination” to adopt “the endless wine vocabulary used overseas”. To Evans “wine smells of itself”. Perhaps such an explanation seems unsatisfactory given his extraordinary tasting ability but Evans is no scientist, his strength lay in an ability to compare and contrast wines, remembering the experience more viscerally than cerebrally.

He is also not above poking a few jabs at the insularity of wine critics/judges, especially from the States. You know the ones, they “start writing for newspapers and magazines and appear on TV: they get feted a little, and in no time they’re all experts. We’ve had lots of them over here to judge different shows and some of them, to be frank, are quire ordinary. They may be alright when they can read the labels but when it’s blind they’ve made some shocking mistakes.” Ouch. But then I wouldn’t expect anything else but the unpalatable truth from Len Evans.

The one semi-technical contribution in this little book is described in the section called An Indulgence. Its Evans’ attempt to depict the structure of individual wines in a graphic format. Each graph is broken into nose, entry, middle palate, after palate and finish – the aspect of tasting described earlier in the book. The height of the line and the width of each segment conveys the impact of the wine. If necessary the intensity can be displayed by the width of the line and the density by dots of varying size. It looks somewhat clumsy and it is difficult to appreciate how a single line contains the many dimensions of a wine. But then it comes from the mind of a true individual in the world of wine. Afterall who else could pen a "Theory of capacity"?

How To Taste Wine (paperback) by Len Evans, 112 pages, Barbara Beckett Publishing, Paddington, Australia (2007) $19.95AUD.

Two Weeks Exploring Australian Wine – A brief overview

We have been back from Australia for a little over a week and it has taken me that long to recover from a head cold, thanks to a fellow passenger on our return flight. The only saving grace was that I didn’t succumb to the sniffles, sneezes and aching muscles while we were on our 3,000 kilometer odyssey through some of Australia’s best wine country. Miranda was not so fortunate; she came down with the dreaded “common” cold the day before we left Dubbo and we were almost through with McLaren Vale before she recovered enough to last though a full day of wine tasting.

Even with the unplanned visits to various Chemists (pharmacists), for the latest in cold remedies, the trip was a great opportunity to explore the diversity of Australian wine. We discovered excellent whites at Printhie near Orange, got a lesson on how to stylishly open a screw capped wine bottle from Ken Helm as we sampled his outstanding Canberra Rieslings, had dinner under a stamped metal ceiling in an historic guesthouse with a boisterous bunch of Aussies, and were the fist through the door at the 2008 Cork and Fork in Cowra. And that was just the first two days!

Two weeks, three states, six wine regions, and all by car. Red wine, white wine, dessert wine, fortified wine, sparkling wine, even wine that technically was not wine at all - we tried them all. Some were simply not that good, others superb. We had cellar door experiences that were not all that polite to hours and hours of joyously sampling Mollydooker wines with Sparky’s mum. We explored Joseph’s room and found a barrel of wine to celebrate our own centenary. We had a winemaker tell us that the wine we gifted him was not that good, only to apologize the next day. It didn’t matter. He was correct and anyway he was allowed to roast Washington Syrah because he had shared his food, his wines and his back verandah late into the night. We had so much wine at one dinner that the waitstaff were forced to bring a separate table to hold all the bottles, and some of the half open bottles had to be given away to other diners. We rode on a paddle steamer, had dinner on a slag heap and ran over a wild pig. We left no stone unturned.

Off to the Land of Wonder, the Land Downunder

Our annual trip to Australia is occurring a little earlier than usual. Real early, like tomorrow. If we have picked our QANTAS flights correctly we should be boarding the A380 Airbus some time after 10pm at LAX for the 14 plus hour flight. This year our wine exposure is a little more ambitious than in the past. A two week road trip visiting six wine regions in three different states. The trip will start in Dubbo, NSW where Miranda and I will be joined by my cousin Ngaire and her husband Chris. First stop will be the cool climate wine area around Orange sampling wines from Canobolas-Smith, Mayfield, and Printhie. Then it will be off to The Falls for a relaxing dinner (and wine) and a good nights rest.

The second day was to be visits to selected wineries in the Hilltops and Canberra regions. But Chalkers Crossing at Young have told us they won’t be open and the Canberra wineries are holding their Wine, Roses, and All that Jazz celebration. So all we hope to achieve is to fight our way through the crowds so that we can taste whatever Clonakilla has on offer that weekend.

It may be fate that the second day promises little wine as the next two as sure to hold some of the highlights of the trip. Why? One word, Rutherglen. Well OK, four words. Rutherglen and fortified wines. For those who don’t know, Rutherglen is the epicenter of fortified wine in Australia, and the wines they make there are among the best in the world. And we get to visit the big guns like Chambers, Morris, Buller, and Campbells. And we will also drop by Warrabilla to taste the big, bold wines of Andrew Sutherland Smith. This should be two days of wine heaven.

To recover from all that alcohol we will spend the next two days traveling along most of the Murray River from Albury to Murray Bridge. We will be driving through a number of wine regions (Goulburn Valley, Swan Hill, Murray Darling, Riverland) as we motor alongside the Murray, but apart from accommodation in Swan Hill and Loxton we won’t be stopping because the next wine region on the itinerary is McLaren Vale. Tastings have been organized at Arakoon, Kay Brothers, d’Arenberg, and Mollydooker. A highlight will be a BBQ with Roger Pike and the chance to taste his Marius wines as we look out over his vineyards. We had hoped to stop by the Redheads Studio and Samuel’s Gorge but I guess they are too busy making and selling wine to answer my email request for a tasting appointment!

The next region is that little known wine making area, the Barossa Valley. We will taste at Winter Creek, Trevor Jones, and Teusner, and then recover over dinner at Vintners Bar and Grill with several winemakers. The next day will see us at Seppeltsfield. Miranda and I visit this grand old place every time we are in the Barossa, but this time it will be special as we will be tasting the wines under new ownership. Diggers Buff, Hobbs and Tim Smith will also be letting us sample their wines.

On the next day we will visit our last Barossa winery, Dutschke, before heading up to Clare Valley and tastings at Kilikanoon, Neagles Rock, Pikes and Paulett. Then it will be back to Dubbo via Broken Hill because its always good to get a little bit of the reality of the outback under your belt before you return to the maddening pace of southern California.

The Battle for the Internet

Its the question that has all waiting with bated breath. The outcome may well make grown men cry, women scream, babies clutch for the mothers’ breast and Aussie wine aficionados run screaming into the night. Nah, it won’t be that dramatic but it will be interesting. One month ago Shiraz posted on Australian Wine - The Critics Web Sites. That post garnered quite a few comments mainly from Gary Walsh of the redesigned The Wine Front. Gary was quite concerned that I hadn’t looked deeply enough into the fine cyberspace tuning that The Wine Front had received. After all the site would now be putting up a hundred or more new-release wine reviews each month. That would be more than any other site and certainly more than James Halliday’s online Wine Companion site. Well OK, that’s great. I still don’t like the search capability of the new site but if it is notes on current wines that drinkers of Australian wines need then go for it.

The zeros and ones had only just settled themselves after the thrust and parry of the comments to that post when I received the monthly update from the Halliday's Wine Companion site. The big news? You get no prize for guessing. “Starting in September, James will be adding 100 new tasting notes to winecompanion.com.au every month. These tasting notes will not appear in the Australian Wine Companion and are only available online to winecompanion.com.au members.” The 100 tasting notes are easily searched as the list is a simple alphabetical one of the wines. Click on any wine name and it opens the tasting note. The only problem is that I can’t find a link to those tasting notes on the site itself, you have to click the link in the subscriber email. Back to you Campbell and Gary.

And it didn’t take long. October 1st saw an email from Campbell Mattinson to subscribers of The Wine Front.

Dear subscribers, I think you're going to like this. From now on Gary Walsh and I will be putting out The Wine Front Hot 50 each month - as a pdf document. To grab your copy just click the link below. We looked at the fact that we are now reviewing several hundred wines each month, which means that unless you're visiting the site almost daily, it's easy for a good number of really good wines to pass you by. This publication should help fix that - it distills the best down to the Hot 50. Beat that James.

Halliday’s response? Well all was quiet, except for a post on SHIRAZ on October 7th from the online Wine Companion viz. ”With an increasing number of great wine resources available online, a review of a few of them was worthy of a blog post. Your overview of winecompanion.com.au accurately reflects the feedback we have received directly for our users. The feedback is partly why, as of last month we are now adding 100 new tasting notes every month (Septembers - http://winecompanion.com.au/wine_search.cfm?latest=1). Also stay turned for the Vintage Search, its on its way. *whip cracked*”

It’s the last sentence that is the interesting bit. As I look over the site now I see quite a few changes to the search capability. True, its still not close to the search capability of Parker’s online The Wine Advocate, but now the “Search Wineries” pull down allows you to click on a state of Australia and it opens up with a map showing you the location of the major regions and you can click on any one (or the text list of regions) and you get an alphabetical list of wineries. That is useful if you want to know where different regions lie in respect to each other and the wineries they contain. The aficionados may already know that but your interested wine drinker, especially those outside Oz will find it very helpful. The “Wine Tasting Notes” pull down has also been ungraded so that you can now pick a variety (Shiraz) and a region (McLaren Vale) and the page will open to a list of wineries and the ability to sort them by Name, Vintage, Rating, Price, Drink By, and Date Tasted. This is certainly more helpful than in the (recent) past. It still can’t do a search that will reduce the number of wines by adding additional search terms so that I can get only the 2002 Shiraz wines from Barossa with ratings above 90. But maybe if the whip is cracked often enough that might just happen. But did this whip crack have any sting in it for The Wine Front?

I guess it did because a week later Campbell was sending out another email to subscribers.

Dear Subscriber,

It's been a gentler past week at The Wine Front - only just shy of 50 new reviews in the past seven days - but you'd hardly know it, with all the comments and new information going onto the site. If you're not visiting the site regularly - you should be.

BEST VALUE: But if you don't visit often, a really nifty way of getting the best out of the site is via the categories and tags. For instance, if you want to see all the BEST VALUE wines we've tasted recently, go to the Best Value tag at: http://www.winefront.com.au/tag/top-value/

BIODYNAMIC: Or you want to see the Biodynamic wines we've reviewed recently go to the Biodynamic tag at: http://www.winefront.com.au/tag/biodynamic/

IMPORTS: Or maybe the imports? See all our most recent Import reviews at: http://www.winefront.com.au/category/import/

We've also got our CALENDAR up and running now - it's on the bottom right of the screen. Check it out - there are some good events coming up - and let us know of any events we should have in there.

In other words, lots happening on the site every day.

cheers,
Campbell Mattinson

So I wandered over to the site. To be honest I’m not a big fan of the way the categories and tags are used on the site. But hey, if that is what works for subscribers then who am I to complain. The Hot 50 is there as a PDF with an alphabetical listing of the wines reviewed in September and their scores as well. But the PDF is 33 pages long and there is no listing of the Top 50 that allows you to click on the name of the wine and skip straight to the review; Halliday wins that round. The Wine Calendar is a different matter. Those looking for wine events are likely to find this quite useful. For the Aussie scene its probably more useful than something like the Local Wine Events site as its more national than international and likely to be of great use to event organizers and retailers looking to attract those with a serious interest in wine.

Will the Wine Companion respond? Probably not, they don’t really need a wine calendar. They should keep sprucing up those search capabilities because as much as I’d like to back the young turks the smart money is still going for Halliday.

The Landmark Australia Tutorial

Wine Australia has announced the first Landmark Australia Tutorial for 1-5 June, 2009. The Tutorial is a five day course comprising text, narrative study and wine tasting on Australia’s fine wines. It is limited to international opinion-formers "with extensive wine experience in buying, selling or editorial decision making. Candidates must demonstrate how they have influenced their business across one or more of these decision making dimensions over the previous 2 years. Previous experience judging at wine shows will also be viewed favorably." The selection process is limited to twelve participants, each of whom will receive all expenses-paid trips courtesy of Wine Australia. Applications close Friday 28 November 2008 and the winning entrants will ne notified 15 December 2008. and must be available to travel to Australia during Monday 1 to Friday 5 June 2009.

The Tutorial has three principal tutors, Dr Tony Jordan, Michael Hill Smith AM MW and Andrew Caillard MW, as well as leading Australian wine experts James Halliday and Brian Croser.

“The opportunity for us to engage the next generation of wine media, trade and commerce with an Australian fine wine story full of courage and ambition is very exciting,” said the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation, general manager of market development, Paul Henry.

“The belief in the existence of terroir, the notion of regionality, the benefits of blending etcetera are all vexed questions that we should now confidently address, staking a bold claim to be judged as a leading producer of wines of character, quality and interest.”

The Tutorial will be hosted at The Louise luxury vineyard retreat in the Barossa Valley, which is associated with the highly praised restaurant Appellation.

Apart from exposure to some of the more legendary Aussie wines including Penfolds Bin 60A, Mildara's Peppermint Pattie and the original Maurice O'Shea's the participants will be guided through several Masterclasses entitled, Australia's Regional Classics, An Historic Perspective, and Pinot Noir.

The Landmark Australia Tutorial could be considered to be smaller brother to the worldlier Len Evans Tutorial, albeit with a much more pertinent focus on Australia. Limiting the tutorial to a lucky dozen does seem restrictive, but I would hope that the lucky few return to heir homelands to spread the message about the great diversity and excellence of Australian wines. All Wine Australia needs now is a tutorial for Australian winemakers in promoting their wines in a more and more competitive global marketplace.

Media Release.

An Aside: Shiraz won't be an applicant (because I have a full time job) but we will be checking out Appellation during our upcoming Oct-Nov trip to Oz which will include visits to wineries in half a dozen wine regions and dinnner at Appellation with some noted winemakers.

More Devalued Australian Wine

I iust received an email from an Etailer here in the US offering Penfold's Bin 28 Kalimna Shiraz 2004 for $11.99USD or $9.99/btl if you buy six. Usual excuse - the distributor wants to move some boxes - one time deal. Wine Searcher has this from $9.95 to the more usual $24.99.

Linked over to their site to see what other deals are on offer. Quite a few. The best is the 2003 Winter Creek Shiraz at $14.99uSD or $12.99/btl for 6. I paid $27.99USD in 2005 for this. Its $19.99 to $29.99 on Wine Searcher. I'll have a six pack please!

Wines like the Fox Creek Reserve Shiraz 2004, Tait Shiraz 2005, Kurtz Boundary Row Shiraz 2003, Margan Semillon 2004, Koonowla Cabernet Sauvignon 2003, Connor Park Shiraz 2002 have 20-50% price reductions. Obviously these are not current vintages but it just goes to show that its been difficult to move Aussie wine for more than just a vintage or two.

What does Grant Burge 'Barossa Vines' Chardonnay 2005 sell for in Oz? $8.99USD here

Australian Wine - The Critics Web Sites

Blogging is almost always about links. The more links you have in your posts, especially to sites with significant traffic, the better chance you have for search engines to include your blog in searches for that link. There are two important aspects to links. First, they have to be current because the internet is simply not static enough for links to remain permanent. And second, the dynamic nature of the ‘net means that new sites are added all the time, and the best of those need to be added to your repertoire of traffic catchers. But links also serve another purpose because they are often placed outside of a post, such as those on the right-hand side of the page for SHIRAZ. These links qualify simply as resource pages. They allow bloggers to expand the knowledge base of their site by doing nothing more than providing a link. Here, at SHIRAZ, I’ve not blogged about the resource links because like many bloggers I assume that those who visit SHIRAZ will know what resource links are. However checking the OutClicks for SHIRAZ suggests that most don’t take advantage of resource links, so maybe its time to blog about them!

In the next few posts I’ll be covering several categories of web sites as they relate to Australian wine. These lists will not be exhaustive and will often only cover sites in Australia, although some of the more important foreign sites will be included. The first category will be the sites of those who can best be described as critics of Aussie wines, the folks that provide not only assessment of wines but also commentary.

James Halliday – Australian Wine Companion. $34.95/year.
Although thought of as part of the old guard by some, James Halliday reigns supreme as the most experienced and most knowledgeable critic of Australian wine. Halliday has also had enviable exposure to the best wines outside Australia, so his analysis is able to place Australian wine within a world context. Halliday may be the oldest Aussie wine critic but his new web site brings him into the 21st century! This site boats over 45,000 tasting notes, information on wine regions and wineries and commentary on current aspects of the Australian wine industry. There is also free content to entice possible subscribers. All of this is easy to access by pull down menus. Searching the site and especially tasting notes is limited by an inability to search by vintage; for example, you can’t get all of the tasting notes for 2002 Barossa Shiraz in a single search. Halliday does send out emails to subscribers on a regular basis that include a few tasting notes but the majority of his notes come from his annual hardcopy Wine Companion, so current tasting notes are limited.

THE WINE FRONT $39.95/year.
Given birth by one of Australia’s best wine writers, Campbell Mattinson, THE WINE FRONT has now been fused with Gary Walsh’s Winorama which was a very successful free site devoted primarily to tasting notes. Mattinson and Walsh fit into a small group of young Turks hoping to rise to prominence and unseat the “old guard”. I was initially very optimistic about the potential that this partnership could bring to critical analysis of Aussie wines. And although the jury is still out, I have to confess to an initial disappointment with the new THE WINE FRONT. The site does have significant positives. The tasting duo hopes to add several hundred tasting notes each month which makes the content very current in terms of wines available at retail; this is a big advantage over other critics (think Halliday, Parker’s The Wine Advocate) that normally release once per year. The site also boasts a first, at least for Aussie wine reviews, in a free feature called Double Take in which both Mattinson and Walsh independently review the same wine. Plus there is a limited amount of free content as a teaser to potential subscribers. However the search features on the site are archaic at best being limited to categories and a generic text search; a page describing tips for searching using this latter feature would be very helpful. If you want to look at all the tasting notes for 2005 Barossa Shiraz, as an example, you will be disappointed; you just can’t do it. And even when you pull up a search you have to scroll through complete notes, there is no facility to search abbreviated descriptions of individual wines which makes things very hard going. Fortunately its early days for this web site and hopefully it will improve, the potential is certainly there.

Jeremy Oliver $39.95 +GST
A site I do not subscribe to as it gives no free content to judge the quality of the material within. Oliver is highly regarded as a critic of Australian wine, although I doubt his name is known much outside Australia. I’ll continue to give this a miss until some free content appears.

TORBWine Free.
Run by Ric Einstein, an amateur wine critic (i.e. Ric does this in his spare time which he seems to have a lot of!). This site contains wine news, commentary and tasting notes. But the most interesting content is the Tour Diaries. Each Year Ric and a few of his mates visit Australian wine regions, mostly South Australia and Victoria, and taste with dozens of wine makers. The writing is a blend of humorous anecdote mixed with serious descriptions of current wines. Tour Diaries is a great way to find out what is happening on the Aussie wine scene, and its a pity that Ric doesn’t visit more wine regions during the year. You can search the tasting notes under several categories but like the sites above its not a sophisticated search engine. Tasting notes are listed by wine and clicking on the wine description will open up the tasting note but the lists are not alphabetical and so it can be hard work to find what you want.

Wine Pros Free
This is another free site that contains wine news, commentary and tasting notes but much of it is archived material that was provided as content when James Halliday used to contribute to the site. Now that Halliday has gone there is little, if any, current content. But the WinePros archive is now a portal for Visit Vineyards; a very new site that looks at both wine and food. Its a little too early to judge its potential, but it does contain content from several Australia writers as well as the well known English Master of Wine Jancis Robinson

A note on search engines for individual wine sites.
None of the wine sites described above use state of the art search engines and so its almost always a hit and miss affair if you want to extract their descriptions of 2002 Barossa Shiraz, for example. That is a major failing for sites which aim to provide material that their visitors and/or subscribers can search. Its simply not efficient to search these sites. In fact its probably easier to do a Google search for the information you want. There is however one site that does provide a very refined search engine, eRobertParker. This site ($99USD/year) is not limited to Australian wine but a few clicks will get you results for quite complicated searches. Its no problem to find all the 2002 Barossa Shiraz that Parker has reviewed. Under Category Search you simply click on Australia, then select Vintage, click on 2002 and then select Location, select Barossa Valley and then click on Variety, and select Syrah (well nothing is perfect!). You can then display the notes for the 111 wines and sort them by wine name, rating, price or maturity. Clicking on an individual wine opens up the tasting note. Now that is a search facility!

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?

Merlove - a movie about Merlot

Well it had to happen sometime. The movie Sideways was seen as doing so much damage to Merlot (at least in the US) that a response had to be produced, and now it has with Rudy McClain's Merlove. Its a documentary that eventually finds it way to Ch. Petrus.

Check out this trailer. Its the first time I've ever heard a wine described as "Sophia Loren's dirty underwear."

Blinded by Shiraz

Australian Shiraz has been criticized, especially outside the boundaries of the island continent, as having a sameness, of being big, blustery fruit bombs, high in alcohol but low in regional expression and not long in life. Its very easy to dispel this myth, all you have to do is gather together a few quality shiraz from several regions and taste them. That’s the easy part. Putting together a blog post that would do the wines justice is more difficult. I’ve been haggling with myself for months about how to approach the content of this blog post, especially the title. There was a point when I was going to call it “Top Gear” and describe the wines in terms of exotic, or not so exotic, cars from the BBC program of the same name. After all wine has been likened to everything else, so why not describe New Zealand Syrah like an Audi R8 - “Meet the new everyday superwine”, or Rutherglen Muscat like a Maserati Quattroporte ;“Quite possibly the most beautiful and desirable wine in the world”. How about the Renault Laguna “has the same old anonymous character” for cheap Bordeaux?

But no, it wouldn’t work simply because I haven’t driven any of those cars, so I would be clueless about comparing them with wine. And besides there are too many wines that could be described the way my car is “Not the most practical, but distinctive, fun-ish”. Even some cheap Bordeaux fits that label. More to the point the wines in this tasting were Aussie Shiraz or blends and exotic foreign cars just didn’t seem to fit the different styles. Still, in hindsight, there was one that you could think of as the new Aussie Supercar, the Bolwell Nagari. “Ahhhh, that’s really good”.

The Shiraz tasting was organized by Chris Davis, a relative and long time wine enthusiast, who feels there is need of improvement in the appreciation of fine wine in the central west of NSW. And he’s determined to do something about it, even if it costs him quite a bit of money and hardly anyone turns up to the tastings he plans. And that is exactly what happened on this evening. Chris turned out an outstanding group of wines, and very few turned up.

The format of the tasting was to be based around my leading the description of a group of wines in the company of a dozen or so wine lovers ranging from neophyte to several serious palates. But as the day drew closer more and more people found something else to do! Maybe it was because there was going to be someone from America leading the tasting of Aussie Shiraz or perhaps it was because the tasting was to occur during the last hectic two weeks before Christmas. Either way, if you didn’t show you, you missed a worthy celebration of Australian wine.

The wines were wrapped in paper and carried different colored dots so that we could match our notes to individual bottles. For all intents and purposes a blind tasting. Well, almost. In a weak moment, Chris had told me that there would be a couple of older wines including a Penfold’s Bin 389 and a Hunter Valley wine. And, maybe one from the Mornington Peninsula. Prior appointments and the favor of the wine Gods meant that only three of us tasted the wines blinded; Chris, Mike(2) and myself. The others who showed up quite a bit later got to pick and choose from the uncovered bottles.

On to the wines First up -
Pink
Deep, dense cherry red with red edge. Lovely fruit flavors together with vanilla, pepper and oaky notes. A hint of nail polish (ethyl acetate). Full bodied with very firm tannins and juicy acidity. The latter detracts from the palate appeal. Will need loads of time to come together. 2, 2, 3.5, 9.7=17.2/20, 86/100.

Difficult to tell. Big, so it could be Barrosan. Mike(2) thought Victorian and probably Mornington Peninsula but I’d not tasted a Mornington wine with such firm tannins. So if it was Victorian it was probably more northerly.

Red
Much older wine, very orange/brown at all levels. Nice notes of leather, caramel, a little spice, smoked meats and a touch of earthiness. Palate is soft and supple with great balance and excellent length. Very nice old wine. 2, 2, 3.9, 10.0=17.9/20, 90/100.

Mike(2) was very firm in his opinion that this was Hunter Valley and I was inclined to agree but I knew that there was an aged Bin 389 in the tasting, so I wanted to wait until I’d tasted all the wines.

Yellow
Dense, deep, dark cherry. Intense color. Very expressive nose of dark fruits, oak and pepper (probably from the alcohol). Beautifully flavored and not adversely affected by a little menthol note coming up with time. Very powerful on the palate with outstanding presence of flavors and great length. Beautiful wine. 2, 2, 4.3, 10.6=18.9/20, 95/100.

No doubt a recent vintage from the Barossa, and (this is cheating) from the bottle weight it has to be Trevor Jones Wild Witch.

Green
Mahogany, great depth of color with a dense browning on the edge. Great complexity with coffee and chocolate predominate. Fuller bodied with wonderful depth and a core of firm tannins, and a lengthy, lengthy finish. The only weak point is that it faded too quickly with time. 2, 2, 4.3, 10.4=18.7/20, 94/100.

OK, this is the Bin 389. That makes the Red dot wine a good candidate for the Hunter.

Orange
Dense cherry red with red edge. A little sulfur stink and then it opens to cherry and other red fruits, but presenting a little green in this company. Nice clean acidity focuses the balance in this excellent little wine. 2, 2, 3.4, 10.1=17.5/20, 88/100.

Hmmm, this could well be Mornington Peninsula Shiraz. Its certainly a cooler climate wine.

Brown
Deepest color, black at its core with a dark red edge. A big, overpowering, wine with olives, oak and a little chocolate. With time some coffee and tomato paste. Soft and supple on entry but its mouth filling and expressive with great length. Lacks a little on the mid-palate but the flavors carry and the depth and concentration is excellent. It just needs time to fill out a little. 2, 2, 3.7, 10.0=17.7/20, 89/100.

Clearly Barossa but the olive note suggest that its not something I’m familiar with because I don’t find that in Shiraz all that often. (EDIT: Nothing is ever simple with wine. In the last few weeks I’ve had two wines from the Barossa that have had aromas of olives. The 2005 Rusden Ripper Creek (a 60/40 blend of Cabernet sauvignon and Shiraz) and the 2005 Glaymond The Distance Shiraz.)

The wines-
Pink: 2004 Langi Shiraz, Mount Langi Ghiran, Grampians, Victoria, 15% alcohol.
Red:1991 Maurice O’Shea Shiraz, Mount Pleasant, Hunter Valley, NSW. 12.5% alcohol.
Yellow: 2005 Wild Witch Reserve Dry Grown Shiraz, Trevor Jones, Barossa, SA. 14.8% alcohol.
Green: 1996 Bin 389 (Cabernet/Shiraz), Penfolds, SA. 13.5% alcohol.
Orange: 2005 Reserve Shiraz, Paringa Estate, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria. 14.5% alcohol
Brown: 2004 Shiraz, Glaetzer, Barossa, SA. 14.5% alcohol.

A tasting like this leaves little doubt that Shiraz is truly Australia’s top gear of wine. Wines from four different regions, each of which show distinctive character. And two showing how gracefully these wines, from both little (Hunter Valley) and well (Barossa Valley) known regions can age. Aussie Shiraz is simply not all the same, all the time. The next time someone tells you that all Australia does with Shiraz is produce fruit bombs, hit them with a bottle of Maurice O’Shea from the Hunter Valley, and as they reel from that give them the coup de grâce with a heavy weight, the Trevor Jones Wild Witch.