SIPPED: American wine
The White House continues pouring only American wines, so far from four states at official events. The first state dinner is coming up next month–stay tuned for what the Obamas pick for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh! [Obamafoodarama]

SPIT: American wine; SIPPED: generosity
While dining in lower Manhattan last weekend, Chief Justice John Roberts and his wife Jane sipped a bottle of Villa Mangiacane, a Chianti. When they finished their meal, they offered the rest of the wine to a neighboring table, specifically, Gay Talese who blogged about it for City Room.

SIPPED: wine service tips
A budding restaurateur offers his first 50 service tips for his staff, including several wine related ones including “For red wine, ask if the guests want to pour their own or prefer the waiter to pour.” [You're the Boss, NYT]

SPIT: old vines; SIPPED: apartment complex
Philip White, a wine writer in Australia, has a scathing critique of Constellation, one of the world’s largest wine makers and marketers, and their apparent plans to scale back in Australia. Particularly irksome to him was the uprooting of John Reynell’s 161-year-old vines at Reynella; 41 “tiny apartments” will replace the vines. [INDAILY]

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan yesterday, alleges that the label for [Down Under] is substantially similar to and infringes on the trademarked label for [yellow tail].

“Bronco’s use of Casella’s iconic square brackets and its use of Australian-centric wording in connection with the sale of Australian wine are likely to confuse consumers,” the lawsuit said.

[Down Under] sells for about $3, or half the price of [yellow tail]. Both wines come in high-shouldered bottles and have duotone capsules as seen in the image after the jump.

If you were presenting evidence to the judge, what would you say in this case?

Lawsuit details: Casella Wines Pty. Ltd. v. Bronco Wine Company et al; Court: New York Southern District Court; Court Case Number: 1:09-cv-07127-RJH; Judge: Richard J. Holwell

SPIT: sales
The NYT summarizes the effect of the recession on the California wine industry: “Brutal.” It continues: “Cash may be trickling, but anxiety is gushing forth.”

SWISHED: retail change in NY
A proposal to reform New York’s retail and allow wine sales in supermarket failed earlier this year. One state Senator has introduced new legislation that would allow not only wine sales in supermarkets but also food sales in wine stores and a “medallion” system instead of licensing. Owners could operate more than one location in New York, also a change. Time will tell whether this initiative fares differently. [LoHud]

SIPPED: ultra low prices
An (unlabeled) Australian wine is selling for $1.99 at a store in Sydney, or “cheaper than water.” Meanwhile, John Brecher and Dorothy Gaiter estimate that the value of juice in Fred Franzia’s new Down Under Chardonnay (retail: about $3) costs “about 35 U.S. cents or less.”

SIPPED: Schmoozing and blogging
Wine Business Monthly reports from the Wine Bloggers’ Conference; Jim Gordon of Wines & Vines has tips for bloggers.

SPIT: stems on Air France
Air France has introduced a new line of stemless wine glasses in Business and First (aka Affaires and La Première). Are the wines served any good? Hit the comments with your on-board experiences.

However, other fortified wines whose names conflicted with European place names have gotten new names. Heretofore, when ordering a glass of sherry style wine made Down Under, the proper term to use is Apera, which is a gentle riff on aperitif. And the wines formerly known as Tokay, a name that clashed with the sweet wine from Hungary, will now be known as Topaque. Eegad, that sounds like something from a medicine chest, not a liquor cabinet.

But if the Australian group for renaming fortified wines had listened to one suggestion they might have come up with something zippier. At a recent tasting, a non-Australian member of our group described these unctuous sweet wines as “lickoffable,” as in you want to drizzle them on your partner’s body and lick it off. Yikes! What a way to boost…sales!

James Godfrey (pictured right), winemaker for thirty years at Seppeltsfield in the Barossa Valley, told me that he saw the new names as an opportunity. The term sherry has “a lot of baggage,” he said, elaborating that the new name will give them an opportunity to energize their new category of aperas, including dry, medium dry and medium sweet (which replace Fino, Amontillados and Oloroso), with younger consumers.

To find the names, a trade group generated about 200 names that could still be trademarked and then ran them by some producers, journalists, sommeliers and shop owners to come up with a list of 20 finalists. Then they surveyed 600 consumers to come up with the winners, apera, topaque, vintage and tawny. (If you want to see more on their strategy for developing the “New Era” names, check out their incredibly detailed report here as pdf.)

What do you think about the new names? A clean break or sour grapes? And what of “lickoffable”?

And stay tuned for part two of this exciting story to see what I call it when I actually taste a bottle of Topaque!

In the foreground, Dean Hewitson stands in the Old Garden vineyard, which was planted in 1853 and grows today without irrigation. As you can see, the bush vines lie in unruly rows since they aren’t trellised. I tried the 2002 Old Garden Mourvedre and it had gamey aromas characteristic of the grape, as well as dark fruits and smooth sweet tannins. (find this wine; I’ll have to stick it in a blind tasting of mourvedres if I do one of those again.)

In the photo, the lights visible on the hill beyond Dean are illuminating the vast Orlando (Jacob’s Creek) wine making facility. Consider it a study in contrast.

We visited the vineyard at dusk and on the way back to the car, I heard a kookaburra laugh echo across the vineyard. For all you birders out there, you can see/hear the kookaburra here.

Okay, Halliday, the 71 year old former vintner and author of some fifty wine books, wasn’t really in the NBA finals. But a tasting last week in the Barossa Valley did showcase some of Australia’s most amazing wines of all time. By showcasing talent old and new, it was kind of like one of those sports questions about who would be better head-to-head, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar vs LeBron James or Hank Aaron vs A-Rod kind of thing. While the younger wines showed some flash, for me it was the seniors that stole the show.

Andrew Caillard of Langton’s, an auctioneer, told us that it took him nine months to arrange the tasting, adding that many of the bottles were among the last available. He presented a history of Australian wine making and how the wines we were tasting were landmark wines in one way or another.

While I knew that mature cabernet could be incredible, I wasn’t so sure about mature shiraz.

First up was the 1954 Seppelt Great Western Hermitage K72 Shiraz Great Western Grampians. Looking very mature in the glass, almost tawny in color, I thought it was going to be shot. Despite only muted aromas, the wine was actually holding together well and had a good balance and finish.

Next was the 1955 Penfolds Bin 95 Grange. Inspired by a trip to Bordeaux, Max Schubert of Penfold’s decided he wanted to make a grand vin a l’australien–or something like that. So he took the best shiraz and cabernet grapes he could, blending regions as well as grapes, and put them in open top fermenters and then finished the fermentation in small American oak barrels. The first vintage of the wine was 1951 but it wasn’t sold; 1952 was the first commercial vintage and is no longer good. The 1955 we had was a wine originally developed for the show circuit and was showing very well. Much more red than the Seppelt K72, it was also more youthful, richer, rounder with a hint of shiraz sweetness on the finish. A mature wine to be sure, but very rewarding. Incidentally, this bottle was recorked under the Penfold’s recorking program, which can provide a greater degree of certainty that a bottle will still be in good condition since it has been tasted by a member of the Penfold’s staff (with a wee dram of the current Grange added for topping up any ullage–love that word).

The 1955 Wynns Coonawarra Estate, Michael, shiraz followed. An excellent and interesting wine, with more meaty and savory aromas than the first two. Caillard described the wine as a “freak,” since there was no power shiraz produced in the Coonawarra and the wine was low alcohol.

But the wine of the day, and one of the best wines I have ever tasted, was the 1962 Penfolds Bin 60A, a blend of Coonawarra Cabernet and Barossa Shiraz. I had the good fortune of tasting this wine last fall in New York, and, sadly, the bottle I tried was off. This bottle, however, was on. Big time. It’s the wine tasting equivalent of a buzzer beater and a walk off grand slam all in one. Although it has that kind of excitement, an important difference is not the power of those moments but rather the delicacy and elegance of the wine, with aromas of cigar box and dried fruits, a fine tannic structure with a finish that lingers for the whole afternoon.

As if that wine alone wouldn’t have made the tasting, there were fifteen more. Next was another Penfold’s Grange, this time a 1971 vintage. As you may recall from a magazine article I once wrote about finding birth year wines, 1971 is always a vintage that I keep an eye out for. (The wine’s success in the auction market for a time made it a barometer of economic activity according to a leading think tank.) Max Schubert, the winemaker, apparently did not like to add acid and in this case picked the grapes early and the resulting wine was a deliciously refreshing 11.5% alcohol. Andrew Caillard said that they did add “heaps and heaps” of tannins, which are still present today although finely integrated. The wine is really in a good place today.

Next we had four wines from the eighties, an 82 Wynns Coonawarra Estate Cabernet, John Riddoch, a mature cabernet that was tasting great, the idiosyncratic 1985 Wendouree Shiraz Clare Valley with its odd hint of iodine, the 1986 Henschke Hill of Grace, probably Australia’s most famous single vineyard wine still with a toasty oak influence, and 1986 Brokenwood Graveyard Vineyard shiraz Hunter Valley that still had quite lively acidity.

Up next was the 1990 Mount Mary Vineyard Lilydale Cabernets Quintets, a lighter but rewarding style of cabernet that showing very well with a secondary blackcurrant note, lovely delicacy and great precision with no greenness or herbaciousness. Apparently Robert Parker described this wine as a “cru bourgeois.” The 1995 Cullen Wines Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot, Margaret River still had a lot of tannic vigor that Andrew Caillard amusingly described as “a hairy armpit, long hair style wine that is no shrinking violet.”

The 1996 Clarendon Hills Australis was included as emblematic of the cult wine scene, which Caillard admitted that even he hadn’t really seen coming. The 1994 Clarendon Hills sparked controversy since it didn’t do well on the Australian show circuit but Robert Parker bestowed it with a 96 point rating, sparking demand around the world. The wine was made from 75 year old vines and 100% new French oak barrique aging. In the glass today, the aromas had an odd blend of plummy red fruits and menthol while it tasted disjointed and tannic.

Of the remaining wines (see the full list here), I wanted to particularly highlight the 2001 Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier. Hailing from vineyards around the national capital of Canberra (and some joked that it’s the best thing to ever come out of Canberra), the wine is a beautiful blend of Shiraz with a touch of viognier. In this case it was about seven percent Viognier cofermented with Shiraz but that has been declining in recent vintages. The hardest thing about adding Viognier, in my view, is to get Viognier that is as good as the shiraz since Viognier can be a pretty rough and tumble category. But in this case, the Viognier gives the wine tremendous aromatic lift and this particular wine was singing.

Image 1: Landmark Australia

Over the next few days and weeks, I’ll be posting on and off some of highlights of the conference/event, sharing my new found knowledge. Really, I could post about each and every session since they were all so interesting and informative. But I’m not turning this into an Australian wine blog (though I do wonder why there isn’t one of those focusing on the lesser-known wines; it could even be called “beyond the fruit bomb”). If you’d like to have a similar experience applications are apparently now open for the Tutorial in 2010.

After the jump, check out the above lineup in motion as I walked down the line with the video rolling. Also, check out a complete list of wines, broken down by session.

Day One
Australia’s Regional Classics (1C)
2008 Grosset Wines Polish Hill Riesling, Clare Valley
2002 Pewsey Vale The Contours Riesling, Eden Valley
1998 Tyrrell’s Wines Vat 1 Semillon, Hunter
2005 Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay, Margaret River
2006 Petaluma Piccadilly Valley Chardonnay, Adelaide Hills
2006 By Farr Sangreal Pinot Noir, Geelong
2001 Cullen Wines Diana Madeline Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot, Margaret River
2004 Wynns Coonawarra Estate John Riddoch, Cabernet Sauvignon, Coonawarra
1998 Brokenwood Graveyard Vineyard Shiraz, Hunter
2004 Mt Langi Ghiran Langi Shiraz, Grampians
2006 Henschke Mt Edelstone Shiraz, Eden Valley
2004 Penfolds RWT Shiraz, Barossa Valley
2006 Glaetzer Anaperenna Shiraz/Cabernet Sauvignon, Barossa Valley
2006 De Bortoli Noble One Botrytis Semillon, Riverina

Australia’s Fine Wine
NV Pirie Sparkling Chardonnay/Pinot Noir, Tasmania
1998 Jacob’s Creek Steingarten Riesling, Barossa
2005 Jacob’s Creek Steingarten Riesling, Barossa
2009 Jacob’s Creek Steingarten Riesling, Barossa
1998 McWilliam’s Mount Pleasant Lovedale Semillon, Hunter
2003 McWilliam’s Mount Pleasant Lovedale Semillon, Hunter
2007 McWilliam’s Mount Pleasant Lovedale Semillon, Hunter
1989 Yarra Yering Dry Red Number 1 Cabernet Sauvignon, Yarra Valley
1997 Yarra Yering Dry Red Number 1 Cabernet Sauvignon, Yarra Valley
1980 Yarra Yering Dry Red Number 2 Shiraz, Yarra Valley
1994 Yarra Yering Dry Red Number 2 Shiraz, Yarra Valley
2000 Domaine A Cabernet Sauvignon, Tasmania
2001 Dalwhinnie Eagle Series Shiraz, Pyrenees
2004 Dalwhinnie Eagle Series Shiraz, Pyrenees
All Saints Estate Museum Release Muscat, Rutherglen

Day Two
Riesling (2A)
2007 Kilikanoon Mort’s Reserve Riesling, Clare Valley
2005 Mount Horrocks Riesling, Clare Valley
1992 Petaluma Hanlin Hill Riesling, Clare Valley
2002 Grosset Polish Hill Riesling, Clare Valley
1973 Leo Buring DWC15 Riesling, Clare Valley
2002 Peter Lehmann Reserve Riesling, Eden Valley
1999 Pewsey Vale The Contours Riesling, Eden Valley
1980 Pewsey Vale Rhine Riesling Riesling, Eden Valley
2007 Seppelt Drumborg Riesling, Henty
1996 Crawford River Riesling, Henty
2007 Frankland Estate Isolation Ridge Vineyard Riesling, Frankland River, Great Southern
2003 Craigow Riesling, Tasmania

Shiraz and Blends (2B)
1990 Craiglee Shiraz, Sunbury
1991 Plantagenet Shiraz, Mount Barker, Great Southern
1991 Henschke Mount Edelstone Shiraz, Eden Valley
1991 Wendouree Shiraz, Clare Valley
2006 Shaw + Smith Shiraz, Adelaide Hills
2006 De Bortoli Reserve Release Shiraz, Yarra Valley
2006 Giaconda Warner Vineyard Shiraz, Beechworth
2006 Mt Langi Ghiran Langi Shiraz, Grampians
2006 Seppelt Mt Ida Vineyard Shiraz, Heathcote
2006 Clarendon Hills Astralis Vineyard Shiraz (Syrah), McLaren Vale
2006 Charles Melton Grains of Paradise Shiraz, Barossa Valley
2006 Clonakilla Shiraz/Viognier, Canberra District
2006 S.C. Pannell Shiraz/Grenache, McLaren Vale
2006 Spinifex Indigene Shiraz/Mataro, Barossa Valley
2006 Wendouree Shiraz/Malbec, Clare Valley
2004 Penfolds Grange Shiraz/Cabernet Sauvignon, Multi-region South Australia

An Historic Perspective (2C)
1954 Seppelt Great Western Hermitage K72 Shiraz, Great Western, Grampians
1955 Penfolds Bin 95 Grange Shiraz/Cabernet Sauvignon, Multi-region South Australia
1955 Wynns Coonawarra Estate Michael Shiraz, Coonawarra
1962 Penfolds Bin 60A Cabernet Sauvignon/Shiraz, Coonawarra / (Kalimna) Barossa Valley
1971 Penfolds Grange Shiraz/Cabernet Sauvignon, Multi-region South Australia
1982 Wynns Coonawarra Estate John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Coonawarra
1985 Wendouree Shiraz, Clare Valley
1986 Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz, Eden Valley
1986 Brokenwood Hermitage Graveyard Vineyard Shiraz, Hunter
1990 Mount Mary Vineyard Lilydale Cabernets Quintet, Yarra Valley
1995 Cullen Wines Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot, Margaret River
1996 Clarendon Hills Astralis Vineyard Shiraz (Syrah), McLaren Vale
1996 Penfolds Block 42 Kalimna Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Barossa Valley
1996 Best’s Wines Thomson Family Great Western Shiraz, Great Western, Grampians
1998 Petaluma Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot
1999 Torbreck Run Rig Shiraz Viognier, Barossa Valley
2001 Bass Phillip Reserve Pinot Noir, South Gippsland
2001 Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier, Canberra District
2002 Seppelt St Peters Great Western Shiraz, Great Western, Grampians
2004 Balnaves of Coonawarra The Tally Cabernet Sauvignon

Masters of Wine
2001 Yarrabank Late Disgorged Sparkling Chardonnay/Pinot Noir, Yarra Valley
1998 Tahbilk Marsanne, Nagambie Lakes, Goulburn Valley
2004 Tahbilk Marsanne, Nagambie Lakes, Goulburn Valley
2008 Tahbilk Marsanne, Nagambie Lakes, Goulburn Valley
1996 d’Arenberg The Ironstone Pressings Grenache/Shiraz, McLaren Vale
2002 d’Arenberg The Ironstone Pressings Grenache/Shiraz/Mourvèdre, McLaren Vale
2006 d’Arenberg The Ironstone Pressings Grenache/Shiraz/Mourvèdre, McLaren Vale
2006 John Duval Wines Plexus Shiraz/Grenache/Mourvèdre, Barossa Valley
2005 John Duval Wines Eligo Shiraz, Barossa Valley
2006 John Duval Wines Entity Shiraz, Barossa Valley
1992 Yalumba The Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon/Shiraz, Barossa
1996 Yalumba The Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon/Shiraz, Barossa
2002 Yalumba The Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon/Shiraz, Barossa
Disgorged 2008 Rockford Sparkling Black Shiraz, Barossa Valley

Day Three
Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc (3A)
1998 Tyrrell’s Wines Vat 1 Semillon, Hunter
1999 Brokenwood ILR Semillon, Hunter
2002 Peter Lehmann Margaret Semillon, Barossa Valley
2003 Tempus Two Copper Zenith Semillon, Hunter
2005 Vasse Felix Semillon, Margaret River
2006 McWilliam’s Mount Pleasant Lovedale Semillon, Hunter
2008 Thomas Wines Braemore Individual Vineyard Semillon, Hunter
2009 Shaw + Smith Sauvignon Blanc, Adelaide Hills
2008 Angullong Sauvignon Blanc, Orange
2008 Logan Sauvignon Blanc, Mudgee
2008 Goundrey ‘G’ Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon, Mount Barker, Great Southern
2006 Cape Mentelle Walcliffe Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon, Margaret River
2008 Brookland Valley Semillon/Sauvignon Blanc, Margaret River
2007 Rosemount Show Reserve Semillon/Sauvignon Blanc, Western Australia
2007 Lenton Brae Wines Wilyabrup Semillon/Sauvignon Blanc, Margaret River

Cabernet Sauvignon and Blends (3B)
2005 Mount Mary Quintet Cabernets, Yarra Valley
2005 Howard Park Abercrombie Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot/Cabernet Franc, Great
Southern/Margaret River
2005 Cape Mentelle Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River
2005 Woodlands ‘Colin’ Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River
2005 Sandalford Prendiville Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River
2005 Château Mouton Rothschild Cabernet/Merlot/Cabernet Franc/Petit Verdot, Pauillac
2005 Parker Coonawarra Estate Terra Rossa First Growth, Cabernet/Merlot, Coonawarra
2005 Majella The Malleea Cabernet Sauvignon/Shiraz, Coonawarra
2005 Henschke Cyril Henschke Cabernet/Merlot, Eden Valley
2005 Wendouree Cabernet Sauvignon Malbec, Clare Valley
2005 Hardys Chateau Reynella Basket Press Cabernet Sauvignon, McLaren Vale
2005 Penfolds Cellar Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, Barossa Valley

An Alternative View (3C)
2008 Henschke Littlehampton Innes Vineyard Pinot Gris, Adelaide Hills
2008 Delatite Pinot Gris Upper Goulburn
2008 Yalumba The Virgilius Viognier, Eden Valley
2006 Castagna Ingénue Viognier, Beechworth
2008 Giaconda Aeolia Roussanne, Beechworth
2008 Dal Zotto Arneis, King Valley
2008 Crittenden Estate Los Hermanos Albariño, Mornington Peninsula
2008 Spinifex Lola Semillon/Marsanne/Viognier/Ugni Blanc/Grenache Blanc/Vermentino, Barossa Valley
2008 Quealy Senza Nome Tocai Friulano, Mornington Peninsula
2008 Coriole Fiano, McLaren Vale
2008 R Wines Mod Gamay, Geelong
2007 Greenstone Vineyard Sangiovese, Heathcote
2007 Gemtree Vineyards Bloodstone Tempranillo, McLaren Vale
2002 Hewitson Old Garden Mourvèdre, Barossa Valley
2006 Arrivo Lunga Macerazione Nebbiolo, Adelaide Hills
2007 Luke Lambert Wines Nebbiolo, Yarra Valley
1998 Pizzini Nebbiolo, King Valley
2005 Boireann Tannat, Granite Belt
2006 Cobaw Ridge Lagrein, Macedon Ranges
2007 First Drop Minchia Montepulciano, Adelaide Hills

Slow Food, Slow Wine
2005 Jansz Rosé Pinot Noir, Tasmania
Avonmore Organic Pale Ale
Pennyweight Woody’s Amontillado Palomino, Beechworth
2008 Sutton Grange Winery Fairbank Rosé Syrah/Cabernet/Merlot, Bendigo
2008 Lucy Margaux vineyards & Àuge Ristoranté Vino d’Àuge Saignée Sangiovese, Adelaide Hills
2008 Gemtree Vineyards Moonstone, McLaren Vale
2008 Moondarra Holly’s Garden Pinot Gris, Gippsland
2007 Ngeringa Viognier, Adelaide Hills
2007 Bass Phillip Estate Pinot Noir, South Gippsland
2002 Castagna Genesis Syrah, Beechworth
2006 Ngeringa Syrah, Adelaide Hills
2002 Castagna La Chiave Sangiovese, Beechworth
2005 Castagna Un Segreto Sangiovese/Shiraz, Beechworth
2007 Cullen Wines Mangan Merlot/Malbec/Petit Verdot, Margaret River
2008 KT and The Falcon Melva Riesling, Clare Valley
2008 Lethbridge Kabinett Riesling, Geelong
2004 JE Ngeringa Altus Pink Semillon, McLaren Vale
2007 Sutton Grange Winery Ratafianovese Fiano/Sangiovese, Bendigo

Day Four
Chardonnay (4A)
2006 Tyrrell’s Wines Vat 47 Chardonnay, Hunter Valley
2006 Cullen Wines Kevin John Chardonnay, Margaret River
2006 Vasse Felix Heytesbury Chardonnay, Margaret River
2006 Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay, Margaret River
2006 Shaw + Smith M3 Chardonnay, Adelaide Hills
2006 Tapanappa Tiers Vineyard Chardonnay, Adelaide Hills
2006 Giaconda Chardonnay, Beechworth
2006 Bindi Wine Growers Quartz Chardonnay, Macedon Ranges
2006 Stonier Wines KBS Vineyard Chardonnay, Mornington Peninsula
2006 Oakridge 864 Chardonnay, Yarra Valley
2006 TarraWarra Estate MDB Chardonnay, Yarra Valley
2006 Freycinet Chardonnay, Tasmania
2006 Hardys Eileen Hardy Chardonnay, Regional Blend
2006 Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay, Regional Blend

Pinot (4B)
2007 Stoney Rise The Holyman Pinot Noir, Tasmania
2007 Bindi Wine Growers Block 5 Pinot Noir, Macedon Ranges
2007 Yabby Lake Vineyard Pinot Noir, Mornington Peninsula
2006 Stefano Lubiana Estate Pinot Noir, Southern Tasmania
2006 Kooyong Single Vineyard Selection Ferrous Pinot Noir, Mornington Peninsula
2006 TarraWarra Estate MDB Pinot Noir, Yarra Valley
2007 Felton Road Block 5 Pinot Noir, Cental Otago
2003 Ashton Hills Estate Pinot Noir, Adelaide Hills
2003 Paringa Estate Reserve Pinot Noir, Mornington Peninsula
2002 Domaine de la Romanée Conti Romanée St Vivant Pinot Noir, Vosne Romanée, Burgundy
1999 Mount Mary Pinot Noir, Yarra Valley
1997 Bass Phillip Premium Pinot Noir, South Gippsland
1997 Bannockburn Serré Pinot Noir, Geelong
1992 Coldstream Hills Reserve Pinot Noir, Yarra Valley

Blending the Rules (4C)
2005 Plantagenet Shiraz, Mount Barker, Great Southern
2006 Glaetzer Amon Ra Shiraz, Barossa Valley
2005 Brokenwood Graveyard Vineyard Shiraz, Hunter Valley
2004 Torbreck Run Rig Shiraz/Viognier, Barossa Valley
2002 Penfolds Grange Shiraz/Cabernet Sauvignon, Multi-region South Australia
2005 Hardys Eileen Hardy Shiraz, McLaren Vale
2004 Henschke Hill of Grace Shiraz, Eden Valley
2004 Clarendon Hills Astralis Vineyard Shiraz (Syrah), McLaren Vale
2007 Clonakilla Shiraz/Viognier, Canberra District
2005 Clayfield Wines Shiraz, Grampians
2006 Two Hands Wines Bella’s Garden Shiraz, Barossa Valley
2005 Penfolds Bin 389 Cabernet Sauvignon/Shiraz, Multi-region South Australia
2005 Seppelts St Peters Shiraz, Grampians
2005 Majella Cabernet Sauvignon, Coonawarra
2005 Cullen Wines Diana Madeline Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot, Margaret River
2006 Balnaves of Coonawarra The Tally Cabernet Sauvignon, Coonawarra
2006 Woodlands Reserve de la Cave Cabernet Franc, Margaret River
2004 Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River
2005 Wynns Coonawarra Estate John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon, Coonawarra
2002 Wendouree Cabernet Sauvignon/Malbec, Clare Valley
Australian Fine Wine 2030
2006 Petaluma Croser Pinot Noir/Chardonnay, Adelaide Hills
2005 Radford Wines Riesling, Eden Valley
2008 KT and The Falcon Peglidis Vineyard Riesling, Clare Valley
2006 Savaterre Chardonnay, Beechworth
2007 The Lane Beginning Chardonnay, Adelaide Hills
2004 Main Ridge Estate Half Acre Pinot Noir, Mornington Peninsula
2007 Tapanappa Foggy Hill Vineyard Pinot Noir, Fleurieu Peninsula
2008 Tapanappa Foggy Hill Vineyard Pinot Noir, Fleurieu Peninsula
2005 Mitchelton Crescent Shiraz/Mourvédre/Grenache, Nagambie Lakes, Goulburn Valley
2006 Mitchelton Crescent Shiraz/Mourvédre/Grenache, Nagambie Lakes, Goulburn Valley
1998 Wirra Wirra The Angelus (Dead Ringer) Cabernet Sauvignon, McLaren Vale
2004 Wirra Wirra Dead Ringer Cabernet Sauvignon, McLaren Vale
2006 Wirra Wirra Dead Ringer Cabernet Sauvignon, McLaren Vale
2007 The Yard Riversdale Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, Frankland River, Great Southern
2007 Cherubino Cabernet Sauvignon, Margaret River
2005 Stanton and Killeen Vintage, Rutherglen

Day Five
Sparkling (5A)
2005 Domaine Chandon Z*D Vintage Blanc de Blancs Chardonnay, Yarra Valley
2004 Yarra Burn Blanc de Blancs Chardonnay, Yarra Valley
2004 Josef Chromy Wines Pinot Noir/Chardonnay, Tasmania
2004 Brown Brothers Patricia Pinot Noir/Chardonnay/Pinot Meunier, King Valley
2003 House of Arras, Arras ‘Grand Vintage’, Chardonnay/Pinot Noir, Tasmania
2002 Domaine Chandon Vintage Brut Late Disgorged Chardonnay/ Pinot Noir/Pinot Meunier, Yarra
Valley
2001 Jansz Late Disgorged Chardonnay/Pinot Noir, Tasmania
2000 Hardys Sir James Tumbarumba Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier, Tumbarumba
1998 Petaluma Croser Proprietor’s Reserve Pinot Noir/Chardonnay, Adelaide Hills
1998 House of Arras, Arras Late Disgorged, Chardonnay/Pinot Noir, Tasmania
NV Hanging Rock Cuvee VIII Macedon Late Disgorged Pinot Noir/Chardonnay, Macedon Ranges
MV Bay of Fires Rosé Pinot Noir/Chardonnay, Tasmania
2005 Domaine Chandon Brut Rosé, Pinot Noir, Yarra Valley
1994 Seppelt Show Sparkling Shiraz, Grampians

Fortified (5B)
Morris Show Amontillado, Rutherglen
Seppeltsfield Museum Oloroso DP104, Rutherglen
Seppeltsfield 2005 Vintage, Barossa Valley
Seppeltsfield DP90 Rare Tawny, Barossa Valley
Grant Burge 30 year old Tawny, Barossa Valley
Penfolds Great Grandfather Series 1, Barossa Valley
Campbells Isabella Rare Topaque Muscadelle, Rutherglen
Seppeltsfield Paramount Rare Topaque Muscadelle, Rutherglen
Morris Old Premium Liqueur Topaque Muscadelle, Rutherglen
McWilliam’s Show Reserve Muscat, Hunter
Morris Old Premium Liqueur Muscat, Rutherglen
Campbells Merchant Prince Rare Muscat, Rutherglen
Chambers Rare Muscadelle, Rutherglen
1928 Morris Liqueuer Muscat, Rutherglen
Seppeltsfield 1909 100 year old Para, Barossa Valley

The youngest Riesling I’ve tasted was a tank sample of the 2009 Jacob’s Creek Steingarten Riesling. The Steingarten vineyard was originally about 1000 vines planted in the 1960s at the top of Trial Hill, a windy spot on the edge of the Eden Valley. At the outset, it was a single vineyard wine of tiny production. But now although most of the vines come from an altitude of 500 meters, it makes no claim to be site specific; the Steingarten name is a brand. The tank sample was brimming with citrus intensity but not yet really formed as a wine. The 2005, by contrast, was in a very nice spot, exhibiting more muted lime and floral character. The 1998 was oddly phenolic and, while quite solid, not as rewarding today as the 2005.

The Riesling of the trip for me was the 1984 Grosset Polish Hill. The fourth vintage of Polish Hill, it was bottled under cork (they switched to screwcap around 2000) and had mid-shoulder fill (if the bottle had shoulders, that is) and came directly from the cellar of Jeffrey Grosset (pictured right), one of only a few bottles remaining. The aromatics were muted but on the palate, the wine was terrific with a great weight and kind of oily character, great integration. The finish was spectacular and went on and on. (On a related note, his current release 2008 Polish Hill had excellent citrus character akin to the white of a pink grapefruit. The grapes were hand-picked, only free-run juice used, and the resulting wine has integrated acidity and minerality.)

Also of note was the 1973 Leo Buring DWC15 Riesling Clare Valley. Golden in color, it exhibited some of those toasty notes that mature Aussie Riesling is known to have on the aroma and still had layered complexity. It’s still in a good place now but reaching the end of maturity–good thing these were among the last bottles remaining.

The 2002 Peter Lehmann reserve Riesling Eden Valley had toasty, lightly honeyed nose with a strong attack, limey midpalate and expansive, rewarding, and lingering finish. The 1999 Pewsey Vale The Contours Riesling Eden Valley, so called because the rows of vines follow the contours of the hillside, was originally released with five years of age on it. Today it showed more maturity but still had a freshness from good acidity. The 1980 Pewsey Vale Rhine Riesling Eden, golden in color, was interesting but definitely in the “drink now” part of its bottle evolution.

Finally, 1996 Crawford River Riesling Henty was picked late, in May, and has “essentially no botrytis” according to the producer. But to me it had a lovely honeyed note that perhaps had a hint of the noble rot. Quite delicious. I also enjoyed one of the current releases from this producer. But I’ll save that along with some other young, fresh Rieslings for a future post.

As a summary comment here, Australian Rieslings are worthwhile with age and can show bottle evolution even under screwcap. The hardest part is probably not drinking them while they are young. But tasting that magical transformation from lime-fresh minerality of youth to the gently honeyed, toasty quality of mature bottles can be worth the wait.

Search for these wines on wine-searcher.com

Related: “Philip Laffer of Jacob’s Creek on Riesling, petrol, and screwcaps“

In the 1980s, the Australian research institute CSIRO imported what they thought were Albariño vines from Spain. Eventually, market demand led to propagation of the vines; about 70 producers make it today.

But a couple of years ago Jean-Michel Boursiquot, a expert vine identifier (who knew?) from the University of Montpellier, spotted the vine thought to be Albariño and suggested that it was, in fact, the savagnin blanc grape often found in the Jura region of France (who in Australia will be the first to make it in an oxidative, vin juane style?). The Australian authorities confirmed this earlier this year, after the harvest but before bottling. Thus the producers can no longer call it Albariño and there’s no consensus on whether they should adopt the Savagnin Blanc labeling or even try Traminer, it’s genetic twin. But time is ticking as bottling time approaches.

Any thoughts? Here were some suggestions that came up in our seminar this afternoon:
* Albari-not
* The grape formerly known as Albariño (actually a symbol)
* I can’t believe it’s not Albariño! (Credit goes to Max Allen)

Further reading: “Albariño and Savagnin, Mencía and Jaen” [Jancisrobinson.com]

This epic tale has received attention from other wine journalists recently including Jay Miller’s February article in the Wine Advocate (”Australia: Into the Abyss”), Jancis Robinson in the FT (”How Australia went down under“), and Mike Steinberger in Slate (whose memorable line was “Foster’s may be Australian for beer (mate); it appears that screwed is now Australian for wine.”).

While all three pieces acknowledged that Australian wines have suffered a sharp reversal of fortune over the past year, they varied somewhat in the cause of the collapse. Miller ascribed it to the rise of look-alike wines. Robinson saw they UK supermarket buyers playing the big Australian wine corporations off of one another turning it into a “duel by discount” and that “Australian wine became synonymous with cheap wine.” Steinberger noted some retailers having difficulties selling the expensive shiraz that is all too often high in alcohol, overoaked, from grapes harvested at the extremes of ripeness. He elaborated on the causality: “It is a rendering of shiraz that Robert Parker happens to adore, and the huge scores that his publication, the Wine Advocate, awarded many of the wines made them wildly popular, which encouraged producers to pump out more and more of these purple people-eaters (the ever-decorous Australians refer to them as “leg spreaders”) and retailers and importers to load up on them.”

The case of Australia offers a fascinating example for other countries that seek to enter the global market. If anything the country came to have too little diversity at the top, especially in the American market, and came to be known for the high alcohol, fruit bomb shiraz to the detriment of anything else (a cautionary tale for Argentina and Malbec and New Zealand with Sauvignon Blanc, perhaps). And since most of the fruit bombs deteriorate rather than improve with age, there’s no real claim to making a wine that can mature, generally a benchmark of an outstanding wine.

Do the non-fruit bomb wines age? Does Australia have a middle ground between the choose-your-critter supermarket wine and an emperor-has-no-clothes shiraz?

Yes, and apparently they are keeping them to themselves. Consider the experience of comedian Lewis Black. He recently related to wine writer Robert Simonson: “I actually went to Australia, and, you know what? They’re cheating! When I was in Australia, it was like “You guys are keeping the good stuff!” You try their wines down there and you say, “Really? THAT’S a Shiraz. Screw you! That is not what you’re selling us!” That was an eye-opener.”

If it was the best of times just a few years ago, it is now the worst of times. Through pop culture, we all know that Australians have to deal with such horrors as baby-eating dingos and man-wrestling crocodiles. But Australian winemakers have had to confront the serious calamities of drought and bush fires that have ravaged vineyard areas this year. In this light, Australia, a largely arid land to begin with, is also at the forefront of climate change.

I’m in Australia right now and hope to find some of those wines that aren’t making it to our shores and more about the story of the rise and recent pullback. Late last year, I was selected from 130 applicants to be one of the dozen participants in an educational conference called Landmark Australia, The Tutorial (see Jancis Robinson’s announcement from December and my previous mention). The group of participants is composed of sommeliers and wine writers from ten countries ranging from China to Finland to Germany; half the group is a Master of Wine or a Master Sommelier. The Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation, a government organization, has organized (and paid for) the event. We will spend the next five days in the Barossa Valley tasting through three sessions a day with leading wine makers from throughout Australia including Jeffrey Grosset and Brian Croser among many others. You can see the whole list of seminar leaders here and the complete schedule here as a pdf.

It should be a fun week and I plan to learn a lot. Stay tuned.

photo: Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation

Such was the case with a thread last week concerning Mike Steinberger’s recent Slate column about the state of Australian wine. Mark Squires, who moderates the Parker board, accused Steinberger of selecting “biased” retailers for the story. One of the retailers shot back with a stinging rebuttal of the bias claim. Shortly thereafter, the thread was deleted in its totality.

Subsequently, Steinberger had an email exchange with Squires. Steinberger questioned the decision to delete the thread and said it had unfairly deprived him of a chance to respond to Squires’s assertions. Squires was unmoved, and a spirited discussion followed. With Steinberger’s permission, I am posting the exchange here. Sit back and pass the popcorn.

****
From: mhsteinberger
To: msquires
Sent: Thursday, April 9, 2009 11:21:34 PM
Subject:

Mr. Squires,

You made an assertion today, in the thread about my Slate article, to which I wish to respond. However, it appears that the thread has now been deleted. I would ask you to restore the thread so that I might reply, and to leave it open so that others can read the comments and weigh in. It was a perfectly civil discussion, and there was no reason to remove it. There was nothing in my article that could be construed as an attack on Robert Parker or the Wine Advocate, and I am at a loss to understand why you felt the need to delete the entire thread.

Mike Steinberger

Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 06:43:03 -0700
From: msquires
Subject: Re:
To: mhsteinberger
This decision has nothing to do with you or your article per se. Calling this a civil thread is simply astounding. It will not be restored, nor could it be as it has been deleted.

I’m still rather confused as to what you consider an unbiased source. I have a degree in journalism, summa cum laude, btw. But frankly I’m not really concerned enough about it to debate it.

From: mhsteinberger
To: msquires
Sent: Monday, April 13, 2009 1:48:14 PM
Subject: RE:

I have no interest in debating, either, but you made comments concerning my article and my journalism that require a response.

To the extent that the thread became uncivil, it was your doing–you immediately posted a snide comment about the article, then quickly followed up with a dig at the retailers I cited and a dig at me. The retailers can defend themselves. I would only note that your broadside against Posner and Hayward was as nonsensical as it was unjustified. Yes, retailers are in the business of selling wine. But how exactly did it profit Posner and Hayward to tell me that they were having difficulty moving high-end Australian wines? Can you explain to me the conflict of interest in this case–how their businesses stood to gain from sharing that information? If you were suggesting that Posner and Hayward have axes to grind when it comes to Australian wines, that’s demonstrably false. Posner maintains a very large Australian portfolio, and Hayward, if I’m not mistaken, was championing Australian wines when Robert Parker’s seat at the Farm Credit Banks was still warm. Are you of the opinion that journalists should just never solicit the views of retailers?

Regarding your critique of my journalism, you claimed that I went fishing for quotes that would fit my argument. To begin with, I wasn’t making an argument, and for you to suggest as much indicates that you didn’t actually read my column. The article was a reported piece; the only commentary came at the end, when I said it was a pity so many people seem to have written off Australia entirely. But the bigger issue here is that you made a damning accusation concerning my work, yet offered no proof to substantiate it. As a journalism major–a summa cum laude graduate, no less–didn’t you feel obliged to offer some supporting evidence for your assertion? It is one of the cardinal rules of journalism–if you make a claim, you have to back it up. Can you back up what you said about my reporting? If not, then you owe me a public apology.

In case you are interested, I decided to pursue this story last fall, after coming across data showing a huge drop in sales of blue-chip Australian wines and hearing from both Jeff Zacharia and Peter Gago that high-end Australia was a moribund category (do they have axes to grind?) I called Chuck because The Jug Shop is renowned for its Australian inventory, and I called Daniel because hardly a week goes by in which I’m not receiving offers on Australian wines from his store. I gather, from your remarks, that you think this story–the crisis of the Australian wine industry–is a bogus one. If you can prove that, I’d certainly be impressed, because the statistical and anecdotal evidence is pretty overwhelming. I know you write for the Wine Advocate now, but do you read it? If so, you may have noticed that your colleague Jay Miller has an essay in the current issue about–yes–the crisis of the Australian wine industry, in which he makes many of the same points that I made in my article (Jancis Robinson even cited Jay’s essay in the piece she did for the Financial Times last week on this same topic). Unless you had something substantive to add to the discussion about my article, there was no reason for you to chime in; your only contribution was snark, and your decision to delete the thread smacks of a censoriousness that is truly dismaying coming from someone who graduated journalism school summa cum laude.

Regarding unbiased sources, I must confess that I’m a little confused, too, and maybe you can help me understand something. I couldn’t help but notice that while you were busy impugning my integrity and the integrity of the retailers I cited, there was an active thread about a visit to Bern’s involving Eric Solomon, Patrick Mata, Jose Pastor, and one Jay Miller. Was this the same, aforementioned Jay Miller who covers Spain for the Wine Advocate? From the picture that was posted, it would appear to be so, and I’m thus a bit perplexed. Eric, Patrick, and Jose are importers of Spanish wines. I’ve always taken Bob at his word that the Wine Advocate scrupulously avoids potential conflicts of interest. How does Jay’s Weekend at Bern’s square with that policy? You would surely agree that there is more to journalistic independence than not accepting advertising–that conflicts of interest can arise in other ways. Bob conceded as much after he caught flak for that dinner in Bordeaux with Alain Raynaud, Gerard Perse, and Michel Rolland, and Jay’s road trip with these importers strikes me as a far more egregious ethical lapse. Can consumers continue to regard Jay as an impartial judge when it comes to wines imported by Eric, Patrick, and Jose? Since you are clearly very attuned to issues of journalistic malfeasance, I’m curious to get your take on this matter. Thanks.

Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:19:32 -0700
From: msquires
Subject: Re:
To: mhsteinberger

>>Can you back up what you said about my reporting? If not, then you owe me a public apology. <<

Your arguments here are as bad as your article, which was a regurgitated version of what has been circulating for the last couple of years. Like I said--I have no interest in debating this. Which you should consider a very good thing, as I'm both a pretty good debater and awfully knowledgeable about every aspect of the subject matter, in general and in specific.

But I have better things to do with my time.

Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:22:13
From: msquires
Subject: Re:
To: mhsteinberger

>>Can consumers continue to regard Jay as an impartial judge when it comes to wines imported by Eric, Patrick, and Jose<<

By the way, one final note. If you think this reprehensible mud-slinging intended to divert attention from yourself does you a service, or makes me want to talk you, you have seriously misjudged the situation. You change the subject and attack someone. It’s an obvious and well scorned tactic. Good luck with that.

If you have a question about ethics in the WA, you talk to Bob. I have no interest in talking to you about anything at any time.

From: mhsteinberger
To: msquires
Subject: RE:
Date: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:23:52 -0400

Yes, it probably is a good thing for me that you have neither the time nor the inclination to continue this discussion. If, by debating skills, you mean an aptitude for hitting the delete button in order to make opposing views disappear, you very clearly are a master of the form. And given that you are now an eminent wine critic, I wouldn’t think to challenge your knowledge. But I do have two questions for you. You now accuse me of regurgitating a story that has been “circulating for the last couple of years,” as you put it. The data, and all the anecdotal evidence, indicate that sales of high-end Australian wines in the United States have tanked in the last 12-18 months. Can you point me to an article from, say, 2005, that claimed that the market for these wines had completely dried up? And if I am guilty of regurgitating an old story, would you agree that your colleague Jay is guilty of the same thing? As I noted in my previous email, his article in the current issue of the Wine Advocate (“Australia 2009: Into The Abyss”) makes the same points I made in my Slate piece.

Lastly, if I did indeed recycle old news, you should immediately contact the Sydney Morning Herald to let them know; they emailed over the weekend to inquire about possibly reprinting my article.

In switching to screwcaps have you replaced one problem, TCA taint, with another problem, reduction?

Yes, in a sense. But in the main, I think we’ve managed the reduction problem by changing our yeasts and by making sure the wines are scrupulously clean when we bottle. Now, having said that, we can bottle a wine under screwcap–and we’re talking here specifically about Riesling–and the wine is perfect and then at two or three years of age, as was the example today with the 2005 Steingarten, which is now four years old, and it’s starting to develop a characteristic that we think is reduction, certainly it’s sulfur related. And it’s coming up now. Why is it coming up now since the wine’s been wonderful for three years (and we know that from experience that it will disappear in two or three years)?

There are things going on in Riesling because of the very anaerobic way that it is made from juice all the way through that create these problems. The interesting work that’s going on now is the research to understand it. We’ve now got Chardonnays with five or six years under screwcap and none of these problems appear yet we know that we are using yeasts that are far more prone to producing hydrogen sulfide or what have you. The significant difference we don’t think is varietal but is the fact that the chardonnay is then put into barrels for six months for a slightly more…exposure to air in the maturation that was probably a similar thing that used to happen when we used a cork. So we need to understand what it is that we need to oxidize so that we don’t have this problem occurring in Riesling.

The decision to go to screwcap is still 500% correct. We do need to discover what it is that’s going on. Some plastic chemists have suggested that we select at the moment the most impervious plastic films that separate the tin layer form the wine. Maybe we need to use a plastic film that has a transmission rate selecting a transition rate of oxygen or air that more assimilates what might happen with a cork. That seems to us not a good solution; we would have to oxidize our wines.

Another approach is to do something that more emulates a cork. Is it associated with something physical, like pushing the air in the headspace with the insertion of the cork? Another theory says that’s wrong because using a cork you can sort of flush the headspace and put a cork into a supposedly neutral atmosphere. Whereas how do you flush screwcap because you’ve got this container full of air that your dropping over the top? So people are now trying around, flushing the caps with nitrogen. I’m don’t think that’s not the issue. I’m sure it’s more related to oxidizing. We know you can get rid of a lot of things in wine with sensible oxidation at the juice stage.

What’s your favorite amount of age to enjoy a Steingarten Riesling?
From about ten years onwards. They’re fascinating as young wines more because you can see the potential. They’re very minerally and reasonably closed. 2005 was a wonderful vintage for riesling in Australia and I reckon that in about five years, that wine is really going to hit its straps. You get a toastiness coming in and a real honey effect which is fruit sweetness and nothing to do with sugar but the minerality remains. So you’ve got this lovely contrast between toast, which in a sense is rich, honey, which is rich, straw, which is pronounced all contrasted with this extreme minerality. Younger wines are all about perfume–citrus blossoms coming through.

Why is a petrol a derogatory descriptor for Riesling Down Under?
Well, we talk about kerosene, because we know that when it comes in, it is a function of oxidation. It starts to progressively take over, one, the fruit flavor, or also the toasty, straw characters. There are two different things: what you talk about as petrol, we probably talk about as flint and minerality. Whereas the kerosene character that we talk about is something that develops further down the track.

Why is Australia a good place to grow Riesling?
Part of it is historic. The Barossa Valley was settled by German refugee immigrants–they weren’t wine people but they became wine people and the first vines they planted were Riesling. So there’s a long tradition with Riesling. When phylloxera went around the world in the 1880s, Australia put an embargo on any vines coming into Australia that wasn’t lifted until 1969 and even then, under very strict conditions. And we had as our significant white varieties Semillion and Riesling. So we grew up making and drinking Semillon and Riesling.

Given our climate, Riesling is a very difficult variety to produce. There was always extreme care taken by winemakers in making Riesling and to a lesser extent, Semillon. By natural site selection, people quickly found that they hilly bits were the right places to grow if you wanted to get these flavors. When Chardonnay came through in the 1980s and swept over Riesling people pulled out Riesling vineyards. But there was always this belief that Chardonnay was a nasty experience that was going to disappear and everyone would come back to their senses and drink great Riesling again! So the best Riesling were always kept. And most of the best vineyards were owned by proprietary winemakers, rather than individual grape growers, since they weren’t under the same financial pressure to pull them out.

So the Riesling vineyards that are left in Australia, most of them are reasonably old, and their also in very good areas. Riesling is the simplest wine to make but it is also the most challenging since if you make a mistake, you just can’t hide it. Put all that aside, dry Riesling have to be one of the greatest drinking wines in the world!

[Incidentally, he also mentioned that they have held back two palettes of 1996 Steingarten Riesling for worldwide release of a mature Riesling. (find this wine)]

Photo via Wine Australia

Okay, there was no shootout. Sort of a duel, but without the guns, wounds or Aaron Burr.

In honor of Australia Day last week, and because I think syrah is most seasonally apt in the winter, I tried a Northern Rhone syrah against an Aussie shiraz. Normally you’d think this would be a no-brainer since although it is the same grape by a different name, the stylistic differences can be oceans apart (literally).

But I did try to raise the degree of difficulty by picking a “European-style” shiraz, the Leeuwin Art Series 2005 from the Western Australia region of Margaret River with an alcohol level of rolling in at a mere 13% (find this wine). Against it, I poured a Saint-Joseph ‘06 from the small producer Pierre Gonon (find this wine).

I found the Gonon to be excellent, with notes of characteristic black olives that I really dig in a good St. Joseph. It has a mouth-filling character thanks to some gentle oak but has a minerally, ashy core that gives it great poise and balance. The Leeuwin, by contrast, has much more fruit-driven aromas–think raspberry, cherry, and blackberry–as well as a dash of eucalyptus freshness. The palate was bigger than the Gonon and more New World but not to the point of being jammy or extracted. And the lighter alcohol was a relief from many a shiraz.

I was with three other people and although the Gonon edged ahead in my view, the group split with two for each. So the showdown saw both participants walk away unscathed. If only Hamilton had been so lucky.

German Riesling
To my mind this is clearly the most singularly misunderstood and underappreciated region for great wines in the world. Even in their own country the wines are not really appreciated- most younger Germans interested in wine would prefer to drink pinot grigio. The strides made with dry rieslings by producers such as Klaus-Peter Keller and the like are helping the wines get a bit more of a hearing in Germany these days, but the traditional, off-dry styles are still wandering in the dessert looking for a fan base. And I really don’t understand why. The wines have everything- magical complexity, profound individuality, a brilliant ability to age gracefully and they are not expensive- what more could one ask for? They go great with the right kinds of food- Asian-inspired dishes, turkey or just hanging out with a cheese board after a tennis match. And yet, so many producers struggle to sell each year’s production through the pipeline, and really continue to make the wines as a labor of love. It makes me ill to think of a great producer such as Hanno Zilliken, crafting some of the most magical elixirs to be found on this gray earth, and he has as backlog of older vintages for sale that is simply unimaginable, while Michel Rolland marches through the world of wine like Sherman through Georgia, and everything he scars sells like hotcakes! I just don’t get it.

Austrian Riesling
I have a profound respect for the best producers of Austrian wines, but simply cannot drink the best examples anymore, as the wines are just too hot for my palate. I have had some absolutely magical bottles of Austrian wines, but all from older, pre-climate change vintages. As things stand now, I think Austria is one of the big losers in global warming, as the best wines these days are all over fourteen percent in top vintages, and no matter what they do, they cannot escape that uncovered alcohol on the finish. And I cannot think of any instance of a high alcohol white wine (and very, very few reds for that matter) that has aged gracefully. The lower tier wines are better, as they simply do not ripen as well, but the best sites are just not turning out great wines to my palate in the top vintages with the current viticultural and winemaking methodologies. And there is no way that one can make a lasting legacy of great wines hoping for “off vintages” and emphasizing the lower tier bottlings. I really think that the top Austrian winemakers have to start thinking about how they can reign in the ripeness in their top sites these days. Everything else is in place for greatness- brilliant terroir, old vines and a great tradition, but these have to be synthesized into the unfortunate new realities of global warming, and in my experience, the Austrians have still not made that leap. Don’t misunderstand me- there are still plenty of superb Austrian wines made year in and year out, but the crown jewels in terms of vineyards and bottlings have been way over-praised to my mind in the last decade, as the wines simply carry too much alcohol to ever meet with greatness.

Australian Riesling
Because of the Aussies’ love affair with screwcaps- particularly for their riesling bottlings- I really have not paid any attention in the last decade. In my opinion, the closure is fatally flawed as it is used today, and I find it inexcusable for so many winemakers and winery owners to try and sweep the flaws under the rug instead of ‘fessing up that they were screwed by the early propaganda and half-assed research- that the screwcap technology is still not ready to gracefully age wines- and switch back completely to corks until a time when the alternatives are really ready. Instead, we have all this “copper fining” BS- adding heavy metals to the wines so that they can use a flawed closure system is in my opinion just asinine and ethically bankrupt- and every other sort of winemaking manipulation ever conceived by man to try and get the wines ready to seal up under screwcap. Of course the jury is still out on whether or not adding huge doses of copper sulphate to the wines pre-bottling is safe for those consuming the wines, but I for one am not about to be the guinea pig on that score.

But beyond my rant on whether or not all these “treatments” (rather an Orwellian use of the word) that the Aussies put their wines through are safe, there is little doubt that copper finings and the like do strip out much of the character of the wines, and are still completely ineffectual and simply put off the day when the wines go into permanent reduction under screwcap and are ruined. How do you make a screwcap-sealed wine taste and smell like rotting cabbage or burning rubber- put it in the cellar for a few years. They almost all get there over time. But the damage starts faster than that- were you at the big Penfolds’ tasting here in New York a couple of months ago? Their 2007 Bin 51 Eden Valley Riesling was a perfect example of just how insidious screwcaps are for wine- this wine received 90 points from Josh Raynolds in his International Wine Cellar review in the September-October ’08 issue, and Josh has a great palate. By the time we tasted the wine at the end of October it was already obviously suffering from sulphate reduction- it was overtly mineral and borderline metallic on the palate, and about as short on the finish as a wine could be- classic reduction symptoms. About as classic an example of a 75 point wine as I have come across in some time. Now most wine drinkers would not recognize the symptoms of sulphate reduction in the wine- this was a journalist-only event and I did not hear many comments about the reduced aspects of the wine when it was served- and most would just assume that Penfolds cannot make riesling worth a damn.

So when the Aussies regain their senses and start using corks again- warts and all, and I am no great fan of TCA-tainted wines- not to mention all of the premature oxidation issues with recent vintages of my beloved white Burgundies, which in my opinion may well be cork-related- then I will start tasting Australian rieslings again in-depth. But really, what is the point of tasting a wine young that you strongly suspect is going to crash and burn quickly because of its closure? By the way, the 1999 Penfolds Eden Valley Riesling served at that same tasting from magnums (sealed with corks) was stellar, and shows that the potential for this grape is very high in Australia, but the whole wine industry down under (and New Zealand is every bit as large of an offender on this score) has got to deal with the screwcap issue first. Until that time I am not prepared to invest much time and even less money in what is going on down there.

The Loire
I have always loved the wines of the Loire Valley, and I fell in love with the region during my first visit back in 1989. It is a beautiful area of France and the wines have this wonderful, laid-back character that perfectly matches the bucolic settings and the people that live there. To my palate they have been one of the big winners with global warming- at least thus far- and the wines here have never been better than they are today. This is particularly true of the Loire Valley reds, which used to really struggle to ripen thoroughly. Back in the old days one or two good red wine vintages were all the vignerons were blessed with each decade, but now they are making good wines in almost every vintage, and great wines at least four or five times a decade. And for the most part these are classically made wines, without a lot of oak or micro-oxygenation or cryo-extraction- just unadulterated, classic French wines from great terroirs and noble grapes. Wines from people like Bernard Baudry, Pierre Breton, Clos Rougeard or Domaine Filliatreau are simply world class and cellar-worthy wines that compete well with anything out there on the market, and once again, they offer stunning value. But the Loire is close to Bordeaux, so you still occasionally find the proprietor who is trying to emulate what is going on these days in St. Emilion and tarts his or her wine up with a ton of unsupportable new oak and heavy extraction, but these are becoming fewer and further between, as more and more growers here embrace their own fine vinous heritage.

On the white wine front things in the Loire are equally exciting these days. Sancerre in particular is just overflowing with brilliant winemakers, and there are tons of great sauvignon blanc wines being made in less well-known places like Menetou-Salon and Quincy as well. Losing Didier Dagueneau at such a young age was a tragedy, but he did so much over the course of his life to inspire producers of sauvignon blanc-based wines to aim for the stars that his legacy will be with us for a very long time. And in chenin blanc country in the Touraine, this is a true renaissance, with legendary wines being made in Vouvray and Montlouis from the likes of Domaine Huet, François Chidaine, Domaine Foreau, François Pinon and a host of others. Savennières has several top estates making great dry chenin, and the back roads of the greater Touraine, Coteaux-du-Loir and Anjou regions are just raging with eccentric producers and their eclectic lineups that are pushing the envelope with grapes like gamay and pinot d’aunis in addition to making brilliant chenin-based wines. Producers like the Puzelat brothers, Eric Nicolas, Pascal Janvier, Olivier Lemasson, not to mention the indefatigable folks at Clos Roche Blanche are turning out so many stunning wines of character and breed that I cannot keep up with them all. And when you factor in what is going on in Muscadet with Domaine de la Pépière and Domaine Luneau-Papin- where they are making the most brilliant wines in the centuries-long history of the region- it really is the golden age of Loire Valley wines.

California cabs from the 70s
As Joni Mitchell once penned, “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.” It is somewhat ironic that I have become one of the big proselytizers in regards to these wines from the 1970s, as I spent much of the latter half of my career in the wine trade selling wines other than Californian, and really had fallen out of the loop with what was going on in wine country on the west coast. Partly this was out of necessity, as my business was handling old and rare wines, and Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, classic Piemonte and Rhônes were the core of my business in those days. But also, I had become quite disillusioned with the Helen Turley school of winemaking, with the excessive alcohol, residual sugar, heavy battering of the wines with a fusillade of new oak and commercial yeasts designed to give everything the same couple of flavors- which were adding up to my palate to boring, top-heavy wines without soul. By happenstance I was invited to an older California cabernet tasting a few years back- it was a remake of the famous 1976 Steven Spurrier tasting in Paris, so this must have been in 2001 during the twenty-fifth anniversary of the epic event- and I was really knocked out by a number of the California wines served at the tasting. I had cut my teeth on many of these wines in my formative days in the wine trade, and I was surprised that the wines had held up so well and were every bit as brilliant as I remembered them from back in the day.

A few years later at a friend’s fiftieth birthday, we were doing a “pot luck” tasting where everyone had to pull a great bottle or two for the occasion, and someone brought the 1974 Mayacamas cabernet- which was just magical. That was it, I was hooked again on these wines, and I have spent the better part of the last three years tasting and writing about them whenever possible. There are simply so many great, great wines still out there from this era that have aged brilliantly and simply tower over what is being produced today, and yet they have fallen out of fashion and most commentators cannot talk about them at all with any degree of intelligence. It is really sad, because wine, if anything, is an historical art form, and really has no meaning outside of its historical context. And yet, here you have this huge pool of brilliant wines from the decade of the 1970s, and the 1960s and 1950s before that, and very few people in the California wine trade can tell you anything about them. The same sort of modern myopia would be unthinkable in places like Burgundy, Bordeaux, Piemonte or the like, but in California it seems that it is perfectly acceptable to collectively turn their backs on their own winemaking heritage. I often wonder about this.

California cabs from the 2000s
Now you are into a realm where I am really out of the loop these days- mostly by design. When I was studying political science back in my university days, I had a great professor named Anthony Lake, who had been on Kissinger’s staff before resigning over the invasion of Cambodia, and who later resurfaced as Bill Clinton’s National Security Advisor. Professor Lake liked to talk about the concept of “group think” (a phrase coined by his friend, Leslie Gelb, I believe), in which bureaucratic circles begin to all share the same assumptions and world view, and consequently all begin to distort reality in the same manner, leading to faulty analysis and projections. To my mind “group think” is the standard operating procedure in most areas of Californian wine country today (with a few notable exceptions), and most of the wines that I cross paths with share the same “cookie cutter” pattern: overripe fruit flavors, tarted up with the same commercial yeasts to produce the same spread of flavors, the same fashionable, obliterating French oak from the über-fashionable tonneliers and the same mind-numbing levels of high alcohol.

It seems like almost all of the wines are overseen by the same couple of consultants- Michel Rolland, Helen Turley or their posse, and I taste very few that seem worthy of standing in the shadows of the great wines fashioned in the 1970s and before. To my palate I can taste the McDonald’s mentality at work in most of these wines- engineering the flavors and aromatics to hit just the right sweet spot out of the blocks, and if it ends up being bad for the long-term health of the wine, who cares, because “we just need to move the new vintage through the pipeline”. To be fair, global warming has not done these folks any favors, but instead of addressing the very real problems presented by climate change, the powers that be have come up with this very convenient philosophy of “physiological ripeness” which allows them to let the grapes hang on the vine and bake away until the resulting wine will be a cross between grappa and boysenberry syrup. All you need to know about the winemaking philosophy out there at most places these days is with their having to water down most wines before letting the fermentations start (literally turn on the hoses and filling up the vats with water to try and cut down on the potential alcohol in the wines). Perhaps there is a problem with the methodology, no?

Rhône today
It’s funny that you ask me about the Rhône today, as I am in the midst of a large project on the region for my newsletter and have been awash in their wines for the better part of two months. If you would have asked me the same question two months ago, I think my response would have been different than it is today. To my thinking there seems to be more to hope for down the road here than was the case four or five years ago, as I seem to discern the first signs of some reigning in of the winemaking excesses that have plagued the region since at least the 1995 vintage. How to deal with global warming is still a big factor here, and until a new, universal approach is developed to the attendant issues of excessively high alcohol levels and stewed, overripe fruit tones, the region will continue to be a bit of a mine field for those with a palate looking for wines that do not stun or sear the tongue. But I see plenty of positive signs that at least some vignerons are starting to think seriously about the over the top style that has been championed for the last decade or more.

In the northern half of the region, the big problem to my mind has not been so much the climate change (though it of course has played a role here as well- just not as profoundly as in the south), but the stylistic chasing of Marcel Guigal. Guigal burst on the scenes in the late ‘70s with his very new oaky, much more heavily extracted styles of wines (particularly in Côte-Rôtie), and his attendant commercial success caught the attention of most of the other growers in the north. You have to remember that in the late 1970s when Marcel was really getting going, the Rhône was a vastly different animal than it is today, and the wines sold for next to nothing and wine was hardly a profitable business. All those steep, terraced vineyards had to be worked by hand, and with prices so depressed for the wines (most Côte-Rôtie was just drunk up by the “pichet” in the cafés in Ampuis those days for pennies a glass), it was awfully hard to make ends meet if you were the vigneron. There were abandoned vineyards everywhere, the younger generation was leaving en masse for better paying and less arduous jobs elsewhere, and it really looked like this area, where winemaking goes all the way back to Roman times, was on the verge of eventual distinction. As late as 1988, fully half of a great vineyard like La Landonne was fifty percent fallow!

Marcel Guigal came along and changed all that- almost single-handedly! There were of course other great producers in the north at this time: Marius Gentaz, Gérard Chave, Gérard Jaboulet, Noël Verset and Auguste Clape to name just a few, but it was Monsieur Guigal that caught the wine world’s imagination and pulled everyone else up with his boot straps. And we cannot forget the great service Robert Parker did at this time championing the best of these wines. The northern Rhône was saved, or at least its threat was transformed. At least people could make a good living making wine again, and a lot of the overgrown vineyards were reclaimed. The problem was that the Guigal wines, as good as they were at this time, were not particularly representative of the deep traditions in the region. People started to use a lot more new oak- emulating the Guigal wines perhaps- and not always with the most flattering results. Reclaimed vineyards also means young vines, and there is an awful lot of young vine wine made in the north these days, and with demand high, there is little incentive to reign in yields of these younger vines. So what one gets confronted with this young vine fruit that lacks concentration, and consequently has to be “monkeyed” with in the cellars to try and hide this fact. Or one harvests extremely late so that there can be a bit of residual sugar and higher alcohol to give the impression of depth, and of course new oak can also help with this. But with global warming, late harvesting means overripe flavors, zero acidity and really heady alcohol, all of which require more manipulating of the wines in the cellars, and often also translate into wines that do not age well in the bottle.

So there have been some pretty serious speed bumps in the north in the last fifteen years, and there were some very notable failures in the vintages of the mid to late 1990s. But it seems that things are swinging back towards the more traditional styles in the north, and of course the vines are getting older in the replanted sections, which means that a lot of producers are getting much higher quality fruit with which to work. The bigger firms still seem lost in the wilderness to my palate- Chapoutier, Guigal and the like, but many of the smaller growers are really starting to make exciting wines in the north. Amongst my favorites here is Éric Texier, who is doing simply brilliant work in the north. Cornas is another town that I see as at the beginning of a renaissance- it was kind of left behind when all the hoopla reached Hermitage and Côte-Rôtie in the late 1980s and 1990s- but there are some really good growers working here now, the most famous being Thierry Allemand. And I taste more and more serious examples from the “satellite” regions like Crozes-Hermitage and St. Joseph, not to mention the re-discovery of an appellation like Brézème- where Éric Texier is making brilliant wines- all these things point to good news in the not too distant future in the northern half of the Rhône. I don’t think that the “big boys” have figured it out yet- but they will in good time.

However, the southern half of the Rhône is another world, and global warming has really been throwing its weight around here. The incidence of ludicrously alcoholic wines is legion in Châteauneuf du Pape these days, and all of the other over the top winemaking excesses that have equally scarred other regions have wreaked havoc in the south. But one of the biggest plagues in the south these days is the huge expansion of syrah plantings in the vineyards here- not just in Châteauneuf du Pape, but also throughout the villages of the Côtes du Rhône. Syrah is just patently ill-suited to the warmer southern half of the Rhône at the best of times (and this is really exacerbated by climate change), as the grape’s sugars soar in the baking heat of the south before the skins, seeds and stems ripen fully, translating to wines that are both overly alcoholic and taste green from the unripe skins etc. And if the vigneron lets syrah hang long enough to ripen the skins, you get wines that are really horrible tasting, and with potential alcohol in the seventeen or eighteen percent range. Very macabre stuff. But what you do get with all this syrah being incorporated into the traditional blends in the south is dark color- black-purple wines. And here, Robert Parker has undone a lot of the good he previously did for the region by blindly praising these wines.

But there is good news in the south as well. There are several villages that are high up in altitude- for example, Cairanne and Vinsobres immediately come to mind, and here one can still make terrific wines. I just had a couple of Vinsobres bottlings from the owners of Château de Beaucastel, the Perrin family, that were flat out brilliant. There are also some real holdouts in the Châteauneuf region as well, led by Éric Texier, who makes simply stunning, old vine Châteauneuf du Pape from a blend of grenache and mourvèdre (no 17% syrah for his wines), and the wines of Château Mont-Redon are also just textbook, classic examples of the appellation that harken back to the pre-madness days of the 1980s and 1970s. You also have one of the biggest stars in Châteauneuf, Henri Bonneau, who absolutely hates syrah’s results in the south, and refuses to use any in his wines. There are probably many more that I simply have not tasted of late, because it is very hard to find more traditionally styled southern Rhône wines in the US market. Importers have told me off the record that such wines cannot generate high enough scores amongst the most influential American wine critics, so they will not sell well, and importers simply leave them behind rather than bring them into this country. I like to think of folks like Monsieur Texier and the Mont-Redon proprietors as the “French Resistance” in the area, and hope that they can gain more recruits as time goes by.

Champagne
Champagne is in the midst of a major sea change, and I think that in the long run it will be all to the good for this historic region. The explosion of small growers making and bottling their own Champagne is unprecedented in the long history of this region, and this has profoundly changed how the big houses now make their wines. Some of the big houses are fortunate enough to own a large chunk of their own vineyards, but other of the “Grandes Marques” have seen much of their former good sources for grapes and/or wine strike out on their own, and they have had to scramble for suppliers to meet their needs. A lot of times this strain has forced the big houses to cut corners a bit- maybe sell a non-vintage bottling a year earlier than they would have in the past, or include some production from lower tier vineyards that they would have deemed of insufficient quality to be included twenty-five years ago, or increasing a bit the dosage to make a slightly sweeter-styled non-vintage to try and cover up some of the side effects of points one and two- all these types of occurrences have been pretty readily visible if one has paid enough attention to the Champagne market in the last several years. Certainly the recent expansion of the area in the AOC for Champagne is one attempt to try and create a bit more production for the Grandes Marques to work with.

But to my mind, most of the Grandes Marques have done an admirable job in keeping up their quality in the face of these rather seismic changes in the region. Maybe the Veuve Clicquot non-vintage Brut is not as good as it was twenty years ago, but it is still a pretty impressive drink for something made in such a large quantity. And given just how potentially debilitating some of these supply issues could have been, they have really done a remarkable job with their top cuvées, which are every bit as profound as they have ever been. And while the big houses have been adjusting to the new realities in the market, the most exciting aspects of the changes in Champagne have been at the level of the small, grower-récoltant producers, who have struck out on their own and stopped selling off the bulk of their production to the Grandes Marques. There are now dozens and dozens of small producers making absolutely brilliant Champagne, and I have greatly expanded my own cellar of bubbly with the inclusion of my favorites from this genre of producers. I should be quick to point out that I am a pretty tough judge on a lot of these grower bubblies, as to my mind any wine from this region has a responsibility to remain true to the inherent and historical elegance of Champagne, and to my mind there are plenty of examples from small growers that do not meet this requirement.

However, the best small growers do indeed provide very elegant and sophisticated bubbly, and what is one of the finest attributes in this respect, is due to their smaller scale operations, often their wines will be a reflection of the one village in which they work and hold vines. This has awakened a possibility of comparing and contrasting the various terroirs of Champagne- say for instance the dramatic difference between the brilliant, pinot noir-dominated wines of someone like Bernard Brémont in Ambonnay and the very classic Blanc de Blancs of Vazart-Coquart in Chouilly. A generation ago, both growers’ wines might have been purchased by Taittinger and ended up blended together. In this respect things are very, very exciting right now in Champagne, though one has to be intrepid enough to buy the smaller growers’ wines, rather than just cop out and reach for the all too predictable bottle of Clicquot on your merchant’s shelves. And this extends to the wine merchants themselves- too many in the US and France treat Champagne simply as a commodity that needs to be stocked, and put together a selection of the familiar Grandes Marques and let the bottles sell themselves. This is one of the reasons so many merchants sell the vast majority of their Champagne around the holidays, because they put no effort into understanding the region and its changing ways. But I drink Champagne at least a couple of times a week- for an open bottle with a good stopper in the fridge maintains its freshness better than any other wine I can think of- and would never think of not having a bottle chilled at all times. So I need to be more fully able to dip my beak in the great mosaic that is Champagne today, and would never want to limit myself to just a few brand names.

Wine scores
There is too much scoring in baseball, and too little in soccer! As far as wine scores go, I am a man of my era, and my burgeoning interest in wine coincided with Robert Parker’s ascension in the world of wine criticism, so I have been living with wines being scored most of my wine-drinking life. Mr. Parker is actually the person who really got me interested in wine, as I can recall reading his journal in its earliest days (which coincided with my university stay) and dreaming about how great it must be to taste all these monumental, historical wines. So in this respect, I really do not have any problems with the scores. I certainly have at least as many issues with the prose of some wine writers these days as with their scores- style books anyone? But where I think scoring of wines has gone really off track is with the so-called “objectivity” school of wine criticism. Look, a critic’s job is to be subjective, not objective, and this is true in art criticism, food criticism or wine criticism. Tell me what you think about X, why, and if I find over time that our aesthetic perceptions coincide, then you are the critic for me. But too many wine writers these days try to hide behind the rubric of objectivity, claiming that even though the wine sucks, it is technically not a flawed wine, and therefore it should at least merit an 89 point score! To my mind that is just a cop out.

In the end all the objective approach does is squeeze everything into a very narrow range of numbers, where meaningful differentiation between the various wines becomes next to impossible, unless one reverts to the prose, which I think we already touched upon. When I read in the past about a wine with which I was unfamiliar, what I wanted to know most about was the style of the wine, as for me this is the most important determinant as a consumer if I am going to go out and buy a bottle from a producer that I have never tasted previously. I mean which would you rather drink- a passably good example of a wine that tastes like kissing Bridget Bardot in her golden youth, or a brilliantly-executed wine that has the palate impression of a Monster Truck collision in your mouth? Scores alone are not going to make this distinction for you- particularly from the camp of “objectivity”. But at least a subjective approach to scoring will fully prepare you for the mysteries on the other side of the cork- whichever you prefer is your business.

wine over 14% alc
If you had said fifteen percent, this would have been easy! In general I think it is important to realize that history has not been kind to wines put in the cellar with high levels of alcohol, other than fortified wines, but that is another story. For non-fortified wines, high alcohol usually translates into either a short cellar life or a less than positive evolution in the bottle- or both. There are of course exceptions- Henri Bonneau’s brilliant Châteauneuf du Papes immediately come to mind- but these are exceptions. For the vast, vast majority of wines, lower alcohol wines have traditionally aged longer and better. Part of this equation of course is that lower alcohol wines, having started with lower sugar levels in the grapes, generally start out life with higher acidity. I have been drinking wine a long time now, and it is pretty clear to me that acidity is the cornerstone to a wine’s ability to age gracefully for a long period in the bottle and remain fresh and vibrant. And wines that age well are the ones that interest me the most. The transformation that a wine undergoes with bottle age is still one of the mysteries of wine- how it improves, what chemical reactions are taking place- all of these things are still unknown even with our advanced levels of science. But if the key fundamentals are in place in the wine when young, we do know that the wine will change and evolve and become more beautiful with age. And one of these keys is sound acidity.

When one thinks back or reads about the legendary Bordeaux wines of the first half of the twentieth century- the 1945 Mouton-Rothschild, the 1928 Palmer, the 1929 Latour or the 1900 Margaux- one of the glaring things that so many commentators fail to mention is how low in alcohol these wines were back then- probably between eleven and twelve percent, and they came from ripe vintages in those days! One of the chief reasons that they lasted so long was specifically because they were lower in alcohol- balanced wines that were able to stand the test of time. As Monsieur Bonneau has emphatically proven, it is not impossible to balance your wines at high degrees of alcohol, but it is a hell of a lot harder to do it, and for every Monsieur Bonneau who has been able to succeed with his formula, there are thousands who have tried and failed miserably. A perfect example of the differences between higher and lower levels of alcohol are the 1947 and the 1949 Cheval Blanc- both great wines, but the headier, almost Port-like 1947 is nowhere near as interesting to my palate as the lower alcohol, hauntingly ethereal 1949. I have been fortunate to drink both wines on several occasions, and even once had them served side by side in the same flight at a memorable dinner, and I would be willing to argue that the beautiful 1949 will in the end prove to be the longer-lasting and ultimately more interesting wine. And let me be the first to tell you, not every high alcohol wine is a 1947 Cheval Blanc in the making- no matter what you read elsewhere!

I think that today high alcohol is one of the worst plagues in the world of wine, as it virtually guarantees that the wine in question will not stand the test of time in bottle. A lot of people might say “so what”, I want to drink my wines younger anyway, so what do I care about higher alcohol. Other than driving home from the dinner party, they may have a point. As long as there remains plenty of cellar-worthy, lower alcohol wines for those of us who want to age our wines, then it should not be a problem. In other words, if each individual wine exists in a vacuum, outside of the temporal world in which we live, then there is plenty of room for both kinds of wines. But the reality is that the new car in the driveway of the vigneron who let his grapes hang out on the vine until they were ready to fall off, and consequently was able to get a higher score (and more money) for his wine because some critic was suckered in by the black-purple color and the sweet, warming effects of alcohol on the palate which gave the wine a consistency of motor oil, then the odds are that a few vintages down the road, all of the nieghbors will be vacationing in September and picking their grapes in late October to try and make the same money and drive the same cars. That is just the way the world of wine works today, and consequently, the high alcohol wine that someone else likes will eventually threaten the extinction of my lower alcohol wines that I want to cellar for twenty years.

new, small oak barrels
Contrary to my reputation in some circles, I really do not mind wines with a lot of new oak. A perfect example are the Burgundies of producers such as Henri Jayer and Domaine Dujac. Both estates make (or made in Monsieur Jayer’s case) their wines almost entirely in new oak, and yet they are two of the finest producers of wine that I have ever had the pleasure to taste. But it is extremely hard to use a high percentage of new oak well, and it takes any extremely skilled artist in the cellar to be able to consistently pull this off. Unfortunately, there are not a whole lot of producers with as much skill as Monsieur Jayer had during his lifetime. Too often, new oak dominates the other characteristics of the wine, both on the nose and the palate, producing in a best-case scenario a one dimensional wine that derives many of its flavors and aromatics from the wood. And the worst-case scenario (all too familiar to those of us who taste a wide range of wines these days) is that the new oak has been imperfectly cured, and has leeched raw, resinous tones into the wine, which come across as sawdusty or resinous on the palate, and add so much raw wood tannin to the wine as to upset its balance. This condition is usually terminal- as the wine is too tannic from the wood to drink with much enjoyment when young, and spends its life stillborn and rigid from the oak, and eventually withers, with the fruit giving up the ghost while the wood tannins remain obstinately present. For those who are familiar with the New York subways, wines from the worst-case scenario camp are like two riders getting onto separate trains at Grand Central Station, with the fruit getting on the Express and the oak getting on the Local. After a short time, they are never going to come together again, and the fruit on the Express is going to be long gone by the time the oak arrives at the mutually agreed upon destination.

roto-fermenters
You mean paint shakers for Barolo? Roto-fermenters are just a flat out disaster. They manage to obliterate every ounce of terroir in the wine, and often can suppress the varietal characteristics as well. The dumbest thing about their use in Piemonte is that the biggest practitioners of their use will tell you that they need to use them to “tame the traditionally intransigent tannins of the nebbiolo grape”, and then of course, after beating the living daylights out of their nebbiolo with the roto-fermenters (to tame the tannins, remember), they will age their wines in new, French oak barrels, and infuse the wine all over again with new tannins, this time from the wood. So let me get this straight, the idea is to destroy the wine’s terroir and varietal character (a sad, but necessary side effect) to tame the tannins in the wine, and then we are going to leech in a ton of wood tannins (that will never integrate with what is left of the fruit in the abused wine) which in effect replace the tannins we removed at the price of the original character of the wine? Who writes this stuff?

Indigenous yeasts
The longer I drink, taste and write about wine, the more I am convinced that indigenous yeasts are a key fundament of great wine. It is not that it is impossible to make great wine with commercial yeasts, but these have to be strains that are engineered to be as unobtrusive and “transparent” as possible, so that the natural beauty of the wine that originates in the vineyard can be reproduced as faithfully as possible. But even the cleanest and clearest commercial yeast is not, in my opinion, going to quite match the complexity that comes with using indigenous yeasts. And most commercial yeasts these days are not engineered (or selected if you prefer the term) for their transparency, but rather to deliver specific flavor or aromatic spectrums in the wine, or more and more often, to be able to survive at higher levels of alcohol before dying off and ending the fermentation. It used to be that no yeasts could survive in solutions with alcohol above fifteen or so percent, but when you are trying to make a black-purple wine so that you can buy a new, black-purple Mercedes SUV, you need a “Rambo” yeast to do the job- one that can keep the fermentation going to sixteen and a half or seventeen percent. Otherwise, the winemaker is going to end up with more residual sugar than he or she desired (one of the dirty little secrets of the high octane school is that they are always looking for some residual sugar in their ostensibly “dry” wines), which may or may not effect which model of Mercedes they can buy when the new scores come out.

One of the questions that he asked me is whether Yellow Tail is a “gateway” wine. In case somehow the ten-million case wine brand from Australia had escaped your attention, they are now following up a billboard and print ad campaign with a $6 million campaign on teevee (find this wine).

With such scale, the brand owners must source from a wide area; indeed, the geographic origin of the wine is simply stated as “South Eastern Australia,” a vast area that encompasses virtually all Australian vineyards. With such a wide reach and an effort at consistency across bottles and vintages, the wine defies what many of us wine geeks look for in wine, which is individuality and the expression of where the grapes are grown.

So will people come to wine through Yellow Tail and then move on to more expressive wines? In the interview I said that it is a “gateway” wine. Having people reach for wine of any sort will hopefully lead them to enjoy the fruits of the vine at first and then lead some more curious to explore wines from other, more specific, places.

What do you think?