Youth can be Raw and Brash

This week, I had a group of South Australian Shiraz reds to taste and review, and what struck me was the difference a year or two in bottle makes. Of course, this is not news, but sometimes an illustration underscores the validity of a well-known idea.

The 2015s were simply not ready to be let loose on the world, and they were $20 reds from Head Wines and Wirra Wirra. A 2014 Bremerton Selkirk Shiraz showed better (and scored higher) simply because it had a chance to settle down for another year. The 2013 Yangarra was more settle again.

Why are wineries releasing 18-month-old reds? I can understand a small operator like Alex Head doing this, but Wirra Wirra should have enough in reserve to keep the reds a bit longer. The Church Block 2014 is a case in point: it needs more time for the various components to make peace with each other.

Maturity is Satisfying

We have a choice, that’s the good news. Lots of wineries have already released 2015 reds and 2016 whites, but we also have wineries like Mitchell in the Clare which releases its reds up to 8 years old. You can buy the Cabernet 2008 at Dan M’s, or the Semillon 2013 at Kemenys.  There are also wine merchants with good stocks of older wines, and then there are the cellar releases from Dan M. The other good news is that most of these older wines are no dearer than their younger counterparts.

Here’s a shortlist of good examples:

Hidden Label Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 – $10. This is Wynns The Siding Cabernet

Hidden Label Central Victoria Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 – $14 at Kemenys. This is Tahbilk Cabernet under a Hidden Label

Penfolds Thomas Hyland Shiraz 2012 – $15 at Kemenys

Wirra Wirra Church Block Cabernet Blend 2013 – $15 at WSD. IMHO a better wine than the 2014

Mojo by Rockbare Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 – $16 at Kemenys

OLeary Walker Shiraz 2013 – $18 at WSD

Hidden Label Langhorne Creek Cabernet Malbec 2012 – $19 at Kemenys. Bleasdale Frank Potts Cabernet Blend under a Hidden Label

Leasingham Bin 56 Cabernet Malbec 2010 – $19 at Kemenys

Hewitson Miss Harry Dry Grown GSM 2012 – $20 at WSD

Mildara Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 – $20 at Dan M’s

Sons Of Eden Sons of Eden Pumpa Cabernet Shiraz 2013 – $21 at Winelistaustralia (WineSellersDirect and Winelistaustralia are both owned by the di Pietro family in Melbourne).

Yalumba The Cigar Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 – $22 at Jim’s Cellars

Rosily The Cartrographer 2012 – $23 at the winery

Alpha Crucis Titan Shiraz 2010 – $24 at Kemenys

Wynns Coonawarra Cellar Release Black Label Cabernet Sauvignon 2006 – $40 at Winesellersdirect.

So here is another advantage we offer at Best Wines Under $20: most wine review sites review only the latest releases, often so late that you won’t yet see them in the shops which wastes time and cause frustration. We tell you where to find older gems that for reasons beyond our ken are still in stock somewhere.

Kim

‘The launch of The Penfolds Collection has become a carefully stage-managed affair,’ Jancis Robinson tells us. These days, Peter Gago has become Penfolds’ chief promoter, flying round the world with the latest wares in his luggage. To what extent he still has a hand in making the wines is anybody’s guess.

As usual, Grange leads the charge this year with a new price of $850 a bottle. Clearly, Peter Gago and his masters want to push the famous Aussie red up to 4 figures. 2012 was a good vintage in South Australia, and the Grange from this vintage is said to be top notch. Huon Hooke gives it 98 points, and he’s a pretty hard marker.

Peter Gago is fond of telling the punters that they’ll never lose when they invest in Grange, which is absolute rubbish as we show in our piece Penfolds Grange – rich wine, poor investment. Virtually all Granges back to 1966 sell at auction for much less than $850, including the best Grange I’ve tasted: the 1966, which I gave 100 points to a few years ago when it was at its peak.

The Ugly Side of the Grange Coin

Yes, it’s so ugly that Perth wine merchant Vince Salpietro of Grand Cru Cellars emptied 2 bottles of the 2011 on the floor of his wine cellar last year, and took out a a half-page advertisement in The West Australian newspaper telling Penfolds that their $750 asking price for the 2011 Grange was an insult, given the poor quality of the 2011 vintage.

In view of the enormous margins Penfolds makes on Grange, you’d expect them to take a leaf out of the book of top Bordeaux chateaux which declassify the fruit of a bad vintage to their second labels. If the vintage is really bad, they’ll just sell it to the local merchants who’ll bottle it under their own label as Bordeaux Superior.

That Penfolds didn’t do this with a wine most reviewers scored in the low nineties shows TWE’s insatiable greed. That they got away with it shows how gullible Grange collectors are, but then Grange hasn’t been about wine for many years. It’s about luxury goods, and that market has little to do with the wine in the bottle.

Poor Man’s Grange is heading for $100

That’s what the old Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz used to be called when it was affordable. I remember buying the ’96 for less than $20 a bottle; now the RRP is $90. Same for the Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon and the Bin 150 Marananga Shiraz. Even the humble Kalimna Shiraz, which comes from everywhere in South Australia except Kalimna, now has an RRP of $45.

Climbing up the price ladder, we find St Henri at $100, and the RWT Shiraz up at $200. The elusive Bin 707 is now $500, clearly destined for superstardom – Gago has taken to calling it ‘our Grange Cabernet’. For reasons not stated, there’s no Bin 169 Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon in the 2016 collection. I suspect it went into the Bin 707, which is much more profitable.

Same Same

At a Penfolds collection lunch a couple of years ago, the overwhelming impression I came away with was the great similarity of the reds. They all offer rich, even voluptuous fruit, bright and polished, supported by classy oak treatment. It’s obvious that the more expensive wines get more expensive treatment, so they show more polish, more intensity and more oak. The other overriding impression was that all the reds were too big.

For those who don’t mind spending $100 on a bottle of wine, the pick this year may be the Reserve Bin A Adelaide Hills Chardonnay 2015, which is as modern as Aussie chardy gets. The fruit is sourced from cool climate sites across eastern Australia, and the wine gets the full treatment. Huon Hooke calls the 2015 ‘an outstanding vintage of this wine, with the funky, wild-ferment characteristics in full expression as usual, but I fancy the wine is better balanced than ever.’

For those who pay attention to these things, the 2015 Reserve Bin A won two trophies at Royal Adelaide Wine Show, and topped the 2016 James Halliday Chardonnay Challenge (which has as much to do with Halliday as the Bin 28 Kalimna has with Kalimna).

Penfolds – Australia’s Ambassador?

‘Big company ownership and tall poppy syndrome,’ writes Tyson Stelzer, ‘not to mention ever spiralling prices, have triggered Penfolds grumbles among Australian devotees and wine trade alike, but the fact remains, no company is contributing more to the global standing of Australian wine right now than Penfolds.’

What a pile of rubbish: TWE promotes Penfolds. TWE doesn’t promote Australian wine regions. Most Penfolds wines are blends of material from different wine regions. Consumers who’re introduced to Penfolds learn almost nothing about Australian wine regions or styles, yet learn lots about Penfolds.  Tyson Stelzer’s article is headed ‘The Truth about Penfolds,’ just to make it more dubious. A couple of years ago, I wrote that he sounded like Penfolds’ PR agency; now he sounds like he is Penfolds’ PR agency.

The final proof of Penfolds’ boundless greed is the way it exploits its hero Max Schubert, and the rubbish it puts his name on. Greed is good, and Bad Taste is Better.  Shame on you, Penfolds.

Kim

Serious Sommeliers

OK, I’m a simple soul. I love simple food that’s tasty, and wine that doesn’t pretend to be anything but wine. Occasionally we visit a trendy wine bar in town, where sommeliers practice their solemn craft in serious outfits that laugh at their silly haircuts, beards and tattoos.

What do you have for us today? A Vin Jaune from some unknown corner of the French Jura? A Clay Amphora wine from Georgia perhaps? Or just a plain old Teraldego from a boutique in the Northern Territory on the edge of Kakadu? How much for a glass? And it’s not even half full?

‘Their job has no English word,’ says Dom Knight in Daily Life, ’the wine-snob industry prefers just to use the French term, which I would argue speaks volumes about their profession.’ Here’s his advice:

‘Whenever I’m confronted by a sommelier in future, I shall fix them with my most intimidating gaze, and say “Everyone says you should just order the second cheapest bottle on the menu. But I’m a bit of a connoisseur in these matters, so why don’t you bring me the third-cheapest?” ‘

Master Sommeliers 

Image Source: Wine Searcher

Ron Washam, the satirist known as the Hosemaster of Wine, wrote about a scandal that rocked the fine dining world of New York last year, ‘a cheating scandal run by a now disgraced Master Sommelier, as if there were any other kind. The wine world moves on, unconcerned with ethics and truth, as well it should. Ethics and truth are Roundup for the wine business. You don’t want to use them liberally, or at all, they pretty much destroy the ecosystem.’ 

The New Yorker tells us that ‘the chairman of the Court of Master Sommeliers (which administers the Master Sommelier exam) announced, over raised glasses of champagne, that a record twenty-four candidates had passed.’ Five weeks later, the court revealed that one of the test’s supervisors, a Master Sommelier, had leaked details about the blind tasting to an unknown number of examinees. The leaker was stripped of his Master title, and 23 newly anointed Master Sommeliers were stripped of their titles.

‘The revelation of deceit in fine wine’s most sacrosanct circle has rattled the tight-knit world of sommeliers,’ reports the New Yorker, ‘who pride themselves on presenting a decorous, unflappable face to those outside their ranks. Sommeliers have entered a period of mourning for their defrocked colleagues. (“Friday tasting group felt a little heavy this morning,” one wrote on Instagram.) … Master status comes with the industry’s top bragging rights, plus a hefty raise. But for many sommeliers it is an honor imbued with almost spiritual significance—the oenological equivalent of running a marathon, winning an Oscar, and being canonized, all rolled into one. “For some people,” one sommelier told me, “this test is life.”

Trendy Trattorias

Years ago, before sommeliers became a guild of masters in down under eateries, we were meeting some friends over in Bondi, so I asked a wine friend for a restaurant recommendation. Sean’s Panorama, he said without hesitation. We made a booking and found a hole-in-the-wall  place with the menu spread over various wooden slabs up near the ceiling, tiny tables with tinier stools, and we were all squashed together like passengers on a peak hour bus.

The food was awful, conversation was impossible, and I can’t remember the wine we had. We were embarrassed, our friends were gracious to a fault.

My good friend Jeffrey put it better than I could, when I shared the experience with him recently. He said: ‘Oh, Sean’s lovely panorama over at Bondai! Yes, a friend took me there once, years ago. I had a terrific time … I looked around, saw the trendy folk all around, got thoroughly pissed to antidote my trauma, and had a lovely time. Cockroaches there too. Think I even ate one … and the bastards charged me for it. Loved the wine I bought.’

Hi Guys!

Jeffrey shared a more recent experience at BENTLEY, – ‘those wankers. Gee they pissed me off.’

I can only add that Jeffrey is one of the most polite and gentle men I know. He is also kind, and this is what he said to me in a recent email:

‘My dear Kim,

You are the only clear breath of practicality in a storm of farts, in today’s world of wine & food. I don’t get these open factory trendy inner city – fringe suburb wine bar restaurants. You would have to keep the rats down with a whip!  Rats arm wrestling with cockroaches over dropped crumbs.

The food is too trendy bullshit (just reading what’s in a dish makes me impotent) and the wine is equal in the disappointment – at exhorted prices.  A glass of Nose-bleed Rose made from ‘non irrigated old vine, organic, non sulphur added natural wines’ that smell of rancid jock-straps; ‘pan seared rooster- cock served with jus on blinis, tapas’ – “that will be $50.00 x two please sir!” Oh, forget “Sir” it’s “Guys!!!”

“Hi Guys” is the only term of greeting obnoxious young bearded trend-oids know how to address the collective male/female diners in these trendy places now … SPARE ME FROM F—ING “HI GUYS!!!”

I can’t improve on Jeffrey’s take, but here’s a pictorial review from Adventures with a Gourmand that will fill in more blanks.

Avagreatweekend, guys.

Kim

A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine. Brillat-Savarin

Can you imagine the French or the Italians sitting down to a meal without wine? No? So how come Aussies do? We watch food shows like MKR from time to time, and are often surprised that wine plays no role in the lives of people who are great cooks and love good food. How do we know?

Black wine glasses are a dead giveaway, aren’t they? You can see Pete Evans staring at them in disbelief, can’t you?

I can’t believe that serious foodies deprive themselves of the extra pleasure that the right wine contributes to a great meal. On the reverse side of that coin, I don’t know any wine lovers who don’t care about the food they eat.

When the Experts Get it Wrong

That spells serious trouble, because they really should know better. Here’s a Wine pairings for chicken list from US magazine Wine & Food:

• Sautéed Chicken with Olives, Capers and Roasted Lemons – Rosato
• Herb-and-Lemon-Roasted Chicken – a crisp, citrusy Sauvignon Blanc
• Chicken and Cheese Enchiladas Verdes – a spicy, dark-fruited Malbec
• Chicken Breasts with Potatoes and Mashed Peas – a dry white sparkling wine
• Basque Chicken with Sweet Peppers and Tomatoes – a red with bright flavours and soft tannins
• Chicken Chow Mein – a fruity, sparking wine, like a Prosecco
• Pan-Seared Chicken Breasts with Jamaican Curry – a low-alcohol, off-dry Riesling
• Chicken Sofrito, a rosé sparkling wine
• Chicken with Slow-Roasted Tomatoes and Cheesy Grits – a rosé sparkling wine
• Mexican Chicken Pozole Verde – a rich but unoaked white wine such as an Alsace Pinot Gris
• Thai Chicken Stew with Potato-Chive Dumplings – a lemon appley Chardonnay.

You see what I mean? Herb and Lemon roasted chicken and crisp Sauvignon Blanc? Chicken and Cheese Enchiladas Verdes with a dark-fruited Malbec? Thai Chicken Stew with Potato-Chive Dumplings with a lemon appley Chardonnay? And the only time Riesling gets a look-in is with a Jamaican curry? I’d probably drink beer with that dish.

For almost all of the above, a full-flavoured, dry Riesling of the style made in Oz and Alsace is the best fit. There is a case for red wine with chicken in a red wine or tomato sauce, such as Chicken Cacciatore or Coq-au-Vine, but I’d pick a light red like a Beaujolais or Pinot Noir or a basic Montepulciano. I rest my case.

It’s Pretty Simple Really. There are 3 simple ways to match Food and Wine: Like & Like, Contrast and the Unexpected.

Like & Like

This is pretty simple, self-evident even – like white wine with white meats and red with red:

Contrast & Unexpected

A lot of Asian food is cooked in sticky, often slightly sweet sauces, and the common pairing is off-dry whites (Like & Like). IMHO, contrast works better here. Also, some foods just don’t go with wine and you’re better off drinking beer with them.

The unexpected pairings include cheeses, which most people would match up with red wine when old whites work much better.

Please Don’t Follow these Rules Blindly

With Pizza and Pasta, match the wine to the main ingredient, i.e. seafood or salami, white or red. Dishes like Paella can be tricky to match because we may have seafood mixed with chicken and chorizos. Here I’d suggest a middle course: a big Chardonnay or a white Rhone style – Marsanne, Roussanne, Viognier – with a bit of age. That’s also the best option with a Salade Niçoise. 

These subtleties can make a big difference. Recently, we had rack of lamb with a rich Barossa Shiraz which was all we had handy other than a Pinot Noir which would’ve been too subtle. The chunky Shiraz overpowered the lamb, and a medium-bodied Cabernet blend or straight Cabernet would’ve been a much better match.

Kim

What do you do when you can’t unscrew the inscrutable?

You become a hacker!

You’re enjoying dinner with friends; they’ve done the cooking, your job was to bring the wine. You’ve brought a Yealands Single Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc 2015 to go with the Snapper pie. Lovely savvy, one of our favourites.

Only one tiny problem: I can’t get the screw cap off. We found that hard before with this particular wine, so we look for the oyster knife to cut deeper into the separation between cap and neck piece. No luck this time.

We try a moist, grippy cloth. Still no luck; the screwcap won’t budge. We start looking for pliers, but the ones in our friends’ kitchen aren’t big enough. This is becoming tedious. The only option left is to hack the screw cap, which of course is metal.

Eventually, we work the old corkscrew through it, and we use the oyster knife to widen the opening. The screw cap still won’t budge, but at least we can pour the wine.

The wine was lovely, and so was the Snapper pie.

I also brought a 1993 Wendouree Shiraz Mataro which was a great red in perfect condition, opened at the peak of its long career. The cork had broken in half but I got it all with the old Ah-So two pronged opener. It’s much better at getting fragile old corks out of bottles than any corkscrew but it takes practice to get the hang of it.

As a footnote, I keep meeting wine lovers who think the Stelvin cap has solved all the old problems that can befall wine. That’s not so: the only problem the cap solves is that of cork taint, which was fairly common in the wines of the nineties. All the other problems are still with us, so we still strike wines that are in poor health or off. Just thought I’d add that caution. And keep your sturdy old corkscrew handy for a bit longer.

Kim

Tuscany is not where the Value is

When you focus on a special area in the wine business, it’s easy to lose the big picture. Put another way, how can you follow the whole story when you’ve only got a few chapters? That’s why I go to tastings that keep the broader horizons open, either because there are more expensive wines to compare with the samples I drink mostly, or because they’re from another part of the world. Or both, as in this case.

I decided long ago that certain wine areas in Europe had built a reputation for their wines that was matched by their prices but not by the content of the bottles. Tuscany has been one of those since all things Tuscan had become the subjects of bestsellers these last three decades. Tonight was a confirmation that nothing has changed: the labels are exotic and the prices are in the same territory, while the quality lagged way behind.

The Chiantis were from 2012, 2013 and 2014, cost between $25 and $65 yet I didn’t score a single one more than 91 points. I liked the elegance and finesse but many of these wines simply lacked depth and real flavour.  The rest of the wines came from Montepulciano, Montalcino and Toscana, and I found a couple of 93 point wines among them.

I don’t see how the GTW panel came up with 95 point scores, not many to be sure. I only scored a couple of wines at 93, and they were Col d’Orcia 2012 and Fuliigni Ginesttreto 2013 from the Rosso de Montalcino appellation. A bit more Italian charm, and a bit more to them , but hey cost $49 and $62 each. I liked the Podere 414 Morellinin di Scansano 2013 for its rustic charm but $42 for  92 point wine?

Tuscany is not where the value is in Italy but some of the labels are pretty, aren’t they? I’m looking forward to the The Italian Wine + Food Festival in Sydney on Saturday August 21^st, where I’ll be searching out wines that are better value. We’ve recommended Puglia at the heel of the boot that is Italy as the region where the value is in Italian wines and Sicily south from there, and Lange in the north.

We can buy Lucarelli Primitivo and Negramaro reds from Puglia for $14 a bottle, and the Pico Maccario Barbera D’Asti DOCG and Maretti reds from Lange for around $20. Madeline from the Wine Folly suggests Puglia and Lange as regions for value reds, and recommends Aglianico from Basilicata and Campania, and Nero d’Avola from Sicily.

At the bargain end, we have the Gran Sasso and  Vendetta whites and reds, polished commercial styles that drink well but lack real character. I think the Spaniards do these wines better on the whole, but that’s another story. The take-away from the tasting for was that these reds weren’t heavy or heady like Aussie brutes, and left the taster relatively intact.

Here’s an Introduction to Italian Wine from Nicks, if you want to get your head around the basics. And here’s the list of wines from the current issue of Gourmet Traveller Wine.

Kim

On Tuesday morning August 9, Fran Kelly did a segment on this thorny topic. Interviewees included the Grand Old Man of Australian Wine, Huon Hooke, Tony Keys and yours truly.

Grab the 6 minute podcast on ABC RN Breakfast

I don’t have much to add to this issue, except that the ABC’s lawyers sanitized the piece to prevent libel claims, but there were 3 other claims by James Halliday that puzzled me:

1. That it was only people in the industry complaining, and that consumers have not
2. That his scores are higher these days because we make better wines
3. That inflated scores aren’t a problem as long as they’re consistent in the reviewer’s world.

Point 1 is most likely valid, except that some of you have told me that you stopped paying attention to Halliday’s scores years ago. A wine friend of mine said to me not long ago: Halliday’s scores might be a bit OTT but he never recommends a bad wine. That’s generally true, but I’ve had plenty of really ordinary wines James gave 94 points to. Most punters wouldn’t know if a wine is ordinary or not. I have a wine-loving friend who thinks McGuigan’s $6 black label Merlot is manna from heaven.

Point 2, Halliday’s scores going up because we make better wines is a joke. We make oceans of ordinary wine, more than we used to in the days when little wine was made and consumed by enthusiasts (fifties & sixties).  What we are better at these days is making wines for early consumption, fruit-driven wines that are more approachable, easier on the gums when young.

Point 3 is nonsense and ignores the fact that Halliday has skewed the system and is misleading consumers into thinking they’re getting outstanding wine when in fact it’s just a good or fair wine.

Kim

‘If a wine didn’t make you retch, it got a Commended.’

I just finished an interview with ABC’s Radio National for a program they’re making on this issue that will go to air via Fran Kelly’s breakfast program next week, under the title Australian wine industry questions integrity of wine ratings.

In preparation, I pulled a bunch of insights together from the posts I’ve penned on this subject over the last couple of years. The short story is that wine reviews and wine shows have become Big Business, since serious money has turned the once genteel art of wine writing into a huge sham. The last 15 years have seen inflated scores become common currency in the wine business, in the UK, the US and Australia.

Uncommon Generosity

In 2015, the Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA) and the International Wine Competition (IWC) judged some 30,000 wines between them and handed out close to 20,000 awards (trophies, medals and commendations).

In her article The truth about wine awards: why medals don’t mean great bottles, Daily Telegraph (UK) wine writer Victoria Moore says: ‘Gold, silver, bronze and commended awards do little to help consumers, but add millions to organisers’ coffers.’ She adds that the statistics show ‘an all-shall-have-prizes pass rate that makes complete mugs of trusting drinkers like me and you.’

In case the numbers don’t make the scam clear enough, she quotes a couple of judges who say things like ‘if a wine didn’t make you retch, it got a commended.’ On Twitter, Moore summed it up this way: ‘Congratulations to all 9,694 wines given an award by the IWC this year. Did anyone fail to get a sticker of some sort?’

Follow the Money

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Sticker Shock or Sticker Scam?

(This is an updated version of an earlier post)

I always read the mailer from Bert Werden at Winestar with interest. I can’t remember a Tuesday when it didn’t start with a 95 or 96 point Halliday sub-$20 bargain. Why does Bert start his mailer like that every week? Because it sells wine.

As I’ve written elsewhere, Halliday scores have become bankable currency that is more valuable to wine companies than major show trophies. More and more retailers now advertise secret deals purely on the basis of Halliday’s scores because they sell wine. Punters fall for these scams.

Yes, let’s call it for what it is: a scam. Wine companies and retailers pay for those Halliday stickers and the right to cite his rave reviews, just as they do for medal stickers from the big shows. In that post I wrote that the medal tally from the Decanter World Wine Awards and the International Wine Challenge 2015 was staggering: 11,152 out of some 16,000 entries for the DWWA, and a similar number for the IWC – in other words: 2 out of 3 wines scored medals.

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What’s a Grand Cru?

The top wine producing areas of France classify their vineyard areas according to the quality of wine they have historically produced, the nature of their soils, their aspects and more. These classifications are always the subject of lively debate but they tend to stand the test of time, and so it is in Champagne.

The capital of the Champagne region is Epernay, which lies about 60km north-east of Paris. Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, to give the area its full name, lies about 13km south of Epernay in the heart of the Côte de Blancs. This is Chardonnay country, and the style is Blanc de Blancs: wines made from Chardonnay alone rather than from Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier.

Mesnil-sur-Oger is one of the great crus in this grand cru area, and produces two of the most famous and exclusive champagnes:

• The House of Salon makes a tiny 50,000 bottles a year from over 40-year-old vines. Only one wine is made: Salon S Cuvée Blanc de Blancs, and it’s a vintage champagne (made from single years rather than a blend of years). That means Salon only produces the S Cuvée in good years. In the 100 years of itrs existence, the house has released just 37 vintages under the Salon label. The cost of a single bottle is A$800 or more.

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19023286

• The House of Krug makes a wine called Clos de Mesnil from an ancient walled 17th century vineyard, the most exalted Chardonnay sparkling plot on earth which makes the most expensive wine at around A$1500 a bottle. The house is part of LVMH – Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the French luxury goods conglomerate.

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