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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Australia produces as many ordinary politicians as ordinary wines, but at least there are some colourful characters among them. In this post, we showcase the more interesting ones.

Tony Abbott vintage 2001 is an old Hunter Semillon from a difficult vintage. Most Hunter Semillons start life lean and mean with a strong acid grip, but turn into tasty gems with aromas of buttered toast and honey over the years. Abbott 2001 has failed to develop that way; in fact it has never changed. It has always lacked charm and finesse; the nose is closed, the taste is blunt and the style  is old-fashioned. Due to the large quantities made, the wine keeps popping up in the bargain bins.

Peta Credlin 2013 was a fortified wine that burst onto the scene last year and forced a number of judges to recalibrate their reference points. Some argued that the winemaker was exerting too much influence on the show system. As it happened, the wine soon turned volatile and lost support from both judges and consumers. Those who kept bottles in the hope that they’d recover report that the wine is just turning more bitter with age.

Malcolm Turnbull 2009 reminds us of a top flight Bordeaux, perhaps a Pauillac in the style of Lafite-Rothschild. The Cabernet-dominant wine is polished and stylish, with elegant dark fruits, expensive oak treatment and fine-grained tannins. Sadly Turnbull doesn’t look like fulfilling its early promise, looking more like vin ordinaire of late. Wine lovers who paid a high price for this vintage are asking for their money back.

Bill Shorten 2016 is a noticeable improvement on previous vintages, which were light and fluffy bistro reds produced by students at a TAFE college in Sydney’s outer west. With a professional winemaking team on board, the 2016 looks like a more serious wine but it still lacks the authority and gravitas of the best Australian reds. Some argue that the 2016 hasn’t hit its stride yet; only time will tell.

The Julie Bishop 2015 is one of those steely, austere Rieslings coming out of the Great Southern region of Western Australia. The wine has plenty of style and youthful energy, though the blue tint may put a few people off, and the acid backbone may be too much for some. Best drunk with boiled chicken, skin off.

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This week, I had a chance to experience what wine judges do so often: work my way through almost 200 wines. Not blind, mind you, but still an experience that tests your judgement and your stamina. When I walked into Pernod Ricard’s clinical tasting room, Huon Hooke, Rob Geddes and Ray Jordan were already sniffing wines and typing notes on their laptops.

At Best Wines Under $20, we taste a carefully selected number of wines over several days, with and without food. It’s a lot easier when you can take your leisure, and get some input from friends and family. It’s very different when you’re confronted with wall-to-wall wines all around the room, and a table in the middle.

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The Way We Were

The Coonawarra reds I remember from the sixties and seventies were delicate creatures, much as Bordeaux reds were in those days, and you often wished for a little more fruit and body.

Today it’s hard to find Cabernets or Cabernet blends from Coonawarra that aren’t 14.5% alcohol or more, even in coolish years like 2010 and 2012. Overripe, jammy, extracted reds that assault your senses have become the norm, as have alcohol levels of 14.5 to 15%. Some of Doug Bowen’s reds come to mind – his 2013 Shiraz is 15.5% – and Brand’s Blockers Cabernets often run close to 15%. Chunky, clunky, clumsy wines from an area that once made the most elegant reds in Australia. What happened?

The Parker Paradigm

The American wine writer who makes and breaks reputations at will developed a great fondness for the big ripe reds made in South Australia and Victoria. In the late nineties, he gave a 1996 Chris Ringland Shiraz 100 out of 100 points and called it ‘arguably the greatest Shiraz made in Australia … this viscous, black/purple-colored wine represents the essence of both wine and Shiraz … it is akin to a dry vintage port.’ It was 15.3%.

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No Women among Dan Murphy’s list of local heroes

I exaggerate: Debbie Lauritz from Cumulus gets a mention in the 14-page winery special of the latest Dan Murphy’s April Buyers Guide, but she’s the sole exception. We can be sure that the lift-out’s main purpose is to promote wines that DM sells, so we can’t expect this to be an objective list. Nor do we know if wineries have to pay for their listings in these guides as they do in the guides that accompany the Halliday magazine. That said, the male domination of this list is a breathtaking oversight, and I thank subscriber Helen P for drawing my attention to it.

Louisa Rose, Vanya Cullen and Virginia Wilcox

Whatever the parameters, any list of Australia’s best winemakers is worthless unless it acknowledges the remarkable achievements of winemakers like Louisa Rose at Hill-Smith Family Vineyards. Louisa makes one of Australia’s great Rieslings and has pioneered new grape varieties down under, such as Viognier, and seen that venture through to a mature range of wines made from that variety.

When l asked my search engine about  Australia’s Top Winemakers, Louisa came up at the top of a GoodFood list of top winemakers that reflects the views of 100 of their peers. Vanya Cullen of Cullen Wines is also on that list, most likely for taking her parents’ dream to the next level and establishing the Cullen name as an icon along Australia’s most sought after wines.

Virginia Wilcox at Vasse Felix is another quiet achiever who was voted  Winemaker of the Year at Gourmet Traveller Wine a couple of years ago. It surprised me that Sue Hodder of Wynns Coonawarra wasn’t on Good Food’s top 10 list, along with her colleague Sarah Pidgeon, given the heroic work thay’ve done at Wynns Coonawarra. Other great winemakers of the tender gender are Kerri Thompson of KT Wines, Sue Bell of Bellwether Wines, Clare Halloran at Tarrawarra, Rose Kentish at Ulithorne and Tash Mooney.

Sue Hodder, Tash Mooney and Clare Halloran

In 2000, Tash Mooney’s E&E Black Pepper Shiraz was awarded ‘Best Red Wine in the World’ at the IWC show in London. In 2005, she started her own business, Natasha Mooney Wine Architect. She now consults to wineries as different as Sidewood Estate in the Adelaide Hills and Mountadam in Eden Valley.

Since I work mainly at the consumer end of the wine market, I don’t know as many winemakers as other wine writers. Please write to me with any winemakers’ names that deserve inclusion here, at Kim@bestwinesunder$20.com.au. And please write to Dan Murphy’s and make them see the shocking bias in their publication.

Checking the wine press on this issue, I found 3 interesting articles:

Wineglass ceiling: how women still struggle for share of the action by Max Allen. The title tells you about the angle of the piece.

Women in wine are pushing open the cellar door by Inga Ting says: ‘More women are working in the Australian wine industry than ever before, but the playing field isn’t even yet.’

National survey reveals damning state of gender equality in the Australian wine industry is from Winetitles Media, and the title is more than a clue to the state of affairs.

More Recent Blog Posts

Kim

When you read the tourist brochures, you get the impression that Margaret River is a paradise which serves up wonderful wine and food and great surfing in a picturesque landscape surrounded by the most pristine ocean you’ve ever seen. The Mediterranean climate is said to be perfect for making great wine, and so it goes.

The reality isn’t quite as blissful. For one thing, the climate around Karridale in the south of Margaret River is a fair bit cooler than that around Willyabrup in the north, and late ripening varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon can have trouble getting there. Between these two areas, we have micro-climates that are similar to the Medoc, St Emilion and Pomerol in Bordeaux. It sounds like Cabernet and Merlot country, and it is, but it’s just as good for whites. Here’s the short story on the Margaret River sub-regions.

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Wine companies are getting mean with samples, so my friends in the industry tell me. Yes, I understand why wine companies would feel that way. They used to send samples to a handful of reviewers and wine magazines and, now that the internet has spawned dozens of wine bloggers, the list has grown and so has the cost of distribution. We can’t blame them for closing the gate on some reviewers.

For Best Wines Under $20, samples have been a problem from the word go. Many wine companies don’t want you to know where to buy their wines at bargain prices. Others don’t fancy any association with a site that is focused on the value end of the market. When I ask wine companies for samples, I often get this response: we don’t make wines under $20. I give them half a dozen links to their $25 or $30 wines selling for $15 to $20, and half the time that’s the end of the conversation.

It’s a tough world out there

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Please Note: We use real scores, not Halliday scores.

Taster’s Choice Clare Valley Riesling 2015 – $8.50 at Dan M’s. This wine won a gold medal (95 points) in the Canberra International Riesling Challenge late last year. It’s a straightforward, full-flavoured aromatic white at bargain price but I can’t see a gold medal here. 90 points

Richland Pinot Grigio 2015 – $9 at OurCellar. Good Pinot Grigio, with apples and pears that aren’t too ripe or too green, supported by a lovely fine acid. Everything’s in perfect balance here, and the wine is drinking well. 90 points, bargain.

Miamup Estate Chardonnay 2014 – $10 at Kemenys.  As bright as a summer’s day, full of gleaming energy and pristine fruit – white peaches and melons – full-flavoured, with a lick of oak adding a creamy texture. Gorgeous wine, off the scale on drinkability. 93 points. Back up the truck.

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It needs the Defiance of Guaranteed Success, says Wine Spectator

‘You know what really makes a wine fine?’ asks Matt Kamer in Wine Spectator, and answers: ‘The root is: It’s not a sure thing.’ He adds that he has long seen ‘finesse and nuance and harmony, along with layers and even a sense of surprise (never mind somewhereness),’ and complexity and originality, as elements that make a wine ‘fine’.

Somewhereness? Yes, it seems Matt is fond of inventing words. Anyhow, he argues that these qualities are the results, rather than the source which is wine ‘not being a sure thing. Fine wine comes from a defiance of guaranteed success,’ he explains, and insists that this is true everywhere in the world regardless of grape variety or region.

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