Tough Times in the Oz Wine Industry No.1

This is an email I received from the Chief Winemaker at the Hunter Valley's iconic Mount Pleasant winery. It has a cellar door that's in my TOP 5 to visit. Spectacular wines at very reasonable prices .  Living so close we've visited the Hunter three times over the last few months showing visiting family and friends around. So we've experienced the smoke and witnessed the struggling vines. On top of all that the parent company McWilliams recently went into receivership.  "As most of you would be very aware, Australia has been gripped by the worst bushfires in living memory. Many parts of Australia have suffered, with people losing their homes, their livelihoods and worse still, the loss of life. This is an absolute tragedy for all of those affected, and one which we offer our sincerest sympathies and condolences. Here in the Hunter, we were surrounded by bushfire, initially from the fires near Taree, and then closer to home with the Brokenback ranges ablaze with close to 1,000,000 hectares burnt out. With these fires smoke blanketed much of the region for nearly 3 months. Only recently have we begun to see clear skies and some much needed rain. The smoke that covered the region has not been great. Constant exposure over a period can result in the vines absorbing these compounds, which bind to the sugar molecules which are released upon fermentation. We have sent many samples off for testing with Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI), Vintessential Laboratories and we had installed measurement devices in our Lovedale vineyard courtesy of LaTrobe University. We have also been conducting micro ferments in our lab, taking representative samples of many of our blocks and fermenting them to see if we could detect taint in the fruit before picking. With all the knowledge we have gathered through laboratory and sensory analysis of our Estate, Rosehill and Lovedale Vineyards, coupled with the third-party test results we have recieved,  the difficult decision to not pick any grapes for Vintage 2020 has been made. This painstaking choice was not made lightly. If we were to pick these grapes and make wine from them, we could not guarantee the wine to be of the highest quality and of the standards we set ourselves. We have nearly a century of history at Mount Pleasant and vines almost 140 years old, and with this comes the responsibility to ensure that we uphold the highest integrity when making wine for you. We will not compromise on quality or take any unnecessary risks when it comes to this. Grape tests have been carried out across the whole of the Hunter Valley. While we are unsure how other producers have been affected, there are likely scenarios where there are clean grapes in other pockets of the region. We hopeful that other vineyards have been more fortunate and not have seen the levels of exposure our vineyards have.  We look forward to seeing you in the future and trust our relationships will only strengthen with this over the coming years. Please do not hesitate to contact our team if you have any questions." - Adrian Sparks, Chief Winemaker Add us to your address book

When is half price the real price?

About now I reckon with these two Eaglehawk reds.

I wandered into the Liquorland store at Budgewoi last week and noticed they had the Eaglehawk range at a mere $5. HALF PRICE the signage screamed! I resisted the temptation  to see which price the quality of the wines really warranted. I yielded on Sunday when I paid a visit to Dan Woolworths in Bankstown [I get around, you know] and saw them at $4.99.

My decision was rewarded at the checkout when I said “There appears to be a price war on Eaglehawk”. She replied, with commendable corporate loyalty that someone had it at $5 and as always her company beat it. “We always do” she emphasised with eyes sparkling with pride. It was impossible not to respond to her enthusiasm “Yes, you SMASHED it” thinking how fortunate I paid by card for that two cent savings. 

And the wines ………….

The two I purchased were both 2018, both reedy thin and verging on transparent. One was a Shiraz, the other a Merlot. At least that's what the labels said. I suspect most cask reds offer far better quality and certainly better value.

How anyone would pay $10 for these in today's market is beyond me. Even $5 is hard to justify.

It was a different world in 1977

In their second anniversay issue Wine and Spirit Buying Guide magazine reviewed red wine offered in casks and flagons. This was the time when the newly invented "bag in a box"was still struggling with problems of leaking and oxidisation.
The panel tasted 110 wines - 74 flagons and 36 casks.
They culled this down to just 30 flagons and just 9 casks that they considered worthy of reviewing.

The top wines were: Penfolds Rose, Orlando Coolabah Burgundy, dÁrenberg Dry Red  and Tyrrells Hunter River Dry Red flagons along with the Orlando Coolabah Rougolais cask. It was the time when it was sadly acceptable to label Australian wines claret and burgundy while      shiraz was regularly called Hermitage



I love their conclusion
"The moral seems to be - buy casks for everyday drinking but buy carefully, and buy flagons whenever the situation allows"

No wonder the French got upset

We spent a week in 2018 touring around Epernay in the heart of Champagne. Each day we hopped onto a mini bus that took us to tour and taste at champagne houses I'd never heard of. Some were simply houses in villages with cellars and production facilities that must have extended under all the neighbour's houses. We wandered around Epernay where many of the larger producers offered tasting flights for around 10 euro. 

The number one thing I learnt is no-one can afford to produce bad champagne. The Champagne Police keep a close eye on things. Plus he price of land is so high it virtually dictates a minimum price for the stuff . And as we all know, that's not cheap. Unlike Carrington which always seemed to be available somewhere at $4.99.

So I had to laugh when I came across this ad in a 1980 issue of TIME magazine. No wonder the French got upset even though it doesn’t excuse nuclear testing in the Pacific. Champagne is made in Champagne, not Australia or anywhere else in the world. Not even in other parts of France. Ironically a French multi national, Pernod Ricard, took ownership of the company and the brand a few years ago. The word champagne was rightfully dropped from the label a few years prior to that. 

THE 13% GUIDELINE FOR RED WINE

With European supermarkets packed full of red wines how do you make a selection from stuff you've never heard of and labels you probably can't read? Or pronounce.

You can narrow down the selection by having a look at the alcohol content. If it's a minimum of 13% it means the grapes were picked with a fair level of ripeness. This means you have a better chance of getting a satisfying tasty amount of fruit flavour. 

My long held theory was reinforced by visits to a couple of expensive convenience stores in Avignon, France recently. I didn't expect much but I found a different Cotes du Rhone in each store. Both weighed in at 13.5%  a/v. They were both under 5 euro and were really tasty little wines.

Of course you'll find great reds under that level and some undrinkable stuff if the alcohol level is too high. But at the budget end of the market the 13% mark is a great help.

The OWB Scale Explained

The argument that there are only two types of beer has a few variations: Ale or Lager? Warm or cold? Low alcohol or full strength? Good or bad? But there's no bad beer, some just taste better than others. Draught or containered? Why do people go to a pub and drink beer out of a bottle or can? 
I'm putting forward the proposition that all beers can be divided into 5 categories 

THE OWB Scale Categories

1. BEER. This is the simple straightforward, don't think too deeply about it, stuff that tastes like ........ beer. They can be chilled to within a fraction of freezing and no-one will complain. They're designed to be quaffed straight out of the can or bottle because no-one cares two hoots about what they look like. But for what it's worth they, like all beers, will taste better out of a glass.

2. MALT. These are the ones with flavour dominated by one of the four ingredients of beer. It's the malt that provides the sugar for the yeast to create the alcohol. And because there are so many grains, so many combinations and so many malting options there are a myriad of flavours in this category. But they all come back to a central theme of richness, toastiness, colour and complexity that demands to be poured into a glass. And sipped and savoured.

3. HOPS. The other flavour ingredient  in beer is hops and it's all about aromatic bitterness. The flavours can be so intense they are like the NZ sauvignon blancs of the beer world. They also contribute an important chemical stability to beer so they're not just all about froth and bubbles. Every time you encounter an IPA you're in for a hop blast. And as much of a hop fiend as I am [I've been known to sniff pellets of Fuggles] on a regular basis I can sympathise with beer drinkers who reject the style. If you're a fan they MUST be poured into a glass because that ensures your nose has a chance of extracting all the aromatics.

4. PERFECTION. These are the beers with a brilliantly balanced palate of hop and malt flavours. You don't taste many.but have the best glass on hand when you find one

5. WEIRD: These come about when there's a fifth additive to the basic beer ingredients of water, yeast, malt and hops. The weirdest, worst and undrinkable example is Carlton and United Breweries adding vodka to their Carlton Cold beer. Meanwhile there are mango,chilli, lychee and the Belgium fruit beers. which are all perfectly drinkable. But still weird.

The Adjectival Geographic Wine Naming Technique

It's simple.
Sit around in the boardroom, tearoom or cellar door and get everyone present to think of all the geographic features they can. Write them on small pieces of paper and pop them into a hat. Then get another hat and repeat the process with as many random words as possible.
Draw a piece of paper out of each hat and, providing it's not been used before, whacko-the-diddlio you've got a name for a whole new range of your wines.
For the geographic second part of the name there are the usual suspects. Hill, ridge, creek and bay probably lead the way
There is only one catch.
When you choose the first word, someone must have the ability to explain the name with what I call "Back Label Justification". I've read some astonishing twaddle over the years ranging from butterflies to Dorothy Parker and gorillas. Doesn't matter what the wine tastes like, they have a compulsion to attribute their name selection to some vitally significant, recently created, aspect of their heritage.

The proliferation of whacky names has exploded in recent years with wineries producing BOB labels for Colesworths. As much as anyone Zar Brooks was a pioneer some years ago when the Osborns let him loose on their d'Arenberg labels. Suddenly we had the Laughing Magpie, Broken Fishplate, Wild Pixie, Daddy Longlegs and a serious number of etceteras.
There have now been so many.
A personal absurdist favourite was Victoria's Witchmount  nude label release of Captain Jack and the wine we had fun with, Scarlett. What a bummer that was when we ran out!

I'm confident the trend will continue. Often the same wine will be on the market under a few different labels and this will keep graphic designers and copy writers gainfully employed. Meanwhile I yearn for the days of Lindemans Hunter River Shiraz. And in those pre-barcode days you probably didn't need a backlabel.

What are your favourite wine names? Past or present.

 

The Top Five Wine Suppliers of 2012

My top 5 fine wine suppliers of 2012 in order of dollars
De Bortoli
Haselgroves
Tyrrells
Westend
.Berton
Interesting......... 3 Riverina in origin, 1 Hunter but sources stuff from everywhere and the other McLaren Vale.
Four family owned and the other owned by a bunch of families.
And just as outstanding as the quality and value of the wines are the people I deal with. Thank you so much Mitch, Erin, Andrew and Mr Neville from De Bortoli; Big Jim and Nicole from Haselgrove; the delightful Helen from Tyrrells; the two lovelies Natalie and Kerrie Anne as well as the whole Calabria family from Westend; and Handsome Steve from Berton Vineyards.
It's the way it should be. Outstanding wines represented by outstanding people. A big contrast to the shareholder owned companies run by muppets who are far more concerned with their contracts and bonuses than long term multi generational viability.

It’s all about the GRAPE …

There are upwards of 2000 grape varieties that are used to create wine throughout the world.
Think about it. 2000!
Start counting and if you can get past 20 that you know or have tasted you are doing better than most.

So if you want to venture past a world of chardonnay and cabernet, sauvignon blanc and shiraz you may like to read on ..

 

Let’s start with some advice:

· BE BRAVE and experiment. If we recommend a “different” wine to you there’s no guarantee you’ll like it. But there is a guarantee that the wine is an outstanding value example of its variety or style. We wouldn’t have bought it otherwise

· NO GRAPE is inherently sweet or dry [the driest wine I’ve ever tasted was a gewürztraminer] They may lend themselves to a particular style but ultimately it depends on what the viticulturist achieves and the winemaker devises

· DON’T just buy in the same price window all the time. Try some of the bargain $5 efforts and treat yourself to the occasional $20+. Remember, we recommend the wines that over deliver not the ones that pay to be on our retail shelves.

 

· PLEASE remember to give me feedback. Tell me what you liked about a wine or what you didn’t like– IN YOUR OWN WORDS. It’s like a Wine Education course for free. You can see me in store, email me, post a comment on our wine weblog, become a friend on Facebook, a follower on Twitter or a skyper on Skype. Or you could even phone me if you received our email newsletters. It’s how we all learn.

 

 

 

Staying at the VIC in Rutherglen

So...
what happens when my passionate Richmond supporter sibling suggests we ALL go to Melbourne to contribute to the effort to achieve 100G at the G. Great idea to celebrate the club's centenary.
The response started at coach load, eased into a mini bus and ended up with just the two of us in a Barina called Chester.
Given that both the game and result were ugly, the undisputed highlight was our overnight stay in Rutherglen. What a top spot.
There are three pubs in Rutherglen and I was really pleased I booked at the Victoria. It's a 140 year old pub that's two years into a 10 year renovation project. Sarah and Sean have undertaken a huge enterprise along with the help of their mate Jim. The best part of all is that the end result will be a traditional old pub, not something glammed up to be something it never was. The rooms are basic and comfortable even though Sarah rather humbly calls the accommodation "like camping under a roof."
We'll be returning as soon as possible not only to see how the renovations proceed but to further the Rutherglen experience. It has to be one of the most welcoming, fascinating vineyard areas I've ever visited. We'll also try and plan the next visit to co-incide with one of the VIC's food and wine weekends. Sarah and Sean are planning six events each year and we suspect they might be rather special.
If you'd like to contact the Victoria Hotel:
http://www.rutherglenvic.com

A few truths about RTDs

At midnight on 26/04/2008 the Federal Government hugely increased the excise duty rate on Ready-to-Drink [RTDs] premixed spirits.

Was this a master stroke to end the so-called epidemic of binge drinking or a devilish scheme to score a $3bn tax windfall. Whatever the intent I can assure you the end result will be neither. It's patently ridiculous to attribute binge drinking to either this segment of the market or to the price of alcohol. Sadly the causes are far more complex and it will require far more thoughtful efforts to address the issue. Nor will it raise tax revenue as sales of RTDs have been decimated as buyers have switched to beer or bottled spirits. Our observation is that they are not buying wine as an alternative. Not even cheap sweet cask wine which I would have expected to happen.

As much as I dislike RTDs [they're just not MY thing] I sympathise with the customers who don't like beer, enjoy the convenience of not having to mix their own and rely on the concept to give them an accurate measure of their alcohol consumption. And this is where I object to the sweeping generalisations of both the products and their consumers.

For starters let's stop calling all of them "alcopops".

Broadly the market can be divided into three categories. Firstly there are serious branded spirits where customer brand loyalty is very strong. Then there are the vodka drinks which seem to all taste the same but are clearly alcohol and lastly there's the ridiculous category that producers have created to shoot themselves in the foot. These are the milk drinks and "energy" drinks that could easily be confused with soft drinks. On top of that producers have created the ridiculous situation where there are now over 5000 different products on the market. A large part of the proliferation has come from different container sizes and alcohol strengths within the same product. Which of course could lead to confusion regarding alcohol consumption giving the critics more ammunition.

The consumers of RTDs are equally diverse with all ages represented fairly evenly. That's right, it's not just kiddies. They are drinkers of all ages who have primarily enjoyed the convenience that these products have offered and prefer the taste to beer. And let me tell you, the 35yo who buys the occasional 4pack of Jack Daniels and Cola or Haig and Dry is not very impressed with the suggestion they are binge drinkers of "alcopops."

But the debate has started and alcohol is back as a priority on the political agenda. As wine drinkers we should all be very concerned about arguments for volumetric equality in alcohol taxation. During the 1980s the effective tax rate on wine increased from 10% to over 40%. In 2000 the Wine Equalisation Tax of 29% was introduced to complement the GST. This means that if a producer receives $100 for a box of wine we pay $141.90. Can the wine industry handle an increase? Here's an article from today's Sydney Morning Herald that's worth a read. Let's just hope the Winemakers Federation of Australia argument is successful. What the article doesn't mention is that the vagaries and lead times of wine production is a compelling argument to treat wine differently to other categories of alcohol :

"Tax on alcopops sets off alcohol lobby war

Mark Metherell
Sydney Morning Herald June 12, 2008

"THE huge tax increase on alcopops has unleashed a fresh lobbying war, with the alcohol industry raising obstacles for further tax changes being sought by community groups.

With most health and drugs groups arguing the Government should tax drinks uniformly by volume of alcohol, the drinks industry has turned out in force to protect its interests at the Senate inquiry into the new and controversial tax on alcopops.

The Australian Medical Association was one of several health organisations demanding an end to the varying tax treatment of different alcoholic drinks, arguing for "volumetric" taxation based on the percentage of alcohol in a drink.

The AMA has told the Senate committee inquiring into the issue that the focus on alcopops alone "may provide perverse incentives for young people to shift their preference to potentially more harmful behaviours or alcohol substitutes" such as cheaper cask wines or the self-mixing of spirits.

Under the latest tax changes, $5 buys only 1.8 standard alcoholic drinks of alcopop products compared with up to 14 standard alcoholic drinks of discount cask wine, the Distilled Spirits Industry Council of Australia has argued in its bid to overturn the new 70 per cent tax on alcopops.

Meanwhile, the Australasian Associated Brewers has warned that any shift to a uniform volumetric tax would push up the price of a schooner of full beer by 50 cents to $4.34 and more than double the price of a cask of wine to $31.23.

The figures are reached by assuming the Government collects the same total taxes on alcohol but by imposing a uniform volumetric tax.

The Winemakers Federation of Australia fiercely defended the overall lower tax burden on wine, as it was "different to other alcohol products".

Wine production was a major contributor to the economy - particularly to regional areas - and Australia had "one of the highest-taxed major wine producers" in the world, the federation's chief executive, Stephen Strachan, argued in his submission.

The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre in Sydney said the new tax had played a big role in triggering debate over drinking in Australia.

"It has drawn into the spotlight the place of alcohol in Australian society and our collective acceptance of intoxication as a 'rite of passage'.

"The debate had starkly highlighted the glaring inconsistencies in the current tax approach, which needed to be reviewed in totality, not one product at a time," the centre said."