Yearly Archives: 2006

Wine review — Wolf Blass Black Label, Penfolds Bin 28 & Penfolds Bin 138

5 March 2006Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Wolf Blass Black Label Shiraz Cabernet Malbec 2002 $125
Black Label’s renaissance seems to have begun in about 1996 and to have gathered pace with the arrival of winemaker Caroline Dunn, the opening of a new small-batch cellar at the Blass winery in 2001, the encouragement of Fosters’ chief winemaker, Chris Hatcher, and the co-operation of John Glaetzer, Wolf’s original winemaker. From the great 2002 vintage, this one has the succulent depth of superior fruit and the tight structure to evolve for many years. Unusually for Black Label it contains more shiraz than cabernet – a vintage aberration, says Hatcher, as subsequent vintage return to cabernet predominance. A stunning wine.

Penfolds Bin 28 Kalimna Shiraz & Bin 128 Coonawarra Shiraz 2003 $19 to $26
The release of Penfolds bin number reds is an important event for the simple reason that the line provides such reliable drinking and cellaring. And strong consumer interest, invariably leads to near-cost discounting with Canberra prices this week as low as $18.95. Bins 28 and 128 are the warm-climate, cool-climate shirazes of the range — the former robust and chocolaty, the latter supple and driven by lovely ripe-berry flavours. My only caveat is that both samples had poor corks: wine penetration was half the length of the Bin 128 cork and one centimetre into Bin 28’s. That’s not good enough for wines of this calibre.

Penfolds Bin 138 Barossa Valley Grenache Shiraz Mourvedre 2004 $19 to $26
Grenache lacks the popular appeal of shiraz. Its musk-like fragrance and sometimes confection-like flavours in youth don’t always register as red wine. So, if you don’t like grenache, you probably won’t like Bin 138 at present. For despite the beautiful, plush depth of flavour and real red-wine structure, grenache is the keynote. However, with a reliable screw cap seal (and great track record) this one has the stuffing to evolve to a more earthy and savoury style over the next five to ten years as the primary grenache highnotes mellow, allowing the generous shiraz and firm mourvedre to flourish.

Wolf Blass Black Label — rebuilding an icon, part 1

5 March 2006People, WineChris Shanahan

If we are to believe the market, then it’s a big thumbs down to Wolf Blass Black Label red – a wine that bounced onto dinner tables in the mid seventies priced at a modest discount to Penfolds Grange, the most expensive Aussie red of the time.

It was a bold statement by Wolf Blass. Some said it was outrageous. But it worked and through the seventies and eighties Black Label became the wine to be seen drinking. It meant something to have Black Label on your table.

But sometime in the late eighties or nineties, the gloss wore off and the price gap between Grange and Black Label widened – so that Grange now fetches about $400 on release and Black Label around $125.

Since marked prices don’t necessarily reflect what is paid, the real value that drinkers put on elite wines is, perhaps, more accurately gauged by actual prices realised at auction.

By that measure Blass has a long way to go to restore the prestige of its flagship red. As the new release 2002 vintage hits retail shelves, the latest auction prices of earlier vintages — measured against a current replacement cost of $125 – show serious value declines.

The most recent price reported by Langton’s Auctioneers on last year’s 2001 vintage is $84 – a discount of thirty three per cent on the current release. And the picture seems no brighter for the 2000, 1999 or 1998 vintages, registering discounts of fifty-seven, fifty-six and thirty-seven per cent respectively.

Even the inaugural 1973 vintage languishes at $67 a bottle – a little over half the asking price of the current release.

Using the same replacement-value model, Grange fares somewhat better: last year’s 2000 vintage – a tiny release – recently fetched a premium of thirty-seven per cent on the assumed $400 release price. And while the highly regarded 1998 vintage traded at a premium of seventeen per cent, the 1999, 1997, 1996 and 1973 showed discounts of thirty-two, twenty-nine, ten and thirty-seven per cent respectively.

While the general trend suggests that it’s cheaper to buy Grange or Black Label at auction rather than retail, some of the older Granges do trade at stellar prices. For example, 1955, the oldest recorded in Langton’s current price realisations, recently fetched $4613.

There’s no such joy, however, for the Wolf Blass flagship. And that prompts the question as to when and why Black Label fell behind Grange and other top Aussie reds, and what sparked a remarkable quality rebound in the late nineties.

Insights into the origins and style of Black Label came from Wolf Blass himself at a tasting of the 1973 to 2002 vintages in Melbourne last week.

Wolf, a German immigrant, recalls the Australia of the sixties and seventies as a land of ‘hillbillies’ where men drank beer in the garage while women watched black and white television in the house.

Easy to drink, strongly brand wine might be the catalyst to bring them together, Blass believed. Hence, Wolf’s boldly labelled 1966 Yellow Label Rhine Riesling became the first of a phenomenally successful line, and the model for all the colour coded reds and whites that were to follow.

As we’ll see next week Black Label emerged, albeit serendipitously, in Wolf Blass’s quest to make “sexy wines… that make strong women weak and weak men strong”.

Wine review — Hanging Rock, McWilliams Mount Pleasant Lovedale & Rochford

26 February 2006Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Hanging Rock Heathcote Cambrian Rise Shiraz 2003 $27
Winemaker John Ellis calls this the ‘son’ of Hanging Rock’s flagship $55 shiraz reviewed last week – and it is very much a chip off the old block. At half the price, it offers great value as it has the rich flavour, silky smoothness and finesse of Heathcote shiraz, albeit without the extraordinary concentration of its parent. It’s a blend from various vineyards sprinkled along the red soils — supposedly of Cambrian origin – on the eastern slopes of the north-south orientated Mount Camel Range – heart of Victoria’s Heathcote region. Cambrian Rise should drink well and evolve for up to ten years if well cellared.

McWilliams Hunter Valley Mount Pleasant Lovedale Semillon 2000 $45
One year before Max Schubert created Grange Hermitage, Maurice O’Shea made the first semillon from the Lovedale vineyard – a flat, sandy and unprepossessing site, planted in 1946. Known variously, over the years, as Lovedale Riesling, Anne Riesling and, finally, Lovedale Semillon, the wine has become a long-lived benchmark of the unique, idiosyncratic Hunter style. This new release, from the very cool 2000 vintage, seems to be particularly slow maturing. Less than a year ago it showed the grassy, sauvignon-blanc-like character of the cool year. It’s now slipped into a more lemony, taut, typical and glorious Hunter semillon mode with decades of life ahead.

Rochford Macedon Ranges Pinot Noir 2003 $29
This is a step up in price and quality from the very good Rochford Latitude pinot noir reviewed a few weeks ago. At $19 it offered a convincing introduction to pinot noir. For an extra $8 a bottle this one — sourced from mature vines located 600 metres above sea level in Victoria’s Macedon region – takes the experience another step or two towards the real excitement offered by Burgundy’s classic red variety. The pale colour belies the heady, seductive perfume, great fruit depth and tight but very fine structure of a truly delicious red made to savour over the next 3 to 4 years.

Lovedale Semillon and the emergence of a Hunter specialty

26 February 2006People, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

The release this week of the magnificent McWilliams Mount Pleasant Lovedale Semillon 2000, reminds us that greatness is often accompanied by idiosyncrasy.

And in the case of Hunter semillon, idiosyncrasy begins with a paradox. How can a comparatively delicate wine style emerge from such a warm, humid and wet climate? Haven’t we been told for decades that elegant wines come from cool regions?

The answer appears to lie, say McWilliams, in “the humidity, afternoon cloud cover and gentle sea breezes [that] temper the summer and afford excellent ripening conditions”.

Unquestionably, something is up as warm-climate semillon tends to make clumsy wines smelling and tasting of wet hessian.

But the peculiarities of the lower Hunter allow vignerons to harvest semillon at very low sugar ripeness without suffering the green, tart, unripe flavours that generally accompany such early harvesting.

True, very young Hunter semillon has an austere acid edge, but the ‘lemongrass’ and ‘lemon’ fruit flavours underlying the acidity have a sweet, delicious core. While the bone-dry austerity of young semillon may seem at odds with prevailing Aussie wine styles, some makers, like Brokenwood and Margan have succeeded in tempering the austerity without losing the distinctive regional flavours.

Others, like McWilliams Mount Pleasant Elizabeth and Lovedale and Tyrrell Vat 1, persist with the more austere styles that age so beautifully. This style emerged close to its present from in the 1960s.

According to the late Murray Tyrrell, Ray Kidd of Lindemans put modern Hunter semillon firmly on track with the introduction of protective winemaking technology — principally through the use of temperature controlled ferments and inert gas blanketing.

Great and age worthy Hunter semillons preceded Lindeman’s initiatives – the first from the Lovedale, for example, was made in 1950 – but the introduction of protective winemaking enabled the style to flourish.

McWilliams introduced the technology to its Mount Pleasant winery in 1967 and for decades the delicate, lively and long-lived Elizabeth Riesling (as Hunter semillon was often called in those days) became one of Australia’s most popular wines.

Elizabeth’s popularity waned during the eighties and Hunter semillon, despite its extraordinary qualities, appeared to be marginalised: loved only by wine experts, aficionados and part of the Sydney market.

Whether or not there’s widespread commercial hope for the genre, it’s hard to tell. But the core of makers attending the classic style, sourcing small parcels from the Lower Hunter’s great old vineyards, appears to be growing.

And that’s a trend fanned by aficionados and leading wine shows where judges regularly reward the classic long-lived styles.

But is it a style that only the initiated can love? Definitely not. The popularity of Elizabeth in the BC era (before chardonnay) suggests otherwise. And, of course, the sheer glory of drinking a mature Tyrrell’s Vat 1 or Lovedale is the most convincing argument of all.

Given semillon’s waning popularity in the eighties and nineties and the poor returns enjoyed by most makers, we should be thankful that McWilliams persevered with the low-yielding Lovedale vineyard and the stunning wines from it, crafted since 1978 by Phil Ryan.

A wine of Lovedale Semillon’s calibre is rare: it develops slowly in bottle, gradually building richness upon richness as it unfolds over the decades from lean and lemony in youth to honeyed and toasty with age. It sits squarely in the Lower Hunter mould, yet has a unique intensity and power attributable to the drab-looking, sandy site earmarked for semillon by Maurice O’Shea half a century ago.

Wine review — Hanging Rock, Meeting Place & Houghton

19 February 2006Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Hanging Rock Heathcote Shiraz 2003, about $55
This one’s got class stamped all over it – a wonderful red from one of Australia’s leading shiraz producing regions, stretched along the red-soils-above-Cambrian-bedrock of the Mount Camel Range, Victoria. The label declares an alcohol content of 15 per cent. But there’s nothing heavy about the wine. The colour’s a brilliant crimson-rimmed red and it’s extraordinarily rich and concentrated yet finely structured. The flavours sit in the ripe, cool-climate spectrum with intense, sweet plummy fruit and a savour note. The deep flavour, elegant structure and great balance all point to good medium to long term cellaring.

Meeting Place Canberra Region Viognier 2004 $15
I recommended this last year prior to release and tasted it again recently. It’s terrific. Sourced from a company-managed vineyard at Holt, it’s a blend of tank-fermented and wild-yeast, oak-fermented components. It’s pure viognier from first sniff to last drop. That means an exotic, heady apricot aroma and flavour and a round, soft, slightly viscous texture. There’s certainly a ‘wow’ factor in full-blown viognier, although food matching can be difficult. So drink it on its own or perhaps as winemaker Alex McKay suggests, with pear and Gorgonzola salad. Made to enjoy now.

Houghton Shiraz 2003 $9 to $12
Houghton is the Western Australian arm of Hardy Wine Company, itself a subsidiary of US owned Constellation brands. With over 1000 hectares of vines under its control in the cooler southerly parts of the West, Houghton offers everything from the sublime depths of its Jack Mann and John Gladstones wines to the delicious, big-value white label range, with a lineage going back 60-odd years. Winemaker Rob Bowen tells me the 2003 shiraz comes principally from Frankland River and Mount Barker regions of Great Southern. This explains the wine’s medium body, tight structure and savoury varietal flavour. Brilliant value, especially on special under $10.

Wine review — Penley Estate, Rochford & Madfish

12 February 2006Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Penley Estate Coonawarra Phoenix Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 $19.99
At last year’s Limestone Coast Show, Singapore based writer, Ch’ng Poh Tiong awarded Phoenix the International Judge’s Trophy as his favoured wine of the show. Together with James Halliday, we’d ranked it at the top of the small 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon class, noting its vibrant, sweet, fruity aroma and juicy, fleshy, drink-now palate. Waxing metaphorical at the trophy presentation, Poh Tiong praised its ‘smouldering-ember smoky’ character – fitting for a wine named Phoenix, I suppose. With or without metaphors, it’s simply delicious and made specifically for early drinking. It’s available now at cellar door (08 8736 3211) and fine wine retail outlets.

Rochford Latitude Victoria Chardonnay 2003 & Pinot Noir 2003 $17 to $19
These are stunningly good wines at the price. At three years the Yarra Valley Chardonnay has a delicious crackling freshness to it and a combination of pure, stone-fruit varietal flavour with funky barrel-aged character. The pinot noir – a blend of Macedon and Yarra Valley material – is the best under-$20 Aussie pinot I’ve tried. Like the chardonnay, it’s bright, limpid and fresh with a core of pure varietal fruit flavour. It also captures pinot’s lovely, sweet perfume and soft, fine tannins. And there’s a satisfying savouriness and subtle background of toasty oak. Available at fine wine outlets and cellar door — rochfordwines.com or 03 5962 2119.

Madfish Western Australia Sauvignon Blanc Semillon 2005 $13 to $18
Madfish is the amazingly popular budget label of Howard Park, one of the west’s most in-form wineries. From the outstanding 2005 vintage, this white combines near equal parts of sauvignon blanc and semillon from Margaret River, Great Southern and Pemberton. The lightness, zippy freshness and herbal notes of sauvignon blanc set the tone while semillon adds backbone and mid-palate richness to a wine that’s all about high quality, pure fruit and happy summer refreshment. It’s good value at $18, but occasionally hits the discount bins at $13 or $14 a bottle.

Taste your way to wine knowledge

12 February 2006WineChris Shanahan

A number of readers have asked how to gain a better understanding of wine without wading through hundreds of books and journals. That’s too dry a route to knowledge they say. Perhaps they’re on the right track. For no matter how much reading you do, enlightenment lies inside the bottle.

Professional judges, tasting thousands of wines each year, develop a broad frame of reference. It’s a long journey to that point. But if you’re new to wine and want to know more, a little systematic tasting, perhaps with a group of friends, brings knowledge and pleasure without intimidation.

If you’re in this position, the first building blocks are the different grape varieties used to make wine. You can explore these one by one. But that takes a long time. Alternatively, marshal a few friends into group tastings/dinners so that you can explore a range of wines at each gathering.

Exploring wines over dinner or lunch means you actually drink and enjoy the wine, have a few laughs and became as engaged or disengaged in wine discussion as you want.

A key to learning is to try a variety of good examples of each grape variety. Bearing in mind that this can become endlessly complex, it’s best to start simple.

Riesling, semillon, sauvignon blanc and chardonnay are the commonest white varieties; and shiraz, cabernet sauvignon, merlot and pinot noir the dominant red varieties. Understanding what each of these contributes to aroma, flavour and structure of wine is a great start.

You can learn by trying just one wine at a time. But you’ll move up the learning curve more rapidly by comparing several wines. You could launch your first group dinner, for example, with a little glass each of Clare riesling, Hunter semillon, Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and Yarra Valley chardonnay in front of each person.

In this instance, we’re selecting classic varieties from regions specialising in each variety. These are called regional varietals. South Australia’s Clare Valley makes distinctive, delicate long-lived dry rieslings; the Hunter makes bone-dry, low-alcohol semillon; Marlborough, New Zealand, makes pungent, fruity, bracing sauvignon blanc and Yarra makes refined but rich barrel-fermented chardonnays.

By lining up the four wines and sniffing and sipping in turn, you’ll easily see the differences. Describing those in words is difficult. But that doesn’t matter. What you’ve done is to lay down clear reference points in your mind for riesling, semillon, sauvignon blanc and chardonnay.

Move onto another food course and repeat the exercise with, say, a Tassie pinot noir, Heathcote shiraz and Coonawarra cabernet sauvignon and you’ll have established more reference points.

Now, bring on dessert. And serve with it a late picked Clare riesling and late picked Riverina semillon. Bingo! Your frame of reference for riesling and semillon just grew. So one variety can be either sweet or dry.

With an insight into varietal flavours, a next step might be to serve several examples of one variety.

These could be from different regions, different countries, different vintages or, indeed from individual vineyards owned by a single producer. With riesling, say, you might trot out the original Clare riesling and line it up with examples from Alsace, Germany and Marlborough New Zealand. You’ll be amazed by the differences.

With just a little structure and a band of sympathetic friends, you’ll find your drinking pleasure increases as your understanding grows.

Wine review — Morris of Rutherglen, De Bortoli Sacred Hill & d’Arenberg

5 February 2006Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Morris Rutherglen Shiraz 2001 $12 to $16
While I suspect the extra bottle age has more to do with sluggish sales than maturation policy, I won’t argue – it’s just so rare to find maturing reds at the right price. A winner of a gold medal and trophy at last year’s Great Australian Shiraz Challenge, Morris 2001 delivers generous Rutherglen Shiraz flavours without the mind numbing levels of alcohol, oak or tannin sometimes seen from hot growing areas. It offers juicy, mouthfilling fruit flavour with ample soft tannins to give structure and real-red drinking satisfaction. At five years’ it’s perfectly mature and ready to enjoy.

De Bortoli Sacred Hill Shiraz Cabernet 2005 $4.50 to $6
They say you get what you pay for. But the present grape surplus and perennial retail price war means more flavour for your dollar. On special at $4.50 a bottle, Sacred Hill surely gives Chateau Cardboard an edge in the daily-quaffing stakes with its clean, fresh, plummy fruit aroma, generous flavour and soft tannins. It even has a pleasant vanilla-like oak character, attributable, the makers are honest enough to admit, to maturation on oak staves in the tanks, not barrel maturation. A very slight level of sweetness also helps to fill the mid palate.

d’Arenberg McLaren Vale Tempranillo Grenache Souzao 2003 $37
In Chester Osborne’s latest red, tempranillo and grenache (familiar blending partners in Spain), join the less familiar souzao, a colourful but coarse native of Portugal, in a decidedly savoury, earthy and exotic blend for the adventurous drinker. The medium colour belies the wine’s great power – suggested by the herbal, earthy nose, then delivered in spades on a deep, tightly structured, every-changing palate. Each sip reveals something new and interesting. And it bears d’Arenberg stamp: a core of ripe, intense fruit flavour completely integrated with complex savoury and earthy characters. I suspect that this one will evolve for many years.

Wine review — Pizzini

29 January 2006Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Pizzini King Valley Arneis 2005 $20, Verduzzo 2005 $18
The 2005s, due for release in February, taste even better than the lovely 2004s. Arneis, a Piedmontese variety, can be neutral but this one’s full of character with nashi-pear-like flavour and the extraordinarily zesty, pleasantly tart bite to make a mouth-watering aperitif or refreshing, all-purpose summer food wine. Verduzzo, originally from north-eastern Italy, delivers voluptuous, apricot-like aromas and flavours and rich, silky-textured palate – partly derived from the variety and partly from fermentation and maturation of a very small component of the blend in oak barrels. The 2004 displayed more oak influence but this lighter touch works better, in my view.

Pizzini King Valley Sangiovese 2004 $24, Sangiovese Rosetta $14.50
The full-bore, red sangiovese is bright and clean and kicks off with the variety’s delicious ‘bitter black cherry’ flavour. However, a wave of savoury, fine tannins soon ripples across the palate, drying out the finish and giving the grip necessary to accompany food. This is heaps better than most of the basic Chianti’s kicking around bottle shops – although you might find it interesting to serve it alongside a decent Chianti Classico to compare the style difference. The rosé is a fresh, light, crisp and dry style, still offering some cherry-like varietal flavour – a wine to chill and quaff any time. Cellar door phone 03 5729 8030.

Pizzini King Valley Nebbiolo 2000 $45
Nebbiolo, the noble red grape of Piedmont’s Barolo region, all too often disappoints, even on its native soil. But the great examples deliver incomparable perfume and an elegance, combined with power, that belies the often light colour. In the Pizzini vineyard, wallabies love the vine shoots, often decimating a crop that’s hard to set and ripen even under ideal conditions and, even then, difficult to turn into great wine. This 2000 has the variety’s lighter colour but captures some of the aromatic magic, savoury flavours and elegant, very firm structure. I was completely happy drinking it until Fred showed me the Reserve 2003 due for release in a few years at $80 to $100.

King Valley Australia — Pizzini leads the Italian charge

29 January 2006People, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

Grape production figures for Victoria’s King Valley (stretching thirty kilometres northwards up the King River roughly from Milawa at 170 metres above sea level to the Whitlands plateau at 800 metres) reveal the tiny scale of some the most interesting wines in the valley – tiny plots of Italian varieties like sangiovese, nebbiolo and arneis.

In the King Valley, as in virtually every region in Australia, some, or all of, shiraz, cabernet, merlot, pinot noir, chardonnay, riesling, sauvignon blanc and semillon contribute the majority of output.

But because everyone, everywhere grows these varieties, we might be excused for not hanging a King Valley sign on any one of them – as we do, say, for Hunter semillon, Clare riesling or Coonawarra cabernet sauvignon.

No, the King Valley’s specialty, to date, lies in Italian red and white varieties even though these make up only a small portion of its annual fifteen thousand tonne grape crush.

Although Brown Bros pioneered some Italian styles in its ‘kindergarten’ winery — designed for small, experimental wine batches — Mornington based Gary Crittenden took Italian diversity and quality to another level before local Italian-descended small growers made the transition from grape-growing to winemaking.

During a downturn when Brown Bros reduced its grape intake, cousins Fred and Arnie Pizzini and another grower, Guy Darling, established King Valley Wines at Whitfield. Fred says they built the winery because, “We all wanted a winery, but thought, why build three? We didn’t want our grapes going to distant places. And we wanted to maintain the premium image of wines, mostly whites at the time, coming out of the area”.

Today, KWV is a major contract winemaking centre for the district and includes its local shareholders — Pizzini Wines (Fred Pizzini), Chrismont Wines (Arnie Pizzini) and Darling Estate Wines (Guy Darling) – as customers.

During a half day visit to the King Valley last week, Fred Pizzini said that when his father, Roberto, arrived from Italy in 1956 the area grew mainly tobacco and hops.

In 1976, Roberto and Fred planted riesling – for Brown Bros — on the river flat beside the family tobacco crop. Over time, tobacco disappeared as the vines spread along the river and westwards up the gentle slopes of the valley.

The first Italian varieties arrived in the 1980s and today the red sangiovese and nebbiolo occupy plum spots on the estate near the white arneis and verduzzo and all those other more familiar varieties.

As well, the Pizzini’s grow the white pinot grigio and red brachetto. While these are of French origin, the northern Italians have long made a steely, dry version of what the French call pinot gris. And the obscure brachetto is cultivated more in Italy than in France. Fred says he’ll be producing a Piedmontese style, low-alcohol, sparkling brachetto from the first commercial crop this year.

Even with familiar grape varieties, it takes decades for vines and winemaking skills to mature in any new region. In the King Valley, Fred Pizzini has been steadily developing the distinctive range reviewed in Top Drops.

While each of the wines is a work in progress, there’s a delicious consistency to the arneis, verduzzo, sangiovese and sangiovese rosato — despite continuing fine-tuning in the vineyard and winery.

Nebbiolo, the noble variety of Piedmont’s Barolo, has proven more problematic in Australia, perhaps, than any of the other Italian varieties. The Pizzini’s, however, have begun to hit the mark, although the very best vintages have yet to be released.