Monthly Archives: August 2012

Wine review — Turkey Flat, Helm, Peppertree, Kooyong Estate and Chapel Hill

15 August 2012Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Turkey Flat Mourvedre 2010 $32
Turkey Flat vineyard, Barossa Valley, South Australia
In 1847 Johann Fiedler planted shiraz on the southern slopes of Tanunda Creek. In 1865, the Schultz family bought the site and 125 years later, fourth generation Peter Schultz and wife Christie became winemakers as well as grape growers. Today they grow, make and bottle the wine on site, not far from the still-productive 1847 vines. The very late ripening mourvedre (aka mataro or monastrell) thrives in the valley floor’s hot, dry conditions making this unique spicy, earthy, savoury red with its distinctive, mouth watering, dry tannin structure.

Helm Half Dry Riesling 2012 $25
Murrumbateman, Canberra District, NSW
Ken Helm rates 2012 the vintage of a lifetime – a belief supported by his stunning botrytis riesling reviewed two weeks ago. His Classic Dry and Premium rieslings are to be released later in the year and he’s just released this semi-dry version. Its voluminous, citrus-like aroma and rich palate belie the modest 10.3 per cent alcohol. The rich, citrusy varietal flavour and acidity wrestle a little on the palate at the moment. But from past experience these will harmonise with another few months in bottle.

Peppertree Elderslee Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 $42
Elderslee Road vineyard, Wrattonbully, South Australia
Until the mid nineties, Wrattonbully, known at the time as Koppamurra, consisted of a few isolated vineyards. Its similarity to the adjoining, time-proven Coonawarra region and lower land prices prompted large-scale planting to feed the red wine boom. As the vines mature, we’re seeing some excellent wines, including this beautiful, juicy cabernet sourced from a favoured site on Pepper Tree’s 100-hectare holding. This is an elegant, supple cabernet with a tasty interplay between the fruit and high-class French oak. Made by Jim Chatto.

Kooyong Massale Pinot Noir 2011 $26.59–$33
Kooyong and Ballewindi vineyards, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria
Today’s two Kooyong pinots represent two interpretations of the variety by winemaker Sandro Mosele – the more savoury, earthy, firmly structured Estate wine versus the younger, simpler Massale with its fresh, primary fruit flavour. It’s paler coloured than the Estate wine and still has a savoury, sappy current under the bright, fresh fruit. The palate is brisk and fresh relying on both acid and fine, slightly tart tannins for structure.

Kooyong Estate Pinot Noir 2010 $36.85–$39
Teurong, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria
We love a pinot with a solid backbone of tannin and savoury as well as fruity flavours. Sandro Mosele’s latest Kooyong Estate delivers all of this. It’s an harmonious, intensely flavoured, elegantly structured pinot, the fruit flavour reminiscent of dark, ripe cherries but with a deep, earthy, savoury undertone. Some of the structure and savouriness probably comes from Mosele’s decision to increase the total oak maturation time from 16 to 20 months, six to ten months of that in 6,300-litre foudres following a period in 220-litre barriques.

Chapel Hill Bush Vine Grenache 2010 $30–$35
McLaren Vale, South Australia
This excellent follow up to the fleshy 2009 vintage, captures the rich, earthy flavours of old McLaren Vale bush vines (vines grown as individual bushes, without trellising), planted in 1926, 1952 and 1967. Winemakers Michael Fragos and Bryn Richards say they hand picked the grapes and made the wine in small batches in open fermenters “to facilitate a long, slow, gentle extraction”. Subsequent maturation in older French oak hogsheads further ameliorated the tannins. The result is a pure grenache featuring the earthiness and pronounced tannins of the vintage – with a background of spice.

Wine review — Ben Haines, Oxford Landing Estates and Taylors

12 August 2012Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Ben Haines Warramunda Vineyard Yarra Valley Marsanne 2011 $28
Ben Haines, a young Australian winemaker with international experience – and most recently at Mitchelton and Yering Station wineries, Victoria – recently launched his own brand. And wow, what wines they are, sourced from Haines’ favoured vineyard sites. His marsanne, from the Warramunda vineyard in the Coldstream Hills sub-region of the Yarra, stunned a few palates at a recent tasting. A gentle vanilla-like aroma (from fermentation and maturation in good French oak) invites the first sip. The palate reveals mouth-watering citrusy flavours, underpinned by barrel-derived textural richness and enlivened by the cool season acidity. (Available through www.benhaineswine.com)

Oxford Landing Estates South Australia Sauvignon Blanc 2012 $5.65–$9
I’m seeing very exciting whites from the 2012 vintage. Like 2011, 2012 was a cool vintage, but produced overall much healthier fruit than the mildew and botrytis-ravaged 2011. The cool conditions produced intense varietal flavours and high natural acidity – a combination that prompted the Oxford Landing winemaker to write, “The varietal expression of our 2012 sauvignon blanc was more typical of cooler climate regions with complex fruit flavours evident early”. The wine comes from the normally hot stretches of the Murray. But in 2012 it offers a zingy fresh palate with delicious, passion fruit-like varietal flavour.

Taylors South Australia Tempranillo 2010 $12.99–$18.95
The label doesn’t reveal the wine’s origins, but it’s a blend of material from the Clare Valley and Wrattonbully (on the Limestone Coast, adjoining Coonawarra’s northern boundary). The cool season produced a light to medium bodied red with bright, delicious fruit flavour, reminiscent of blueberries. The winemakers handled various batches of the wines in different ways, including cold soaking one component on skins before fermentation (producing softer tannins), barrel-fermentation of a second component and using open fermenters for another. The varied approaches produced both fruity and savoury characters and resulted in a very fine, soft tannin structure.

Wine review — Jacques Lurton, Ben Haines, Shingleback, La Promesse, Marques de Riscal and Domaine Chandon

8 August 2012Wine reviewChris Shanahan

The Investigator by Jacques Lurton 2006 $70 – wine of the week
The Islander Estate vineyards, Kangaroo Island, South Australia
French winemaker Jacques Lurton believes in cabernet franc, an aromatic red variety that plays a key but not dominant role in the wines of Bordeaux’s St Emillion and Pomerol sub-regions. But in Kangaroo Island’s warmer climate, he says, “it pushes to another dimension and walks away from everything green”. The Investigator, first made in 2004, is Lurton’s best shot at a cabernet franc-dominant red. In 2004, the first vintage, he included 27 per cent sangiovese in the blend; cutting the proportion to five per cent in 2005. But as the savoury sangiovese tended to dominate, in 2006 the blend became 90 per cent cabernet franc, the rest malbec – a seductive and elegant combination that allows cabernet franc’s aromatics and fine tannins to star, sympathetically fleshed out by the malbec.

Ben Haines Syrah 2009 $58
Central Victoria, Victoria
Very exciting wine here from Ben Haines, a young bloke with global grape growing and winemaking experience – recently as winemaker for Mitchelton and currently as consulting winemaker to Yering Station. For his own label, Haines sources grapes from standout vineyards – in this instance from what is clearly a wonderful, if undisclosed, Nagambie Lakes shiraz site, planted between 1985 and 1992. The unfiltered, unfined wine delivers heady varietal aromatics and an amazingly seductive, rich, silk-smooth, fine-boned palate that simply pulses with life. (Available at www.benhaineswine.com).

Shingleback Davey Estate Shiraz 2010 $19.90–22.95
The Davey Estate, McLaren Vale, South Australia
The Davey family grows good grapes and makes wine that always impress on our tasting bench and succeed in wine shows – three gold and three silver medals already for their 2010 shiraz. Winemaker John Davey says he makes lots of little batches from various parts of the vineyard and matures them in French and American oak hogsheads before assembling the final blend. It’s a generous wine, featuring bright, ripe fruit, with a savoury, earthy McLaren Vale edge and soft, rustic tannins.

Loire Sauvignon Blanc La Promesse 2010 $10–$13.99
Touraine, Loire Valley, France
Coles Liquor imports La Promesse for sale through its 1^st Choice and Vintage Cellars outlets. It’s a restrained version of sauvignon blanc, still clearly varietal, but without the high alcohol or in-your-face fruitiness of the popular Marlborough versions. At just 12 per cent alcohol it sits lightly on the palate, delivering lean, crisp, herbaceous, lemony flavours and a fresh, bone dry finish – a versatile and delicious style. Screwcap sealed.

Marques de Riscal Rueda 2010 $14.99
Rueda, Spain
Rueda is a northwestern Spanish wine region. The local white variety, verdejo, was originally used to make sherry-like wines until Marques de Riscal developed a delicate table wine style from it in the 1970s. It’s a distinctive dry white – juicy and mouth-watering, with a pleasantly tart, savoury dry finish. Like the Loire sauvignon reviewed today, it sits lightly on the palate with its modest alcohol content and suits a wide range of foods. Woolworths imports Marques de Riscal wines for sale through its Dan Murphy’s outlets.

Domaine Chandon Chardonnay 2011 $27.95
Yarra Valley, Victoria
Domaine Chandon says its chardonnay comes “primarily from the cooler, elevated sites of the upper Yarra Valley” to provide citrus-like varietal flavour at low sugar levels, and high natural acidity. It also takes small parcels from warmer sites lower in the valley to add stone-fruit varietal flavour. In the very cool 2011 season that combination delivers a comparatively lean, but still lovely chardonnay, with more emphasis on citrus than stone-fruit flavours. Fresh acid and textural richness resulting from barrel fermentation and maturation, completes a satisfying white with good medium term cellaring potential.

Book review — Halliday wine companion and autobiography

8 August 2012Book review, People, WineChris Shanahan

James Halliday: Australian wine companion 2013 edition
Hardie Grant Books. RRP $34.95 (paperback)

James Halliday: A life in wine
Hardie Grant Books. RRP $45 (hardcover)

This year’s review copy of Australian wine companion 2013 arrived with a bonus – James Halliday’s easy-reading autobiography, A life in wine.

The companion’s just as the name suggests – a well-thumbed, much-loved reference that can’t really be reviewed every year, given its predictable content.

Over time it’s become the equivalent, if unofficial, of a Michelin guide to Australian wineries and wine – and as much a marketing tool for successful vignerons as it is a solid, consistent guide for wine drinkers.

Such is the companion’s reach and value that each year a flood of winemaker press releases alerts me to the coming release. Indeed, vignerons value Halliday’s endorsement so much that it appears in marketing material of all kinds, including roadside signs in our wine regions.

Among Canberra wineries, Ken Helm set the pace this year, as always, emailing just days before the book arrived, “I look forward to a chat about wine in general – even Halliday’s wine companion 2013 – Canberra wineries did very well again”.

We haven’t chatted yet, but Halliday puts Helm towards the top of his quality pyramid with eight other Canberra makers – Capital Wines, Clonakilla, Collector Wines, Eden Road Wines, Lark Hill, Lerida Estate, Mount Majura and Nick O’Leary.

Each of these received a five-star rating. But there’s a hierarchy even at this level in Halliday’s system.

He awards five black stars to wineries offering good wines in the current review, with at least two of those rating 94 or more out 100. Wineries consistently making exemplary wines (with two or more currently rating 94 or more) earn five red stars. Wineries at the very tip of the pyramid – with a long, acknowledged record of excellence – have their name printed in red.

Clonakilla remains our only wine on that tip. But Alex McKay’s Collector Wines knocks on the door, with five red stars. The others mentioned above rate five black stars (Helm demoted from red last year). Closely following on four black stars and one white (that is, almost five stars) are Brindabella Hills, Four Winds Vineyard, Gallagher Wines, Lake George Winery, McKellar Ridge Wines and Shaw Vineyard Estate.

A surprise casualty this year, after last year’s rating of four black stars plus white star, is Bryan and Jocelyn Martin’s Ravensworth Wines. Ravensworth received heaps of accolades this year, mine included, making me wonder whether the wines were tasted. Martin says he sent samples. We’ll know when the online Wine companion 2013 goes live.

I wondered, too, about the absence of Long Rail Gully from the Canberra list. Richard Parker makes bloody good wines – worthy of a five-star rating in my view. When I phoned the winery, Garry Parker, Richard’s father, replied, “We’ve never given him [Halliday] our wines”.

Halliday requested samples last year, explained Parker, but at the time he didn’t have enough wine to send. However, he anticipated having a full complement shortly, once they’ve finished bottling recent vintages. Vintages due for release (and destined for Halliday’s review next year) include 2011 cabernet sauvignon and pinot noir, 2009 shiraz and 2012 riesling and pinot gris.

Wine companion 2013 gives profiles on 1,381 wineries, detailed tasting notes on 3,722 wines and ratings on another 3,053 wines. Many of the tasting notes come from Ben Edwards, Halliday’s collaborator and heir apparent.

Several Canberra wines make it to Halliday’s best-of-the-best list: Clonakilla and Gallagher 2011 rieslings, Clonakilla Riesling Auslese 2011, Clonakilla Murrumbateman Syrah 2010 and Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier 2011.

Halliday’s autobiography makes a pleasant afternoon’s read (and a lot of laughs), packing an exceptionally busy life in wine into about 250 pages.

I’ve known Halliday since 1979, selling wine to him, sometimes at mates’ rates, when I was with Farmer Bros, sponsoring his top 100 in The Australian during my time at Vintage Cellars, as a fellow reviewer at countless industry tastings and well-lubricated events and as a judge at various wine shows – including the first five years of the Limestone Coast show at Coonawarra.

Everyone in the industry, including me, always felt in awe of Halliday’s productivity. For me working full time, running a family, judging at wine and beer shows and filing a gradually increasing number of weekly columns for the Canberra Times seemed more than enough work.

But Halliday has an ability, it seems, to work non stop. How else to explain how as a partner in Clayton Utz, a notoriously demanding employer, he established not just one but two vineyards and wineries – Brokenwood, in the Hunter Valley, and Coldstream Hills in the Yarra Valley, at the same time judging at Australian and overseas wine shows and writing numerous books and columns for newspapers and magazine.

At age 50 in 1988, he retired from Clayton Utz, but continued a prodigious work output as viticulturist, winemaker, author, judge and key player in the reform of wine shows and promoting the Australian wine industry.

All this, and he found time, too, to drink deeply and well. The great wine experiences literally slosh through the book in mouth watering detail. Halliday shared the passion generously across the years with a growing circle of friends and industry acquaintances. But the book focuses more on the inner circle and especially on his much-loved friend, Len Evans. Evans rollicks life-like through the book, which Halliday wrote largely before Evans’ death in August 2006.

“On 16 August 2006 my world changed forever” writes Halliday in the preface, giving an account of a joyous, wine-filled night at Evans’ house, Loggerheads, in the Hunter on 15 August, only to arrive in New Zealand the next day to learn of the death.

The sense of loss lingers through Halliday’s personal, frank and at times very funny account of his life in wine. The more you love wine, the more you’ll love the book.

Beer and rum review — Knappstein and Bundaberg

8 August 2012Beer review, RumChris Shanahan

Knappstein Enterprise Brewery Reserve Lager 330ml 4-pack $16
Knappstein Clare Valley winery, an outpost of Japan’s Kirin Brewery, released its own Clare-brewed lager in 2006. Knappstein recently announced plans to expand production using Kirin’s Malt Shovel brewery in Sydney. Fingers crossed that he quality holds as Knappstein’s full-bodied, complex, very bitter lager rates among Australia’s very best.

Bundaberg Original Rum Select Vat 207 700ml $48
The press release says Bundy’s new release is literally a separate bottling from a vat selected by the distillers for the quality of its content. The light amber colour, olive green rim and mellow aroma reflect extended vat ageing – and the fiery, flavour-packed palate confirms it as rum, not fine brandy.

Coeliacs turn to gluten-free brewing

8 August 2012BeerChris Shanahan

Engineer John O’Brien loves a beer. But in 1998, after being diagnosed with coeliac disease, he faced a dry future unless he could find a gluten-free beer.

Gluten’s not a problem for most people. But for Australia’s 30 thousand diagnosed Coeliacs its consumption can be debilitating as it inhibits the small intestine’s ability to absorb vital nutrients. The only cure is to avoid gluten.

A global search turned up nothing satisfactory, so O’Brien made small batches for his own consumption. He later established his own brand, brewing initially at Michael Murtagh’s Bintara Brewery, Rutherglen, using the gluten-free grains, sorghum and buckwheat. O’Brien released the first beer – O’Brien’s Premium Gluten Free Lager –in August 2005.

In 2007 O’Brien and fellow coeliac, brewer Andrew Lavery, set up their own brewery, Rebellion Brewing, in Ballarat and expanded their range of gluten-free beers. We’ll look at these next week.

Wine review — De Bortoli and Oxford Landing Estates

5 August 2012Wine reviewChris Shanahan

De Bortoli Yarra Valley Chardonnay 2011 $21–$30
The recommend price is $30, but as I write Dan Murphy’s charges $23.75 as part of a six-bottle buy, beaten by Costco Canberra’s $20.99, no quantity hurdle. The wine comes from mature vines, average age 20 years, says winemakers Steve Webber. He crushes the grape bunches, stalks and all, and allows the juice to settle before spontaneous fermentation in old 225-litre and 5,700-litre oak casks – followed by maturation on the spent yeast cells. In the cool 2011 vintage, tangy, citrusy varietal flavour sits deliciously with the flavour and texture derived from whole-bunch pressing, spontaneous fermentation and barrel maturation on yeast lees.

De Bortoli Vinoque Roundstone Vineyard Gamay Noir 2011 $24
De Bortoli’s new vinoque range, available on-premise and at cellar door only, features single-vineyard wines, “mainly in development stage”, write Leanne De Bortoli and winemaker husband, Steve Webber. They sourced gamay grapes (the red variety of Beaujolais, southern Burgundy), from the Roundstone vineyard, “at Steels Creek on the western edge of the central Yarra”. Like Beaujolais, it’s a lighter bodied wine to quaff happily with food, with a modest 12.5 per cent alcohol. The inclusion of whole bunches, including stalks, in the fermentation, adds a teasing and pleasant stemmy/stalky bite to the juice ripe berry flavours.

Oxford Landing Estates Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz 2010 $7–$9.50
Yalumba’s Wyndham Hill-Smith established Oxford Landing vineyard on the Murray River, South Australia, in 1958. In the 1980s Hill-Smith’s son, Robert, launched the Oxford Landing Estate range as a fighting brand to take on the big companies. The meticulously managed estate still contributes grapes to a brand that sits with the best in its price range. But the company also sources grapes from other growers in the region – hence the subtle rebranding from ‘estate’ to ‘estates’. This is all you could ask for at the price – clean, fresh, deliciously fruity and clearly made from cabernet, fleshed out with a touch of shiraz.

Wine review — Helm, Printhie, Domain Day, Willow Creek and Tim Adams

1 August 2012People, Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Helm Botrytis Riesling 2012 $30 375ml – wine of the week
Murrumbateman, NSW, Canberra District
In 2012, for only the second time in 36 years, Canberra riesling specialist Ken Helm produced a botrytis-affected sticky. Winemaking mates in Germany helped Helm confirm the presence of botrytis cinerea, otherwise known as noble rot, in a 3.5 tonne batch of riesling grapes. From these he made just 800 luscious litres of wine containing 13 per cent alcohol and 100 grams per litre of residual sugar – balanced by a mouth-tingling 12 grams per litre of acid. It’s a luscious riesling, featuring extraordinary passionfruit-like high notes and aftertaste with underling apricot-like flavours from the botrytis. Despite the sugary flavour intensity, the wine remains delicate and ethereal and will probably age for decades.

Printhie MCC Shiraz 2010 $35
Printhie Vineyard, Orange, NSW
Like Canberra, Orange wine region covers a wide range of microclimates, determined largely by altitude. In Orange, that’s a minimum of 600 metres, but can be over 1000. Printhie’s Dave Swift says the biggest volumes of shiraz in the area grow at the lower altitudes and his own vineyard is at 620 metres. As the altitude increases, says Swift, the variety shows greater cool-climate white pepper and spice character, but beyond 900 metres, it’s unlikely to ripen. Printhie 2010 shows attractive black pepper and spice with vibrant, ripe-berry flavours and fine-boned, elegant structure. It won a gold medal and trophy in the 2011 Orange wine show.

Domain Day Garganega 2011 $18.05–$22
Domain Day vineyard, Mount Crawford, Barossa Valley, South Australia
Garganega is the key grape in Verona’s famous dry white, Soave. It’s an Italian native – and perhaps one of its most promiscuous as recent DNA studies suggest it’s a parent of seven other varieties. Robin Day says his planting was Australia’s first. From it he makes a full-bodied, distinctively flavoured dry white which, in the cool 2011 vintage, seem particularly aromatic and intensely flavoured. A touch of passionfruit in the aftertaste adds zest to a vibrant, savoury dry white whose basic fruit flavour defies description. Day calls it preserved pear; I see more melon rind. Whatever you call it though, it works. And it’s a world away from chardonnay or sauvignon blanc.

Domain Day One Serious Sangiovese 2007 $30
Domain Day vineyard, Mount Crawford, Barossa Valley, South Australia
One of Tuscany’s great sangioveses, Brunello di Montelcino, inspired Robin Day to plant the variety at Mount Crawford, a comparatively cool site at 450 metres, on the border of the Barossa and Eden Valleys. Day’s is an earthy, savoury expression of the variety – the savouriness wrestling with its core of ripe, sweet and sour cherry flavour. Day sums it up accurately, writing, “with a pleasantly drying, fine tannin finish that underlies the more rustic varietal character and keeps the wine rather polite and elegant”. That’s it: savoury, rustic and elegant.

Willow Creek Vineyard Pinot Noir 2010 $36–$40
Mornington Peninsula, Victoria
Good pinot doesn’t belt you over the taste buds. It sneaks up – tastes good, then the drinking pleasure builds, glass by glass, as it does in Willow Creek 2010. The colour’s pale and the aroma’s pure pinot, combining ripe, red-berry with gaminess, earthiness and a touch of beetroot. The palate reflects all these varietal characters and seduces even more with its fleshy, slippery, velvety texture. Now that’s good pinot – made by Geraldine McFaul.

Tim Adams Riesling 2012 $18–$22
Irelands, Rogers and Bayes vineyards, Clare Valley, South Australia
Tim Adams generally makes low-alcohol, dry, austere rieslings requiring a few years to fill out and soften. But in 2012 the aroma and flavour’s already there, bursting like a genie from the bottle. And the alcohol level is still just 11.5 per cent. The beautiful aroma and juicy, intense, lemony varietal flavour comes with a load of refreshing natural acidity and not a sign of the fatness that can accompany forward young rieslings. 2012 looks to be a great riesling vintage in the Clare Valley. This one is sensational at the price.

Book review — Max Allen

1 August 2012Book reviewChris Shanahan

The history of Australian wine: Stories from the vineyard to the cellar door
Max Allen, Victory Books 2012, $49.99

Canberra readers might wonder at first, as I did, why Max Allen’s new book excises us, and surrounding wine regions, from Australian wine history. Local industry founders, Edgar Riek and John Kirk don’t rate a mention. Nor do Tim Kirk and Clonakilla’s world-famous shiraz viognier – arguably Australia’s most influential new-age shiraz. Even the ubiquitous Ken Helm, father of Canberra riesling, misses out. And readers in Young will note the omission of Peter Robertson, founder of Barwang Vineyards and, with it, the Hilltops wine region.

But flip from the index to Allen’s introduction, and we quickly learn the book is best summed up in its subtitle, Stories from the vineyard to the cellar door. It’s not a history at all, in the E. H. Carr sense, but a clever and entertaining compilation of personal stories and opinions.

Allen writes, “Based on a series of interviews conducted across a wide range of industry figures – from winemakers to cellar hands, from business leaders to grape growers – it’s neither an official history nor a definitive history: it’s an oral history, full of first-hand accounts of what happened and when and why, and personal opinions on how Australian wine got to where it is today”.

Those oral histories reside in the State Records of South Australia. They were commissioned by the Wolf Blass Foundation and recorded, transcribed and compiled by Adelaide historian Robb Linn. “Rob harvested the stories, fermented them and carefully bottled them up. I have merely decanted them onto the page”, writes Allen. And he does, images included, over 212 pleasure-to-swallow pages, including the index.

But the available material sets the scope of the book, accounting for the gaps mentioned in the opening paragraph – and the limitations of seeing wine history largely through the eyes of producers.

That’s what the book’s about, of course. But as an old retailer and marketer, I’d love to see more on the dynamic interaction between producers and sellers of wine. For example, Chapter 8 Boom and bust: The business of Australian wine details acquisitions and mergers among producers, but doesn’t refer to consolidation at the retail end that spurred some of this producer activity.

In an earlier chapter, Allen mentions perhaps the most far-reaching legislative change in Australia’s retailing history – Gough Whitlam’s Trade Practices Act. The Act ended retail price maintenance, precipitating massive changes in the distribution chain, particularly in retailing.

Some wine producers resented the abrupt end of what was in effect a gentlemen’s price-fixing racket and resisted the change, futilely, for some years. It’s unfortunate that the book’s sole producer perspective on the Trade Practices Act, comes from Hardys – at the time one of the most conservative companies and, in my memory, one of the slowest and least effective in dealing with the change.

Hardys’ Ray Drew, says the book, links the discounting unleashed by the Act “to the extreme consolidation and virtual duopoly of today’s wine retail market”. Does he mean the industry should’ve stuck to price fixing? I think we need to look elsewhere to understand how Coles and Woolworths amassed their estimated 80 per cent of Australia’s wine market.

The Trade Practices Act created opportunities for retailers and for almost twenty years after the Act’s passing independent retailers collectively controlled the fine wine market. They couldn’t have done this without the protection and freedom afforded by the Act.

It’s true that some of these operators relied almost solely on discounting to drive trade. But some, like Dan Murphys and Nicks in Melbourne, Farmer Bros in Canberra and the Wine Society in Sydney, actively sought the best wines from Australia and overseas and educated their customers through press ads, newsletters, tastings and dinners. Thus the Trade Practice Act not only lowered prices, but allowed entrepreneurial retailers to fan demand for wine.

The Act also released wine producers from the grip of hoteliers and opened the new trading opportunities essential for a production orientated industry producing more than it could readily sell.

But in Queensland, restricted licensing laws gave hotels a virtual monopoly on liquor sales, wine included. However, the conservatism of the hotels, proved to be their own undoing. Their limited wine selections, combined with comparatively high pricing, opened a tremendous opportunity for mail-order wine sellers in the southern states. They soon counted Brisbane and the state’s more affluent provincial centres among their best customers.

By the mid nineties, accelerated by the recession we had to have and interrelated consolidation on both the production and distribution side, independent retailers began to lose their grip on the fine market. Coles moved first, launching its Vintage Cellars chain in 1994 and aggressively acquiring independent outlets to trade under the banner. A few years later Woolworths acquired Dan Murphys. A decade later it had become the dominant force in Australian wine retailing.

Of course none of this happened without intense interaction between the retailers and the producers who tell their stories in Max Allen’s book. Allen takes a unique resource – Rob Linn’s oral histories – and combines it with his own knowledge to give a colourful sketch of Australian wine and the personalities behind it. It’s a valuable contribution to our wine literature. And it whets my appetite both for the missing winemaker stories and the bigger picture of wine commerce.

Beer and cider review — Mountain Goat and Rekorderlig

1 August 2012Beer, CiderChris Shanahan

Mountain Goat Organic Steam Ale 330ml $4.00
“Eat sleep drink Goat”, the label urges. And I’ll happily do the last bit, as it’s a delightful, fresh, bottle-conditioned beer. The colour’s a very pale lemon and the spiciness under the herbal hops aroma suggests wheat beer – an impression confirmed by the fine, white head and brisk, tart, irresistible palate.

Rekorderlig Premium Pear Cider 500ml $8
Our jam makers long ago realised the economies of sugar versus fruit. Dare I suggest the same about Sweden’s popular Rekorderlig cider? Perhaps I missed its charms. But try as I could, the faint but definite pear flavour struggled under the cloying sweetness. Blessed are the sweet of tooth, for sugar is cheap.