Yearly Archives: 2013

Making and marketing single-barrel whisky

27 March 2013People, WhiskyChris Shanahan

Barrel-strength malt whisky isn’t “a dram for the feint hearted”, declares a recent Scotch Malt Whisky Society press release. I’m sure they meant faint hearted. But we get their drift. We could also add that making, maturing and marketing luxury goods, like malt whisky, isn’t for faint-of-heart businesses. Success requires loads of capital, patience, global reach and unique marketing skills.

Successful marketers of luxury goods make us feel good about paying big bucks for their glamorous brands. They have to bring in enough money to cover the real cost of production and marketing, plus a nice mark-up for themselves and acceptable profit margins for everyone in the distribution chain. In the case of single-malt whisky, production might involve maturation in oak barrels for a decade or more before blending and bottling.

In simple terms, this means a malt whisky producer carries the costs of production, storage and maintenance for ten years or more before receiving a cent. But it takes considerable market power – and powerful brand marketing – to achieve a good return on investment.

Good marketers follow consumer tastes but also head off in new directions, taking consumers with them. A colourful example of this in recent years was The Glenmorangie Company’s acquisition of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society.

Glenmorangie, a distiller of Highland Malt Whisky, is part of luxury goods company, LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy). The company makes and markets, as well as Louis Vuitton luggage, many of the world’s great wine and spirit brands, including Moet and Chandon and Veuve Clicquot Champagnes and Hennessy Cognac. Its southern hemisphere wineries include Domain Chandon and Cape Mentelle in Australia and Cloudy Bay, New Zealand.

Glenmorangie’s purchase of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society steps away from the beaten path. It picks up on a growing consumer taste for small-production specialties, generally with strong regional appeal. But the society’s operations seem disconnected from the Glenmorangie brand.

The society, with 26 thousand members globally (1,500 in Australia), formed 30 years ago. Society Ambassador, Georgie Bell, said during a recent visit to Canberra, the society grew from a group of Edinburgh malt enthusiasts, led by Pip Hill. The story goes that in the late seventies, with little single-malt whisky on the market, Hill sourced a single barrel from a Speyside producer and decanted it to gallon jars with a group of like-minded friends.

The group grew by word of mouth and in 1983 became a society, dedicated to sourcing and bottling individual casks of malt whisky. Bell says the society now has 15 branches in 18 countries (one branch for the Benelux countries and one for Australia-New Zealand).

She says the society selects and bottles individual barrels of whisky from 129 distilleries, principally in Scotland, but also from two in Ireland, one in Wales and two in Japan.

An enthusiastic 24 year-old, Bell taught herself to like whisky while working in an Edinburgh cocktail bar as a uni student. She submitted a final-year dissertation on the geography of whisky, based on a case study of the island of Islay and how its identity stems mainly from its whisky production.

Bell attended the society’s Canberra tasting at Regatta point, following events in Canada, the USA, Sydney and Melbourne. She jetted off to open the new Mumbai branch the next morning.

Over three single-cask malts before the Canberra tasting, Bell talked of a new image for malt whisky – a shift away from cigar-smoking, middle-aged blokes. (Though a bloke, Drew McKinnie, heads up the local branch).

Bell describes a significant women and whisky movement emerging in the UK. And she attributes whisky’s appeal to the collection of flavours it presents – seeing strong parallels to perfume, another of her interests.

The three whiskies we compare vary amazingly from one another. They’re to be served at the society tasting with matching entrees prepared by chef, Michael Shilling.

The society’s whisk labels feature two numbers – one representing the distillery, the other the cask number – and cryptic descriptor. For example, we tasted 121.57, described as “bittersweet symphony”. By going to whiskyportal.com I learned that 121 is the number for the Island of Arran Distillery. This is a pale, comparatively delicate whisky with attractive citrus character. Go easy, though, as 55.4 per cent alcohol.

The second whisky, 35.78 “Praline and flat Coca Cola” (from the Glen Moray Distillery, 58.5 per cent alcohol) had been matured for 14 years in sherry casks. It was, in a way, like sherry on steroids, with a rich, delicious caramel-like malt flavour pushing through the sherry-like overlay, with a spicy, oaky aftertaste.

The third whisky, 53.174, “Sumptuous barbecue on the Machair”, combined strong, smokey, peatey aromas (derived from drying the malted barley with peat smoke) with tangy sea-spray character. This 64.2-per-cent-alcohol dram came from the Caol Ila Distillery, Islay.

The society sells its whiskies to members only. However, you can become a member by paying a joining fee and annual subs or, far more palatably, by attending one its quarterly tastings, known as outturns, and purchasing whisky – details at smws.com.au

Prices of whiskies in the current release vary from $150 to $680 a bottle. If you’re visiting Melbourne, several are on tasting at the Whisky and Alement bar, Russell Street.

Beer review — Brewboys and Billabong Brewing

27 March 2013Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Brewboys Maiden Ale 330ml $4.15
This bottle conditioned amber ale, from Brewboys of Adelaide, combines malted barley from several counties, including the UK, Germany and Australia, and fresh hop flowers from Nelson, New Zealand. The pungency of the hops cuts through the rich, smooth caramel-like malt flavours, providing a clean, fresh, drying finish.

Billabong Brewing Nelson Sauvin Ale 330ml $3.98
Western Australia’s Billabong Brewing uses New Zealand Nelson Sauvin hop variety in an attempt to capture its distinctive gooseberry-like character. The beer may have displayed that character when first bottled. But it’s now more of a tartness cutting through and slightly overwhelming the background malt flavour.

Top Aussie beers of 2012

27 March 2013BeerChris Shanahan

Early each year the Beer and Brew Awards nominates Australia’s top 100 brews of the previous year. Beers wine their places through a combination of popular votes, on- and off-premise sales, industry nominations and results from leading beer shows.

Where beers finish on equal points, they’re lined up before a panel of judges for a final decision.

In this year’s event, big, small and middle-sized brewers shared the honours. Japanese-owned Lion led the competition, with 10 successful beer spread across a number of its brands – Castlemaine XXXX, Knappstein, Kosciusko, Little Creatures, Malt Shovel Mad Brewer, Swan, Hahn and White Rabbit. Mid-sized Coopers fielded six winners.

Western Australian Feral Hop Hog topped the list, followed by Byron Bay’s Stone and Wood Pacific Ale, the Lion’s Little Creatures Pale Ale.

You can read the full list at www.beerandbrewer.com

Wine review — Petaluma and Red Knot

24 March 2013Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Petaluma White Label Adelaide Hills Chardonnay 2011 $20–$22
For about half the price of the regular Petaluma chardonnay, white label delivers the vitality and intense nectarine and grapefruit-like varietal flavours of a cold Adelaide Hills vintage. Where the regular blend carries the patina of flavours and texture associated with barrel fermentation and maturation (a serious wine, so to speak), white label delivers the razzle-dazzle of early-picked grapes, captured through fermentation in stainless steel. But barrel fermentation of a portion of the blend adds subtly to the wine’s texture without taking the focus away from the fruit. This is a delicious drink-now style.

Red Knot McLaren Vale Grenache Shiraz Mourvedre 2012 $10.40–$15
The Davey family’s Red Knot range delivers some of the best value for money drinking in the market. Red drinkers twigged to this a few years back, and retailers responded by including the wines among their regular discounts. The wines easily deserve $15 a bottle. But they’re bargains when the price drops closer to $10 – as they were when I wrote this review. The 2012 blend leads with the lovely musk-like fragrance of grenache, supported on the soft and juicy palate by the richness of shiraz and spiciness of mourvedre.

Red Knot McLaren Vale Chardonnay 2012 $14.95
Like every other wine region, McLaren Vale climbed on board the chardonnay bandwagon in the 1980s. While makers of the finest quality chardonnays moved further south or to higher elevations seeking cooler climates, McLaren Vale did the best it could with the variety. Over time the style shifted from rich, buttery oaky styles to the far more refined versions we see today. Red Knot is a good and well priced example of the modern McLaren Vale style – bright and fresh, with generous melon and peach varietal flavour, but modestly alcoholic at 12.5 per cent and with oak way off in the background, a gentle seasoning.

Aldi attracts Woolworths attention

20 March 2013Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Attempting to deflect criticism of its market power last week, Woolworths drew attention to its fast-growing competitor, Aldi. Woolworths highlighted the 95 per cent market share of private labels in Aldi, compared to just six per cent in its own stores.

Aldi remains a minnow compared to Woolies. But it’s growing rapidly and its strategy of offering mainly private labels makes it a difficult devil to grapple with – especially on price. How can you undercut a competitor that sells so few mainstream brands?

Aldi does private labels particularly well. The packaging looks good, often resembling market leaders. And the quality generally exceeds the “no better than it needs to be” values of old-time generics.

The beers reviewed this week, for example, sell on special for around the price of mainstream Australian brews, but offer more, in my view, than, say VB.

Hopper Whitman Belgian White Ale 355ml 6-pack $9.99–$12.99
Aldi’s Hopper Whitman white ale, brewed by World Beers, New York, emulates Belgian styles like Hoegaarden. The lemon colour and cloudy appearance look similar to the original, although the aroma seems fruitier and the palate a little rounder and sweeter. It’s a tasty, clean, refreshing wheat ale and true to style.

Hopper Whitman Summer Brew Pale Ale 330ml 6-pack $9.99–$12.99
At first glance I thought this might be in the bright, aromatically hoppy style of Little Creatures Pale Ale. There’s an element of aromatic hops, but the character leaned more to the herbal than floral and on the palate, hops bitterness seemed more important than hops flavour. It’s an easy drinking, well-balanced style.

Wine review — Gaelic Cemetary, Brand’s Laira, Montalto, Richmond Grove and Cumulus

20 March 2013Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Gaelic Cemetery Vineyard Riesling 2012 $20
Gaelic Cemetery Vineyard, Clare Valley, South Australia
Well-known Clare Valley winemaker Neil Pike makes two rieslings from Grant Arnold’s Gaelic Cemetery Vineyard, five kilometres north of Clare township. The first reviewed, today is made in a fresh, fruity style for current drinking; the second, for review next week, treads a different path. For $20, the fruity style delivers mouth-watering lime and lemon freshness. It’s soft, round, juicy and seductive but dry and cut through with zesty acidity. This is a style to enjoy over the next three or four years, but never better than now.

Brand’s Laira Tall Vines Shiraz 2010 $22–$27
Brand’s vineyard, Coonawarra, South Australia
At the recent Winewise Championship, Tall vines scraped in one point behind Wolf Blass McLaren Vale Shiraz 2010 ($34). They were my top two wines in a group of seven, all gold medal winners from Australian wine shows. I rated the Blass wine slightly ahead of Brand’s, though the price difference makes Brand’s really good value. At just under 15 per cent alcohol, it’s big for a Coonawarra shiraz. But it retains the region’s ripe, distinctive berry flavours – in the 2010 vintage coated with quite firm, satisfying tannins. Though attractive, I believe the style could do with fine-tuning to express the finer face of Coonawarra shiraz.

Brand’s Laira Stentiford’s Shiraz 2008$55
Brand’s Stentiford vineyard, Coonawarra, South Australia
I had a dream. Nick O’Leary and Alex McKay appeared in Brand’s Stentiford vineyard (planted 1893) just weeks before vintage. They harvested grapes a little earlier than usual, capturing their extraordinary, intense, bright berry flavours. They included whole bunches in the ferments, hand-plunged the cap of skins and held back on the new oak (all French of course) as the wine matured. The razor-edged varietality of the bright, elegant, silky, medium-bodied wine they made amazed everybody. Robert Parker and James Halliday rated it 100/100. Then I woke to the real, more burly Stentiford – its oaky, 15 per-cent alcohol, furry tannins blurring the fruit within. Yes, it’s a gold-medal wine to some judges, silver to me. But where’s the finesse and shimmering beauty glimpsed occasionally from this great vineyard?

Montalto Pennon Hill Chardonnay 2012 $23–$25
Pennon and Hawkins Hill vineyards, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria
Montalto rates among the best producers on the Mornington Peninsula, their second label, Pennon Hill, delivering regional style and quality at a fair price. The 2012 chardonnay impresses for its lovely underlying varietal flavour, reminiscent of melon rind, tweaked with grapefruit. But barrel fermentation with indigenous yeast, a natural malolactic fermentation (a secondary fermentation converting malic acid to lactic acid) and maturation on spent yeast cells all add to the rich, but fine, texture of the wine and patina of subtle flavours coating the underlying fruit.

Richmond Grove Riesling 2012 $19–$22
Watervale, Southern Clare Valley, South Australia
Richmond Grove is riesling royalty – combining the long, distinguished pedigrees of Leo Buring-Lindemans and Orlando. The two streams combined in the nineties and included riesling luminaries Bernard Hickin (Orlando) and John Vickery and Phil Laffer (Buring-Lindeman). Today Rebekah Richardson makes the rieslings under Hickin, continuing the delicate, brisk, dry style, with its distinctive lime-like flavour and potential to age well for many years. I rate this the best vintage since the outstanding and still delicious 2002.

Cumulus Shiraz 2010 $35
Orange, NSW
Cumulus comes from a 508-hectare estate belonging principally to Portugal’s Berardo family, owners, too, of several Portuguese estates. Cumulus 2009 shiraz, reviewed a year ago, showed more classic, fine-boned, cool-climate style. But the 2010 seems notably fuller in style, with stronger firmer tannins – albeit silky, smooth and easy to drink. Winemaker Debbie Lauritz says, “We included 10% whole bunches in the press for the 2010, giving the tannins a savoury twist and increasing the texture”.

Book review — Wine Grapes by Jancis Robinson, Julia Harding and Jose Vouillamoz

20 March 2013Book reviewChris Shanahan

Wine Grapes: A complete guide to 1,368 vine varieties, including their origins and flavours
Jancis Robinson, Julia Harding and Jose Vouillamoz
(Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, October 2012, $199)

Page 1023 of Wine grapes brought me to a shuddering halt. Not that I’d read the preceding 1022 pages, instead skimming through Jancis Robinson’s preface then diving in for the low down on ‘syrah’ (shiraz).

It seems Australia’s national red hero isn’t what we all thought. Robinson, Harding and Vouillamoz conclude, “Pinot is a very likely great-grandparent of syrah, which challenges the supposition that they have completely different origins”.

DNA parentage analysis by French and American scientists in 1998 established shiraz as the love child of mondeuse blanche (the mother, from Savoie) and dureza (the father, from Ardeche).

This fortuitous and altogether spontaneous mating could have occurred only had the two shared the same viticultural bed. And in 2008 researchers Meredith and Boursiquot concluded the most likely place to find the two cultivated together would have been in the French Rhone-Alpes region, probably in the Isere.

But where and how does pinot noir come into the shiraz family tree? Something called probabilistic DNA analysis by Vouillamoz and Grando in 2006, established dureza, shiraz’s father, as “a sibling of teroldego”, a variety from Trentino in northern Italy. “This was the first evidence of a close genetic link between two varieties on different sides of the Alps”, writes Robinson.

And it continues, “Since syrah is a progeny of dureza, it is therefore a nephew/niece of teroldego. Vouillamoz and Grando have also detected a second-degree genetic relationship between pinot and both dureza and teroldego, which means that pinot could be their grandparent, grandchild, uncle/aunt, nephew/niece or half-sibling. Since pinot was already known in France and in the Tyrol in the fourteenth century, its cultivation predates that of both dureza and teroldego and it is logical to consider pinot as their ancestor, either their grandparent or their uncle/aunt. Therefore, pinot is very likely great-grandparent of Syrah”.

The shock revelation of shiraz’s lineage dragged me back to Robinson’s preface, where she’d warned of surprises ahead. I have on my bookshelf well-thumbed copies of her Vines, Grapes and Wines (1986) and the first and last of three editions of The Oxford Companion to Wine – the latter containing updates of her previous work on grape varieties.

But Robinson advises us to discard this previously authoritative work, “as this book is so much more up to date and comprehensive than either of my previous works on the subject”.

The book’s many revelations (like the pinot-shiraz relationship) rely on DNA profiling, recently developed probabilistic analysis (capable of finding more distant relationships even in the absence of known parents), and cross-referencing with historical cultivation records.

Robinson says Australian scientists established the first grape DNA profile in 1993. Four years later Californian scientists revealed Bordeaux’s noble red variety, cabernet sauvignon, as a likely natural crossing of cabernet franc and the white variety sauvignon blanc. Knowledge has grown exponentially since then.

Robinson claims the near-1300 page book “provides readers with virtually every DNA result published before 31 August 2011 as well as with dozens of unpublished results and fourteen pedigree diagrams exclusive to us that reveal many new, sometimes unexpected, familial relationships”.

Despite the depth of recent discoveries, many of the boxes in the pedigree diagrams contain question marks representing unknown family members. Perhaps these identities will be discovered in coming decades.

In the case of shiraz, for example, we know one of its great-grandparents (pinot) but not pinot’s mate. Nor do we know shiraz’s grandparents. Other diagrams in the syrah family tree offer several possible options for its genetic relationship with the white variety, viognier.

Robinson estimates the number of vine varieties in the world at 10,000, members of about six species. However, the book limits itself to 1,368 of them. That seems an extraordinary number, despite the steadily growing range of varietal names appearing on wine bottles. But Robinson says this is the number of varieties they know to be producing commercial quantities of wine.

The book offers beautiful colour plates of many vine varieties, depicting leaf, stem and grape bunches.

For each variety the authors detail berry colour, principal synonyms, varieties commonly mistaken for it, origins and parentage, viticultural characteristics, where it’s grown and what it tastes like.

Under ‘Syrah’, for example, we learn France claims the number one position with 68,587 hectares in the ground in 2009. Australia claims second place with 43,977 hectares in 2008.

The introduction covers a broad, easily read introduction to the grape vine, including grape varieties, the vine family, a description of mutations and clones, the basics of vine breeding (natural and human-controlled), rootstocks, grafting and DNA profiling.

The books also lists varieties by country of origin, where and under what conditions different varieties grow. There’s a comprehensive index. And if 1300 pages aren’t enough, the 20-page bibliography points to more bedside reading.

Wine Grapes is a towering and original work, a reference book for the world’s wine industry. And for wine drinkers it reveals so much about the vines that give us such drinking pleasure.

Wine review — Nick O’Leary, Peter Lehmann and Mr Riggs

17 March 2013Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Nick O’Leary Canberra District Shiraz 2011 $28
Local winemaker Nick O’Leary’s 2011 shiraz impressed when he released it last year. Then in a masked tasting a few weeks back it vied for top spot among tasters alongside O’Leary’s new flagship red, the $55 a bottle Bolaro Shiraz 2011. They’re both wonderful, distinctively-Canberra wines, the Bolaro likely to win in the long run. However, the tasting proves the law of diminishing returns. For half of the price of the Bolaro, the $28 delivers 90 per cent of the quality. It’s highly aromatic, featuring the distinctive spice, pepper and ripe berry aromas of cool-grown shiraz. The medium bodied, lively, fresh and elegant palate reflects the aroma.

Peter Lehmann Eden Valley Portrait Riesling 2012 $15
Having dismissed this gold medal winner as just OK in a recent masked tasting, I grabbed another bottle a few days later. Whether my palate went AWOL, or the original bottle was damaged, I’ll never know. But the second tasting revealed a most appealing, aromatic, floral young riesling – delicate and light bodied at just 11 per cent alcohol, shimmering with fresh lime-like varietal flavour and cut through with zesty, refreshing acidity. It drinks well as an after-work refresher (as we had it at the second encounter) and would be good company with light seafood, salads and spicy Asian food.

Mr Riggs McLaren Vale The Gaffer Shiraz 2011 $19–$22
Mr Riggs, made by Ben Riggs, belongs with Woop Woop, Penny’s Hill and The Black Chook in the Galvanised Wine Group’s portfolio. The Gaffer sits in the quality-value sweet spot of the group’s rang, generally offering well-defined regional varietal character. We put the latest vintage, alongside several other shirazes, to the curry test. Against conventional wisdom, many fruity, soft Australian shirazes, retain their attractive flavours in the presence of cumin, cardamon, nutmeg, turmeric, black pepper and even chilli. And so it proved on this occasion. The delicious ripe-berry flavours welled up through other savoury flavours and the firmer, more-grippy-than-usual tannins.

Free app for would-be beer judges

13 March 2013BeerChris Shanahan

The free smartphone app, BJCP styles, targets would-be beer judges and brewers. But it’s an excellent, albeit jargon-riddled, reference for anyone interested in the confusing range of beer now on offer. It also offers short sections on mead and cider.

The beer section covers 23 broad categories. And you can drill down through those categories for details of the major styles it covers.

Tap the “Sour ale” button, for example, to discover six more sub-categories: Berliner weisse, Flanders red ale, Flanders brown ales, unblended lambic, gueuze (see review below) and fruit lambic.

The definitions describe the overall impressions of each style, its history, ingredients, technical specification and details of colour, aroma and flavours we should expect. Each sub-section ends with commercial examples of the style – an invaluable tool for shoppers confronting too much choice. Search “BJCP” in the app store.

Beer review — Wig and Pen and Prickly Moses

13 March 2013Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Wig and Pen Gueuze 355ml balloon $10
Gueuze, part of Belgium’s lambic beer family, combines barrel-conditioned ales of various ages – in the Wig’s version, one, two and three years old. The microbial tag-team in the barrels produces an intensely fruity beer (pineapple-like) of tart, grapefruit-like acidity with underlying earthy, farmyard characters. It’s not a session beer, but a remarkable one to linger over.

Prickly Moses Organic Pilsner 330ml $3.82
Prickly Moses, from Barongarook, Victoria, combines Otway rainwater and pilsner malts with New Zealand hops, fermented by “one of the world’s original yeast strains from Germany”. The slightly cloudy, pale lemon colour and persistent white head appeal strongly, as does the fresh, brisk, herbal-hoppy palate. It stands out among all the me-too pilsners.