Big retailers quickly sense consumer pain. And to preserve sales and profits they apply pressure on suppliers for better trading terms – be it rebates, discounts, promotional payments, bonus stock, longer credit periods or even a combination of these.

The savings are largely competed away. And in Britain, said Ross Brown of Brown Brothers on a recent visit to Canberra, retailers turned ‘ballistic’ in the current severe economic downturn, driving prices ever lower. He says supermarket chain ASDA led the fray but Tesco quickly joined in, fearful of losing market share.

For cash-strapped drinkers the discounting keeps wine in reach. But for equally cash-strapped producers, it’s making the UK’s feared BOGOF (by-one-get-one-free) deals of recent years appear gentle.

In the domestic market, Brown sees the biggest threat to wineries like his own as the rapid growth of private labels offered by Coles and Woolworths. Even so, he says the local market remains strong for the Brown Brothers brand.

He recalls that in the downturn following the market crash of 1989 his business came through strongly. He sees this as a result of strong branding and positioning most of their range at a modest price, not at the vulnerable top end.

Today that means very good, very strongly branded products retailing at $15–$20, with sales driven by consumer desire for the wines, not retailer discounting. Across the decades Browns have stood out as brand builders in a discount-led market, often coming to market with novel new products.

Ross cites the example of Moscato, a fruity, muscat-based, low alcohol wine. It’s a classic style of Asti, Italy, but had little following here in Australia and virtually no local examples until Browns launched theirs ten years ago.

It became market leader and according to AC Nielsen, in the year to 22 March 2009 was Australia’s ninth biggest selling white by value. Its success inspired many others and may have saved the various muscat varieties from extinction in Australia.

It also spawned Zibbibo, Browns phenomenally successful low alcohol, fruity sparkling wine. Then a pink version, Zibbibo Rosa, launched last year found a new army of followers without taking share from the original.

Another huge success in what Ross and his wife Judy call the ‘fruity’ category is the red Dolcetto & Syrah, Australia’s fourth biggest selling red wine by value. Now, we’d normally expect the red varieties dolcetto or syrah (aka shiraz) to be dry. But Brown’s version is very sweet – containing about 50 grams per litre of sugar.

That’s unconventional. But like so many Brown Brothers wines before it, its large scale roll out flowed from more modest success at the cellar door – perhaps one of the best test markets in the world with 90,000 or so visitors a year.

Like the odd winemaker in every generation, probably since the year dot, Browns have perceived that wine is a peculiar flavour, perhaps to the majority of humans. It’s generally an acquired taste and often the introduction is through fruity, sweet styles, often with an invigorating bubble.

In his wonderful little booklet, The view from our place (Simon & Schuster, UK, 2006) winemaker Phil Laffer writes of the birth of our modern wine industry, “Australian really started drinking wine in a serious way with the advent in the 1950s and 1960s of products with wonderful names such as Rhinegold, Barossa Pearl and Ben Ean Moselle. These are now as unfashionable as the sweet German hock that was popular in the UK market in the 1960s.

“They were all white wines, they were all sweet and they were all well made… Each was attractive to drink and, collectively, this style persuaded Australians into drinking wine”.

The Browns, though, see this a perennially successful theme. Each new generation finds its own taste – and Browns have been incredibly perceptive in finding it and offering very high quality wines that Ross and Judy, with some justification, prefer to call ‘fruity’ rather than sweet. It’s justified because the successful wines all have terrific grapey flavours, not just sweetness.

But there’s more – as Brown Brothers offers seriously good, often cutting edge, quality across a very wide spectrum of styles

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

Research being done by the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI), with help from Canberra’s Jim Lumbers (Lerida Estate) and Frank van der Loo (Mount Majura Vineyard), could have a profound impact on how vignerons control the level of pepperiness in shiraz – Australia’s signature variety.

Their work is part of the long history we have of digging into the chemistry of wine flavours. And what science unearths sometimes gels with long-used wine descriptions. A few decades back, for example, Australian scientists identified methoxypyrazene as the compound underpinning the aroma and flavour of sauvignon blanc.

Wines made from the variety, especially those from cool areas, had often been described as tasting of capsicum or gooseberry. Subsequent testing found methoxypyrazene at the heart of capsicum and gooseberry flavours, giving a scientific basis for the descriptors used for sauvignon blanc.

I don’t think Australian scientists discovered the terpene family behind riesling’s distinctive floral character. But they’ve certainly wondered why, with bottle age, some rieslings develop a distinctive ‘kero’ aroma. It’s now thought to be caused by the oxidation of terpenes. And since terpenes are partly behind the aroma of kerosene, the descriptor ‘kero’ for old riesling has some scientific basis.

And less than two years ago a group of Australian scientists discovered the molecule (another of the terpene family) behind the widely observed ‘peppery’ character in shiraz.

In a paper published on the BioInfoBank Library website early last year, the scientists write, “An obscure sesquiterpene, rotundone, has been identified as a hitherto unrecognised important aroma impact compound with a strong spicy, peppercorn aroma. Excellent correlations were observed between the concentration of rotundone and the mean ‘black pepper’ aroma intensity rated by sensory panels for both grape and wine samples, indicating that rotundone is a major contributor to peppery characters in shiraz grapes and wine…”

OK, so rotundone makes shiraz grapes and wine taste peppery. But what makes peppercorns peppery? The wine sleuths weren’t buying into the old belief that it resulted from chemical complexity.

Further investigation revealed “Rotundone was found in much higher amounts in other common herbs and spices, especially black and white peppercorns, where it was present at approximately 10,000 times the level found in ‘peppery’ wine. Rotundone is the firsts compound found in black or white peppercorns that has a distinctive peppery aroma”.

The sensory tests revealed two other remarkable facts about rotundone. The first was that 80 per cent of the tasting panel detected it in amazingly tiny concentrations: 16 billionths of a gram per litre in wine or 8 billionths of a gram in water. These tasters could also discern spikes in flavour intensity as the concentration increased.

The second striking observation (marketers please note) was that 20 per cent of the tasters couldn’t detect rotundone at all – even in water at concentrations of 4,000 billionths a gram per litre, 500 times the detectable threshold for the other tasters. Their conclusion that “the sensory experience of two consumers enjoying the same glass of shiraz wine might be very different” could be an understatement -– but it won’t stop the research on rotundone’s affect on wine flavour.

To track it’s development in grapes and wine, Frank and Jim began sending shiraz berry samples to the AWRI from the time of veraison (the stage where grapes begin to soften, develop red colour and ripen). The AWRI hopes to gain a better understanding of when and how rotundone forms and what determines its concentration in the berries.

And because rotundone is believed to be in or near the skin of the grape, its concentration in wine could be affected by the duration of skin contact during winemaking. The time varies considerably – from a minimum of perhaps seven days to three or four weeks.

The duration of contact depends largely on the winemaker’s preference – shorter periods allow for fermentation and extraction of colour and tannin from the skins; longer periods often include pre-ferment or post-ferment maceration, or both, to modify tannin structure.

Whether or not this affects the pepperiness of shiraz should be better understood following the current research.

And to give a long-run perspective on finished wine, Jim Lumbers says “I have donated my vertical of Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier (2007 to 1997) with three gaps kindly being filled by Tim [Kirk, or Clonakilla]”.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

The first handwritten postcard arrived in early July 2006, postmarked Paris, 30 June. It read ‘Dear Chris, It’s a long time since we’ve seen each other as I have been away for nearly 10 years now. Funnily enough I am back where I started and it made me think of you and the old days. Anyway, I plan to catch up with you when I get back to Australia soon. Love & wishes OBS’.

It made me think of the old days, too. But I couldn’t remember ‘OBS’. And I couldn’t think of any lost friends. My wife raised her eyebrows; grown-up kids seemed amused but suspicious.

A week later the second card arrived from Dubai, postmarked just one day after the Paris one. OBS was on the move. ‘Dear Chris’, she greeted me (it was a woman’s handwriting), ‘Dubai is hot at this time of year and will get hotter. The gold here is beautiful, good value and adorns the most stylish.

‘New Dubai is the vision of one man – truly amazing. 25% of the world’s building cranes are here. It makes me realise that with dedication and passion there are no boundaries to quality and success. I’m so looking forward to talking with you about our mutual friend. Love & wishes OBS’.

So, I shared a mutual friend with OBS. ‘It’s a prank’, said my wife, eyebrows relaxed; grown up son joked about a secret sibling, winked.

Almost two weeks later came the London postcard. ‘Dear Chris’, wrote my long lost friend, ‘Well it’s all been happening here what with the World Cup, Wimbledon and the sales. I was the toast of London and I both dressed and played up like you could not believe. But everyone loved me and it made me so proud to be an Aussie.

‘It’s now time to plan my journey home although I’ll probably make one more stopover. When I do get there I’d love to spend some time with you. Love & wishes OBS’.

By now we were looking forward to the postcards, their hints of lifestyle and self-promotion adding to the OBS mystery. A week or so later came another, from Beau-Rivage Palace, Lausanne, Switzerland. ‘Dear Chris, I’ve travelled well across the alps to Switzerland and I’m now rested in this world famous hotel.

‘I was feeling quite intimidated by the famous parade of names at the hotel when a delightful, professional man agreed to join me in a drink. He liked me immediately and we enjoyed each other’s company most of the night. However, I miss you and my other friends at home and look forward to being with you soon. Love & wishes OBS’.

By now we’d concluded that OBS was a drink. She was Aussie, she saw no limits to quality or success, she’d been the toast of London, she’d travelled well across the alps, and even against other famous names had been enjoyed by a professional gentleman, albeit to excess.

But questions remained unanswered. Who was she and why had she been out of Australia for ten years?

The final postcard, from Sydney, arrived in early August but OBS revealed little: ‘Dear Chris, It’s great to be home safe and sound what with all the trouble in the Middle East right now. Winter is really here isn’t it whilst Europe swelters.
‘The Sydney fish markets received a visit yesterday and a seafood feast was prepared last night, which is something I have missed more than nearly everything else. Oh what joy! I’ve been away for some time now and I can’t tell you how much I have been looking forward to seeing you and making up for lost time. Anyway, I’ll call you in the next few days to try to catch up. Love & wishes OBS’.

But the phone didn’t ring. Instead, came a letter from Richard Owens of Hunter Valley winery, Oakvale, apologising for ‘a marketing programme that may have back fired’. He was also ‘sorry if you or anyone in your family has been concerned or hurt’. What had my fellow wine writers been up to in the good old days? And what were their partners thinking now?

At Chateau Shanahan we’d been puzzled at first, then amused and then curious after the Swiss postcard. We wanted to know who OBS was, not an apology.

And Richard answered our question in the same letter, revealing OBS as Oakvale Barrel Select Shiraz – and she’d been travelling around Europe in a suitcase.

As it turned out OBS wasn’t an old friend – we’d never met – and we didn’t have any mutual friends. She was a metaphor, and a pretty shaky one at that. But she’s welcome to our next dinner party, perhaps accompanying the roast beef. She might even spend the night.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

Chateau Shanahan’s in the grip of a severe riesling addiction. Our pleasure comes reliably and economically. And it’s a direct result of Australia’s dramatic switch from cork to screwcap – precipitated in 1999 by a group of determined Clare Valley riesling makers.

Thanks to winemaker Jeffrey Grosset and his Clare Valley mates we’re all enjoying better, fresher wines of every style every day. And if, like Chateau Shanahan, you began tossing a few cases of screw-capped Aussie rieslings under the house ten years ago you’ll understand our excitement.

Over the last few months we’ve snapped the caps off every vintage from 1998 on. We’ve particularly enjoyed those from 2003 and earlier. And though the styles vary from maker to maker and year-to-year, the best share a delicious combination of mature flavours with shimmering freshness.

What’s also coming through is that inexpensive wines from the right regions and makers often cellar well. A good example is Richmond Grove Watervale Riesling 2002, bought for around $10 in late 2002.
It’s a wine we’ve always regarded as deliciously undervalued, so there’s a few vintages of it on hand, including the 1997, which is cork sealed. And therein lies a little-known screw cap story that precedes the Clare Valley initiative by one year.

It involves John Vickery, perhaps our most influential riesling maker ever, a team of like-minded makers at Orlando (owners of Richmond Grove) and a few people from the then Coles-Myer-owned Liquorland group.

In April 1997 Vickery conducted tastings of his rieslings back to the 1963 vintage for a handful of fortunate media and the trade at the Richmond Grove Winery, Tanunda. (To read about the tasting search for ‘Riesling master John Vickery unveils a life’s work’ on this site).

The best were magnificent. But John lamented the damage caused by corks, saying that he’d had to open many bottles of some vintages to find one good one. By then he was advocating a return to screw caps, a practice that had been abandoned by winemakers after commercial trials in the late seventies. Though drinkers had rejected screw caps, the seal had subsequently proven itself to be highly effective over the ensuing decades.

Immediately after the tasting, the Coles Myer people negotiated with Orlando to have 1,000 cases each of Richmond Grove’s Watervale and Barossa Rieslings sealed under screwcap from the 1998 vintage.

Coles Myer duly launched the wines Australia wide through its Vintage Cellars wine club magazine, Cellar Press, explaining the benefits to its readers.

Drinkers embraced the idea. And the launch sparked a reaction from other retailers demanding the Richmond Grove rieslings under screw cap. But as Orlando had sealed all but the Coles Myer portion under cork they couldn’t oblige. The exercise, however, demonstrated that the screw cap was an idea whose time had come.

However, it wasn’t embraced universally at first. Some sceptics, including the late Len Evans, felt that wine, and especially red wines, wouldn’t mature properly under screw cap. Others lamented the loss of the ‘romantic’ associations of pulling a cork.

And though the uptake for white wines was rapid, there were teething problems. Some of the early bottlings of riesling and, later, red wines, developed smelly sulphide compounds -– a problem of reduction (lack of oxygen) that could be fixed (and was) by more attentive winemaking.

As well, screw caps could be damaged by direct impact and by being on the top layer of the bottom palate of a three-palate-high stack – both of which could break the airtight seal. But these and other glitches were minor and largely manageable problems, especially when compared to the high failure rate of cork over time.

Of riesling taken from the Chateau Shanahan cellar in the past year or so, we’ve found, for example, that to get one really good bottle of the highly prized, cork-sealed 1997 Orlando Steingarten Riesling, we have to open five bottles. Of those one will be corked or so oxidised that’s it’s not much fun to drink, three will be OK, but dull and one bouncing with life.

We’ve found the same, too, with the cork-sealed 1997 Richmond Grove Watervale Riesling. On the other hand, we’ve had no failures (and lots of pleasure) from numerous screw cap sealed Richmond Grove rieslings from 1998 on.

Other memorable, aged-but-fresh, screw cap bottles enjoyed recently include Petaluma Hanlin Hill Clare Valley Riesling 2003, St Hallett Eden Valley Riesling 2002 and 2003, Leo Buring Eden Valley Riesling 2003, Henschke Julius Eden Valley Riesling 2001, Jacob’s Creek Steingarten Riesling 2005 and Tim Adams Clare Valley Riesling 2003.

This experience suggests that the advent of the screw cap makes riesling perhaps the safest, cheapest and most interesting of Australia’s cellaring wines. It’s all about drinking pleasure in the end. You have to choose the right wines – not all riesling will cellar (your wine retailer could point to a few, and these days that’d include several Canberra District wines).

And you have to keep them somewhere cool and dark. A typical under-the-house Canberra storeroom – annual temperature range from 10 degrees to 20 degrees Celsius – seems fine for ten years or so. That’s all we have. But if you have controlled temperature storage at around 16 degrees constant, the best rieslings should cellar for many decades. My favourite of the Vickery 1997 tastings, for example, was from the 1972 vintage.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

If winemaker Peter Gago’s vision is realised, future vintages of Penfolds Grange will be sealed with a unique glass-to-glass closure, developed in-house and now being trialled on the 2006 vintage. Adoption of the closure could create for Foster’s new chief executive, Ian Johnstone, an opportunity to shake the wine world with a powerful assertion of Aussie wine quality. Penfolds, the greatest blue chip of Foster’s wine brands, could rightly claim to have closed the final link in the quality-control chain. The long-term benefit for Grange, indeed for Penfolds reds in general, would be huge.

But despite the successful trial, adoption of the closure is not a fait accompli. Given the harsh economic environment, and with Foster’s reviewing its poorly-performing international wine business, the glass-seal project could easily be swept aside. But it would be short sighted to do so.

Grange is our greatest international wine icon. It’s been around since 1951 and, like the great wines of France, its custodians must view its future in centuries, not in the fleeting blip of even the nastiest recession.

What makes these wines hold their allure across the centuries? In a nutshell it’s the perception – by thousands of people over great spans of time – of unique style and superior quality sustained. This judgment is expressed in the premium that people are prepared to pay. Indeed this was the basis of Bordeaux’s classification of its great wines in 1855.

Peter Gago’s glass-seal project recognises that in this elite world, where a bottle might cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars, quality control isn’t limited to grape growing, winemaking, maturation and bottling – especially when there’s an assumption of longevity, where individual vintages may be enjoyed for many decades, sometimes a century or more. For wines of this calibre the winemaker must do everything possible to deliver every bottle in pristine condition.

And, so, we arrive at the pointy end of the Grange bottle and what to put in it – or over it. At present you’ll find an A-grade cork, says Gago, ‘but we are perpetually unimpressed by it’, largely because of cork taint – a musty taste caused by cork-borne trichcloroanisole (TCA). If there’s TCA in a cork, it’ll taint the wine immediately and forever. There’s no going back. And in the case of Grange, that could be goodbye $500.

Why not screw cap? Two thirds of Aussie wines now have one, Penfolds offers all of its wines, except Grange, under screw cap and it’s now known that cap-sealed whites and reds mature normally.

But Peter Gago says that while we know for sure that there are no problems with white wine stored under screw cap for forty years, we don’t have certainty beyond a decade or two for reds. He says that white and red wine chemistry is different and we simply don’t understand enough about how red might react in the very long term with the wads that form the seal inside screw caps.

He believes it’s an important area for the Australian Wine Research Institute to investigate. But meanwhile, given Grange’s multi-decade cellaring capacity, he initiated the glass-to-glass concept, reported here in May 2007.

Subsequently, Peter’s team developed two prototypes – a spring loaded device and a ‘pseudo screw cap’ – in time to test on the 2006 vintage. He says that they’re now ready to take it to the next level. But that requires money, and that’s very tight in the current environment.

Nevertheless it presents a golden opportunity for Foster’s to take a global lead – and seize a competitive advantage. And if they don’t, such a good idea’s sure to attract support from a savvy entrepreneur or, at worst, from a competitor ready to embrace the new technology.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009