Category Archives: Wine

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.

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.

How the Casella family built the Yellowtail brand

22 January 2006People, WineChris Shanahan

An air picture of Casella’s Yellowtail winemaking facilities shows rows of stainless steel tanks, each holding 1.14 million litres of wine! And there’ll soon be 68 of them.

Gigantic as they seem, they’ll hold less than half of the 200million litres of wine stored at this site – home to a brand launched in the USA in 2001.

Just five years later, it’s the number one imported wine in the world’s biggest wine market; the number one Australian wine in that market; and the fastest growing imported wine in US history – with annual sales projected by the owners at 8.5 million cases in the US this year and over 10 million globally.

To feed that demand, the winery will this year process 142 thousand tonnes of grapes (about 10.7 million dozen bottles) and supplement production by purchasing bulk wine.

Who is it? No, not any of the big four: Foster’s, Hardy’s, Orlando-Wyndham or McGuigan-Simeon — but Casella Wines of Griffith, owner of the extraordinary Yellowtail brand.

Yellowtail came from nowhere, overtook everyone and continues to dazzle the wine world as it achieves greater volume in five years than Jacob’s Creek, Australia’s other huge global wine brand, did in thirty.

Managing Director, John Casella, says, “I would’ve been happy with a fifteen thousand tonne winery and 100 thousand case brand”. But he and the family fulfilled the unanticipated and explosive American demand, maintained family control and leveraged the American success to launch Yellowtail domestically and in other export markets.

Casella is unrecognisable from the business founded by John’s parents, Philippo and Maria, in the 1960s. More remarkably, it’s unrecognisable from the business that exported its first wines to the USA, under the Carramar Estate label, in 1998.

Says John, “we crushed 200 tonnes in 1993 and 20,000 tonnes in 2001”.

By 2001, John perceived more scope for growth in exports than in the crowded domestic market. As part of a planned export push, in 2000 he purchased the Yellowtail brand name and distinctive packaging from Adelaide designer, Barbara Harkness.

However, with the Yellowtail due for launch in the US in June, 2001 and the first year’s sales projected at 50 thousand cases, Casella sold much of the 2001 production into the bulk market.

Just thirteen months later US exports passed the one million case mark. But there couldn’t have been a better time to misjudge sales! Rosemount’s exit from the Australian bulk wine market after its takeover by Southcorp, meant easy availability and low prices for bulk wine.

John attributes that early US success partly to the low Aussie dollar at the time but principally to the appealing nature of the wine and an outstanding partnership with long established US distributor, W.J. Deutsch & Sons.

Such conspicuous success in the US drove interest in other markets. Yellowtail is now growing in the UK, number one Aussie import in the large Canadian and emerging Japanese markets respectively, and achieved sales of 130 thousand cases in the year following its domestic release in 2003 – with compound growth since of 30-40 per cent.

Continued extension of the Yellowtail range (there’s a new riesling and other varieties in the pipeline) and the successful launch (250 thousand cases) of the Yellowtail Reserve range in the US ($US11 a bottle versus $US 6 for the standard wines) suggest further growth for this family business.

Although a weak dollar combined with low bulk-wine and grape prices helped in establishing Yellowtail, John Casella believes that the brand’s future remains bright. It continued to grow as the Aussie dollar appreciated. And with growing numbers of long-term grape contracts, John says the brand is not reliant on the unsustainable prices of recent years.

King Valley overview

15 January 2006People, WineChris Shanahan

Victoria’s King Valley stretches northwards from the sub-Alpine country around Whitlands, at a chilly 800 metres above sea level, gradually descending and comparatively narrow, before fanning out over the hot Oxley plains around Milawa at around 170 metres.

Growing conditions vary greatly in this thirty kilometre long valley. Varying altitudes, rainfall, latitudes, soils and aspects produce a correspondingly wide spectrum of grape and wine flavours.

The mean January temperature at Milawa in the north is 22 degrees Celsius; in the south at Whitlands it’s just 19 degrees. Grapes ripen in early March at Milawa but not until late April at Whitlands.

In short the area produces everything from thumping big, alcoholic fortifieds and reds, to delicate sparkling and white wines.

While the Valley’s winemaking began in the late nineteenth century, most activity remained at the warmer northern end around Milawa until the 1970s.

Milawa owes its prominence on the winemaking map to Brown Bros whose presence, from 1889, sustained the industry in the region and, ultimately, sparked the southward vineyard expansions into the higher, cooler southern end of the valley.

The spread south and upward towards Whitfield, Myrrhee, Whitlands and Cheshunt was driven by growing demand for high-quality table wines. Brown Bros led the way, developing its own high altitude Whitlands vineyard and encouraging local landowners to diversify into grapes.

The first independents — Guy Darling and John Leviny — established vines between Moyhu and Whitfield in the higher, cooler northern sector in 1970. Both sold grapes to Brown Brothers. Indeed, older readers may recall Guy Darling’s Whitfield vineyard name – Koombahla — appearing on Brown Bros labels in the late seventies and eighties, before Darling established his own brand.

During the eighties and nineties, other landowners, including several Italian descended tobacco growers, commenced growing grapes, originally to sell to Brown Brothers or other winemakers.

However, during the recession of the early nineties Brown Brothers reduced its grape intake. This shock, Arnie Pizzini once told me, was the catalyst that forced himself and other growers to adopt a broader, more independent approach to marketing their product.

During the late nineties, driven partly by the export boom, the numbers of independent growers increased, as did the number converting all or part of their production into branded product.

The late nineties, too, saw the arrival of the large independent makers De Bortoli and Miranda, both Griffith based and both Italian descended.

By this time the Valley had acquired a distinctively Italian flavour as the Corsini, Pizzini, Cavedon, Dal Zotto and other families planted indigenous Italian varietals, including sangiovese, arneis, barbera, marzemino, prosecco, barbera, nebbiolo, dolcetto, primitivo (aka, in California and Australia, zinfandel) and verduzzo.

These joined the usual mix of French and German varieties plus a sprinkling from Spain (tempranillo and verdejo), Russia (saperavi) and France’s little known petit manseng and increasingly popular pinot gris.

This diversity of landscapes, climates, grape varieties, growers and makers means that the King Valley gives wine drinkers an exceptional range of taste sensations – subtly different in the case of the mainstream varieties like chardonnay and shiraz but totally removed from our usual fare when we encounter sangiovese, nebbiolo, barbera, verduzzo and the like.

In this instance the principal driver of difference was the Italian connection – the sons and daughters of post-war immigrants. I’ll report back on what this Italian influence offers after a visit to the Valley in a few weeks.

Wynns to re-launch John Riddoch Cabernet and Michael Shiraz

8 January 2006WineChris Shanahan

After a half-decade absence, Wynns Coonawarra flagship reds are to be re-launched in March.

Once headline grabbers and eagerly sought by collectors, Wynns John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon and Wynns Michael Shiraz fizzled and faded at the height of the red-wine boom, giving up the game to a flood of new, mostly unknown $50 to $100 hopefuls.

Management’s response was to terminate production of Michael and John Riddoch after the 1998 and 1999 vintages respectively.

However, the stock problem proved intractable and in 2001, following parent company Southcorp’s acquisition of Rosemount, new management slashed the wholesale price and offered rebates to retailers sitting on large back-vintage stocks. The retail price fell from around $100 a bottle to $50 and sales resumed.

These were dark days for a great brand. However, over in Coonawarra, winemaker Sue Hodder and vineyard manager Allen Jenkins continued working on vineyard rejuvenation projects and a fine-tuning of winemaking techniques.

Though production of John Riddoch and Michael had stopped, individual components continued to be made and kept separate — to learn more of progress in the vineyards – prior to blending into the standard Wynns cabernet and shiraz.

y this time, too, Sue and the winemaking team had developed a new vision for the flagship reds, based partly on observations of older vintages. In 1997 a tasting of Wynns Shirazes, embracing the 1953 to 1995 vintages, revealed the lovely elegance and keeping ability of the earliest vintages – wines notably lower in alcohol and oak than the modern wines, especially Michael.

The soon-to-be-released Wynns Michael Shiraz 2003 and John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon 2003, tasted in Coonawarra last October, crystallise that vision.

At the Coonawarra tasting, winemaker Sarah Pidgeon emphasised that both came largely from the same old vineyards in Coonawarra but that rejuvenation of the vineyards had resulted in the same ‘dense, dark fruit character but more supple tannins’.

Combine this with slightly earlier picking, hand harvesting of some components and a reduction of the proportion of new oak used in maturation and we have Wynns flagships that are big on elegant Coonawarra fruit yet more velvety and supple in structure than earlier vintages.

While these are earlier to love as young wines than most of the earlier wines, I believe they still have the essential fruit concentration and tannin structure to evolve with long-term cellaring. The low-oak, lower-alcohol wines of the fifties confirm the staying power of this fruit.

This was demonstrated yet again in 2004 with a tasting of all the cabernets from 1954 to 2004.

That tasting and other experiences with the more burly John Riddoch and Michael vintages revealed, too, that the essential elegance of the Coonawarra fruit tended to prevail over time – but that the tannins and oak ought, in general, to be more refined – as they are in the forthcoming 2003’s.

With continuing work on Wynns great old vineyards and in the winery, Sue and the team are on track to produce the truly great, long-lived elegant reds that Coonawarra has, to date, thrown up only occasionally — but often enough to know what can be achieved.

Wines of the calibre of Michael Shiraz 1955 and John Riddoch 1982 remain as unforgettable models. I have no doubt that over time these will be equalled and surpassed by Wynns. With the right commitment from Foster’s, the new owner of Wynns, Coonawarra could lead Australia into the super premium segments of the world markets.

2005 review and a look ahead

1 January 2006WineChris Shanahan

2005 may be seen as a turning point for the Australian wine industry – the year when surplus production, created by an export induced vine planting spree a decade earlier, finally began to take its toll on winemakers and grape growers while providing drinkers with a cornucopia of low priced wine.

The squeeze on margins, while delivering lower retail prices, severely curtailed rewards to wineries, setting back most of those listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, and took an even greater toll on grape growers – most conspicuously in recent weeks those with contracts cancelled by McGuigan Simeon Wines.

With the wine surplus likely to drag on for another few years, the good times for drinkers should continue as the industry adjusts through growing export demand, domestic discounting, mergers, rationalisation of brands and winery ownership, grafting to varieties more in demand and, almost certainly, forced sales and liquidations.

The year began auspiciously with Foster’s bid for Southcorp – owner of Penfolds, Wynns Coonawarra Estate, Lindemans, Rosemount Estate, Leo Buring, Rouge Homme, Seaview and other familiar wine brands.

Ultimately the bid succeeded and the merging of the two businesses proceeds as the managers bring the Southcorp brands, vineyards, wineries, marketing, accounting, etc. under one roof with Yellowglen, Wolf Blass, Mildara, Ingoldby and others.

In 2006 and beyond investors will see whether or not the promised synergies and savings flow to the bottom line. And wine lovers, ever nervous of ownership changes, will see if some of Australia’s greatest wine brands – built on complex grape-growing and winemaking cultures — continue to deliver.

In other words, will Wynns Coonawarra still taste like Wynns Coonawarra? Will Penfolds still taste like Penfolds?

As an outsider looking in, the first signs are that the grape growing/winemaking cultures behind the prestige brands will survive in the short term.

Of more concern, though, is whether or not the marketing and marketing communication can be brought up to speed with the production/cultural side of these icon brands.

In my opinion, the Foster’s mass brands like Yellowglen bubbly have been effectively marketed. But the recruitment of fast-moving-consumer-goods professionals doesn’t seem to have paid off so well for the premium brands. Why? I think it’s because of a lack of understanding what makes these wines unique. And it shows in the communication.

This presents a huge challenge for the industry. If the aim is to introduce drinkers at home and abroad to our great inter-regional blends and increasingly good and diverse single region specialties, then the big companies must lead.

And their marketers must understand and communicate the regional, varietal and winemaking values that make the wine what it is. This is the core of any premium wine brand – flavour and character, not contrivance, not what a focus group thinks.

Of course, brand building requires a long-term commitment. And it’s easy to be distracted from that goal when surplus and slashed margins eat away at the rewards.

While the near chaos and deep discounting seen in 2005 appear set to continue for a few years, when the dust settles it’ll be the wines that mean something that survive and attract our dollar.

The best small makers tend to focus on what’s special about their region and vineyard and lead drinkers to it. Let’s hope for the sake of the vast majority of drinkers reliant on bigger companies that the innovation and leadership that’ve built our world-leading industry don’t give way to bureaucratic timidity and me-tooism.

There’s gold in them thar liquor stores

11 December 2005Wine, Wine reviewChris Shanahan

There’s never been a better time to buy wine. Equally, there’s never been a more confusing time for wine drinkers. For the very glut of producers and labels currently forcing prices down forms an intimidating wall of brands that confounds even professional wine judges.

The diversity of choice and competition-driven low pricing is good, of course. But confusion comes because on any one day at any price you’ll find wines that were made to sell at that price and offer fair value (or, sometimes, poor value) and wines that were made to sell at a much higher price but are now reduced and offer superior quality.

Take, for example the just-released Wynns Coonawarra Estate Shiraz 2004 (reviewed below). It really does sell for $21 or $22 when not on special. And given its quality, fifty-year pedigree and cellaring ability, that’s a fair price.

Well, it is until you see 1st Choice, Philip, advertising it at $11.40 by the dozen. At that price none of the brands made to sell at $11-$12 a bottle – and found on the shelves away from the red-hot specials — can hold a candle to it.

Unfortunately, Wynns at $11.40 has been and gone between deadlines for this column. But the fact that it happened, and that the market remains tough for producers, almost certainly means that it’ll be back somewhere in the competitive Canberra retail landscape. So, watch for the second coming.

Similarly, really good $17-ish reds – Penfolds Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet 2003 and Hardys Oomoo McLaren Vale Shiraz 2004 – have popped up in several retail outlets in recent months at $8.90 a bottle by the dozen.

The former, a multi-region blend, and latter, a straight regional varietal, simply blow the purpose built $9 reds away. These are perennial favourites with retailers, so pile in whenever the numbers come up.

The list of white, red and bubbly bargain goes on. More than ever the astute buyer, cherry picking the best specials, drinks appreciably better wine than the casual or confused buyer grabbing a bottle on the way to dinner or believing that a high price tag is necessarily the best cue to quality.

But what consumer research has consistently shown is that really knowledgeable buyers make up a tiny minority of the wine drinking population and that, faced with such wide choice, most drinkers don’t know where to start.

So how do you identify the gold dust?

If you’re not immersed in wine lore, it’ll take some effort. But it’s possible if you seek advice from wine reviews or a couple of good reference books – and crosscheck these with the weekly press and Internet specials. The effort will be rewarded as it will give you the choice of drinking the quality you’re used to at a lower price or stepping up the quality ladder without paying more.

While favourable reviews from trusted critics make a reliable guide, they’re not always at hand may not cover all of the styles you’re interested in.

It’s therefore useful to invest in two reference books, both of which are updated each year: James Halliday’s Australian Wine Companion 2006 ($29.95) and The Penguin Good Wine Guide ($??) by Huon Hooke and Ralph Kyte-Powell.

You could use one or the other. But the combination gives you Halliday’s form guide to 2001 wineries plus Hooke and Kyte-Powell’s wine-by-wine ratings. Armed with these and a list of specials you’ll be on the money.

WINE REVIEWS

Wynns Coonawarra Estate Shiraz 2004 $11.40 to $22
Wynns is a magnificent, cellaring red prone to bouts of discounting. Hopefully the $11.40 price offered by 1st Choice last week will come around again somewhere in Canberra. Made by Sue Hodder, the 2004 — benefiting from vineyard rejuvenation and a shortening of time in oak — is fragrant, medium bodied and oozing juicy, Coonawarra berry flavours. Shame on Wynns marketers, though, for lacking the courage to roll it out in screw cap. Hiding behind a ‘test the market’ screen, they’ve limited screw-cap stock to Vintage Cellars. That was fine five years ago as the technology emerged. But it’s now both proven and accepted. Restricting distribution merely deprives many drinkers of the best stock available.

Champagne Taittinger Brut Resérve NV $74.95
With a little more chardonnay in the blend than most NV’s (40 per cent versus about 33 – the remainder pinot noir and pinot meunier), good old Taitts is on the light and cheery side of Champagne, albeit with a rich and creamy mid-palate. Served recently at Chateau Shanahan after a bottle of the intense, pinot-driven Lanson 1996, the guest smile-gauge spun crazily. It could’ve been the second bottle phenomenon. But, no, a sober sip says this is a lovely, delicate aperitif style with the lightness of chardonnay and yummy brioche-like nuances of pinot meunier, the lesser of the two pinots, but indispensable nevertheless.

d’Arenberg McLaren Vale d’Arry’s Original Shiraz Grenache 2003 $15 to $20
d’Arry Osborn, father of present d’Arenberg winemaker, Chester, bottled the first of the famous ‘red stripe’ labels in 1959 and in the following two decades made d’Arenberg ‘Burgundy’ an Aussie favourite. The mellow, soft style appealed when young but also aged well for decades – attributes it retained after dropping the French place name, Burgundy, in favour of varietal labelling. The new release is a robust expression of the style with an appealing earthy richness and smoothness plus, being a year older than many new releases, a satisfying red-wine character that comes only with time. The fruit is so delicious that it carries 15 per cent alcohol with ease.

Riesling sizzles at the National Wine Show

4 December 2005Wine, Wine reviewChris Shanahan

The sheer delicious pleasure of drinking riesling, young or old, and the efficacy of screw caps for both early drinking and cellaring wines came through at the recent National Wine Show exhibitors’ tasting.

Faced with 1400 wines and just four hours’ tasting time, quick forays into chardonnay, cabernet and shiraz turned to a dedicated look at the 119 rieslings entered across seven classes. Better a leisurely taste of one variety than snippets of everything – especially with such rich pickings on offer.

While the older wines, which we’ll get to later, tell us a lot about the future direction of many younger wines, the current release 2005’s present the best buying opportunities. It was a great vintage.

But very young rieslings are notoriously difficult to judge. Almost invariably at wine shows simpler commercial wines outscore the long-lived classics. Then, as the years roll by, the best wines blossom – providing huge drinking pleasure and raking in gold medals.

In the National’s premium 2005 riesling class, for example, Yalumba’s inexpensive ‘Y’ riesling with 52/60 points outscored its cellar mates – the slightly more expensive Pewsey Vale (51) and the company flagships, Heggies (46.5) and The Contours (44).

Similarly, Leo Buring’s flagship, Leo Buring Leonay DW 117 – a glorious, if austere drop, at 45.5 points languished behind its cellar mates, Buring Clare Valley on 46.5 and Buring Eden Valley on 49.5.

So if the judges reward the second best wines, what are we to make of it? My interpretation is that it’s partly human fallibility – especially when faced with a long line up of delicate, high acid wines; and, partly as a consequence of this, wines of greater fragrance and upfront fruitiness tend to win the day.

And in great years like 2005 a silver medal winning Yalumba Y at $9 to $12 provides really delicious drinking. But you only have to taste older vintages of Heggies and The Contours where, ultimately, quality lies. Indeed, the 2003 Heggies won a gold medal and trophy at the National while The Contours won gold medals for the 2001 and 1999 vintages.

By the way, the top two rieslings in the 2005 premium class are the exceptions that prove the rule: Peter Lehmann Reserve Riesling 2005 (55.5 points, gold medal) is a stayer but struck me as much fuller and richer than normal. The 2003 and 2001 also won gold in another classes.

And Jacob’s Creek Steingarten 2005 (56 points, gold and trophy) is stylistically different from earlier vintages. Normally austere and slow evolving, the 2005, says winemaker Bernard Hickin, was intentionally made to be fuller and riper with an eye on the American market.

In the museum class Steingarten 1997 won gold. But at the exhibitors’ tasting all three of the cork-sealed bottles available tasted different while the screw-capped gold medallists – Pewsey Vale The Contours 1999, Richmond Grove Watervale 1999 and Richmond Grove Watervale 1998 – showed a beautiful combination of maturity and freshness.

Those Richmond Groves, by the way, are perhaps the white bargain of Australian wine. They’re delicious when young, age beautifully and sell for as little $12.90. Unfortunately the lovely gold-medal winning 2005 (small volume commercial classes) won’t be released until September next year. But it’s worth noting as a must-buy.

While the Clare and Eden Valleys almost monopolised the gold medal spots, Houghtons staked a claim for Frankland River, Western Australia, with its minerally and dry 2002 vintage.

WINE REVIEWS

Yalumba ‘Y’ Series South Australia Riesling 2005 $9 to $12
Despite the humble price, ‘Y’ comes from the Barossa and the Eden Valley, key riesling areas. And in the hands of the Yalumba team, you can always count on the flavour and freshness being there. With 52 points out of 60 and a silver medal at the National Show, it outscored many much higher priced 2005 vintage wines. Over time, those wines may overtake ‘Y’. But for current drinking when you want tonnes of fruity aroma and flavour combined with zippy freshness, this is where the value lies. It should continue to drink well over the next two or three years.

Helm Canberra District Premium Riesling $ $33
Ken Helm’s been talking the riesling talk for decades. Now, deservedly, he’s walking the walk with this stunningly good wine. It’s the product of years of incremental adjustments to a winemaking regime applied to the very best grapes from Al Lustenberger’s fastidiously managed Murrumbateman vineyard. All it took was thirty years’ hard work, fuelled by vision, and a benign 2005 growing season that seems to have brought out the best in the variety. This is a wine with a seriously long future: it has the classic citrus and mineral aromatics and taut, intense, steely-yet-delicate palate of classic riesling. This is a great achievement for Ken and a very significant wine for the Canberra district, too. Cellar door phone number is 6227 5953.

Peter Lehmann Eden Valley Riesling 2005 $13 to $16
More often than not the very best rieslings reveal more as they age. This was reflected in the recent Barossa wine show results and at the National in Canberra. Amongst the 2005 vintage contenders, the flagship rieslings generally rated behind cheaper commercial releases. But, over time, we are sure to see those delicate, steely flagships surge ahead. Meanwhile, as these mature, there’s huge drinking pleasure in the more revealing, slightly cheaper rieslings like this triple-gold-medal winner from Peter Lehmann. With lovely aromatics, delicious fruit and taut, ultra-fresh, dry finish, it’s a stunning summer drink. Sensational at the price and has good cellaring potential.

Farmer finds independent retail niche

27 November 2005People, WineChris Shanahan

David Farmer — former Canberra wine merchant, in town last week to launch his new Barossa-based business, Glug — believes traditional liquor retailing has gone forever to Coles and Woolworths.
Even after the current margin-sapping wine glut clears, consolidation among producers and retailers virtually ensures a changing landscape.

For independent retailers that means finding a niche that doesn’t go head to head with the superior buying and selling power of the supermarket chains.

And for small winemakers it means finding outlets to complement cellar door sales. For no retailer, no matter how large (or small), can represent the thousands of labels now available from Australia’s 2000 wineries.

What we’re sure to see in the future, then, is not just bricks and mortar independents, but continuing growth in internet-based wine clubs, wine retailers and internet-based cellar-door extensions.

Farmer’s new creation takes into account thirty years’ retailing experience– from 1975 to 1994 as Farmer Bros, with stores plus mail order; from 1994 to 1996 with Cellarmaster Wines, Australia’s largest wine direct marketer; from 1996 to 2003 in partnership with Theo Karedis of Sydney based Theo’s Liquor Markets; and from 2003 to 2005 as marketing consultant to Coles Myer after its purchase of Theo’s.

What those years taught David is that even the keenest wine drinkers and collectors buy mainly in the $6 to $15 a bottle price range. They might enjoy the odd $50 or $100 bottle, but that’s not the daily tipple.
And especially through exposure to wine clubs he saw that the closer to the source the better you’ll buy.

Cellarmaster had demonstrated during the grape gluts of the eighties how profitable it was to buy direct from growers, make wine and put their own label on it. Who needed a middleman?

But Farmer had also enjoyed the pleasures of what he calls ‘the country wines’ of France – simple, tasty and generally inexpensive wines distinctive of a particular grape variety and region.

Transplant that notion to Australia and you have regional varietals – like Barossa shiraz, Clare riesling or Coonawarra cabernet.

With some of this in mind, Farmer established Glug close to the source – in an office within the Veritas Winery on the western edge of Tanunda in the Barossa Valley.

With a vigneron’s licence and the comparatively low overheads of a virtual shop, glug.com.au now offers the first of its own regional wines as well as selections from outstanding small makers – many of whom also make wine for the glug label.

Farmer says each wine will be made and sold to the slogan “from this vineyard, grown by this farmer and made by this winemaker in this winery”.

The close relationship with key growers (including former treasurer John Dawkins) — and winemakers of the calibre of Rolf Binder, Christa Binder-Deans, Trevor Drayton, Kym Teusner, Steve Hoff, Colin Forbes, Robin Day and Wayne Dutschke – means not only increased exposure for these makers, but what looks like being a flow of modestly priced regional specialties for consumers.

While David Farmer – aided by brother Richard – believes that glug occupies a special niche and will appeal to many drinkers, he also believes that success of the concept will take many years.

Looked at in the context of the battle of the retail giants, it strikes me as a highly original approach to wine selling with strong consumer appeal. And it’s unlikely to register at all on the competitor radar screens at Coles and Woolies.

Penflds RWT 1998 — is this the perfect Barossa Shiraz?

20 November 2005People, WineChris Shanahan

Australia’s great wine icon, Penfolds Grange, is in no danger of demise. But in my view it does have a quality challenger – albeit in a different style – from within its own cellar.

The challenger goes under the name RWT, originally a prosaic acronym for ‘red wine trial’ – a mid nineties project led by John Duval, Penfolds Chief Winemaker at the time.

With increasing volumes of high-quality shiraz available, Duval sought to make a 100 per cent Barossa red expressing the sweet perfume and voluptuous, juicy, soft richness of the variety, complemented by subtle French oak.

What he envisaged – and made – was the antithesis of the opaque coloured, brooding, slow-evolving power of Grange.

The first RWT – from the generally lacklustre 1997 vintage – made a big impression with its wonderful fragrance and supple, fruity palate. There never had been another Penfolds red like this. In fact, it’s hard to recall any Barossa shiraz of this calibre.

In retrospect we might conclude that Duval — like his mentor and creator of Grange, Max Schubert – successfully transformed a vision into an enduring and distinctive wine style.

Of course, reputations can’t be based on one vintage. But RWT comes from what was an already impeccable pedigree: the unique shiraz from the western and north western fringe of the Barossa Valley – a resource integral to the success of Penfolds reds and highly valued by Schubert and by his successors, Don Ditter, John Duval and now Peter Gago.

Subsequent vintages confirmed the power of Duval’s vision even if the market – expressed through auction prices – lags the opinion of experts.

Several recent encounters with RWT prompted these observations. At dinner before the Barossa Wine Show with fellow judges Huon Hooke and Lester Jesberg, we struggled to name even one truly great Barossa shiraz – until Jesberg suggested RWT 1998.

Ah, yes, we all agreed. That was magnificent. Days later, by fate, the as yet unreleased RWT Shiraz 2004 — with that same heady fragrance and lush, silkiness – romped home as top red of the show.

At a judges’ dinner during the show, a line up of red trophy winners from the 2002 show – including RWT 1998 – highlighted the sheer perfection of this wine. Huon commented that each of the reds could have been better in some way – less alcohol, less oak, less tannin – but not RWT. “There’s not a thing you’d want to change in it”, he said. And he was correct.

The same might be said of the 2004 that topped the show this year and of the current release 2002.

With a retail price of between $120 and $140 a bottle, nobody’s going to call Penfolds RWT cheap. But for a wine of this calibre I’d regard it as undervalued when compared with the other great wines of the world.

This, I believe, makes RWT good value for the collector wanting to get in early and build a sequence of what could be seen a few decades from now as one of the very finest Australian reds.

And if you’ve that in mind, do look at current auction prices. Recent sales — varying between $72 for the 1997 and $94 for the 2002 — represent a significant discount on retail price.

Unlike Grange, RWT doesn’t need 15 plus years in the cellar. It seduces from the day its released but has the depth to age well for a decade or two.

Dan Murphy reshapes liquor retailing in Australia

13 November 2005People, WineChris Shanahan

Wine marketers will tell you that drinkers shop around: serious wine collectors cherry pick at numerous outlets; casual shoppers go where it’s convenient; and bargain hunters scour the press and web before leaving home – or pushing the button.

And wine marketers will also tell you that within the context of the massive liquor retail struggle between Coles Myer (Liquorland, Vintage Cellars, First Choice) and Woolworths (Woolworths Liquor, BWS and Dan Murphy) – it’s one brand – Dan Murphy – that’s doing more than any other to reshape the landscape.

Woolworth’s acquired Dan Murphy – a then Melbourne based large-format liquor retailer, specialising in wine — for several tens of millions of dollars in 1998.

In retrospect, the buying price was a bargain as Woolies acquired not just five stores in Melbourne but a proven and potent business model that had been honed and polished for decades by the original owner, Dan Murphy, with support, in later years, from a partner, Tony Leon.

Rare for a predatory big company, Woolworths resisted any temptation to engulf Dan Murphy with its own culture. Instead, it left Leon to run the business separately from Melbourne (Woolies head office is in Sydney) while providing the resources to spearhead a nation wide expansion.

The rollout from 5 stores in Melbourne in 1998 to 43 nationally in 2005 (two in Canberra with another to come), appears to have bulldozed archrival and former liquor market leader, Coles Myer Liquor Group.

The strategic advantage of having acquired Dan Murphy and exploiting the business model has now become apparent.

In Sydney this week, Tony Leon said that the business – apart from being much larger – still runs substantially at it did under the late Dan Murphy. He said, “It’s not complicated. We’re traders. We buy and sell liquor and that’s what we work on”.

Part of the success, he says, lies in having a long-term view. “When we open a new store we expect it to take three years to perform well”. The principal, he said, was expressed in something Dan Murphy once told him, “Tony, no single advertisement works. But advertising works”.

And if you’ve looked at Dan Murphy’s ads over the years, you’ll have seen that they’re direct and single minded: “Nobody beats Dan Murphy”, they scream. And the outlets back the scream with a raft of specials and a unique in-store experience: prairie-like space bristling with wines, beers and spirits.

Such is the appeal of the offer that a typical store, says Leon, draws customers from within a 20-30 minute travelling distance. Naturally, this has a dramatic effect on competitors within that catchment – including other outlets owned by Woolworths. Nothing in the history of liquor retailing in Australia, I believe, has had such competitive impact.

Indeed Coles Myer responded to the Dan Murphy threat with a look-alike offer – First Choice – now being rolled out nationally, with one outlet already operating at Philip.

But nothing’s ever the final word in retail (or anything else). Local, independents like Jim Murphy, Georges Liquor Stable, Cand Amber and Australian Winebrokers, each in its own way, continues to fight for and earn part of our liquor dollar. As do our dozens of independent, licensed supermarkets catering to the convenience factor.

All of this, in conjunction with a wine surplus, spells a field day for wine drinkers in the immediate future. Longer term, market consolidation could make it difficult for smaller makers to find outlets, thus reducing diversity. However, if demand is there, that could be a profitable niche for future, fast-moving independents.