Wine review — Richmond Grove, Barwang, Shaw+Smith, Petaluma, Helm, Kirrihill and Arete

Wine review

Richmond Grove Adelaide Hills Chardonnay 2008 $18–$24
Barwang 842 Tumbarumba Chardonnay 2006 $30–$35
Shaw + Smith M3 Adelaide Hills Chardonnay 2008 $35–$40
Petaluma Tiers Vineyard Adelaide Hills Chardonnay 2005 $100–$130
What a gorgeous line up – beautiful, complex oak-fermented and matured chardonnays with neatly aligned price and quality. Richmond Grove is the value offering, especially on special under $20. But Barwang takes a step up, showing the bracing freshness of high-altitude Tumbarumba. Shaw + Smith is all refinement and finesse with potential to build in richness over time. And Petaluma’s in the zone right now – a mature, weighty, fine and magnificent drop for a special occasion.

Helm Classic Dry Riesling 2009 $23–$28
The 2009 adds to Ken Helm’s glory list. It’s simply bloody delicious, ¬delivering volumes of appealing, floral aromas and a zesty, lime-like freshness on the palate. Indeed, I found it as refreshing as Hugh Johnson’s comment on using fruit similes to describe wine “… I don’t think it really helps anyone to give what sounds like a recipe for fruit salad. Riesling tastes like riesling more than it tastes like lemons and apples. Surely once you have tasted riesling, it becomes a reference. How many apples do you have to eat to recognise an apple?”

Kirrihill Clare Valley Shiraz 2008 $11–$15
Kirrihill Clare Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 $11–$15
Arete Barossa Valley Shiraz 2008 $18–$20
The distress pricing on the Kirrihill wines give a hint of the pressure on small makers in our glutted market. They’re powerful, albeit slightly raw, reds that could do with another year or two in bottle. But they’re rich, solid, and squarely regional and varietal. The shiraz comes from the Tullymore and Ballingarry Vineyards and the cabernet sauvignon from KSI and Kalimpa vineyards. While you’re taming the Kirrihill wines, Arete, made by Richard Bate from fruit grown in the Barossa’s Greenock Creek sub-region, offers perfect drinking right now. It’s fragrant, ripe and juicy with lovely soft tannins. See www.aretewines.com.au

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

American craft beers defy downturn

Beer

Beneath the mass of bland, amber, soft-drink-like American beers there bubbles a vibrant craft brewing industry. But apart from the wonderful Samuel Adams specialties, we seldom glimpse these in Australia, despite the best efforts of a handful of importers.

According to www.beertown.org, at December 2008 craft beer accounted for 4.3% by volume and 6.3% by value of American beer sales. That means America’s 1,482 craft brewers sold 8.6 million barrels of beer (about 1 billion litres) worth $US6.3 billion in 2008 – comparable in value to Australia’s total beer market.

In the first six months of 2009 as overall US beer sales declined 1.3% and imported beers plummeted 9.5%, craft volume and value increased – and that was on top of 5.9% volume and 10.1% value increases in 2008, at the height of the GFC.

While Americans keep most of the best stuff at home (who can blame them for sending Millers, Bud and Coors offshore?), you find good American brews online at www.internationalbeershop.com. And, in Canberra, Plonk (Fyshwick Markets) offers an idiosyncratic range from Rogue Brewery, Oregon, and Flying Dog Brewery, of Colorado and Maryland.

Next week we’ll look at Flying Dog’s quirky offerings – including the rabid 11.5% alcohol, off-the-scale-bitter Double Dog Double Pale Ale.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

Wine quotes across the ages

People, Wine

In his great book, The story of wine, Hugh Johnson wrote of wine’s unique ability to banish care. Across the ages many of our greatest writers, scientists, historians and philosophers felt strongly enough about wine to record their thoughts for posterity.

Today’s column is a little tribute to these writers, featuring snippets from across more than two millennia of wine commentary.

Tasting notes
“See how it puns and quibbles in the glass”.
George Farquhar, Love and a bottle, 1698. (Evidence that sparkling wine existed in the seventeenth century).

“From the wine steward she ordered a bottle of Roederer’s Cristal. Even for those who dislike champagne, myself among them, there are two champagnes one can’t refuse: Dom Perignon and the even superior Cristal, which is bottled in a natural-colored glass that displays its pale blaze, a chilled fire of such prickly dryness that, swallowed, seems not to have been swallowed at all, but instead to have turned to vapors on the tongue and burned there to one damp sweet ash”.
Truman Capote, Answered prayers, unfinished novel contracted in 1966.

“It had the taste of an apple peeled with a steel knife”.
Aldous Huxley.

“… Mr. Tulkinghorn sits at one of the open windows, enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a hard-grained man, close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. He has a priceless bin of port in some artful cellar under the Fields, which is one of his many secrets. When he dines alone in chambers, as he has dined to-day, and has his bit of fish and his steak or chicken brought in from the coffee-house, he descends with a candle to the echoing regions below the deserted mansion, and, heralded by the remote reverberation of thundering doors, comes gravely back, encircled by an earthy atmosphere and carrying a bottle from which he pours a radiant nectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to find itself so famous, and fills the whole room with the fragrance of southern grapes.”
Charles Dickens, Bleak house.

“Did they shoot the horse?”
Anon.

“It tastes like it’s been drunk before”.
Anonymous.

“I’ll be glad when I’ve had enough”.
Gordon Shanahan.

Anecdotes
“Here is a story about two Australian swagmen who used to meet for a chat under the shade of a well placed tree. By Jacob’s Creek, I shouldn’t wonder. One day, Barry, the first, turned up with a bottle. He took a long swig, wiped his lips on his sleeve, and passed the bottle to his mate Kevin, who did the same. ‘Whad’ya think of it?’ said Barry.

‘Jes right’, said Kev.

‘Whad’ya mean, jes right?’

‘Well. If it’d been any better you wouldn’a giv’n it to me, and if it’d bin any wuss, I couldn’a drunk it.’

The art of wine selection in a nutshell.”
Hugh Johnson, Wine: a life uncorked, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 2005.

“In the wilds of Afghanistan I lost my corkscrew and for days was forced to live on nothing but food and water”.

“Some weasel left the cork out of my lunch”.
W.C. Fields

“On one occasion some one put a very little wine into a [glass], and said that it was sixteen years old. ‘It is very small for its age’, said Gnathaena”.
Athenaeus, circa A.D.200, The Deipnosophists.

“An old wine-bibber having been smashed in a railway collision, some wine was poured on his lips to revive him. ‘Pauillac, 1873’, he murmured and died.”
Ambrose Bierce, 1842 – 1914, The devil’s dictionary, 1911.

Wine qualities and philosophy

“My wines are sexy; they make weak men strong and strong women weak”.
Wolf Blass, 1974.

“Life is too short to drink bad wine”.
Anonymous, but popularised in Australia by Len Evans.

“A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows”.
George Bernard Shaw.

“I drink it when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise, I never touch it – unless I’m thirsty.”
Lilly Bollinger, Manager, Bollinger Champagne, 1941–1971.

“Wine is sunlight, held together by water”.
Galileo Gallilei.

“Give me a bowl of wine, In this I bury all unkindness.”

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.

“You haven’t drunk too much wine if you can still lie on the floor without holding on”.
Dean Martin.

“Both to the rich and poor, wine is the happy antidote for sorrow”.
Euripides.

“When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading”.
Henry Youngman.

“I can certainly see that you know your wine. Most of the guests who stay here wouldn’t know the difference between Bordeaux and Claret”.
John Cleese (Basil Fawlty), Fawlty Towers.

“There are no standards of taste in wine… Each man’s own taste is the standard, and a majority vote cannot decide for him or in any slightest degree affect the supremacy of his own standard”.
Mark Twain.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

Wine review — Jim Barry, Grosset, Williams Crossing, Stefano Lubiana, Curly Flat and Mitchelton

Wine review

Jim Barry Watervale Riesling 2009 $14.95
Grosset Springvale Watervale Riesling 2009 $36
Grosset Polish Hill Riesling $45
Probably because it’s so subtle and delicate as a young wine, riesling can be difficult to assess. Even our best wine judges struggle, regularly ranking modestly priced wines ahead of more expense and, given a little bottle age, better wines. Even then, the quality gap can be out of proportion to the price difference. In a recent tasting, for example, we rated these three wines closely – making the lovely, limey, dry Jim Barry wine a great bargain for drinking any time in the next 20 years (the 1989 still drinks well).  Nevertheless, the Grosset wines are impressively delicate yet intense.

Williams Crossing Macedon Ranges Pinot Noir 2007 $24
Stefano Lubiana Tasmania Primavera Pinot Noir 2008 $33
Curly Flat Macedon Ranges Pinot Noir 2006 $46
Does Aussie pinot get better than this? For current drinking try Steve Lubiana’s delicious Primavera. It’s fragrant, generous, supple, elegant, pristinely varietal and ready to drink now. Williams Crossing presents more mature and savoury pinot flavours – it’s a blend of the barrels that didn’t quite make the cut for Curly Flat and, in my view, remains the best value pinot noir in Australia. It’s sensational at the price.  Curly Flat rises to another level again, a pinot of great complexity and length and built to last.

Jim Barry Lodge Hill Clare Valley Shiraz 2007 $17–$20
Mitchelton Goulburn Valley Shiraz 2007 $17–$20
Put these two shirazes side by side and enjoy the contrast. Jim Barry’s wine comes predominantly from the Lodge Hill vineyard, high up in the Clare with views across to the Petaluma and original Knappstein vineyards. It’s a powerful, but not heavy shiraz featuring ripe fruit flavours, with a note of mint, and a round, soft tannins. It’s easy to love, delivering heaps of flavour and enjoyment at a reasonable price. The Mitchelton wine, from the cooler Goulburn Valley, Victoria, is also generous, but there’s an appealing spicy, meaty, savouriness in its flavour.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

Drinker with a running problem — looking for good news

Wine

Can we train for The Canberra Times fun ran and drink alcohol? Not together, it seems. One website goes a step further – abstain for 48 hours before exercise, it advises.  OK, so how about a celebratory glass after the fun run? Maybe, but not much, seems to be the Google consensus.

Let’s Google for good news. Ahh, finally hope, for drinking runners: a Danish study, cited on a CNN health blog, “didn’t find that alcohol and exercise were interchangeable, but rather they had a compounded, additional effect together”.

Dr Morten Gronbaek, an epidemiolgist at Denmark’s National Institute of Public Health observed 12,000 people over 20 years – and concluded that “Leasure-time physical activity and a moderate alcohol intake are both important to lower the risk of fatal IHD and all-cause mortality”.

They found that those who exercised and drank moderately were 50 per cent less likely to suffer heart disease than non-exercising wowsers. Non-drinking exercisers reduced their risk of heart disease by 30 per cent compared to non-exercising wowsers – a risk reduction rate shared by couch-bound moderate drinkers.

Dr Gronbaek concluded, “physical activity and light to moderate alcohol intake in middle-aged and elderly people are both preventive and independent from one another”.

Perhaps we can continue to drink as we exercise after all. But not much. The study defined moderate drinking as one to 14 drinks a week, with an optimum for protection of one drink a day for women and two for men. Glad I’m a bloke.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

Beer review — Guinness 250 and Wig & Pen Russian Imperial

Beer review

Guinness 250 Anniversary Stout 330ml 6-pack $19.99
Guinness began brewing ales on its Dublin site in 1759, sold dark beers as ‘porter’ from 1778 and first used the term ‘stout’ in the 1840s. The 250th anniversary brew is smooth and easy drinking, the key flavour being a lovely, sweet maltiness matched by a mild, balancing hops bitterness.

Wig & Pen Russian Imperial Stout half-pint $9
The Wig’s popular seasonal stout tastes like liquid, liqueur, bitter, dark chocolate, charged with heady alcohol. It’s opulent, unctuous, slippery smooth and with underlying sweet molasses-like flavours offsetting the bittersweet charry-chocolaty roasted malt flavours. There are hops in there, too, adding to the complex flavours and bitterness.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

The stout spectrum — shades of darkness

Beer

Two just released beers represent opposite ends of the stout spectrum – the mild and malty five-per-cent alcohol Guinness 250 Anniversary Stout; and the chocolate rich, ten-per-cent-alcohol Wig & Pen Russian Imperial Stout.

Although the new Guinness brew is carbonated, not nitrogenated like the popular draught and canned versions, it sits squarely in the familiar Guinness mould – smooth and easy to drink, but at the tame end of the stout spectrum.

If your tastes are more adventurous there are stouts offering more assertive characters – stronger roasted grain flavours, greater hops bitterness, higher alcohol content (after all ‘stout beer’ originally referred to all higher alcohol brews, not just dark ones) or a combination of these flavours.

The Wig’s Russian Imperial, inspired by a late eighteenth century English style exported to the Russian court, combines high alcohol with equally robust roasted malt and hops bitterness. But it’s not a ‘session’ beer like Guinness. One is probably enough. Very sensibly the Wig serves it only in half pints. And brewer Richard Watkins makes Russian Imperial only in winter, the style evolving each year.

Between the two extremes, though, there’s a world of interesting stouts including ‘session’ brews like Cooper’s and Young’s luscious Double Chocolate Stout.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

Wine review — Jacob’s Creek, Coldstream Hills, Bream Creek, Capercaillie and Wandin Valley

Wine review

Jacob’s Creek Reeves Point Chardonnay 2005 $26–$32
Jacob’s Creek St Hugo Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 $32–$40
Reeves Point is a terrific example of modern Australian chardonnay – bright, fresh, beautifully varietal (with Padthaway’s unique melon-like flavours), full bodied (but not heavy), finely textured and with layers of complexity derived from oak fermentation and maturation. Four years’ bottle age brings out the beauty of this wine – and it’ll prosper for a few more years yet. St Hugo starred at a recent Canberra tasting, loved for its deep, rich cabernet flavours and firm but elegant structure – classic Coonawarra. Reds of this dimension need a few years show their best – good to see it being released at four years’ age.

Coldstream Hills Yarra Valley Reserve Chardonnay 2006 $50
Bream Creek Tasmania Chardonnay 2007 $22
Meet two absolutely delicious and contrasting chardonnays – the first an opulent, vivacious giant killer and top scorer in Winewise magazine’s recent international chardonnay shoot out; the second a leaner, understated, mouth-wateringly intense gem from Fred Peacock’s Bream Creek Vineyard, Marion Bay, south eastern Tasmania. Recalcitrants still in the ABC (anything but chardonnay) club stopped drinking chardonnay ten years ago – there just isn’t a sauv blanc in Australasia to match these two for quality and complexity. The Coldstream wine, made by Foster’s, is sold out officially, but a number of retailers still offer stock. Bream Creek is available at www.breamcreekvineyard.com.au

Capercaillie The Ghillie Hunter Shiraz 2007 $70
Wandin Valley Estate Bridie’s Reserve Shiraz 2007 $35
At the Winewise Small vignerons Awards recently we awarded three gold, five silver and five bronze medals in a class of 18 Hunter shirazes from the 2007 vintage. The extraordinary 72 per cent strike rate suggests rich pickings from that vintage well beyond the few wines we tasted on the day. The best probably won’t have been released yet. But it could be rewarding looking in this often-neglected corner of Australia’s wine world. These are very fine, soft wines, quite often with exceptional keeping qualities. The three gold medallists were Capercaillie The Ghillie, Wandin Valley Bridie’s Reserve and Thomas DJV – I’ll detail the release dates in a future review.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

Book review: Wolf Blass — behind the bow tie

Book review, People, Wine

Wolf Blass — behind the bow tie
Liz Johnston, Fairfax Books 2009, $39.99

Old winemakers and merchants don’t retire. They push on past the golden years, working until they drop. At 75 years Wolf Blass remains the man behind the brand, owned by Fosters since 1996 – and out of his financial control since 1991, when Wolf Blass Wines and Mildara merged to become Mildara Blass.

He’s unquestionably one of the most influential figures of our modern wine industry. Wolf both tapped into and led public tastes across four decades, building an immensely successful brand in an industry more prone to disbursing wealth than creating it.

He deserves a book. But what credibility can we expect of an official biography (Fosters owns the copyright) marking Wolf’s 75th birthday, and launched in a blaze of publicity for the brand?

But scepticism is unfounded. Like all things associated with Wolf, there’s substance behind the fanfare. History isn’t rewritten; Wolf’s not canonised. Indeed, Liz Johnston gives us the best wine book in years. Like Wolf’s wine it’ll engage a wide audience.

It starts, of course, with an interesting subject – Wolfgang Franz Otto Blass. He was born into a wealthy German family in 1934, spent an adventurous, at times dangerous boyhood under the Third Reich in Stadtilm, Thuringia; and lived under American, British, French and Russian occupation after the war before settling and training as a winemaker in West Germany.

At age 22 he became cellarmaster for Karl Finkenauer at Bad Kreuznach; moved to England as wine chemist in 1957; and in 1961 emigrated to Australia to become sparkling wines manager at the Kaiser Stuhl Co-operative in the Barossa Valley.

He registered ‘Bilyara’ as a business name in 1966 and made small quantities of wine under this brand, while working full time at Tollana, the wine arm of United Distillers. In 1973 he started Wolf Blass Wines International; floated the hugely successful business in 1984 and merged it with Mildara to form Mildara Blass in 1991.

Fosters bought Mildara Blass in 1996 but retained Wolf as brand ambassador, a role he plays very actively today – travelling, promoting and working with the winemaking team, led by Chris Hatcher and Caroline Dunn.

But the book’s more than just a chronology. It’s a reflective work that puts Wolf and his life in historical context. Some of the most interesting and confronting bits cover his childhood in wartime Germany.

Some of it’s boys-own adventures like pilfering food from German supply trains between strafing runs by British Spitfire squadrons. But other memories continue to disturb Wolf today – for example, as a child he witnessed the beginning of the death marches from Buchenwald prison, located near his home.

Johnston writes of Wolf seeing prisoners shot and the corpses left on the roads – and being told that the victims were criminals and deserved their fate. It was years before Wolf realised what he’d witnessed as an eleven year old.

The toughness of the war years and the period of shortages that followed, though, helped shape a determined and resourceful Wolf Blass.

In Australia Wolf initially made sparkling wine for the ‘pearl’ styles, pioneered by Colin Gramp in the 1950s. But when he moved to Tollana under United Distillers began making the bright, fruity, easy-drinking styles that ultimately made the Wolf Blass brand famous.

The commercial history sprinkled through the book introduces us to other key figures that shaped our wine drinking habits, including Max Schubert (creator of Grange), Harry Brown (a remarkable, Sydney-based wine merchant), Len Evans and Peter Lehmann. But we also see the commercial players, notably Ray King, the man behind Mildara’s commercial success and later, the success of the combined Mildara and Wolf Blass. This was the industry benchmark for return on investment.

King must scratch his head wonder at the destruction of wealth in Foster’s wine division since its disastrous acquisition of Southcorp in 2005.

We learn a lot, too, about Wolf the promoter, the brand builder, the womaniser, the racehorse owner – a colourful and refreshingly frank, politically incorrect commentator. We see Wolf through others’ eyes – notably his wife’s and two exes. Now that is being frank.

It’s a terrific read and will appeal to different people at different levels – the human perspective, the wine perspective and the large wine industry view.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

Beer review — Crown Ambassador 2009 and Thomas Hardy

Beer review

Crown Ambassador 2009 Reserve Lager 750ml $69.99
You can sense Crown Ambassador’s luxurious flavours as soon as you see its shimmering, burnished-bronze/caramel colour – an impression that grows as you sniff the rich, high-toned fruit and sweet underlying caramel/malt sweetness. The palate is complex and creamy textured, the opulent malt and alcohol offset by delicious hops bitterness.

Thomas Hardy’s Ale 250ml $14.90
Another Thomas Hardy, in The Trumpet-Major, penned a note apt for this 11.7% alcohol, bottle conditioned ale: “It was of the most beautiful colour that the eye of an artist in beer could desire; full in body yet brisk as a volcano; piquant yet without a twang; luminous as an autumn sunset.”