How Peter Lehmann kept the Barossa flame burning

6 August 2006People, WineChris Shanahan

The story of how Peter Lehmann rescued grape growers abandoned by Dalgety — then owners of Saltram Winery — in 1979 is well known. Perhaps less well appreciated is that in doing so, Lehmann probably spared a century-old winemaking tradition from extinction.

Lehmann had been winemaker at Saltram since 1959. He’d taken the reins from Bryan Dolan when Dolan moved to sister company Stonyfell, replacing Jack Kilgour who’d been making Stonyfell wines since 1932.

Dolan, in turn, had spent his first four years at Saltram working alongside Fred Ludlow before taking over in 1949. And Fred had been there since 1893, making wine for the last fifteen years of his remarkable sixty-year service.

In his time under Dolan, Lehmann continued the tradition of making sturdy, long-lived reds, introduced the flagship ‘Mamre Brook’ red, sourced from a vineyard of that name, and introduced the use of new oak for red wine maturation in 1973.

So, in 1979 when Lehmann walked – with the stranded Barossa growers and offsider, Andrew Wigan – he effectively transplanted the Saltram winemaking culture to his new venture, Masterson Barossa Vignerons. Saltram subsequently fell into a deep hole for fifteen years.

The winemaking achievements of the old Saltram culture can’t be underestimated. In a tasting marking Saltram’s 140th anniversary in 1999 — attended by Bryan and Nigel Dolan and Peter Lehmann – reds from the Ludlow through to Lehmann eras, spanning the years 1946 to 1979, drank remarkably well.

Underlining the significance of Lehmann’s exit in 1979 was the poor showing of the Saltram 1980s reds. (Happily, under successive ownerships of Rothbury Estate and Mildara Blass, Nigel Dolan put Saltram back on track in the mid nineties).

As Saltram lost the plot, Lehmann, even under enormous financial constraints, kept the Barossa red-tradition alive, starting with the 1980 vintage.

Winemaker Andrew Wigan recalls, “The winery was still being built around us. The Italian concreters went crazy every time fresh juice was spilt onto the setting concrete. Cellar hands and winemakers alike had to jump from tank to tank because we did not have scaffolds or catwalks”.

Even without the benefit of oak maturation – a great builder of complexity and stability in red wine – that inaugural 1980 shiraz (sold at $25 a dozen in 1982) still opened beautifully at a tasting held by Wigan in Sydney a few weeks back.

Like the Saltram tasting held seven years earlier, Wigan’s 25-vintage tasting proved two things. First that good quality, ripe Barossa fruit in the right hands makes delicious, long-lived wine. And second, that this need not cost a fortune.

Most of the Lehmann wines in the tasting were holding up well, the highlights, for me being the 1980, 1985, 1986,1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2002 and 2004. That’s a lot of highlights, but it shows how reliable Barossa shiraz can be.

The general theme is one of ripe fruit and soft but abundant tannins, albeit with considerable vintage variation, and a tendency towards riper, rounder, juicier fruit flavours in recent vintages.

It’s worth remembering, too, that Lehmann kept ripe, full Barossa shiraz going during the dark years of the early eighties as other warm-climate growers experimented — and failed — with leaner, earlier picked styles.

Lehmann’s success was no accident. And the good news is that he’s still going and that the glorious 2004 reviewed last week can still be had for as little as $14 a bottle – a modest price indeed for a red of this provenance.

Wine review — Peter Lehmann, Wirra Wirra & Majella

30 July 2006Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Peter Lehmann Barossa Shiraz 2005 $15 to $18
At a tasting in Sydney last week (full report in next week’s column) winemaker Andrew Wigan presented all but two of the Peter Lehmann shirazes from the inaugural 1980 vintage to the current release 2004 – all made by himself. It was an extraordinary line up of lovely, rich, soft – almost tender – Barossa wines. It was all the more extraordinary because the wine has always been modestly priced yet cellars well for a quarter century – the 1980 being one of the highlights. The current release appeals already with its pretty, floral nose, juicy varietal flavour and soft, tend tannins.
Wirra Wirra Adelaide Hills Chardonnay 2005 $25, Arneis 2005 $25
The good-humoured Wirra Wirra team, led by industry veteran, Tim James, seems right on the money with this complex, traditional, barrel-fermented chardonnay and new fangled arneis – a variety native to Italy’s Piedmont region. There’s a herbal, zesty not in Arneis reminiscent in some ways of sauvignon blanc. Pizzini’s King Valley is perhaps the best Australian version I’ve tried though this one goes close – but wins the honest back label award, “It is a typical arneis if you ask us”, it claims, “the only problem being we are not sure what a ‘typical’ arneis is”.
Majella Coonawarra Merlot 2004 $28, Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 $28
Majella’s first ever merlot, a stunner, and a blinder cabernet lead a raft of new releases from the Lynn family’s very special patch of dirt down in Coonawarra. From experience the cabernet ages beautifully, maintaining pure varietal character as it mellows over time. And if you think merlot is either green, tough and weedy or light, sweet and soft, try this one to see how elegant and refined and but still quite firm this variety can be. Another standout, at $17, is the 2005 ‘The Musician’, a fruity and soft cabernet shiraz blend – all from the Majella vineyard – made specifically for early drinking.

Two buck Chuck’s Aussie debut

30 July 2006WineChris Shanahan

What’s the connection between Olivia Newton John and two buck Chuck?

Yes, there is one. And it’s in some blue coloured wine bottles sold through Woolworth’s BWS chain a few weeks back.

But before we discover the connection, let’s meet two buck Chuck.

A couple of years ago American retailer Trader Joe’s released the Charles Shaw varietal wine range at an unprecedented $1.99 a bottle. The wine was instantly dubbed two buck Chuck.
What rocked the global wine industry and won American consumers was two buck Chuck’s extraordinarily low price. How could this be?

Well, Trader Joe had very effectively tapped into a wine glut caused by a massive Californian vine-planting spree in the late nineties.

At the time Australia’s own wine glut – also driven by a late nineties planting spree – was looming before hitting with full force following the bumper 2005 harvest and only slightly smaller 2006 vintage.

Here the glut, in combination with an intense nation-wide retail rivalry, drove wine prices down as well as spawning a new generation of ‘clean skins’ – unbranded wine sold in minimally labelled or entirely bare bottles.

But, as low as retail prices fell, an Australian two buck Chuck seemed unlikely until a couple of weeks ago when separate branches of Woolworths achieved the seemingly impossible. And this is where Olivia Newton John comes in.

The word from Mildura is that two Woolworth’s buyers visiting the region earlier this year put two and two together and gave Australian wine drinkers two buck Chuck in blue bottles.

Initially, the story goes, the buyers enquired after grape growers abandoned pre-vintage by McGuigan Simeon Wines. At the same time they learned about a large cache of blue wine bottles sitting in a contract bottler’s warehouse.

These bottles had been bought in optimistic volumes for export to the USA under Olivia Newton John’s Koala Blue brand. By vintage 2006, however, they had become about as white as a white elephant can be – until the Woolies’ buyers came along.

By putting chardonnay from the abandoned growers (by my guestimate costing thirty cents a litre or less) into distressed-priced blue bottles (probably bringing the total packing cost to about half the normal level) they had on their hands Australia’s first two buck Chuck – if they wanted to.

And they did, selling the entire production — an estimated 136 thousand six packs — at $11.93 in just one week.

And what did this achieve? Well, Woolies got the triple whammy – a thumbs up from keen wine drinkers, a modest profit and a poke in the eye to arch-rivals Coles; consumers got a good deal and the abandoned growers and Olivia Newton John each received some rather than no money.

In the same week, Dan Murphy, another Woolworths’ chain, offered two wines – a cabernet merlot and a chardonnay – at just under the $2 mark. Again, I am told that this was a one-off phenomenon.

The question asked by a struggling industry and a delighted consumer is whether or not the Aussie two buck Chuck is dead and buried.

The answer is that, unquestionably, it cannot be sustained. However, until production comes back into line with consumption it’s quite possible that distress sales may cause a repeat.

By all accounts there’s a lake of bulk wine out there – especially chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. And with prices as low, I’m told, as thirty cents a litre, there just has to be more cheap wine coming our way or flowing overseas.

Wine review — McWilliams Hanwood, Di Georgio & Pizzini

23 July 2006Wine reviewChris Shanahan

McWilliams Hanwood Shiraz 2005 $7.99 to $11
This, to me, personifies, the general superiority of brands over cleanskins. While the latter come and go and vary in quality from batch to batch, brands like Hanwood evolve steadily for the better over time. What began as a predominantly Riverina product is now a blend from higher-quality areas – reflecting increasing fruit availability — and contains only about five per cent Riverina material. The result is a budget wine (selling for as little $7.99 on special) that’s big on plummy, sweet varietal flavour with the rich, soft tannin structure to make early drinking thoroughly enjoyable.
Di Georgio Coonawarra Emporio 2002 $23
After acquiring Rosemount a few years back, the late Southcorp (Southcorpse?) sold Rouge Homme winery and 13.5 hectares of lovely old vines to the Di Giorgio family. These vines are in the heart of old Coonawarra, next door to Wynns. Combine these unique vines with the viticultural experience of the Di Giorgio’s and winemaking expertise of Coonawarra veteran Peter Douglas and you get a stunning result at modest prices. The Cabernet Sauvignon 2002 and Shiraz 2002 are excellent examples of their styles. But Emporio – an elegant, refined blend of merlot, cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc – really hits the excitement button. www.digiorgio.com.au
Pizzini King Valley Pinot Grigio 2006 $19
& Sangiovese 2005 $26
At Wine Australia, Darling Harbour, last weekend, Fred Pizzini’s wines captured my attention for pure varietal expression and good value. It’s difficult to coax the best from pinot gris and sangiovese, but Fred ranks amongst the best in Australia with these two varieties. There’s a shimmering purity to the just-released 2006 pinot grigio, made in the tight, dry Italian style. Not that many Italian versions come near it in quality. And the same might be said of the pure, bright and fruity but dry and savoury sangiovese – a delightful red that simply wipes the floor with many commercial Chiantis. See www.pizzini.com.au

94-year-old Ray Beckwith wins O’Shea Award

23 July 2006People, WineChris Shanahan

Seventy-one years ago Australian scientist, Ray Beckwith, joined Penfolds Wines. A little over a year later, with the blessing of Leslie Penfold-Hyland, he purchased the company’s first pH meter.

Shortly thereafter he found a cure for ‘sweet wine disease’, a malady destroying about thirty per cent of Australia’s fortified wine — the industry’s then major export earner.

Ninety-four year old Beckwith recalled in Sydney last week, ‘there was at the time a code of silence amongst wine companies’ that discouraged a co-operative approach to solving industry-wide problems – and probably accounts for why Leslie Penfold-Hyland head hunted him from rival winemaker, Thomas Hardy.

It was a good call by Penfold-Hyland. The talented young Beckwith found a means of defeating lacto bacillus, the organism identified by fellow scientist, John Fornachon, as cause of the foul tasting ‘sweet wine disease’.

Prior to Beckwith’s breakthrough, Penfold-Hyland’s struggle against wine infection had not always been scientific.

In an interview in February 1992, Grange creator, Max Schubert (an employee at Penfolds from 1932 and still a junior when Beckwith arrived) recalled, “A tremendous number of experiments with Leslie Penfold-Hyland… for instance, he’d be out somewhere shooting quail or something. He’d come across a different type of soil and he’d pick up a handful, put it in a paper bag… he’d say try that in the wine. So I’d mix it with gelatine or charcoal and he’d use the soil or clay to take it down the bottom… to get rid of the terrible flavour…”

In the same interview Schubert said, “we started to get on top of this when Ray Beckwith… introduced pH to the company and, of course, from that time onwards we were able to control these bacteria… I think Ray Beckwith has never got the credit he should have for the work he did regarding pH”.

Suspecting that “pH may be a useful tool in the control of bacterial growth”, Beckwith tested his theories in September 1936 using Adelaide University’s pH meter – even after “Professor McBeth had drunk my samples”.

Enlightened by Fornachon’s work and equipped with a pH meter at Penfolds from January, 1937, Beckwith, with encouragement from fellow scientist and friend, Allan Hickinbotham, determined that the maximum pH in fortified wine should be 3.8 (the lower the reading the more protective the environment).

And to reduce pH he introduced the practice of adding tartaric acid – a natural component in grape juice. This was the key to defeating lacto bacillus and sweet wine disease. Losses after that were nil.

It was a profound insight and one that continues to benefit winemakers around the world. But it was just one of several major innovations that’ve made Beckwith prominent in the global wine science world.

Broader recognition finally arrived on Friday, July 14th, 2006 when Beckwith accepted McWilliams’ Maurice O’Shea Award in front of six hundred industry peers at Darling Harbour Sydney.

Recounting an amazing 75-year association with the industry, Ray commented, “Winemaking is a special partnership between science and art. Science imparts the understanding and body, while art imparts the style and soul. I am proud to be part of an industry that gets both the science and art so profoundly right, and I feel genuinely honoured that my role within it has been recognised… I like to think my generation created an infrastructure for succeeding generations, something to build on. I will continue to take great delight and pride in watching the Australian wine industry continue its pioneering work”.

Wine review — Cullen, Yalumba & Katnook Estate

16 July 2006Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Cullen Diana Madeline Margaret River Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 $90
In recent years we’ve seen this wine grow in quality and status under Vanya Cullen, daughter of the late Kevin and Diana Cullen. In recent cabernet tastings it’s consistently ranked amongst the best, distinguishing itself for perfect ripeness, intense flavour, fine tannins and elegant structure. So often cabernets from around the world disappoint with varying degrees of green flavours, hollow palates and hard, green tannins. Cullens avoids all of these shortcomings. With its limpid colour and fine structure, it’s no blockbuster. What it offers is fragrance, flavour intensity, a silky texture and complete harmony. It’s an exceptional wine to savour over the next few decades.

Yalumba Hand Picked Barossa Tempranillo Grenache Viognier 2005 $28
The Chateau Shanahan BS meter spun wildly. What mongrel breed could this be? What synergies might the marriage of Spain’s savoury, tannic tempranillo, France’s aromatic, soft grenache and white, syrupy, apricot-like viognier bring? What, at first glance, might have been strange bedfellows – a blend of winery leftovers, perhaps – turned out to be pure magic and all the more so because it was intentional, the varieties having been fermented together. It has an appealing floral aroma, slick, syrupy, fruity palate (with a telltale touch of apricot) and soft, persistent tannins. This is one of the rare reds that holds its own with very spicy food, thanks to the floral aroma and syrupy fruit.

Katnook Estate Coonawarra Chardonnay 2003 $26-$32
I don’t know whether or not Katnook intentionally holds its chardonnay back for late release. But it tastes like it. The wine’s beautifully fresh but at the same time shows some of the richness of bottle age. It also lacks the heaviness that we used to see in older Australian chardonnays. That’s partly to do with more delicate fruit handling in conjunction with smarter oak fermentation and maturation. Together these have resulted in fresher, longer-lived chardonnays overall. And that’s been topped off by the introduction of screw caps. In Katnook, the result is a rich, fine-boned chardonnay with fresh, melon-like varietal character with the textural richness and nutty complexity derived from oak maturation.

Winewise small vignerons awards

16 July 2006People, WineChris Shanahan

For many small winemakers Canberra’s Winewise Small Vignerons Awards is the most important Australian wine show, overshadowing the usually prestigious and larger – but to them irrelevant – Sydney, Adelaide and National Wine Shows.

So how did this little home grown show assume such importance?

What began for Lester Jesberg (then a tax office official) and others as a hobby in the sixties and seventies became a small business in 1985 with the establishment of ‘Winewise’ magazine – a by-subscription, no advertising publication providing impartial wine reviews.

Twenty-one years later ‘Winewise’ remains a niche publication highly respected within the wine industry and by Australia’s keenest wine enthusiasts.

Each year Lester and his team taste thousands of wines and review each fearlessly, under ‘outstanding’, ‘highly recommended’, ‘recommended’, ‘agreeable’, ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ categories.

The disciplined, masked tasting approach sustained over two decades gives the results a high degree of credibility across a vast range of Australian and imported wine.

Somewhere along the line this led to the creation of the Winewise Small Vignerons Awards – a forum for small makers not well serviced by the larger wine shows.

Like the magazine, the Small Vignerons Awards developed high credibility and this year attracted a reported 1350 wines from 450 exhibitors.

And because it’s such a well-run event appealing to key small producers, it also attracts high quality judges to complement Winewise’s own panellists – Lester Jesberg, Phil Trickett, Andrew McEwin and Len Sorbello.

Several features lift the SVA above so many other shows: outstanding judges; small classes, often broken into regional groupings so that like is judged with like; comparatively low numbers of wines to be tasted per judge per day; the use of good quality glassware; and serving wine at a consistent, moderate temperature.

While the results of any show is just an expression of opinion, good outcomes are more likely where judges are not fatigued, where there’s time to carefully re-assess all gold medal candidates and where only outstanding wines move forward for the trophy taste offs.

What you can be sure of with the SVA is that the trophy winners are excellent wines. What you cannot be sure of is that they are necessarily the styles that each and every person likes.

For that fact is that everyone is genetically programmed and otherwise conditioned to perceive smells and tastes differently. With that caveat there’s a feast of good drinking in this year’s hard-won trophy line up below.

Best riesling: Delatite Alpine Valleys Victoria 2005. Contact www.delatitewinery.com.au. Phone 03 5775 2922.

Best semillon: Saddler’s Creek Hunter Valley Classic 1999. Contact www.saddlerscreekwines.com.au. Phone 02 4991 1770.

Best dry white blend: Lenton Brae Margaret River Sauvignon Blanc 2005. Contact www.lentonbrae.com. Phone 08 9755 6255

Best pinot noir: Paringa Estate Mornington Peninsula 2004. Contact, www.paringaestate.com.au. Phone 03 5989 2669.

Best shiraz: Paringa Estate Mornington Peninsula 2004. Contact: www.paringaestate.com.au. Phone 03 5989 2669.

Best cabernet sauvignon: Koppamurra Limestone Coast 2002. Contact: www.koppamurra.com. Phone 08 8357 9533.

Best other varietal red: Burge Family Barossa Valley Garnacha 2003. Contact: Phone 08 8524 4644.

Best dry red blend: Windance Margaret River Cabernet Merlot 2004. Contact: www.windance.com.au. Phone 08 9755 2293.

Best fortified wine: Stanton & Killeen Rutherglen Grand Muscat. Contact www.stantonandkilleenwines.com.au. Phone 02 6032 9457.

Best exhibitor: Capercaillie Wines Hunter Valley for achieving greatest total score for three wines entered in three different classes. Contact: www.capercailliewine.com.au. Phone 02 4990 2904.

Wine review — Leconfield, Evans & Tate, Miceli

9 July 2006Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Leconfield Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2004 $26 to $30
In the early eighties some Coonawarra makers flirted with early-picked cabernet styles. The resulting thin, green wines enjoyed wine-show support for a time before good sense and ripeness once again prevailed. Leconfield hung onto a green component in its cabernets for much of the nineties, so it’s good to report a shift to a more generous, riper, fresher style under winemaker Paul Gordon. Less irrigation, pruning for lower yields and later harvesting account for the riper but elegant berry flavours. And increased skin contact, easy-on-the-new-oak maturation and more aeration combine to present these bright berry flavours wrapped in a satisfying packet of firm, ripe tannins.

Evans & Tate Salisbury Chardonnay 2005 $9-$11
Largely because of generous, fruity, inexpensive wines like Salisbury, chardonnay remains Australia’s favourite bottled wine. AC Nielsen figures reveal that in the year to March, 2006, chardonnay accounted for 16.1 per cent of bottled wine sales with sparkling white in number two position, followed by shiraz, then cabernet sauvignon, then sauvignon blanc in fifth place accounting for 5.8 per cent of sales. While we drink almost three bottles of chardonnay for every one of sauvignon blanc, chardonnay is in mild decline and sauvignon blanc in rapid growth. Sourced from the hot Murray Darling region, Salisbury offers generous, ripe, peachy varietal flavour with a delicious zesty freshness.

Miceli Mornington Peninsula Iolanda Pinot Grigio 2005 $19.95
As Australian and New Zealand winemakers grapple with pinot grigio – a white mutant of the red pinot noir — we’re seeing a diversity of styles driven as much by winemaker input as by region of origin. What Michael Miceli has shown is that even with high levels of winemaking artifice – oxidation, warm ferment, wild yeast ferment and lees maturation etc – the variety can still assert itself. We’ve seen some beauties in this mould from Miceli in recent years, including this very complex, new-release 2005. It captures the minerally/nashi pear flavour of pinot grigio, somehow enhanced by the patina of winemaking inputs.

For sale — Seppeltsfield, Aussie icon, fortified wine treasure trove

9 July 2006WineChris Shanahan

Last week, as part of a cost cutting drive related to its acquisition of Southcorp, Fosters Group announced the sale of one of Australia’s most cherished and visited wine estates, Seppeltsfield.

The 185-hectare property is a treasury of Barossa winemaking history dating to the early 1850s. Visitors to the site drive through an avenue of date palms – established to keep workers employed during the depression – to the complex of cellars, dwellings and National Trust listed Seppelt family homestead.

Five generations of the Seppelt family established this sprawling village before the company floated in 1970 and subsequently passed, intact, through successive ownerships by South Australian Brewing Holdings, Adsteam, Southcorp and Fosters.

Perhaps the most direct links to the past, with continuing relevance to wine today, are the 108-hectares of vines and around nine million litres of fortified wine stored in an estimated thirty thousand barrels – each in need of TLC.

With the market for fortified wine all but dead, who will take on such a colossal volume, even if it is some of the best material in the world?

It’s easier to imagine would-be buyers eyeing the beautiful old grenache, shiraz and mourvedre bush vines and thinking red rather than fortified.

But those nine million litres of fortified wine won’t simply evaporate. And the fact that Fosters is offering for sale the Seppeltsfield fortified brands as well as the stock means that their continuation is not beyond imagination.

Could a luxury goods business – such as Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy, already with substantial wine and spirit assets – be tempted? If anyone knows how to crack luxury markets, the French do?

Look, for example, how they’ve created the Chandon sparkling business in the Yarra and at the importance of the magnificent winery, restaurant, cellar door complex in the marketing of it. Could they attempt this with fortifieds and with a similar icon in the Barossa?

Another possibility is to find an extremely wealthy family or private company prepared to become custodian of this priceless asset. They’d need to love wine more than they love money.

But that has been the case historically with wine and wealthy people. The pursuit of great wines can supplant normal commercial judgement – or live side by side with it in the situation where a profitable business supports a lofty wine ambition.

Those of us who love those irreplaceable Seppeltsfield fortifieds certainly hope a suitable new owner can be found. And I’m sure James Godfrey does, too.

For many years now James has presided over this extraordinary collection of wine, including an unbroken line of Para Liqueurs stretching back to 1878.

His is a demanding and highly specialised skill. Each year he makes and adds new wines to the barrels while taking off carefully judged portions of older material for blending and bottling.

The range is wide and includes pale, delicate fino, aged-amontillado and luscious old oloroso ‘sherry’ styles; tawny ‘port’ styles of various ages, up to and including the sublime DP 90; luscious, aged

Rutherglen muscats and tokays; and the unique single-vintage Para 100-year-old – the first barrel of this having been laid down by Benno Seppelt in 1878 with instructions – duly followed – that it be bottled in 1978.

Whatever commercial possibilities Seppeltsfield possesses, this unique fortified collection will hopefully endure. It’s the heart and soul of Seppeltsfield – a national treasure that ought not gather dust, nor be discarded. Rather, it demands to live on giving every generation a taste of the past, present and future in every glass.

Wine review — Castello di Poggio, Musella & Illuminati

2 July 2006Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Despite a glut sloshing around the world, Australia continues its parochial wine-drinking ways. Indeed, distance — aided by a weak dollar — seems to be a one-way tyranny these days, holding back a potential flood of cheap, surplus foreign wine while allowing the free passage of our own in the other direction.

Thus in the year ended June 2005, imports represented just five per cent by volume and eight per cent by value of wine consumed in Australia.

Stripped of our fairly hefty Champagne drinking habit — and the pricey table wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy – the great bulk of imports consumed, I suspect, remain in the under $10 price range, with volumes tapering sharply above $15 a bottle.

Certainly this value area is the key focus for Australia’s two largest liquor retailers, Woolworths and Coles Myer. For both, imports play a profitable role in a tough market. And, increasingly, both import direct from producers, bypassing local wholesalers.

Importing direct is nothing new. At any time in the past one or two enterprising retailers – with an eye to bigger margins – imported direct, while the majority, of necessity, purchased from wholesalers.

In theory, a direct importer might pocket the entire wholesale as well as the retail profit margin. But in seeking an advantage over competitors most have traditionally undercut normal retail prices, effectively splitting the wholesale margin with customers.

With these two retailers sharing almost half of Australia’s take-away liquor sales and fighting tooth and nail to outdo one another, we can safely assume that today a greater proportion of the direct importing advantage is being competed away.

Curious at the increasing profile of direct imports in Woolies and Coles liquor outlets, I recently drove to Melbourne to visit the warring parties. On successive days I visited the Dan Murphy head office (Woolworths ‘big box’ brand) and Coles Myer Liquor Group to look at the overall imports list and, as a case study, to taste each group’s Italian imports.

What they have in common is a competitive urge backed by the resources and expertise to select and buy well – meaning a pretty good value offer for shoppers.

Tony Leon, Dan Murphy boss, an old-time trading retailer and former partner of the late Dan Murphy is still at the helm under Woolies’ ownership. In this no-bull, short-chain-of-command business, premium and imported wine man, Campbell Stott, reports direct to Tony and has support from the experienced former winemaker, Steve Creber.

The three have as good a nose for wine as for business and this translates into a growing portfolio of value wines from France, Chile, Argentina, Italy, Spain and Germany.

The focus is on very good under-$10 wines — increasingly under screw cap at Dan Murphy’s insistence — with a sprinkling of more expensive regional specialties of varying quality and value.

Within a somewhat more complex business structure, Coles’ premium wine and imports man, Jeremy Stockman – long-time retailer and wine show judge – reports to Grant Ramage, a wine experienced recent import from Oddbins, UK.

As Stockman’s selections appear not only in First Choice outlets (Coles’ answer to Dan Murphy) but also in the upmarket Vintage Cellars chain, the top-end section of his Italian range is, in my opinion, stronger and more diverse, and the cheaper wines are all interesting regional specialties.

Moscato d’Asti (Castello di Poggio) 2005 $13.99
Dan Murphy’s import is a lovely example of this unique, low-alcohol white made from moscato grapes grown in the vicinity of Asti, Piedmont. Beautifully, fresh, light and crisp with delicious, sweet grapey flavours, it weighs in at just 5.5 per cent alcohol by volume. Sweet wines might be unfashionable for some in Australia, but Moscato d’Asti is catching on as it ought. It’s a good case for regional specialisation as few Australian attempts at this style capture the light, tingly fresh essential to balance the juicy, sweet grapiness. Reduces to $12.99 in case lots.

Valpolicella Classico Superiore Vigne Nuova (Musella) 2003 $19.99
Watch for the specials on this as importer Coles Myer offers it considerably cheaper through First Estate and Vintage Cellars on occasion. It’s another Italian regional specialty made in Valpolicella, a little to the west of Verona, using the native red corvina veronese, rondinella and molinara grape varieties. This is a modern expression of the style – very bright and fresh with lovely perfume, medium bodied, juicy but tight palate, with a touch of new oak, and tart, dry finish. Valpolicella can be wishy-washy. But this one’s terrific – with the fruit and structure to accompany savoury food.

Montepulciano d’Abruzzo ‘Riparosso’ (Illuminati) 2004 $8 to $11
Just to show that Australia doesn’t have a monopoly on value, here’s a savoury favourite from Italy. I confess to having sourced Riparosso for Farmer Bros in 1991 and, after their demise, introducing it to the Coles Myer group in 1995. They continue to offer Riparosso – often misspelled as Riparossa in press ads — through Vintage Cellars, Liquorland and First Choice. It’s made in Abruzzi, on the Adriatic coast by the Illuminati family using the local Montepulciano grape. Family patriarch, Dino, elevated this variety to new heights and now his son, Stefano, continues to fine-tune Riparosso lifting it to new heights in the sensational 2004 vintage.