Terroir Vino

Every year TigullioVino.it, Italy’s foremost wine portal, organizes a wine Meeting, a table-top event bringing together over one hundred winemakers hand picked from Italy and Europe. This year’s edition, with some influence from yours truly, is called Terroir Vino, and was held at the magnificent Palazzo Ducale in Genova.

The Palazzo Ducale, photo by Luca Risso

Terroir Vino is the brainchild of my friend, web entrepreneur Fil Ronco. Participants are invited after selection in a blind tasting by TigullioVino teams, and so you get a wide spectrum of styles and sizes of winery, from the “all natural” vigneron with less than 4 hectares, to large quality producers like Lungarotti. Half the day is reserved for wine professionals (press, restaurant owners, importers), and starting mid-afternoon the event is open to the public for a nominal fee.

The setting under the gold leaf carved ceilings of the doge’s palace, the perfect organization and the friendly atmosphere made this Terroir Vino day a big success. It was good to see lots of blogging and newsgroup friends, including Joan Gómez Pallarès, Terry Hughes, Luca Risso, Giampiero Nadali, Schigi, Filippo Cintolesi, Franco Solari, Fiorenzo Sartore, Mirco Mariotti, Gianpaolo Paglia, even Slow Food friends Enrico Sala and Maurizio Fava. All in all 1500 people attended.

...continue reading "Terroir Vino"

Posted by Mike Tommasi on Thursday 19 June 2008 at 17:04
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Temporarily teetotal

by Martin Field

Long-time readers will be shocked to hear that your humble correspondent has been off the grog for a few weeks. Doctor’s orders, following a nasty but necessary ‘routine’ operation visited often enough upon ageing geezers.

Seems that up to a month’s healing is required, and alcohol, which can dilate blood vessels, may hinder this.

Not that I felt much like booze, or food for that matter for a couple of weeks. No doubt due to trauma and the ongoing aftermath of a generous intrathecal dose of dope that left me temporarily legless.

Where was I?

...continue reading "Temporarily teetotal"

Posted by Martin Field on Thursday 05 June 2008 at 06:23
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Wine and cancer. Shock! Horreur!

Latest news reports suggest that drinking two glasses of wine a day can increase your risk of mouth cancer by up to 75 per cent. See, for example, Cancer drinking danger.

Hardly a day goes by without one of these scientific horror stories. And if it's not a horror story then it's wine as a miraculous cure-all.

...continue reading "Wine and cancer. Shock! Horreur!"

Posted by Martin Field on Sunday 11 May 2008 at 23:26
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Californian, Noosan, Kiwi vigneron

by Martin Field

So I’m sculling a tasty New Zealand pinot noir at Laguna Jacks and this guy comes up to me and asks me in an American accent how I like his wine.

I learn that his name is Quintin Quider and that the pinot is from a Central Otago winery, Wild Earth that he owns with wife, Avril. He adds that he hails originally from California, came to Australia after a stint in New Zealand, and now lives in Noosa.

...continue reading "Californian, Noosan, Kiwi vigneron"

Posted by Martin Field on Tuesday 22 April 2008 at 02:34
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Cellaring in hot climates

by Martin Field

In Noosa it’s spring, and the last few weeks have been unseasonably hot and humid. Our latitude is around 26° south; if Noosa was in the northern hemisphere it would be at a similar latitude to Miami, Florida. Hardly an ideal climate for the lengthy cellaring of wine.

Daily temperatures have hovered around 20°C minimum and 28°C maximum. The humidity is often in the 70 to 80 percent plus range. This is warm and humid enough to require refrigeration of bread, tomatoes and chocolate to stop them spoiling quickly. Oh, and to call for ice blocks in a glass of red*. As summer approaches, it will no doubt get a great deal hotter. (*Naturally, when I'm drinking a superior red, I use ice blocks made only from superior bottled water.)

Why is heat a problem for wine cellaring? Well, the ageing of wine is essentially a prolonged chemical reaction. That is, you leave a bunch of chemicals and water in a glass container, usually sealed with a wet bit of tree, for an undefined length of time. Wine ‘connoisseurs’ optimistically hope that doing this will eventuate in an ‘improved’ wine. A risky business in a cool climate, let alone the sub-tropics.

The trouble with warm climate cellaring, scientists tell us, is that for every increase of 10°C applied to a chemical solution, the rate of chemical reaction in that solution will double. Theoretically, this means that if you store your case of 1998 Grange at an average temperature of 15°C, and I store mine at an average of 25°C, my case will age (i.e. improve/deteriorate) twice as fast as yours.

Reds and whites oxidise over time, and heat speeds up this oxidation. Oxidised wines lose their youthful fruitiness and develop secondary winey characteristics. Prematurely oxidised wine will quickly acquire aromas and flavours that will remind tasters of sherry. As wine ages and oxidises it also changes colour: whites become darker and eventually turn a light brownish hue. In red wine, youthful vibrant purples will disappear; the wine will become lighter in colour and will end up a murky brown.

Heat can also make wine expand in the bottle. This expansion can move corks a little, leading to leakage and consequent acceleration of the oxidative process. Wine prematurely aged by heat will soon look muddy, and smell and taste coarse, fat and flabby.

Before we left Melbourne, in anticipation of our move to the warm Noosa climate, we drank as many of the older reds and chardonnays as humanly possible and sold off a few cases at auction. We brought the younger vintages to the new house.

So, I hear you say, Whaddami gunna do if I live in a hot climate and can’t cellar my wine properly?

To safeguard the wine collection I guess you could buy one of those expensive wine fridges that control temperature and humidity. Alternatively, you could lash out and create a climate-controlled cellar in the basement – if you have the spare cash, and a basement. But I’d rather spend my money on wine. For the time being I simply store the better stuff in the coolest, darkest part of the house, which happens to be the floor of a linen closet.

The simple alternative is to buy young wines and drink them while they’re young.

Posted by Martin Field on Wednesday 14 November 2007 at 10:19
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Dumb kitchen wine storage

by Martin Field

What do kitchen designers know about wine and food storage in the kitchen? Not a lot it seems. Sure, they can make a new kitchen look like a snazzy ad in a glossy magazine. But I’m not convinced they know or care much about users’ needs.

For example, the recently modernised kitchen in our new home came complete with lots of stainless steel, gleaming stone bench tops, 2-pack cupboards and drawers and an open wine nook right between the fridge and the pantry. Ranging from chest height to above head height, there was space for a dozen and more bottles on gleaming stainless steel racks. What’s wrong with that? Well, good wine needs careful cellaring. Preferably in the coolest, darkest part of the house.

In contrast, modern kitchens are bright and busy and hot. Hot from hundreds of watts of halogen downlights, the fridge, the microwave, the oven, the electric jug, the toaster, the espresso machine, the [enough hot examples already! Ed.].

Anyway, I unscrewed the no doubt expensive racks and tossed them out on the nature strip for the hard rubbish collection. The space came in handy for the rice cooker and a pottery crock we store the rice in. The wine stays in the cellar. PS Tossed out all the high wattage bulbs too and replaced them with lower powered bulbs.

Posted by Martin Field on Saturday 15 September 2007 at 01:33
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AOC wines: SEVE agrees with UFC Que Choisir enquiry about quality

SEVE communiqué

For several years now, consumers organizations and the press have alerted the public to the degradation of appellation (AOC) wines in France. Let us recall that in December 1995 consumer magazine UFC Que Choisir published an enquiry (Vins français, la qualité en peril = French wine, quality endangered) questioning in a well argued article the quality of wines and the authenticity of the claims of French AOCs. We also recall that Alain Berger, at the time director of INAO, declared in this article that “one can find on the market today some horrible products marked with the AOC label… AOC wines today represent half of the French production by volume. It is too much, we must stop this now”.

Finally we recall that the winemaker’s unions at that time arrogantly and violently attacked Que Choisir, and managed to get Alain Berger fired.

In its announcement on September 3rd, 2007, UFC Que Choisir asks the same question again, 12 years later: for wine consumers, is the AOC label reliable? Sève, an association of winemakers founded in order to obtain a radical reform of the appellation system, agrees with the answer given by UFC Que Choisir: No! Because “the loss of credibility of the AOCs is explained also by the coexistence within the appellations of two types of wine with very different quality-price ratios, and which must now be officially separated: on the one hand, wines that have a strong link to terroir that respect the original definition of AOC, on the other hand wines with less character that correspond to a new market demand, and that should develop outside of the appellation system. By distinguishing these two categories with distinct labels, we can satisfy the double requirement of making consumer choices clearer while safeguarding the AOC heritage.” (UFC Que Choisir)

...continue reading "AOC wines: SEVE agrees with UFC Que Choisir enquiry about quality"

Posted by Mike Tommasi on Wednesday 12 September 2007 at 14:27
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The AOC reform will fail if the French wine appellation system refuses to redefine its market segments.

In an article in the French language section of TheWineBlog.net Marc Parcé, winemaker at Banyuls and Maury (Domaine de la Rectorie and Préceptorie de Centernach) and one of the leaders of the winemaker’s association Sève, has pointed out the risks of the AOC reform being prepared by INAO, the French government body in charge of regulating appellations for food and wine.

In his reading of the recent reports from INAO and CNAOC (the national confederation of AOCs) concerning the specifications and the plans for inspections and controls on wine, all the positive points of the reform have been diluted or removed, while the most dubious ones, especially those that will bring a leveling down of all wines, remain.

...continue reading "The AOC reform will fail if the French wine appellation system refuses to redefine its market segments."

Posted by Mike Tommasi on Wednesday 12 September 2007 at 14:16
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Assessing French appellations: do AOCs today bear any relation to what their creators imagined?

The time has come to assess a century of rules and practices of the Appellations d’Origine Contrôlées in France.
Patrick Baudouin, winemaker in the Loire and a leader of Sève, an association of winemakers identified by terroir, has published an article in the French language section of TheWineBlog.net advocating such an assessment, arguing that the appellation system is part of France’s cultural heritage and that it naturally implies “terroir”, a word impossible to translate, and therefore used in all languages to convey the importance of origin in quality wine, and the need to defend this origin, be it in France or anywhere in the world, for wine or for any quality produce. Despite this, the following question has never been more pertinent than today: in 2007, do the appellations bear any relation to what was imagined by their creators, a group that included J Capus and baron Le Roy? What follows is an abridged translation of his article.

...continue reading "Assessing French appellations: do AOCs today bear any relation to what their creators imagined?"

Posted by Mike Tommasi on Wednesday 12 September 2007 at 14:02
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Freeing the taste of AOC wines from the shackles of “organoleptic profiling”

Patrick Baudouin, winemaker in the Loire and a leader of Sève, an association of winemakers identified by terroir, has published an article in the French language section of TheWineBlog.net about the tyranny of the wine tastings used to approve appellation wines, pointing out the absolute unreliability of such subjective, imprecise procedures. What follows is an abridged translation of his article.

Despite all the criticism and evidence of their shortcomings, these tasting are being reintroduced by the current AOC reform as the most important criterion for approving wines as AOC. The latest INAO report argues that it is not the tastings themselves that are at fault, but the way they are conducted, which does not offer guarantees of impartiality. In order to correct this, INAO proposes to replace the current tasting panels, composed only of the winemakers themselves, with panels comprising experts, consumers/merchants, and something described as “carriers of memory”, whatever that means, presumably sages that know what wines from a certain area should taste like!

This flies in the face of the reforms that Seve had suggested, because it reintroduces tasting as a fundamental test for approving wines, because it allows the local control organization to chose the tasting panels, and because it brings back, through this tasting, the idea of a taste profile for each appellation, and wines that do not fit that standardizing profile will be rejected. It is the return of the slippery notion of what is typical of an appellation. Such procedures are not based on any solid scientific, cultural or commercial logic.

...continue reading "Freeing the taste of AOC wines from the shackles of “organoleptic profiling”"

Posted by Mike Tommasi on Wednesday 12 September 2007 at 13:07
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Europe launches wine reform by proposing a new Council Regulation

Last week week the European Union released the full text of the “Proposal for a COUNCIL REGULATION on the common organisation of the market in wine and amending certain Regulations”, this had been announced a few days earlier on the website of the European Commission’s Agriculture and Rural Development section.

This new Common Market Organisation (CMO) for wine will lead to the repeal of current CMO as stated in Council Regulation (EC) No 1493/1999 of 17 May 1999

The main stated objectives are:
– increase competitiveness;
– strengthen the reputation of EU quality wines;
– recover old markets and win new ones;
– set clear, simple rules;
– preserve the best traditions of EU wine production,
– reinforce the social fabric of many rural areas,
– ensure that all production respects the environment.

...continue reading "Europe launches wine reform by proposing a new Council Regulation"

Posted by Mike Tommasi on Friday 13 July 2007 at 10:40
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TGV Meeting 2007

What is TGV Meeting? It is the annual wine fair in Liguria of TigullioVino, with 90 winemakers, mostly italian, invited to participate on the basis of decisions of the tasting committee of this leading italian wine portal. What a concept : the wine must be good ! This means that you will find both very small vignerons as well as larger wine companies, with many different kinds of winemaking, but a common thread of very high quality.

( Bloggers Giampiero, Maria Grazia, Terry, Laura, Mirco )

This Meeting is also the occasion to meet the movers and shakers of the enoblogosphere. The day before I had already met Giampiero Nadali (AKA Aristide), Mirco Mariotti (alias Blog&Wine) who actually makes wine near Ferrara, and Terry Hughes (alias Mondosapore) who had just arrived from New York.

...continue reading "TGV Meeting 2007"

Posted by Mike Tommasi on Thursday 07 June 2007 at 12:29
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Crumby corks - Waiters knives don't cut it

by Martin Field

Corked wines are disgusting to drink. Less annoying, but common enough, are wines with bits of cork floating in them. Admittedly, cork crumbs are more a cosmetic than a taste problem but they’re very irritating when you find them in your glass.

My certifiable genius friend Kim, cast his beady mathematical eyes over a number of crumby wines. He observed that cork flotsam and jetsam appear most frequently when he uses a waiters knife to extract corks from older wines.

In the E-vine tasting lab he demonstrated, using a deluxe waiters knife on a 15-year-old bottle of wine, that just before the cork fully emerges from a bottle the waiters knife actually pushes the cork away from the perpendicular.

This leverage bends the wet end of the cork, and if the cork is unsound, causes it to break and shed crumbs. Consequently, small pieces of cork tend to stick in the bottle neck and fragments fall inside the bottle. These then have to be fished or filtered out. Or, chewed and swallowed.

To put it more simply: the structural integrity of a decomposing cork will be compromised as the waiters knife’s vectoring forces simultaneously compress and expand the wet end of the cork in opposite directions. Having lost the springiness of youth, the stressed cork will self-destruct.

Kim’s solution is to use an old-fashioned butterfly corkscrew when opening older wines. This type of corkscrew will extract the cork in a strictly vertical direction, avoiding destructive stresses and strains caused by sideways movement. He’s convinced me.

If you have a strong arm, a simple T-shaped corkscrew will also do the trick.

Posted by Martin Field on Saturday 31 March 2007 at 22:43
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Whither Australian Chardonnay?

by Martin Field

I enjoyed a bottle of Laroche Petit Chablis 2004 ($28) the other night. A Chablis of a lesser appellation admittedly, but a lovely aperitif for all that. Not a fruity style but clean, acidic, minerally, without apparent oak and showing lip-smacking persistence. As I poured another glass I wondered why Australian winemakers don’t or can’t make something similar.

Of course, I’m not suggesting we can copy the inimitable Chablis but it is made from chardonnay and we have more than enough of that in Australia to experiment with. But what do we do with chardonnay? We make big, blowsy, buttery, oak-saturated, oily, soft, sweet, alcoholic, over the top wines, is what we do.

In the unrefined circles I move in, these styles are rarely seen on the dining table any more. Many people are sick of them and are more likely to pour sauvignon blanc, riesling, pinot gris or even viognier.

And as for cellaring Oz chardonnay, in my experience it’s a waste of time and space and money. Just lately I’ve opened a selection of aged (six years and more) premium bottles. Mostly, they’ve been disappointing. They lack acid; they display premature brownish hues and oxidative bouquets and are fat and flabby on the palate. Yet rieslings and semillons of similar age are inevitably youthful in appearance and a delight to drink.

Thinks: if I’m going to drink chardonnay, I’ll stick to just-released, unwooded styles, and Chablis - when I can afford it.

Posted by Martin Field on Sunday 11 February 2007 at 00:37
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Grumpy old wine writer

by Martin Field

I've occasionally been criticised by a tiny minority of readers for not taking wine seriously enough. For, as it were, too much taking of ze peez. In a spirit of détente, ecumenicalism and with good will to all, I henceforth vows to treat all wine matters with a level of appropriate gravitas. Here goes…

‘Let us have wine and women,* mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda-water the day after’
That well-known clairvoyant Lord Byron wrote the above way back when. Today his words might well apply to the debate concerning the after-effects of environmental degradation and the no doubt related drought that continues to devastate Australia.

A handy barometer of Yarra Valley climate change is the unirrigated shiraz vine in our garden, which has shown signs of stress from water deprivation for the first time in 17 years. The leaves are wilted and browning at the edges; the grape bunches, while plentiful, bear sparse berries and while some show a youthful purple, many are green and scrawny.

Similarly, our tomato plants are dying, the lawn is brown and parched and our sinks are cluttered with buckets, in a foolhardy attempt to recycle greasy washing-up water.

My tastebuds have a brainwave
To cope with the water shortage, I racked my brains for a water substitute. It had to be cheap, non-toxic and with similar qualities to H2O. That is, tasteless, odourless and colourless. Then, while I was absentmindedly sipping such a liquid, my tastebuds had a brainwave (sort of like an organoleptic epiphany - to put it more simply). I'd drawn the magic potion from a four-litre cask (bag in a box) of white wine that a poverty-stricken friend had left, inadvertently, in our kitchen.

It met all the above criteria, and I thought, if Cleopatra could bathe in asses’ milk why should I not shower in cask wine? A wise move. The acid and alcohol have done wonders for my complexion, there is evidence of hair regrowth amidst my monk’s tonsure and people in the street stop to ask me where they can buy the fragrant aftershave I waft onto the breeze as I stroll along the boulevard.

Try it yourself and see. A word of warning though. When I used a bucket of the stuff to wash the car it made the paint bubble.

Posted by Martin Field on Sunday 11 February 2007 at 00:33
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More Wine Haiku

Bruno of Balmoral sent in this little gem.

Smouldering red dawn
frantic waves quench ash grey sand
like sparkling shiraz

Posted by Martin Field on Sunday 11 February 2007 at 00:32
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Gippsland wine find

by Martin Field

Down the road apiece, just over an hour’s drive southeast of Melbourne, lurks West Gippsland, a relatively unsung region producing fine Victorian wine. On a day trip there in late October, I learned that the area is not only the source of fine cheese and asparagus (85% of the Australian crop), but that it also hosts some 20 and more up-and-coming wineries.

However, according to the geographically challenged boffins who created the Australia Geographic Indications appellation, some of the wineries at the Melbourne end of West Gippsland are in the Port Phillip zone. What would they know?

Gippsland, I was already aware, produces some great pinot noir and chardonnay but on tasting a cross-section of current reds and whites I was surprised to find examples of sauvignon blanc that could eventually challenge the classics of New Zealand and the sauvignon blancs of other, better-known Australian regions.

...continue reading "Gippsland wine find"

Posted by Martin Field on Sunday 03 December 2006 at 23:00
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Wine Haiku

The news group alt.food.wine recently ran a thread featuring the Japanese poetry form haiku - using wine as the main theme. Martin has risen to the challenge with this little offering - inspired by the recent devastation of Victorian vineyards by a bout of cold weather.

Frost, the wrath of grapes
Sly night-stalker culls the vines
Bare vats, wine unborn

Posted by Martin Field on Sunday 03 December 2006 at 22:25
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Wine cliché news count

Ever heard or read a conversation like this? ‘It’s been a long and exciting journey. I feel empowered when I’m making wine. I’m passionate about it. I have a commitment to quality and have a vision that our product will one day become an Australian icon. I’d like to thank my mentor.’ ‘Absolutely!’ Yuck!

Writing about wine sure brings out the clichés but I reckon reporters, copywriters and publicists easily outgun wine writers in over-spicing their paragraphs with hyperbole. A little while back, I ran the word wine - combined with some of my least favourite psychobabble words - through Google’s News Search. (For example, enter wine +passion, in the News search window.)

The wine and passion combination brought up 643 news items, while passionate rated 274. Journey rated 674; commitment – 603; absolutely - 790; vision – 499; mentor came up with 201; icon scored 269; empowered rated 22 and empower 33. Wine and pretentious scored 56. Remember, these results are from current daily news sources.

A straightforward Google web search for wine and passion scored over 12,000,000 hits. I quit while I was ahead.

I hope I’ve engaged you with this research - admittedly, the context in which the words are used in news items varies considerably – but you get my drift.

Posted by Martin Field on Saturday 28 October 2006 at 23:33
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Water wastage in Australian vineyards?

Arid Australia
by Martin Field

My daughter, who studies these sorts of things, says we shouldn’t think in terms of drought in Australia. She argues that Australians will eventually have to accept that we live in the driest populated continent on the planet and that the 100 year ‘drought’ we’re experiencing at the moment is simply a variation on what is in fact a permanently arid environment.

...continue reading "Water wastage in Australian vineyards?"

Posted by Martin Field on Saturday 28 October 2006 at 23:18
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Kvevris, Marani and Kakheti

Warning, at the end of this post there is a fun vidéo clip so please read to the end!

On the banks of the Black Sea there is a beautiful country, with high mountains, and a climate that is ideal for growing grape vines: Georgia.

...continue reading "Kvevris, Marani and Kakheti"

Posted by Mike Tommasi on Thursday 26 October 2006 at 22:06
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The vego jackaroo

by Martin Field
So whaddaya reckon vego wine writers do on their weekends off? In my case they round up cattle. Yeah. Sounds incongruous, whatever you want to label it - but it happens.

We’ve got friends who run a cattle property where they make a little wine on the side. They occasionally invite us up to the farm (1500 acres – a herd of three or four hundred Black Angus beasts at any one time) for the weekend. But it ain’t a lolling round the open fireplace, drinking Scotch, country house in tweeds weekend. It’s a full-on, get yer hands dirty, sweaty old Akubras, hideously dirty jeans, up to the tops of yer elastic-sided Blundstones in sheeit and don’t turn yer back on the shaggin’ bulls weekend.

Socialising cows
The boss cocky had a plan. Nine visiting, well-hung, stud bulls had been bed and breakfasting and socialising with around three hundred cows and calves, in three non-contiguous paddocks. Now it was time to move the three different mobs of cattle to the cattle yards to inoculate the calves against seven different kinds of deadly bovine ague.

This exercise involved a quiet enough ramble along a few kilometres of back roads. The country air perfumed with the smell of gumtrees and cow crap that combined into a not unlikeable fragrance. The walk is accompanied by the lowing (and highing) of the cows and the ear-splitting shrieks of hundreds of amused, sulphur-crested cockatoos who have turned out to watch the passing parade. And as you amble along, shouting such endearments as ‘Move yer stupid *%*#& arse!’ you hope that the local boy racers don’t come hoon-mobiling over the next rise in Top Gear fashion, en route to hamburger heaven.

You persuade each mob to enter the yards and then try to separate the calves from their mothers and the rather promiscuous, polygamous bulls from their lovers – none of them, it seems, wanting to say farewell. There’s much yelling and effing and blinding and not a little dangerous excitement before the calves are channelled, wild-eyed and reluctant, into the race.

Self-inoculation
This is where our Farmer Giles administers the aforesaid, multi-functional inoculation from a backpack, via a mean-looking hypodermic into the hide above each calf’s neck. The calves have other priorities. They’re practising for the next calf Olympics. Apparently their events will include reverse parking, leap-frogging, piggy-backing, playing dead, and self-throttling through the steel bars on a cattle race. Consequently Farmer ‘this won’t hurt a bit!’ Giles not infrequently shoots the vaccine (ironic that) into his thumb. As a result it can be safely said that he won’t ever suffer from certain unspeakable cattle diseases in his allotted life span.

Raging Bulls
Eventually, the on-loan, not quite shagged out bulls have to be moved into separate pens to be picked up and returned to their home the next day. This is when the fun begins. Picture it, there are three yappin’ dogs whose aspirations in the cattle herding arena far outweigh their capabilities. Us two city folk are driving an old Subaru 4x4 ute; gentleman Farmer Giles is in a big Toyota ute leaving his partner quite unprotected riding a none too stable, all-terrain vehicle. All of us are in a large paddock where we’ve cornered nine huge, lascivious, red-eyed, rampaging, rootin', tootin', fightin’, we’d rather be shaggin’, dustin’ and pawin’ the ground, angry bulls.

All we had to do was push them through rather narrow gates then separate them into individual pens.

They had other ideas...

Much later, congratulating ourselves on our survival as wranglers, we eat a huge dinner accompanied by a few bottles of fine red and then loll around in front of the open fire sipping a few shots of Laphroaig as a night cap.

Then Farmer Giles suddenly remembers that there’s another mob that has to be done early the next morning.

Posted by Martin Field on Saturday 30 September 2006 at 13:20
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Book Review

By Martin Field
James Halliday’s Wine Atlas of Australia
Halliday is unarguably Australia’s most talented, most prolific and best researched wine author. This volume handsomely reflects those abilities and then some. It is has something for anyone with an interest in Australian wine: the grapes, the wines, the regions, the wineries, the history. All complemented with full colour maps and photographs. Highly recommended. Illustrated, large format hardback, 312 pages. Published 2006 by Hardie Grant Books Victoria, Australia. $79.95.

Posted by Martin Field on Friday 29 September 2006 at 13:36
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Two Bucks? Shucks!

by Martin Field

Or, ‘If you can’t be with the wine you love, love the wine you’re with…’ Billy Preston and Anon.

Dan Murphys’ recent two dollar a bottle cleanskin wine promotion received wide media coverage and the punters loved it, buying shiploads of the two wines on offer.

Tony Leon, general manager of Dan Murphy’s, told me, ‘We’ve sold almost one and a half million bottles and had thousands of back orders for the wine. Customers asked me “What’s it like?” I told them, “For $1.99! Buy a few bottles, if you don’t like it bring it back.” They didn’t bring it back. Of course we hoped the cleanskin customers would buy other wines but if they didn’t that was okay.’

I asked Tony if such cheap wine was good for business. ‘After taxes and transport costs are accounted for there’s not much profit in a $1.99 bottle. But the turnover is good. Even our staff were buying it.’

I’ve also been asked often enough what I thought of the $1.99 wine and whether it’s worth the money. My answers have been along the lines of ‘Whaddya want for a miserable two bucks a bottle? It’s cheaper than some cask wines.’ Anyway, I lashed out four dollars and bought two bottles.

Here, for what its worth, are my notes. I thought the 2005 WE2 Chardonnay was the better of the two. A pale wine, it showed a fruity fresh tropical fruit nose with a hint of oak. The off-dry palate exhibited juicy flavours of ripe peaches and apples and finished with mild acidity. The 2006 WE3 Cabernet Merlot was light-bodied, with sweet grapey, berry aromas. On the palate it had youthful fruit, softish tannins and an edge of sweetness. A perfectly acceptable everyday quaffing red.

Overall I thought they were terrific value for money, and much better than the general run of casks.

Posted by Martin Field on Thursday 24 August 2006 at 12:50
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Len Evans RIP

by Martin Field

Len Evans, that great man of Australian wine, died last week aged 75 years, of a heart attack. Len was a true ambassador and friend of the Australian wine industry here and overseas, a wine educator of note, a leading wine judge and an important wine writer.

I’m thankful to Len to this day as he was indirectly responsible for my early wine education. His Complete Book of Australian Wine (1973) was my most useful reference source when I began to take wine seriously. Back then I found it highly instructive to look up his tasting notes for nearly every wine I tasted, to better understand the wines I bought.

I met Len a few times over the years and he always had a joke or amusing anecdote to relate and always insisted on opening and sharing a bottle of good wine.

It seems appropriate to leave with one of Len’s many quotes: To make the most of the time left to you, you must start by calculating your total future capacity. One bottle of wine a day is 365 bottles a year. If your life expectancy is another thirty years, there are only 11,000 odd bottles ahead of you.

Posted by Martin Field on Thursday 24 August 2006 at 12:09
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Reply to When the Shiraz Hit the Fan

By Russ Badham

Martin, As always I enjoyed your argument and as always was interested in your very measured editorial comment with which I am almost always in strenuous and audible agreement.

I would however caution you against sweeping charges insofar as the whole wine / grape growing industry should not be characterised as adopting the aggression and immorality of some big companies; or as whinging primary producers seeking to park their tax freebee bucket under the milking cow of government handouts.

As you correctly note, the remarkable growth of our industry, (particularly in export), over the last two decades has led to massive plantings, some led by normal commercial considerations , some by tax advantage , and some of both of these at the instigation of 'Collins Street Farmer' types for whom I have no sympathy . The fact is however that an enormous amount of grape production in this country is the province of small ‘fruit blockies’ or farming families in districts as diverse as The Barossa, McLaren Vale, Sunraysia/Riverland, and the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area.

There is nothing glamorous about what these people do now for a few hundred dollars a tonne, (if they still have a buyer), and there was nothing glamorous about what they did before they were enticed away from pursuits like dried fruit (sultanas) or citrus growing and into wine grapes.

These were the classic small people in agriculture who were at the mercy of international markets, the weather or government policy; any of which could deliver quality earnings or rip their livelihood apart at no fault of theirs. When the big wine guys ran around Australia with grape supply contracts it would later be revealed one could drive a tractor through, many of these little people grabbed the paperwork and rushed the banks who in turn believed the financial pages. (And did not read your column in 2000!)

The rest is as you say. They did not see the shirt front coming and could do little in the short term if they had. The big guys who needed them once, do no longer... Who was it who said that ‘when the elephants play the grass gets trampled.’?

It is fine to criticise those who purchased their moleskins and R.M Williams so they could wear them in their off road vehicles to check the vines in 'The Yarra', but spare a thought for the guys who are still in jeans and heavy duty work boots wondering if they should and / or can afford to graft their wine grapevines over to some other variety or pull them out.

One Robinvale Blockie I know has ‘on sold’ his water rights - encouraged by his bank of course - as this is the only asset left. Having not picked one grape off his 20 acre block in 2006 and taking little more than cost recovery the previous year he has no money to redevelop and so will let the vines die. If the twelve month, (also Bank inspired) effort to sell the place comes to nothing , he proposes to subdivide the house off the block so his family has somewhere to live, and simply walk off the land which is planted to non se-xy varietals which were nevertheless 100 percent contracted until 2005.

I am happy to get up the grocers who would turn icon wines into breakfast cereal status, and brewers who see their suppliers and products as transient and as dispensable as the latest advertising concept would dictate. I certainly encourage your continued cynicism in this regard. But don’t tar all the producers with the same brush.

And if we need a campaign about related issues, let’s not let the moronic Federal Agriculture Minister off the hook because a slush fund to bail people out is correctly rejected. But let him feel a bit of heat. After all he could support his natural electorate in the bush as well as his government’s real constituency at the top end of town, by adopting some real old fashioned government intervention and throw serious dollars at export market support and development here and abroad. It is after all good enough for right wing governments in France.

Let’s not pull the vines out, or prop up an industry with a short term over supply, let’s work a bit harder and smarter with serious government support to maintain and build exports.

Posted by Martin Field on Monday 24 July 2006 at 12:12
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When the shiraz hit the fan

by Martin Field

The good, the greedy, and the glut-tonous
Over a glass of good red we were talking a couple of weeks back about the Australian wine glut. Who in the wine industry wasn’t? The particular topic was news that wine industry lobbyists wanted taxpayers to fund a lazy $60 million bail out fund.

My drinking companion, a vigneron who has a small Victorian vineyard, makes his own wine and also sells grapes to big makers, was amazed. ‘Audacious!’ he said. ‘More bleeding snouts trying to get into the trough,’ I added. The government, in a rare stroke of wisdom, knocked back the bail out proposal, pointing out that nobody forced growers to plant their grapes in the first place.

Of course you have to feel sorry for growers forced to let their grapes rot after the suits at the big end of winetown tear up their contracts. And my winemaking friend told me that a well-known company he’d supplied did just that, wanting to take only part of a contracted vintage. He told them to stuff their deals up their de-stemmers and, luckily, found another, honourable, buyer.

The wine business is just a business, but unlike many others it’s seen as glamorous. That’s part of the problem. In the boom cycle it’s a magnet for cashed or borrowed up investors who see an industry offering an attractive lifestyle and a profitable business. Unfortunately they are often poorly advised and know little about winemaking.

And when the big profits do roll in these types swan around in luxury cars, get their buffed heads on TV infotainment shows and generally live the life of egotistical b-grade celebs. But you’ll never hear the wine high rollers say, ‘Thank you consumers for buying shiploads of our temporarily overpriced bottles. Here, take a few million bucks we’ve creamed off the top. Use it wisely to build new schools and hospitals for those less well off than us.’

In the inevitable bust cycle however, they immediately plunge into whinge mode and expect taxpayers to subsidise their losses, which often result from greed, bad planning, and even worse management.

The disastrous wine glut has been on the horizon for years, not least of all because companies, whose only business plan seemed to be chasing the easy dollar, planted grapes or encouraged contractors to plant grapes like there was no tomorrow. And given that situation you didn’t need to be an MBA, a clairvoyant, an economist or an industry analyst to know that the shiraz was going to hit the fan sooner or later.

Nearly six years ago, in September 2000, I wrote in a wine column, ‘My belief is that over the next few years we will see a glut of wine grapes with a consequent stabilisation, if not a fall, in wine prices. This can't be good for winemakers but will undoubtedly please consumers. As for investing in a small vineyard to fund my retirement, I'd rather take up yachting. The latter pursuit has been likened to standing on one leg under a cold shower while tearing up $100 bills. It sounds like a far better investment than planting vines.’

Posted by Martin Field on Thursday 06 July 2006 at 07:53
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Fifty-five million bottles down the drain

by Martin Field

According to reports emanating from the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation, some 60,000 tonnes of wine grapes from Australia's 2006 vintage will be left to rot in the vineyards. That’s the equivalent of 55 million bottles of wine down the gurgler, enough to provide for the average annual consumption of one and a half million Australian adults.

...continue reading "Fifty-five million bottles down the drain"

Posted by Martin Field on Thursday 04 May 2006 at 01:31
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Desert Island Wines

by Martin Field

Len Evans is reported to have once said that he’d hate to be marooned on a desert island with nothing but goats' cheese to eat and sauvignon blanc to drink. With that in mind I conducted a straw poll of Australian wine writers (and one cheesemaker), based on the premise used by the BBC’s Radio 4 show, Desert Island Discs. That’s the long-running program where celebrities are invited to choose music to take with them in the event that they are about to be marooned on a desert island.

The hypothetical situation set for the writers was that they were about to be stranded on a desert island and they could only take with them two currently available Australian wines, a dozen of any one red and a dozen of one white (including bubbly).

Here’s what they said.

...continue reading "Desert Island Wines"

Posted by Martin Field on Friday 31 March 2006 at 08:23
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Picks of the mostly Oz bunch

by Martin Field

Caves de Beblenheim Pinot Blanc 2004 - Around $17 to $18
Appellation Alsace Contrôlée. Juicy aromas of ripe pears. Lovely mouth-filling style with flavours of pears and Granny Smith apples leading to a firm zesty finish. Excellent aperitif and solid entrée accompaniment.

Brown Brothers Vermentino 2005 (cellar door release) - $16-ish
Very pale, edge of green. Distinct citrussy fragrances on the nose. Quite a dry style with lots of mouth-watering, acid tang and noticeable alcohol (14.5%) warmth. Flavours are of citrus and maybe hay – not unlike a good semillon.

...continue reading "Picks of the mostly Oz bunch"

Posted by Martin Field on Friday 31 March 2006 at 08:17
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Six ways to ease the Aussie wine glut

by Martin Field

The old brain has been chugging away addressing the ongoing problem of over-supply of wine grapes and wine in Australia. Although the 2006 vintage is not a record one the wine glut has seen grapes rotting on the vine, wineries going broke and, as you’d expect, corporate ethicists from larger wine companies inventing more devious strategies to dishonour contracts with grape growers.

But I have a few strategies of my own to suggest and these, if applied across the board, will undoubtedly transform excess into success.

...continue reading "Six ways to ease the Aussie wine glut"

Posted by Martin Field on Wednesday 01 March 2006 at 09:18
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Australian Wine Notes

by Martin Field

Syrah - Return of the cultural cringe
Australian winemakers have a long history of cultural cringing – that is, using European, mainly French names for their wines. Most finally stopped this pathetic practice after being dragged into the late twentieth century by litigation and international trade treaties.

But a few winemakers have short memories – a stroll through retail liquor aisles will reveal the increasing usage on Australian labels of the Frenchified term syrah (Ooh bloody la la) instead of the good ol’ Aussie shiraz. Consumers beware, Australian wines labelled syrah will undoubtedly carry a premium price. Wine marketing tosseurs (tossers in Australian) have a lot to answer for.

Must be the season of wood
Doncha just love Americanese? When we were in the Napa Valley in November we noticed that back label writers over there avoid the use of down market terms such as ‘aged in new and one year old barriques.’ They prefer the more refined ‘aged in new and seasoned oak barriques.’ Bit like advertising for pre-loved cars really.

...continue reading "Australian Wine Notes"

Posted by Martin Field on Tuesday 31 January 2006 at 23:31
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Aged and Ageing wine

Among the fine reds lined up on our regular Tuesday table was a bottle of 1952 vintage Mt Ophir Burgundy. Mt Ophir was a renowned Rutherglen winery near Chiltern that shut down in 1957. In its day, according to David Dunstan’s Better than Pommard - A History of Wine in Victoria, Mt Ophir produced over half a million litres a year.

The 53 year old wine (most likely shiraz) was in a heavy champagne bottle of an unusual bluish green hue and we wondered whether the contents had stayed the distance as the ancient cork looked very dodgy and proved difficult to extract. But not to worry, the wine was excellent. In colour it was a deep ruddy brown. The nose showed leathery aged fruit but was not at all sherrified. Also there was a distinct whiff of vanilla, although it is unlikely that the wine was matured in new wood. The palate was soft, rich and dry with a long and penetrating finish and a flavour that reminded me of coffee liqueur. It must have been a monster in its youth.

...continue reading "Aged and Ageing wine"

Posted by Martin Field on Saturday 01 October 2005 at 01:16
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Whither California Cabernets?

Recently, I received the latest issue of "Connoisseur's Guide to California Wines" (CGCW), one of the older publications that reviews (mostly) California wines. In their Aug. 2005 issue, they reviewed 163 recently released California Cabernets, almost all of which came from the highly touted 2001-2 vintages. Of these 163, 1 (the 2002 Diamond Creek Gravelly Meadow) received their highest accolade of ***, whereas 16 received a rating of ** and 56 received a grade of *. If we take these three rankings as meaning bottles meriting serious attention, then 73/163 (44%) made the grade with less than 1% achieving the highest status and ~10% reaching **. Granted, many of the heavy hitters (Ridge, Phelps, Montelena e.g.) were missing from this issue, but as a survey of what's on the market I believe that it gives us an accurate picture.

Much has been written in recent years about the tremendous strides made in winemaking in CA, so I decided to see it this was reflected in increasingly positive reviews in CGCW by digging out an older issue of CGCW (Vol. 6 from 1981) that looked at Cabs from the '76-'77 vintages (drought years that produced some very good wines, but which weren't heralded as great years). What I found was that, of 212 wines reviewed, 1 (<1%) got ***, 20 (10%) got ** and 46 (21%) received *. So, overall, 31% of the wines reviewed merited serious attention.

What to make of all this number crunching? First of all, it appears that little if any change has been made at the top. It is true that the standards of the publication may have changed in the interim, but the fact remains that as few wines today receive their top marks as did 25 years ago. However, there is a significant increase in * wines, reflecting what I see as an overall increase in the baseline quality of winemaking and vineyard practices. This is also reflected by the absence of any "inverted glass" ratings (undrinkable wine) in the Aug. 2005 issue, as compared to 14 inverted glasses in the '81 issue. However, this must be balanced by another significant change: whereas there were 11 Cabs labeled "Best Buy" in '81, only 2 received that accolade in the latest issue.

In many regards, this matches my own, wholly subjective impressions. CalCabs today are uniformly drinkable, well made wines that sell for usually absurdly high prices, with only a very few providing actual excitement. It is interesting to contrast the very successful 2001 vintage of Cabs with the 2000 vintage in Bordeaux. In both cases, the top wines sell for obscenely high prices, but it is noteworthy that the 2000 Bordeaux vintage produced many excellent wines from the satellite appellations that sold in the US for $15-20 a bottle; surveying this current crop of CalCabs, only one of the rated wines sold for less than $20.

I contast this situation with what I remember from the late '70s, when wineries like Conn Creek, Robert Keenan, Caymus and Franciscan (to name a few) made exciting, idiosyncratic, hit-or-miss wines that sold for reasonable sums of money and would not infrequently hit home runs. I am sure that there remain wineries in CA that still do this, but I fear that the vast majority have swapped inconsistency for mediocrity while at the same time pricing their wines out of all proportion to what's reasonable.

Posted by Mark Lipton on Friday 26 August 2005 at 18:08
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News - Jimmy Watson Trophy 2005

The Geoff Merrill McLaren Vale Reserve Shiraz 2004 won Australia’s most prestigious wine prize, the Jimmy Watson Trophy, at the Royal Melbourne Wine Show Awards dinner last night.

Geoff Merrill’s current reserve shiraz - selling for $40 - is the 1999 vintage, so we are unlikely to see the 2004 bottling on the shelves until 2009/2010.

The Jimmy Watson Trophy is awarded to the best 2004 vintage red from show classes 19 to 23, that is, cabernet sauvignon, shiraz, pinot noir, merlot, and other blends.

Of the nearly 4,400 wines judged, a staggering 1020 wines were in the running for this one main prize, one wag at the awards dinner suggesting that the trophy is so important to winemakers and the prestige of the Royal Melbourne Wine Show that the event will eventually be renamed the Royal Jimmy Watson Wine Show.

Posted by Martin Field on Friday 12 August 2005 at 03:40
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Eating Booze

‘Dad, what happens if I get breathalysed by the police after eating Tira Misu?’ The question came from the daughter who has a provisional driving licence – a licence that requires the driver to have zero blood alcohol content whilst driving.

I thought about it for a while and said that depending on how much booze was in the dessert she ran a small but real risk of registering an alcohol blood content on a breathalyser and could therefore jeopardise her licence.

...continue reading "Eating Booze"

Posted by Martin Field on Tuesday 02 August 2005 at 01:19
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End of the dozen bottle case of wine?

In a story in the Melbourne Age today (20 July 2005) Coles demands half-measure from wineries Leon Gettler reports that a major Australian liquor retailer has required its wine suppliers to package wine in six-pack cartons rather than 12-pack cartons from October 2005.

The main reason for this change is based on occupational health and safety issues - in other words, the repeated lifting of heavy 12-bottle cartons is seen a risk to the staff health - and who could argue with that?

No doubt other retailers will follow this lead and I don't think it would be over the top to suggest that this will herald the end of the 12-bottle case of wine (and spirits for that matter) as we know it.

The obvious flow-on (no pun intended) will be the abolition of 12-bottle packs of 750ml beer bottles and even 24 and 30 pack slabs of 375ml beer cans and bottles. The costs to the beverage industry (not just small winemakers) to repackage will be massive - the profits to packaging companies sensational. Consumers, as usual, will bear the costs of this repackaging in the long run.

Posted by Martin Field on Wednesday 20 July 2005 at 02:01
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Les Wine Miserables

Nothing beats getting together with a bunch of wine lovers to taste a selection of superior reds and whites. Drinking good wine is, after all, about enjoyment, fine dining, friendship and sharing. Isn’t it? Then how do you account for what I call ‘wine misers’?

We’ve all met one or two. They’re usually blokes. They know a lot about wine and spend a fair bit of money on it. Typically, they will own an interior-designed, expensively constructed cellar, that is well-stocked with the best that money can buy: top-shelf, imported, indented, aged and selected wines.

With a proud gleam in their beady eyes they like to take you on a guided tour, to point out the rarity of certain bottles and to explain the shelving and cataloguing system and the intricacies of the air-conditioning and the constant humidification.

Trouble is, when they eventually offer their by now exhausted and thirsty guest/s a post-tour drink, they will inevitably open a cleanskin, boasting, ‘Only seven bucks the bottle! The guy who sold me this reckons it’s the equivalent of a thirty-five dollar Coonawarra cabernet!’ It is more likely to taste like it’s only a step away from vat dregs, Chateau Cardboard or the vinegar factory.