Oh, how fickle wine can be and on occasions, it's enough to drive one to drink. Regular readers will know that a couple of weeks ago I tried a bottle of wine which was initially beautiful, but after about twelve hours showed unmistakable signs of Brett and decidedly undrinkable. However, things are not always what they seem and sometimes wine can do again good job in deceiving us. Here is the tasting note from the first bottle.

 

Burge Family 2003 Draycott Feb 05

 

Although it is not necessary to disclose less than 15% variation on the label, according to the back of the bottle, this “Shiraz” contains 10% Grenache and 4% Mourvedre. After three hours in the glass, the nose is still tight and unyielding but the bouquet is clean, inviting and you know this is going to be a quality drop. Cherry, milk chocolate, blackberry and aniseed are the first impressions from a wine that is still tight as a drum. It refuses to lift its skirt higher than ankle height until time in the air seduced it and convinced it to reveal its charms. Ample in weight, the wine is impeccably balanced with powdery, slightly sappy tannins, fresh but well judged acid and deeply seated fruit. Length is very good but this is an absolute baby that will need time to show its best. After having been opened the best part of the day, the true character of the wine finally emerged and the longer it was opened the better it became. At this stage, blackberry and chocolate dominated the flavour profile and the wine seemed to have taken a little weight finishing with long drying tannins. Rated as Highly Recommended with *** for value, I'm sure that in about three a four years, the rating will increase as the wine reaches its peak; a fine result for a very poor vintage.

 

However, as I was sipping the wine with dinner something strange occurred. A fairly noticeable level of what I am reasonably confident was Brett started to appear. The nose started smelling of Band-Aids with a little bit of horse character and the palate developed a metallic edge.

 

I had decanted off half a bottle when I first opened the wine and had a look at that half bottle the next night. Basically the Brett had taken over in the wine was undrinkable. (Readers should also note that this wine was sent to me in a styrofoam pack which took about four days to reach me and was travelling when the temperature was about 40°. So the chances are there was some possible heat impact during transport.)

 

The findings were reported to the winery, the suspect's second-half of the bottle was returned for testing and another bottle of wine was sent to me to assess.

 

The complete tasting procedure was repeated with the new bottle. After three hours, the second bottle was much the same as the first. After six hours, it was drinking beautifully. On the second night, the other half bottle was uncorked and guess what, it reeked of a Band-Aid like character and showed what seemed to be a distinct metallic edge as well. Not a good look. The wine was left in the glass for a further couple of hours and I came back to it fully expecting it to the completely and drinkable. Now this is where it gets really interesting. The Band-Aid or Brett character had met metamorphosed into an earthy mushroom character on both the bouquet and the palate and the unpleasant metallic finish had transformed into refreshing acidity. Bloody amazing, the wine was not only drinkable, it was damn enjoyable. As for the very unpleasant character; in fact it was probably not Brett, it was a stage the wine was going through. Well I'll be -- and I was!  

 

If you ever wondered why, when you have a read a tasting note, it had differed so much from what you fond in the glass, you should now have appreciation of how a bottle of wine can and does change in a relatively short space of time.

 

Readers Feedback on “How Would You Rate It and Call It?”

Feedback and opinions from readers on this one would be appreciated. Recently I was sent a premium bottle of wine to review.

 

Initially, when the wine was poured it was locked up tighter than Fort Knox but as I have experienced recently released wines from this producer before, I am aware they need a few hours in the glass before they show anything. After three hours, the nose was still tight and unyielding but the bouquet was clean, inviting and you just knew this is going to be a quality drop. Cherry, milk chocolate, blackberry and aniseed were the first impressions from a wine that is still tight as a drum. Ample in weight, the wine was impeccably balanced with powdery, slightly sappy tannins, fresh but well judged acid and deeply seated fruit. After having been opened for about eight hours, the true character of the wine emerged and it was terrific. At this stage, blackberry and chocolate dominated the flavour profile and the wine seemed to have taken on weight, finishing with long drying tannins. At that stage, it would have been rated as Highly Recommended with room for improvement as the wine matured.

 

However, as I was sipping the wine with dinner something strange occurred. A fairly noticeable level of what I am reasonably confident was Brett started to appear. The nose started smelling of Band-Aids with a little bit of horse character and the palate developed a metallic edge.

 

I had decanted off half a bottle when I first opened the wine and had a look at that half bottle the next night. Basically the Brett had taken over in the wine was undrinkable. Readers should also note that this wine was sent to me in a styrofoam pack which took about four days to reach me and was travelling when the temperature was about 40°. So the chances are there was some possible heat impact during transport.

 

Here is the dilemma, in most normal situations when you are reviewing wines, you certainly don't have the opportunity to review them over a 36 hour period. If I had walked into the winery, the chances are the bottle would have been freshly opened for me or possibly been open for a few hours. There is also the added impact of possible heat damage.

 

So how would you rate this wine? What would you say about it? Would you rated it as Highly Recommended all would you point out that the wine could be undrinkable after it had been cellared for a few years? I'm still scratching my head trying to work it out. Please e-mail me at Torbwine@bigpond.com with your opinions. Depending on the responses, I may post them next week.

With the potential takeover of Southcorp by Foster's, the press has gone into an absolute feeding frenzy with an incredible array of speculation. The permutations that have been investigated seem more convoluted than the ins and outs of the ducks arse but I love this one best where they went into speculation as to why Pernod Ricard may be interested in buying it to merge in with Orlando Wyndham. The reasons stated was "(PR)could be interested in Southcorp because it would strengthen its position for Jacob's Creek in the US, UK and Australian markets.”

 

Yes that makes a lot of sense, after all Jacob's Creek is only the world's largest single selling brand! Where do these “brain surgeons” come up with these ideas? However, I will confine my comments as to what is likely to happen if a full merger goes ahead.

 

Let me preface the comments by posing the question. Assume that you have two train wrecks, one is size “x” and the other size is “y”. Now what happens, if instead of having two train wrecks, if you have one giant train smash instead? It's not simply a case of “x” plus “y”, it could well be a case of “x” multiplied by “y”.

 

Since the reverse takeover of Rosemount by Southcorp, the board and management have been cleaning up what amounts to a train wreck. When the two companies were smashed together, it has taken years for the company to return to profitability and even then, they still have a long way to go to get the profitability back to an acceptable level.

 

In the case of Fosters, when the Beringer and Blass operations were combined, profitability dropped to about the level of a snake’s belly.

 

In theory, merging two large wine operations should have a virtual immediate positive impact on the bottom line. Duplicate positions can be eliminated and economies of scale can be utilised but there is one more big reason why profit should have been increased in both these two situations. In the case of Southcorp and Rosemount, Southcorp had a very successful UK operation and Rosemount had a very successful US distribution. In the case of the Beringer and Blass, Blass would be able to use Beringer's US position and distribution to increase its exports.

 

Whilst it's all very well and good in theory, what happened in practice was something completely different. Both situations turned out to be train wrecks. So now we have a situation where the company doing the takeover has a wine division that is financially up the creek (with a very large paddle called Foster's) and the company being taken over is in the same financial profit creek and paddling like hell (with a very small paddle) to get out of the creek and into the river.

 

This is d'eja' vu  all over again. Two large wine organisations, both of which you're having trouble making adequate profit returns, both of which in theory can assist the other with distribution and a situation where further economies of scale savings can be made. In the short term, the merger created a train wreck at Southcorp and exactly the same thing happened, to a lesser extent with Beringer and Blass.

 

If this takeover goes ahead, now we can look forward to a really huge train wreck.

More Olde Worlde Condescending Wine Wanking of the Professorial First Order

FRS - or Sparkling Shiraz

The learned Prof Brian of Majella fame coined the term FRS or Fizzy Red $h*t when referring to Sparkling Shiraz. At this time of the year, there is undoubtedly more of it consumed then the other eleven months combined. Both the hot weather and a Christmas Turkey lend themselves extremely well to this gorgeous drink. However, and its unfortunate, many people are missing out on some of the best (and worst) attributes of this wine style by serving it far to cold. Most fridges keep liquid at about 4 degrees and many experienced wine drinkers will know this is far to cold for normal whites. Its even worse for FRS.

 

The perfect drinking temperature is about 10-12 degrees. The best way to achieve that is to pull the bottle out of the fridge about an hour before you want to start drinking it. Keeping the bottle at about a 45 degree angle, extract the cork; then leave it on the counter to warm up. The reason you extract the cork in the manner suggested it that if you try extracting it when the wine is warmer, you are more likely to have an explosion of froth and bubbles.

 

At this temperature, you will get much more of the subtle nuances and flavors from the wine. Try it - you won't be disappointed. If the wine starts getting to warm, a freezer sleeve or a quick stay back in the fridge will fix the problem. Happy Christmas FRS drinking!  

There may be one born every minute

.... but Barossa Valley Estate is looking for 52 of them. I had to laugh when I received the BVE newsletter yesterday. In it, on page three there was a "True Collectors Item" for sale described as a three pack of 99, 00 and 01 E&E Shiraz "in a beautifully presented recycled Jarrah Box along with a Certificate of Authenticity." Oh, and the cost was "a special price of $345." "A special price" indeed because in the same edition, the same wines are available for sale individually, the 99 is $71, the 00 is $77 and the 01 is also $77. If the buy the vintages individually, the price is $225. So, a recycled box and "Certificate of Authenticity" will cost you $120. But why do you need a Certificate of Authenticity in the first place? Isn't the label on the bottle good enough. But you had better be quick, there are only 52 packs! Its either 'unbelievable marketing' (read that any way you desire) or P.T. Barnum was right!!

Southcorp's Bean Counters are at it again

In an article in todays paper, it was announced by SC that vineyards would now be classified as profit centres instead of cost centres and if they were not profitable, they would be given the chop. Whilst this sounds like a rational plan there are other factors to consider.

 

The rational used to decide if a vineyard is profitable will be interesting. Wineries like Torbreck will pay huge amounts per ton to get top quality, low yielding fruit and get a commensurate return when they sell the wine. SC is unlikely to pay that amount for grapes, so if they had vineyards that produced grapes that Torbreck would be happy to buy, the vineyard could wind up being sold off because it's internal measurement would show the vineyard was not profitable enough.

 

If you think its a far fetched example, it's not. This exercise is all about making the balance sheet look good, not about making the wine look good. And that is the bottom line, bad pun intended.

Henschke Answers ......

Reporting the News or Creating it?

In one news report this morning, there was an article titled Giants eye good cheap wine which which details speculation that predicts that Coles/Meyer and Woolworths will expand their home branded operations. Apparently, in the UK, supermarket own brand wines represent up to 70% of wine moved through some store. According to the article, the speculation is that the big two could be aiming for up to 30%. This will be give a big boost as the supermarkets start to sell wine in the grocery section in Victoria soon.

 

In a second article, Your wine isn't value for money, the boss cocky of Dan Murphy criticised the value of some wine from the premium growing districts of SA and said that consumers were after better value wine from the Riverland.

 

Being a cynical bastard, I can only wonder if the big two are not pushing their own agenda here.  

More on Hill of Grace

The plot thickens. After my last article Henschke 1998 Hill Of Grace or ..... I received information from a very credible source (that wished to remain confidential - "deep throat stuff") advising me they had a documented, independent laboratory report that showed a bottle of 1996 HoG was found to have about four times what would be regarded by many professionals as an acceptable of Brett.

 

This really perked my interest as I had not heard and rumblings about the 1996 HoG. On the same day, I read Halliday's annual Top One Hundred which had just been published in the Weekend Australian Newspaper; in relation to the 1999 HoG it said, "There has been a degree of controversy about some recent prior vintages of Hill of Grace .... ."  Notice Halliday says "vintages" (plural)  so I decided to do more digging.

 

Specifically I went looking for tasting notes and articles on the 96 HoG. After looking at hundreds of search results, just about all I came across was about a dozen tasting notes, the majority, on two US wine forums. Considering production, according to one major US publication, is listed at around a bit less than 9,000 bottles and Henschke's own web site recommends the peak drinking year as 2011, the lack of tasting notes is not surprising as the vast majority is probably still in cellars.

 

Most, but not all the reviews expressed very positive comments but a number of the people admitted it was their first HoG. Thinking wine lovers know the impact of the label on perceptions, so I went looking for blind tastings for truly independent conclusions. I found exactly one Spotlight on Syrah/Shiraz where 25 of the world top wines had been tasted blind by wine professionals. The 96 HoG came 19th with a score of 85. It is worth reading the article and it states, "The selection was put together for a purpose: this was a tasting organized by Sam Harrop (a winemaker working with UK retailer Marks & Spencer) designed to explore the relationship between Syrah and Brettanomyces (a spoilage yeast which has the potential to add complexity at very low levels). Harrop’s MW dissertation is on this subject, and he asked us to try to identify which of the wines had brett character, and to what degree."

 

Readers can make up their own minds.

Wine and Petrol

In a recent press article, Liquorland launched a pre-Christmas offer of 12 cents a litre off the price of petrol to customers who buy a dozen bottles of wine. The National Association of Retail Grocers of Australia, said the move sent the wrong message to consumers but the issue goes a lot deeper. In a recent article on Torbwine, called The Big Squeeze the implications of the big two retailers gaining a strangle hold were explored. This is just one more of the typical moves consumers can come to expect from the big two and they try to gain a stranglehold on the retail liquor market.

 

As a nation, we have an irrational obsession with fuel prices and saving a few dollars. Firstly, lets look at how much we save when we get a 4 cent a litre discount using shopper dockets. Assuming use is an average 50 liters a week, the motorist will save $104 a year when their total fuel bill is over $2,600. However, if we look at the big picture, according a recent NRMA report, fuel is not the biggest vehicular expense for the average car, deprecation is a bigger cost and fuel represents only a small part of the cost of running a car. So the fuel savings gained as a percentage of total vehicular costs is miniscule.

 

Now lets examine the 12 cent a litre Liquorland deal. If you take a low cost dozen bottles of wine, say $10 a bottle the dozen cost for the wine is $120. Assuming a 50 lire fill up, at 12 cents discount the motorist/wine buyer will save $6.00. Sounds like a good deal, its 5% off but 5% off what? Well, that depends on what that same wine would cost you from an independent wine retailer. If we look at a dozen bottles that cost $20 a bottle then the saving on $240 worth of wine on the petrol is still $6 so its not looking as good. In reality, in most cases its not a good deal. The reason is, frequently the local independent wine retailer is substantially less expensive then the chains. My local is normally still less expensive then Woolworths when they are having a 20% off sale. So the smart buyers who want to save a $ or $$$ will continue to shop at their local independent wine retailer and avoid the sharp marketing practices of the big chains.

2004 National Wine Show

Results of the 2004 National Wine Show have just been announced and can be found here. The Canberra show is the most credible in the country and to enter, a wine must have won a gold in another show. This is one show where they are very tough on entrants and not every child wins a prize, in some classes very few gold medals are awarded. For example, in Class 50 (2003 commercial dry reds) out of 46 entrants, there was one gold and three silvers awarded. However in some of the stronger classes there are many high scoring wines, but that is to be expected as these are the best of best.

 

The 2002 St Peters Shiraz did well scoring a couple of gold gongs and that is no surprise as I thought it was fantastic when I tried it last February. Southcorp will also be happy that their Penfold 2002 Bin 389 and Rosemount 2001 Balmoral both received gold medals. Jamieson Run did very well with their up market reds.

 

Results of the Shiraz and Cabernet Classes have been presorted by results and can be found here. 

Class 29 2001 Older Shiraz   Class 28 2002 Shiraz   Class 13 2003 Shiraz

Class 27 2001 Older Cabs    Class 26 2002 Cabs    Class 12 2003 Cabs

Class31 2002 Older Blends    2004 Shiraz and Cab 2002 and Older Trophy