Plastic Manufactured and Manipulated Wine

We all know that well over 90% of all wine sold is drunk within four hours of purchase. The wine industry has a huge incentive to try and get their product to be smooth and soft when the wine is young. The more drinkable it is at an early age, the more the wine companies will sell.

This has lead to the manipulation or the manufacturing of many wines. Processes like micro origination and addition of powdered tannins to red wine are just two that comes to mind. There is nothing wrong with making young wine drinkable early in its life if that’s what the majority of the market requires, but it does have some very serious implications for those that wish to cellar wine.

When you buy a wine to cellar, how do you know if the wine you are buying has been made in the traditional method or is highly manufactured and is it important? It sure is important as the more the wine is “manufactured and manipulated” the more likely it is to fall apart and not develop, as you would expect.

Not to many years ago it was possible to buy many low cost mass produced commercial wines and cellar them with confidence for 5 years plus. I fear this may no longer be the case. Recently I have experienced a disproportionate numbers of wines that that have simply not developed as well as expected.

(As an aside to the main point of this article, wines that don’t develop as well as expected are not restricted to low cost wines. The 93 and 94 Eileen Hardy are two that come to mind and what’s even more galling is Hardys now expect us to pay $90 a bottle for the 98 vintage, for a wine with this sort of track record. The 95 Rosemount Mountain Blue looks like another one that’s not doing as well as the pundits predicted and my remaining stock of these is going off to auction too.)

Back to the central theme - the 96 Rosemount Diamond Label Shiraz was a cracker and could be confidently cellared for 5 years. The wine improved during that time and is drinking perfectly today. The same cant be said for the sequent releases of the Diamond Label. They are drink now wines of a lesser quality. However the Rosemount Show Reserve Range has a RRP of about $28 and most wine lovers would think these wines could be cellared in the short to medium term with confidence. I am not one of them and based on my experience with this label over the past few years would not risk cellaring these wines.

We now have a situation where even some of the mid range wines that most people would automatically assume could be cellared with confidence are starting to have questionable cellaring potential. I suspect the reason is the amount of manipulation involved in the making of the wine is the cause/answer. I am going to stick my neck out on the chopping block and say I have a gut feel “the greater the manipulation to make the wine attractive for drinking early, the greater the chance the wine will not cellar brilliantly.”

From my experience, it seems like some of the largest companies in the Australian wine business are the greatest proponents of the use of manipulation when making wine. It’s obviously takes more manipulation to make 750,000 bottles taste the same (and similar to the previous vintage) that is ready to drink now than it does to make a 12,000 bottle unique offering. The smaller wineries and boutique wine makers may be a better alternative for the serious wine lover who wishes to cellar lower cost wines with confidence.

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