The Big Picture

After having just returned from nine days tasting wine in South Australia its worth taking time out and spending a few moments taking a macro view of the vintage conditions over the last few years as it provides an interesting ‘big picture’ perspective that should be kept in the back of your mind when making purchasing decisions.

Everyone knows that 1998 was regarded as a ripper of a vintage but there seems to be bit of concern that some of the big blockbuster fruit forward wines may not last as long as predicted, so if you have any of these in your cellar a bit of caution may be warranted and some selective sampling may be a good idea.

Although not regarded very highly at the time, a number of wineries have looked back at the development of their 1999 wines are very happy with the way they are going, so this vintage may be a bit of a sleeper and has suffered in the shadows of 1998, much like the 1991 vintage which was overshadowed by 1990 but which turned out to be a great vintage in its own right. I am not saying it’s a great vintage, but there will be some great wine produced.

Everyone agrees that 2000 was a dog of a vintage in South Australia but Coonawarra had a reasonable vintage and there are a few gems to be found from the other areas too so don’t completely dismiss it.

After the bad 2000 vintage, there has been a lot of hype building over the 2001 vintage because the wine business needed a boost. My advice is to be very cautious about 2001 wines from Barossa and McLaren Vale. The year was very hot and harvests were the earliest on record in many vineyards. More than just a few of the wines I tried from this vintage have been in the ultra ripe prune, blackberry spectrum and either have dead fruit characteristics or are approaching that character. Many of these wines will not cellar for long periods and will best been consumed within a few years of release. In my opinion, this vintage is one where picking drinking windows is critical or you will have a cellar with a lot of disappointments. Don’t get me wrong, there are some very enjoyable wines coming up, you just need to be careful about drinking dates. Coonawarra is looking good but once again, we are dealing with very ripe fruit, just not as ripe as some other areas.

After my last trip to South Australia last year I made a very big early call and said that 2002 will produce some of the best wines from McLaren Vale this country has seen. Based on reports from the vineyards visited this year, it looks like that prediction is on track and the wines from the Barossa for that year are also shaping up very well too and should not be far behind. Coonawarra in 2002 may be a very different story.

The weather played havoc with 2003 so as you would expect, it was a very difficult vintage. Yields were way down in many areas, but almost without exception ever producer I spoke to said what was picked “they are happy with in terms of quality.” Doug Balnaves in Coonawarra told a great yarn. A new bank manager rang him up and asked him “how was the vintage?” Doug replied, well the good news is yields were up 30% on last year, the bad news is that we were still 50% short of expectations.

From your perspective the good news is that no matter which way you look at it, there is a lot of good wine coming down the pipeline from South Australia and because of the economic conditions combining with the rise of the Australian Peso there should be some great buys around.

Copyright © Ric Einstein 2003