The Tale of Two (Red) Bigots

Ric’s Story

The Grandfather, or possibly the favourite uncle, of the modern Australian wine industry, Len Evans came up with a “Theory of Capacity” that rivals Einstein’s “Theory of Relativity” for sheer brilliance. In short, it states that each person can only consume a finite amount of wine in their lifetime.

At the time he came up with the Theory, he figured that he had about 20 years left to live and that if he consumed about a bottle a day, it meant that he would only be able to consume a miserable 7,300 more bottles of wine, so every one of them had better be a good’n. Smart man that Mr Evans because the theory is completely sound, life is certainly too short to drink bad wine, and let’s face it, we never know when the next bottle we open will be our last.

If you are a young person in perfect health and expect to live till you are 90, then this Theory may not seem as immediately important to you as it would to someone who is 60 and in poor health. Never-the-less, if you are a wine geek, sooner or later it will become an underpinning foundation to your wine consumption plans.

It is this theory that in many ways is the reason I have become a red bigot, but to understand the whole story, we need to start at the beginning.

I started drinking wine at home on Friday night family dinners and special occasions when I was just into my teens. By the time I was fifteen I actually enjoyed wine and looked forward to drinking a small glass occasionally. In those days, the family was just getting into wine and whilst I hate to admit it publicly, we drank Ben Ean Moselle and other such muck, today’s equivalent of Yellow Tail or Two Buck Chuck. Luckily, my oldest sister had an excellent palate and consuming interesting in wine and took charge of the wine buying decisions and things started to improve dramatically, and very quickly.

I finished school at 17 and went into the army. Being posted to Albury was handy, as I spent a few weekends in Rutherglen sampling free wine and starting to improve my wine knowledge. I also made a habit of visiting country pubs and buying old dust encrusted bottles of wines cheaply because they were happy to have people take them off their hands. The Leo Buring Bin Numbered wines were a favourite as were some of the old Orlando wines. At that’s stage, I was probably drinking two thirds white and one third red.

By the time I was 21 I was into my third career change and the sales manger that employed me was into wine in a big way and Leon convinced me that I should be buying wine by the case (more often) and cellaring a larger capacity. By the time I was twenty two my cellar was about two or three hundred bottles of red and by the time I was 25, it was at about 400 bottles. These cellared bottles would come out for special occasions and dinner parties.

In my early twenties I was still drinking about two thirds white and one third red. The c-throughs were rarely cellared, although some good bottles did find their way there. When I look back on that period, my choice of reds were quite reasonable but much of the white I drank was pretty ordinary stuff, in fact some of it I would be ashamed to admit to drinking now, but I did enjoy them. Up until I was twenty five, I didn’t drink wine every day, but probably drank it most days.

For everyday wine, I sometimes used to buy Leasingham 10 litre casks because the wine was not far behind the quality to the bottled wine; in relative terms, it would probably be equivalent to the Bastion range Vs the standard offering; but my affair with casks did not last long.

By the time I was twenty seven, I was certainly drinking wine everyday and the ratio was probably about fifty percent red and fifty percent white. The cellar capacity was still about four hundred bottles. Up until that time, my wine development had been slow and steady. Between thirty and forty, with no real conscious or intentional thought, my tastes changed and the consumption of red went up as the quantity of white dropped. It was not that I had anything against white; I just found that I was enjoying red more.

Also, at that time I did some experimenting and bought a bit of French, Italian and South African wine but the Australian wine was the staple in my cellar. In my late 30’s I was lucky enough to be transferred to London and shortly after I was sent there, the company I worked for was taken over and I took the golden parachute that was built into my contract. The payout was substantial so I decided to take time off and enjoy life. As a result, I took two years off and travelled extensively through Europe (as well as a few other places) and both tasted and drank a lot of foreign wine. In fact in that time, I drank almost no Australian wine. I found that I loved Barolo and fine quality Bordeaux; at the lower cost end of things, found that the everyday Italian wines were more to my preference than the everyday French wines.

When I returned to Australia, I pulled my five hundred bottle cellar out of storage, and got back into the local stuff. By that time, once again with no real thought or planning, I was drinking about 90 percent red. Over the next few years, the percentage of white went down until it basically became non existent and I had evolved into a red bigot.

So why and how did it happen? The answer is simple; I knew about the Len Evans Theory of Capacity and thought it valid. I knew I could only drink “x” number of bottles during the rest of my life and I wanted to enjoy each and every one of them.

By the time I was forty it was time to really start getting serious about wine and over the next few years my cellar went from five hundred bottles to five times that number.

One of the criticisms made by some people towards red bigots (who drink Australian wine) is they have a “mono” palate and never try anything new, so their taste is boring and unexciting.

A different way of looking at that position is to say that I have the confidence to know what I like and cut straight to it. Remember, I experimented with foreign wines years ago and spent almost two years touring round trying loads of foreign wine; from Georgia (in the USSR) to South Africa and everything in between; so its not like I have never experimented.

There are a number of reasons I concentrate on Australian wines. Firstly, they generally offer great value in comparison to imports. Secondly, there is a huge range available and finally, they are easy to taste prior to buying. It also helps that I actually like them!

As far as imports are concerned, I still love many French and Italian wines and enjoy drinking them when other people are kind enough to open them but I do not have the time or inclination to chase them anymore, especially when there is so much choice available in the Australian category.

The Australian segment is an exciting one and there is nothing boring about it. There is a huge diversity of styles from the peppery Shiraz grown in the cool climate areas of Victoria through to the blackberry and chocolate, warm climate wines of the Barossa; then there are the quality Cabernets from Coonawarra and Margaret River: and to add interest and zest, there are all the new European varieties that are starting to emerge, as well as the traditional blends. And if you are into Pinot Noir, there is the traditional minefield of those wines to work through as well.

In reality, I have become an Australian “specialist” drinker. In the years left to me, I know that you cannot beat the “Evan’s Theory of Capacity”; a person can only drink or even taste “x” many bottles of wines and I intend to enjoy each and every one of them, as much as humanly possible.

Here is Brian’s Story.

The dim dark ages…

I was born and raised in Hamilton (Western Vic), not too far from Coonawarra. We visited Mt Gambier occasionally, but I first visited Coonawarra many years after I left home. The first wine I tasted was communion wine (Seppelt Purple Para Port), about the only drink at home was an occasional sherry. I and my youthful partners in crime used to score the occasional bottle of Australian Whisky (sic) to spike the soft drinks.

The 60's

I escaped Hamilton and embarked on a Science degree at Melbourne University, paid for by the Victorian Education Department in return for a promise to teach for at least three years on successful completion of the course.

My first drinking experience at University was a disaster! Orientation week sherry-parties were the rage in 1964; in trying to get my money’s worth, I over-indulged and slept for quite a while in the middle of St Kilda Rd after being thrown off a tram. The worst part was that I had organised to meet a lovely girl I’d met a few days before, she never did forgive me. I still can’t cope with more than a sip or two of a good sherry.

From there it was beer, and at Balls, parties etc, beer and/or Leibfraumilch, sweet sparklings like Rinegolde and Pink Porphory Pearl; drinking what the girls liked: I (very) briefly dated a gorgeous Lithuanian blonde who could drink me under the table. I managed to concentrate long enough to get a B.Sc. (chemistry and maths) and a Dip Ed, and ended up teaching snotty-nosed kids in the Latrobe Valley (eastern Victoria) in 1969. I visited Rutherglen a few times, and as well as the fortifieds, I was just starting to get into red wine. I married in December 1969 (another teacher) and taught senior maths and chemistry at Moe High.

The 70's

I gave up teaching after only 2 years and moved to Melbourne. The Commonwealth Government offered me 12 months full-time training in the emerging computing technologies, at just a little less then I was getting as a senior teacher, with guaranteed promotion if I passed the course. Best move I ever made! I topped the course and thoroughly enjoyed the move into information technology. This was a period of Rough Rutherglen Reds, Tahbilk and Brown Brothers, flagons of Muscat and Tokay, home-bottling reds from SA. I also browsed the back rooms of newly sold/bought licensed grocers to dig out the mature reds; wines like Orlando Barossa Cabernet and Yalumba Signature Cab-Shiraz were snapped up at bargain basement prices, before the new owners woke up to what they had. Memorable times: wines like Bullers Calliope Shiraz 1962 set me on the path to red bigotry, as did the 44-gallon drums of Tollana Cabernet, possibly made by Wolf Blass in his early days.

With some friends, we went to a wine-appreciation course sponsored by the Australian Wine and Brandy Association; a course apparently designed by Len Evans. I still have the “waiter’s friend” corkscrew presented on completion of the course.

In late 1974 I moved to Canberra; my daughter was born in early 1975, and more home bottling of red wine took place when I joined the Australian Customs “Bottling Group”. I moved on from Customs to the Department of Health in 1975. I joined the “Health Monday” wine-tasting group in 1977 (it actually started a year or two earlier); it is still going and meets nearly every Monday, some Public Holidays excepted. This was the era of dinner and fondue parties, we still drank bit of white as it was the “accepted thing to do”.

We did a bit of winery tourism: SA - camping at Nuriootpa with 35C minimum overnight; Hunter Valley - overnight camping by the Wollombi with ten bottles lined up by the campfire in the morning for two couples. We were drinking mostly reds, with still the occasional Tahbilk Marsanne and a few Hunter Semillons. I finally made it to Coonawarra in the late 70’s, just before the lean, green reds were starting to be delivered.

The 80's

More SA and Vic Reds, dabbled a little more with the Hunter (Tyrrells and Rothbury Estate), and quickly stopped once I realised I didn’t like the style. I was separated and divorced in 81/82 and lost half of the cellar of about 50 dozen (most of the small proportion of whites went, thankfully). With a great stroke of good luck I somehow convinced Andrea to join up with me (amongst other things she’s an RB too). We took a 3-month trip around the world in 1985, amongst other places we visited and tasted were Napa, Champagne, Loire, Chablis, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Rhone, Languedoc, Bordeaux, Provence, the Northern half of Italy and lots in between. We found and enjoyed an amazing variety of wines and wine styles.

After another couple of inter-departmental moves, in 1985 I left the public service to become an independent IT contractor/consultant. (I was still doing it and generally loving it until I “retired” in April 2005.)

The 90's

The new career paid well enough to support fairly rapid Cellar building, I got a real air-conditioned cellar at last in 1994, filled it with lots of good 90, 91, 96, 98 reds and a few in between, from all over Oz. I decided to stick mainly to Australian reds as I couldn’t afford to buy (even if I could get them) the French/Italian wines I liked and still drink wine with the frequency I desired. Part of my long-term retirement planning was to have about 10 years supply of good reds in my cellar when I retired.

I thought I was a wine geek until I discovered the Auswine forum and the denizens that frequent same. My predilection for reds was so entrenched by then that expressing my preferences quickly had me being labelled a “red bigot” (thanks Martin E) and I instantly adopted that as my “tag”, with Ric being relegated to “The Other Red Bigot” some nanoseconds later.

I can’t quite remember when I adapted the famous Len Evans line “Life’s too short to drink bad wine” to my own version “Life’s too short to drink white wine”. In truth, there are some white wines that are interesting enough to tempt me to forgo a red, but in almost all cases they cost more than I want to pay. I thoroughly support the Len Evans “Theory of Capacity” described by Ric above, a few (untainted) wines go down the sink because they just aren’t interesting enough to qualify for one of the ever-diminishing number of good wines I will be able to drink.

My regular tasting schedule was now (and still is) the regular Monday weekly group, a Thursday-fortnightly group, a Wednesday monthly tasting, plus dinners and commercial tastings. Interestingly, the Monday group tastes whites about twice a year; seldom does Pinots, and has all-red dinners. The Thursday-fortnightly group tastes whites about four times a year and some members still drink whites at wine-group dinners. The Monthly tasting group typically has a bracket of four whites followed by two flights of four reds. There is general cheering when the first bracket is sparkling red or Pinot.

I developed my first cellaring database using Visual Basic 3 sometime in the early 90’s and converted it to MS Access when the first decent version (2.0) arrived in about 1994. After I met up with Ric, he collaborated with me on a new version of the program using Access 97 and I decided to make it available for free, as I was too lazy to expend the extra effort to refine it and package it as shareware. There have been numerous enhancements since that time and it’s still free (but you need MS Access from 2000 or later); there are now about 370 users world-wide.

The Naughties

Mission accomplished, the cellar is full (actually over-full) of good cellaring reds, mainly Australian, retirement was possible and taken as soon as the numbers came together.

Following on from my personal buying research (to get case discounts, I buy wine for others as well as myself,) I decided to publish the good deals on quality red wines that I found. I had already set up my personal web site as to allow requests for the RB Cellar Master Program, and the Buyers Guide was added as an extension. The RBG page formally started in January 2004 and will continue as long as I’m buying wine and people let me know they find it useful.

The plan is to “Drink (a little) less, drink better”, stabilise the cellar contents and stay fit enough to travel and drink regularly to ensure a slow decline in the currently excessive number of bottles, enjoy retirement (and try not to break a leg again).

Andrea has a few more years to retirement, then we will decide whether to stay in Canberra or move to the “red wine centre of the Universe/Australia” ie Adelaide. We had better be fairly successful in reducing the cellar contents by then or the move will be prima facie impractical!