One of the perennial criticisms you hear from many experienced American wine drinkers, is that all Australian wines taste the same; and that is especially so when it comes to South Australian Shiraz.

Whenever I have seen those comments in the past, I have always poo-pooed them and come back with a retort, which goes through the huge diversity of varieties available in Australia, as well as the different characters seen in Shiraz from our disparate wine regions.

Last November I was lucky enough to taste my way through fifty masked bottles of 2002 Shiraz. In all honesty, it was hard work, but then you would not expect anything else when making tasting notes on fifty wines in less than a day. What was not expected was the similarity in many of the wines.

Of the fifty wines, thirteen of them were from Victoria (only one of which could be regarded as seriously cool climate,) two were from Western Australia and of the remaining wines from South Australia, only one could be regarded as cool climate. However a number of these wines are certainly regarded as more elegant than the stereotypical blockbuster Barossa Shiraz, so there should have been a fair diversity of styles and flavours.

Unfortunately this was not the case. Whilst there were obviously marked differences in many of the wines, far too many of them seemed similar and that similarity revolved around two very noticeable aspects.

In the past, Australian wineries had been criticised for using too much new American oak which imparted way too much overt vanillin and/or dill characteristics. This criticism was 100% justified and winemakers being fairly smart cookies, moved away from that style of wine. The bottom line with this problem was oak usage. Whilst many wineries have fixed this problem, they have not fixed the problem completely. In fact it's far from being fixed. Far too many of the wines tasted reeked of coffee or coffee essence and in many cases, this characteristic in the wine can be directly attributed to the oak being used and specifically, the toast level.

Whilst oak characteristics in a wine can be very attractive, in well made wine, the oak should support the wine; it should not dominate it. In this line up, and bear in mind we are talking about some of the best wines from the 2002 vintage, the tasting notes of approximately one third of the wines indicate significant amounts of coffee oak character showing. In some wines it can be attractive but oak flavours should be used as a sympathetic aid to winemaking, it should not become either a crutch for lazy winemakers to lean on, or part of an automatic formula when calculating how to make the wine. The smart winemakers will match their oak, and that includes grain, age, toast level and a whole lot of other factors to the wine. Unfortunately far too many winemakers and now deciding on the oak regime without giving sufficient thought to the characteristics of the grapes available or the impact the oak will have on the finished wine. The end result of this process is the boring sameness of the coffee oak characteristics found in so many of the wines during this tasting.

The second very noticeable aspect in this line-up was a number of wines that were dominated by overt blackberry flavours. There were even more blackberry wines than there were coffee wines, but to some extent that is to be expected, although it is not necessarily a good thing. At least the blackberry flavour comes from the grape and has not been created by a winemaking addition.

The reality is this trend towards blackberry flavours can and should be reduced. Sure, some wines will always have blackberry flavours in them and that is to be expected; what is of concern is the increasing frequency to which blackberry flavours are being found. This increasing level of blackberry juice is directly related to viticulture and in many cases, by utilising better viticulture, this increasing shift towards over-ripe, dead fruit characters, and very ripe blackberry, can be lessened.

Far too many wineries are still “pushing the ripeness envelope” which is leading to these characteristics. It has often been said “great wine is made in the vineyard” and to have great wine, you have to have great viticulture. Whilst viticulture has improved the yield per acre over the past few decades, there is still a long way to go before many of the growers get their viticulture right, and can pick their grapes with full physiological ripeness, at reasonable alcohol levels without having overt and dominant blackberry characters when they don’t necessarily have to be there.

Once the industry backs of the overuse of coffee-laden oak, and improves their viticultural practises, our wines will show more of their own native character, have better complexity; and most importantly, diversity of flavour will improve.

Why haven’t the wine press been all over this one? I don’t know! Many of the wine press are show judges, and surely they should be noticing the problem when they are judging wines at the shows.