In The Picture

Great new shots with Canon SX220

It goes everywhere in my pocket so I miss very little. Weddings at Christmas time, for example

http://briard.typepad.com/get_the_picture/powershot-sx230-hs-gallery.html

Kim

Christmas time, time to share good wine around

Bargain wines of 2011

We’re all looking for the bargains, and there are plenty about – on paper at least. Or online, at Kemenys and Dan Murphys and Winestar. The problem is that you need help to find the real gems, and that’s a problem unless you have a wine merchant you can trust and who really knows your taste. Not many of those left, so we’re left with wine judges and wine writers.

I’ve long struggled to understand some of the gongs and ratings our experts bestow on wines. James Halliday seems to have decided that just about all Aussie wine is worth 90 points or better (a silver medal by the old 18/20 scoring system), and throws 90+ point ratings around like confetti. Others like Tyson Telzer and Huon Hooke are more restrained. There’s talk about ‘points-creep’ in wine circles, guys trying to outdo each other with bigger scores? Doesn’t help, does it?

James Halliday put out his annual top 100 in the Australian a few weeks ago http://www.winecompanion.com.au/wines/james-hallidays-top-100-wines-of-2011

The first problem with this list is that you simply won’t find over half of these wines, not even at Dan Murphy’s. I had more luck with the reds under $20 than the whites, and a few made it on my list of top wines for 2011.

Best reds under $20

St Hallets Gamekeepers Shiraz Cabernet                              $11      Vintage Cellars

Smooth as silk drink now red. Good as it gets for the money. Same for Shiraz Grenache

Amberley Secret Lane Cabernet Merlot 2010                        $14      Kemenys

Voluptuous fruit, silky smooth. They’ve found Wolf Blass’s Jimmy Watson winning recipe

AnaHera East Vineyard Pinot Noir 2007                                       $17      Dan Murphys

Interesting Pinot from Central Ottago with body, depth and complexity.             

Mount Langi Ghiran Vineyards Billi Billi Shiraz 2008               $15      Winestar

Low yield year, rich fruit and good depth of flavour. Great drinking at a great price

Teusner The Riebke Northern Barossa Shiraz 2010              $18      Winestar

This is old vine Shiraz from a great year. Concentrated, needs a few years to open up

Thorn-Clarke Shotfire Quartage 2009                                 $18      Winestar

Bordeaux blend. Tightly packed layers of fruit on a fine tannin/acid backbone. 10 years +

They’re all bargains. The Amberley is my pick for drinking now, the Quartage my pick to put away. An object lesson in restraint and perfect structure.

Best whites under $20

Jim Barry Watervale Riesling 2011                                      $14            Winestar

Full of vigour and life, a mouthful of summer

Pewsey Vale Riesling 2006                                                 $19.95        Dan Murphys

Super value for $5 more than the 2011. Still has years in front of it

Montes Chardonnay 2010                                                     $9              Dan Murphys

Super value from Chile. Big, round, full-flavoured, easy on the gums

Whither Hills Sauvigon Blanc 2011                                     $14             Dan Murphys

Great value, classic NZ SB, the best under $15 by far          

Robinson Pinot Gris 2010                                                  $12            Vintage Cellars

At the ripe peach end of the spectrum, not the most elegant PG but great value

Lawson's Dry Hills Gewuerztraminer 2009                          $19              Winestar

Gewuerz from NZ to rival Alsace at its best

If there are more Kiwi wines in the white selection, it’s because they’re working harder to give us value for money. It’s very hard to find decent chardonnay, pinot gris or sauvignon blanc under $15, and not easy under $20.

The stand-out bargains are the Montes Chardonnay and the Amberley Secret Lane Cab Merlot 2010. Serve the red blind to your friends and they’ll shake their heads in disbelief when you tell’em the price.

The Montes Chardonnay qualifies as the under $10 bargain white of the year. The red under $10 find of the year is the Leasingham Riders Row Clare Valley Shiraz 2008 at $8, including delivery from Grays Online. No, it's not Grange, but it's a smooth, easy drinking red with real flavour and no faults http://www.graysonline.com/retail/01625-08/wine/leasingham-shiraz-syrah-2008?spr=true

 

I ‘m not talking about bubblies and fortified wines in this post, as I don’t drink enough of them to have anything sensible to say.

The biggest disappointments of the year

Cape Mentelle Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2011

Restrained nose, some promise on the front palate but no depth or length. Hollow. Gets 95 points from Halliday??!

Cape Mentelle Trinders Cabernet Merlot 2009

Big, lush nose raises expectations the wine fails to deliver. No depth, and does a vanishing act. An imposter like its white sibling. Great reviews.

Mike Press Adelaide Hills Shiraz 2010

This red is easy on the gums but I can’t for the life of me see why it got rave reviews

Palliser Estate Pencarrow Pinot Noir 2010                                

Billed as THE bargain Pinot from Martinborough ($18). Trophy and Gold medal winner. Pinot nose, indistinct palate, ordinary finish

Les Courtilles Cotes Du Rhone 2009

A big alcoholic, pedestrian red which you’d never pick as a Cote du Rhone.

Here are some pleasant surprises

Richmond Grove Watervale Riesling 2004

A Dan Murphy Cellar release, and a steal at $16 in a six-pack. Classic Clare Riesling.

Seppelts Chalambar Shiraz (Grampians. Bendigo) 2004       $19           Dan Murphys

This is another DM Cellar Release, and an absolutely bargain. Elegant, cool climate Shiraz close to maturity.

Teusner the Avatar 2008                                                      $25          Winestar

Steak & eggs and a good cigar in a bottle. Let it breathe, and it will blow you away. The 2009 is just as good, but dearer at Dan Murphy’s.

Have a peaceful Christmas, and a healthy New Year

Kim

More Resources:

Halliday’s tasting notes for close misses - reds

http://www.winecompanion.com.au/wines/~/link.aspx?_id=A6191CBE5D3246BD9DD7AC61A563DD64&_z=z

Halliday’s tasting notes for close misses - white

http://www.winecompanion.com.au/wines/~/link.aspx?_id=B1E18B4F35F24F24BE06E5693FA33A43&_z=z

 

 

 

 

GRAND OLD WINES - SAFE FROM RAVAGES OF THE GFC

Peter Bourne's Front Bench - an institution

Most of us have been around Peter Bourne the wineman one way or another for many years. Over 30, in my case, when Peter ran bottle shop in Cleveland Street Redfern and ran tastings in a lovely big room upstairs. We all sat around a huge table made of laminated sections propped up on wine boxes.

After Peter sold the bottle shop and became a wine consultant and educator, we were lost in a wilderness of sorts until one of us had the bright idea to get us all back together 2 or 3 times a year for a dinner. It had to be a restaurant that let us bring our old wines along, the ones that are so precious you only want to share them people who know what they're drinking.

These days, Peter's shopfront is in Piermont and again there's a big tasting room upstairs, so he suggested we use it for our dinners and get a catarer to provide the meals. Works like a treat. The only problem now is that the guys bring too much wine, always. With very old wines, there tend to be some bad bottles, but last Monday there were almost none.

Here are the first two brackets, with Ray, Alan, Doug and Peter in the background. The Champagne bracket included an impressive Gosset and a 1975 Dom Perignon which had seen better days but was still a big mouthful. The Pewsey Vale Riesling was the Contours model 2002 and the Steingarten was the same age. Stunning wines with years to go.

Here are some of the reds - just click on any image to see a bigger file. John brought along a whole bracket, all 20 years old Shiraz, so we could compare them. Which we did happily. My favourite was the St Henri by a small margin but they were all lovely wines and somewhere near their peak.

Another bracket included a 1967 Seppelt Shiraz Cabernet (Hermitage-Cabernet in those days, when nobody would buy Shiraz), and a 1964 Hardy's 'Claret'. Both were blends of grapes from different areas as was the custom of the big makers in those days, and both were still good - magnificent in the case of the Seppelts. Complexity and wonderful integration of aged characteristics.

Brett quietly clearing away the remains of his main course while Peter and Chris discuss an important point.

Some of the dessert wines. The Taylors Vintage Port was phenomenal.

Here's the full list of the wines we enjoyed - don't know how we got through them.

And here's the other Peter, our master decanter, talking to Chris (a man of immense resources when it comes to the boudoir of the grape).

We are a lucky bunch indeed to be able to share these treasures in great company, in a perfect environment. Thank you, Peter.

Kim

Teusner Wines – stunning Aussie reds for a song

Old vines, great fruit and simple winemaking – what a difference!

Before we get to the good news, a little history to set the scene: A couple of months ago, I wrote a post headed How Fosters and Southcorp trashed Australia’s greatest wine brands. The piece is a short history of what happened to these companies between 1960 and 2010 http://briard.typepad.com/get_the_picture/2011/09/how-fosters-and-southcorp-trashed-australias-greatest-wine-brands.html .

The wine business - a distraction?

The trigger for that piece was Fosters CEO John Pollaers describing the wine business as a ‘distraction’ to Fosters’ beer business (after he sold it). The ‘distraction’ to Fosters’ beer business included a list of hallowed brands that were once the backbone of this country’s wine industry: Leo Buring, Seppelts, Penfolds, Lindemans, Wynns, Saltram, Metala, Seaview, Tollana, and Bailey’s of Glenrowan.

I concede that my disenchantment with the wine business began in earnest in the nineties. For two decades, I’d spent vast sums of money on wine which gave enormous pleasure. And for those two decades, you could buy wine from every corner of the world for fair prices, some for bargain prices. In those days, Sauternes and Barsacs were among the bargains, underrated, as were the wines of the Rhone.

Australian wines had long been the biggest bargains, but that changed in the nineties with a new cult that celebrated star wine makers and ‘super’ wines. ‘Super Tuscans’ in the old country, $100 Aussies in the new. Penfold’s 707, Wynn’s Michael and others were suddenly priced and handled like precious bottles of grand cru Bordeaux. Penfolds’ Yattarna Chardonnay hit the shelves with a silly name and a silly $150 price tag. Henschke’s Hill of Grace was $300. Grange leapt up to $500.

Rock Star winemakers

Star winemakers were another phenomenon, along with star wine writers like Robert Parker and James Halliday.

High points from these guys was equivalent to a triple AAA sticker from Moody’s or Standard and Poor’s. And like the DCOs before the financial crisis, the value of the wines was vastly overhyped. This is an excerpt from a different older post, a segment headed The winemaker as demigod . http://briard.typepad.com/kims-konfection/2009/11/australian-wine-the-jam-is-on----the-way-we-were--most-people-would-argue-that-australian-wine-has-changed-for-the-better-ov.html

‘Overseas and at home, it was soon a case of wineries that were celebrated and wineries that were forgotten. Guns-for-hire winemakers were quick to see the opportunity and offer their services to the forgotten wineries, flying by helicopter from vineyard to vineyard, and flying by plane from continent to continent, adding their magic touch and fairy dust for a small ransom wherever they went. Soon it was easier to pick the roving winemaker than the winery that grew the grapes at blind tastings, that’s how big the fingerprints were.

The wine business had come to resemble Hollywood and its star system, from Michel Rolland in France to Brian Croser in Australia. The best of them were consulting to some 100 wineries at vintage time. It’s a kind of madness that is best understood by watching a documentary called Mondovino, which contrasts the old with the new in a very compelling way. In their defence, the flying winemakers would argue that they sorted out many problems that beset small and large wineries alike, for the greater good. Their opponents would argue that they made more and more wine taste the same.’

The rise of the young Turks

Some of the new generation winemakers were content to stay  in one place and do their own thing. Many were sons of Growers in the Barossa or the Riverland, and they began making wine under their own label. The Barossa Valley was home to many growers who used to sell their grapes to the PLO (Penfolds, Lindemans, Orlando) and still do. Some of these vineyards contained  vines that were over 50 years old and produced  low yields of wonderfully concentrated  fruit. Shiraz, Grenache, Mataro were the main varieties.

Photo courtesy of Teusner Wines - it's the boys drinking some cool amber fluid at the end of a hard day.

The wine business is a lot like the fashion business, and these boys don't have any fashion sense (reassuring, that). In the eighties, Shiraz was a very poor cousin to Cabernet, and Grenache and Mataro (Mourvèdre) were often blended away without a mention of their names even on the back label. They were old grapes, and the Barossa and McLaren Vale were old hat - the new darlings were the Yarra Valley and Tasmania.

In the early nineties, US wine guru Robert Parker paid us a visit, tasted some big, ripe, old vine Shiraz from the Barossa and declared it purer than the blood of Jesus and worth a king’s ransom. Suddenly, everybody wanted old vine Shiraz from the least fashionable wine regions in Australia. The bigger the better. Parker also praised the few GSM wines (blends of Grenache, Shiraz & Mataro) he tasted, and suddenly every winemaker was running around the Barossa looking for these almost extinct varieties. Today, Mataro is back in fashion!

   

photo courtesy of winebiz.com.au http://www.winebiz.com.au/pdf/WIJ-MourvedreVarietalReport.pdf

Here’s a classic example of Parker Power: Parker gave the 1997 Wild Duck Creek Duck Muck Shiraz from Heathcote in Central Victoria 99 out of 100 points in his ‘The Wine Advocate’ quarterly, ‘and suddenly every Texas oil baron or Silicon Valley billionaire had to have a bottle of Duck Muck on the dinner table. A $50 bottle achieved more than $1500 at auction soon after Parker gave it the nod.’ Here’s the rest of the story http://steveburnham.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=67%3Aduck-muck&catid=36&Itemid=55

Nine Popes and the Holy Trinity

I think it was Charlie Melton who first defined the Rhone formula down under with his Nine Popes label. Others soon followed with Rhone blends like Holy Trinity, and a new genre was born. With the big old firms bought and sold many times over, younger stars set the pace with the new old vine Shiraz and GSM styles, led by Elderton, Kalleske, Hewitson, Rockford, Turkey Flat and Torbreck. 

Turkey Flat and Kalleske had been growers for many decades, while Hewitson and Torbreck were young Turks making wine from fruit bought from other growers. The big, warm and friendly GSM formula was and still is a hit with drinkers, but some of these wines are pretty pricey. One reason was Robert Parker writing them up for his US readers, which made them scarce. They range from $35 - >$100 (for the hand-signed private label).

Teusner Wines

They also tended to be high in alcohol, which bothered me for years until I figured I’d have to get used to it with all that global warming going on. (Btw, the Duck Muck 1997 was 16%). I read about Teusner Wines in Winestar’s newsletter – their Riebke Shiraz 2010 made Hallidays’s top 100 this year, and it was less than $20. We tried a bottle with a Boeuf Bourguignon, and I was impressed. A purple, vibrant wine with wonderful sweet fruit and soft finish, it’s a bargain.

Next we opened a bottle of 2009 Avatar, a GSM blend, and it was a sumptuous, soft, velvety wine that made us sit up and pay serious attention. A modern version of the old steak-and-eggs-and-a-good-cigar in a bottle. This one’s about $25 and a steal at that. The third wine we tried from Teusner was a 2010 Eden Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, a big chuncky wine that still has some softening to do over the long haul, one that will reward patience as they say. Another bargain at $18. We haven't yet tried the 'Independent' Shiraz Mataro with the puss-n-boots-in-a-suit label - I like the humour of these guys.

On the right Page

Teusner Wines is a partnership formed in 2001 by Kym Teusner and brother-in-law Michael Page. Michael is a viticulturalist, Kym is a winemaker who worked for Torbreck before starting out on his own. He knows the best vineyards for the kind of fruit he’s looking for: Shiraz, Grenache and Mataro from old, well-tended vines. The wine is matured in big, old barrels, not new oak hogsheads, and minimal manipulation occurs during winemaking – just the opposite of what put me off in the late eighties and nineties when all kinds of tricks were used to extract more fruit and oak and flavour by any means fair or foul.

Keeping the wines affordable is a goal of these young Turks. I don’t know how they do it, since fruit from old vines can’t be cheap. I suspect it’s the usual cycle: these guys are on the up-and-up, and busting a gut to make the best wine they can. Once everybody finds out how good their wines are, they’ll beat down the cellar door and drive the prices up. Don’t anyone tell Parker about Teusner, please.

Ode to the grape

I’ll leave you with this truly poetic review of the Teusner Avatar from Salsa Rose at the Age newspaper:

‘Spicy, seductive and alluring, she goes by no other name than grenache. With her favourite dance partner mataro, they tear up the night. The backbone of shiraz cutting in at the end. That’s the label of this rose that’s full of tangy, juicy fruit fragrant with rose petal and rhubarb notes, some creaminess and sweet fruit on the palate before finishing dry with crisp acidity!’

That’s not how the Avatar spoke to me, but you have to admire the poetry. More on Teusner Wines here http://www.teusner.com.au/history.htm

Safe travel

Kim