In The Picture

Leconfield Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2010, Kooyong Clonale Chardy 2011, Lenton Brae Southside Chardonnay 2011

A few great wines, and too many of the other kind

When it comes to reds, I’ve long been a fan of Cabernet Sauvignon and Bordeaux blends that add some Merlot and perhaps Cabernet Franc to the blend. So I was pretty chuffed when I retasted the Amberley Cabernet Merlot 2010 a few days ago and found it exceeded my wildest expectations. I'd bought a dozen of these for the ridiculous price of $13 some 7-8 months ago. There’s still some left at $14 here: http://ourcellar.com.au/p/8175/amberley-secret-lane-cabernet-merlot-750ml

Sadly, the Evans & Tate Cabernet Merlot 2009 didn’t exceed in any department, and the Philip Shaw no 17 2009 Bordeaux blend from Orange disappointed as well. My current benchmark for this style is the Woodlands Cabernet Merlot 2009. It has more to it than most Cabernet Merlot blends which tend to be fruit-driven drink-soon propositions. The Woodlands is more dense and brooding and adds a hint of dusty gravel character which made me think of Pomerol. I think the 2009 has the edge on the 2010. Another wine I wish I’d bought more of, but this one was $23 a bottle.

BUY

Leconfield Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 for $18

Here we get into bargain territory. This red is everything Huon Hooke says it is: ‘An outstanding young Coonawarra, loaded with bright, blackcurrant and cassis aromas and flavours, with nicely handled oak and delicious fruit sweetness backed by good tannins.’ 95 Points. Ray Jordan gives it 97, Winestate gives it 5 stars. 14.5%. More details here: http://www.winestar.com.au/prod2746.htm

I could add that it’s not exactly my idea of a restrained Coonawarra Cabernet built for a long life, but the sheer up-front appeal here is too strong. Think of it as built for a Lush Life – I’m sure the Jazz lovers among you will understand – to be enjoyed now and for the next 3-6 years. Now the good news: The RR price is over $30, and the best retail price around the traps is $25. It turns out that Kemenys sells the same wine under a Hidden Label for $18. How do I know? Because Huon Hooke’s quote above is next to it https://www.kemenys.com/go.jsp#!class=Product&spn=1093931.

At $18, it’s a serious bargain if you don’t mind the plain wrapper.

Another Hidden label worth buying is the 2009 Eden Valley Riesling, which is all of $9. OK, it’s not a super-duper Riesling but it’s hard to fault for the price. It comes from Poverty Hill Wines in Eden Valley, not one of the better known producers but a winery in capable local hands. ‘The name derives from a windswept, stone inhabited hill on one of our partner’s properties barren of any grass or such,’ says the plain website. ‘It was the best we could come up with at the time and we think it is a name that is hard to forget!’ http://www.povertyhillwines.com.au/ .

The wine is showing a touch of development, even a hint of hair oil on mid palate, but it has length and depth and a long acid tail to keep it fresh for a while longer. 12.5%. $9 at Kemenys. Great for everyday drinking.

Lenton Brae Southside Chardonnay 2011

This Margaret River Chardonnay is sourced from fruit grown on the estate vineyard in Wilyabrup. Barrel-fermented and matured in French oak. 30% of the wine was went through malo-lactic fermentation, which the label says has softened the wine’s natural acidity and added a creamy, richness. It’s a classy style, this, with the cashew nut oak finely balanced against hints of grapefruit and pretty long, fine acid. Some white peach came through after prolonged opening, giving us a hint of the wine’s potential. 3-5 years, at least. 13.5%. $22 at Kemenys.

Kooyong Estate Clonale 2011 Chardonnay
Very similar class to the Lenton Brae, but more restrained/refined even. French oak again, clearly of good quality but in the back seat. There’s fine fruit, tight and austere at this stage with fine acidity and just a hint of malo-lactic mouth feel. More grapefruit than stone fruit right now. Good with seafood if you have to drink it now. Will get better for several years, a triumph given the tricky vintage. 13%. $22.50 at 1^st Choice Liquor.

I’ll skip over the Bellarmine Riesling from Pemberton since you’d have a tough time finding the 2010, but Kemenys have the 2011 for about $17. This is another wine that was transformed after just 9 months in bottle, showing lovely development in the creamy, almost honey/toasty Riesling manner. Don’t leave this one too long.

I’ll skip over the d’Arenberg Hermitage Crab as well, since I’ve recommended it before. It’s still a lovely food wine for $13 but it won’t get any better. Nice and round and mouth-filling now. Buy up, and drink up.

NOT CONVINCED

The Vouvray La Coulée 2009 was clean enough and quite delicate, but didn't offer much else, really. Chenin Blanc from here needs years to show its best but I don’t see the potential or the backbone needed for the long haul here. Not a bargain for $20 at Dan Murphys.

I had high expectations for the Castle Rock Estate Great Southern Riesling 2011, a wine James Halliday gave 95 points to ans called 'ludicrously cheap'. I had some of this over lunch with my mate Reg. The nose was a standout and the front palate full of zingy young Riesling promise. Sadly, we both thought it did a vanishing act after that, and it didn't produce a satisfying finish after several more days. A bit short, in short. $12%. $18 at Kemenys.

Mitchelton's Blackwood Park Riesling is usually a pretty reliable performer but this 2010 had an off-day or something, coming across a bit flat and tired. No zip, no spritz. $14 at Kemenys.

The Scarborough Yellow Label Chardonnay 2009 from the Hunter was a polished performer, a little too polished for my liking. It never really opened up, it was like sucking on a smooth pebble without getting the infusion of minerals that a Chablis delivers. This is bigger than Chablis, mind you. Nicely put together, good balance of fruit and oak, just not really prepared to open up. $22 at Porters.

Bunnamagoo Chardonnay 2009 from Mudgee was a special at 1^st Choice, and the guys there said it was great, but I found too much oak over ripe but indifferent fruit. A nice big round drink if you like a lot of wood but not really up there with other Chardys around $20.

There’s a lot of the Evans & Tate Cabernet Merlot 2009 around, and I can see why it hasn’t walked off the shelves. It’s not that attractive. Yes, it’s soft and plummy enough but that’s about it, there’s not much depth and not much length and not much to recommend it really. $17 at 1^st Choice.

I had high hopes for the Hollick Cabernet Merlot 2009 from Coonawarra but it showed the same slight hardness on the palate that put me off its little brother the Shiraz Cabernet 2009. Shame because everything else is pretty well together here in a medium-bodied package. Not big on complexity, mind you. $18 at 1^st Choice.

Deen de Bortoli Vat 4 Petit Verdot 2009 has 4 gold medals stuck on the bottle so I thought: maybe we have a $10 super bargain here. OK, it’s $11 at 1^st Choice but the real issue is the stuff inside the bottle. It didn’t grab me even after giving it ample opportunity over several days. The fruit is bright and juicy but you can see why the frogs always blend this variety (though even as a blender it’s fallen from favour there). Unfocused, unstructured, missing something really. The nose was mostly alcohol. Didn’t make me want to drink more of it.

The Metala Shiraz Cabernet 2010 is a ridiculous wine. It reminded me of the Gramps 2010 Shiraz I wrote about a few weeks ago, but it’s even bigger and more impenetrable. It’s a sledgehammer, not a table wine. It hits you like that. Sorry, assaults you. I can’t imagine why anybody would want to make a wine like this, let alone drink it. I take that back: I have mates who love’em this big. HH gave it a great rap and 95 points. Hell, Huon wouldn’t give Grange more than 95 - he must've had an off day. This ain't no poor man's Grange in my book, this is a poor man's fast track to ruin. $11 at 1st Choice.

AVOID

I wanted to like Philip Shaw’s No 17 Saint-Emilion blend 2009 from the high country of Orange – 50% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Franc, 10 Cabernet Sauvignon. Love the unusual label. The wine was a big disappointment. At first it came up pretty tired, quite developed. After some time, it opened up a bit and showed some elegant fruit but it was all pretty simple and not that exciting.

I wondered if I’d missed something and consulted the Oracle (JH) who says: ‘Light, clear colour, with some development already showing; the savoury/brambly/foresty characters have already exercised control over the palate, with not much left to enjoy.’ Maybe an off vintage?

De Bortoli Windy Peak Pinot Noir 2010. Bought this wine for my Pinot Noir under $25 exercise a while back but didn’t open it then. When I did, I asked myself: why do people bother with $12 Pinot Noirs? It’s hard enough making a decent Pinot Noir for twice that money. Why not add this to your cask wines? It’s a waste of bottle and label. Nice label too in this case. The wine is feeble lollywater with a hard edge. Cheap and tastes that way.

The Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio 2011 was a wine a fellow bought a case of at Dan Murphys. I asked him if it was that good, and he said it was the best Pinot Grigio he'd ever had, so I tried a bottle. I wish I hadn’t. Flabby, touch sweet, loose and unfocused - vin tres ordinaire.

Kim

Gunns bites the dust - are Tasmania's old growth forests safe now?

Today, the radio brought the news that Tasmanian wood chip exporter Gunns called in an adminsitrator. The money had run out, the bank said there's no more, and the company capitulated.

Tasmania's Premier Lara Giddings claimed that Gunns' demise did not spell the end of the project. 'I would say to people be very careful about dancing on the grave,' she said, 'because the fact is the resource still exists, the proposal still exists... The unfortunate demise of this company,' she explained, 'may in fact mean that other proponents come forward.'

Giddings is clearly away with the fairies. Christine Milne said, 'Laura Giddings is misleading the Tasmanian people and she should stop it.' Amen. More details here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-25/gunns-timber-company-rise-fall-timeline/4235708

'The story of Gunns is a parable of corporate hubris,' writes Richard Flanagan. 'You can, as they did, corrupt the polity, cow the media, poison public life and seek to persecute those who disagree with you. You can rape the land, exterminate protected species, exploit your workers and you can even poison your neighbours. But the naked pursuit of greed at all costs will in the end destroy your public legitimacy and thus ensure your doom. Gunns was a rogue corporation and its death was a chronicle long ago foretold. The sadness is in the legacy they leave to Tasmania—the immense damage to its people, its wildlands, and its economy.' http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/weblog/article/the-days-of-the-cargo-cult-are-over/

In my search for a bit more background, I came across an article written by Richard about 5 yeares ago, in The Monthly. I've taken the liberty of providing a short excerpt here, to show how various Labour Premiers were just as culpable in the pulping of Tasmania as predictable conservative apparatchiks like Robin Gray. http://www.themonthly.com.au/monthly-essays-richard-flanagan-out-control-tragedy-tasmania-s-forests-512

'For in a manner that at least is understandable if onerous to Tasmanians, it is clear that in Tasmania Gunns more or less is the law. The woodchippers and their government cronies constantly use the courts against conservationists, but when the courts are used against them the government's response is admirably straightforward: change the law. They changed the law, for example, when Bob Brown sold almost everything he had and took both the Tasmanian and the federal governments to court to prove that under their own laws the logging industry in Tasmania was illegal, because it threatened the survival of endangered species, including the Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle and the swift parrot. He won, but the government's response was not to enforce the Tasmanian Regional Forest Agreement to protect those species, but simply to alter it so that logging is once again legal.

Faced with the possibility that the pulp mill might not now meet the RPDC pollution guidelines, Paul Lennon simply rushed an act through parliament to establish an entirely new process that seems certain to ensure the mill will be approved by the end of August this year. Though this contradicted what Lennon had so dogmatically maintained for the previous two years about an impartial process that was above politics, the act (drafted with the input of a Gunns lawyer) tellingly allows for the mill to no longer meet the original pollution guidelines. Public consultation has been dispensed with and, most remarkably - and possibly without precedent in the annals of Westminster legislation - the act explicitly provides that the mill will still go ahead even if it is proven that the consultant assessing the project has been bribed.

*

It had been uncharacteristic of Lennon to even pretend a process mattered more than an outcome, and it seemed cynicism more of a piece with his predecessor, the late Jim Bacon. A one time Maoist, an upper-middle-class alumni of one of Australia's most exclusive private schools, Melbourne's Scotch College, and later, of one of its most infamous unions, the Victorian Builders' Labourer's Federation (BLF), Bacon was for several years a loyal lieutenant of the BLF's leader, the notorious Norm Gallagher. By the time Gallagher was jailed for taking bribes from developers and his union the subject of a Royal Commission that led to its deregistration, Bacon was ensconced in Tasmania, where the old BLF tactics of espousing a working-class rhetoric while cosying up to the powerful served him well. In 1997 he became leader of the Tasmanian Labor Party.

The following year Bacon was instrumental in brokering the deal that saw the very electoral basis of the Tasmanian parliament altered. Since the 1970s, when the world's first green party was formed in Tasmania, the Greens had been a powerful political minority in Tasmania, securing up to a seventh of parliamentary seats under the island's unique proportional representation system and with it, on occasion, the balance of power.

The 1998 deal was sold to the public as a common-sense measure to reduce the number of parliamentary members. But it was intensely political in effect, because having fewer parliamentarians meant that a higher quota was required by an individual to be elected, thus making it harder for minority parties to win seats and possibly destroying future Green representation - and with it the only real opposition to the woodchipping industry. The former Liberal leader Bob Cheek recalls how Robin Gray, the state's premier in the '80s and now a member of Gunns' board, lobbied him on the night before the vote on the reform. "We've got to stop the Greens, Bob," Gray told him. And they did.

The subsequent election in August 1998 saw the Greens decimated and Jim Bacon's Labor Party triumphant. The Bacon government quickly established itself as the most pro-big-business government Tasmania had ever had. Favoured companies received extraordinary treatment. The privately owned Federal Hotels group, who run the island's two casinos, was awarded a 15-year gaming monopoly - conservatively estimated by Citigroup to be worth $130 million in licensing revenues - free of charge.

But the greatest winner was Gunns. Its shares were languishing at $1.40 when the Bacon government came to power. The company's subsequent growth was dizzying. Within four years, it had recorded an increase of 199% in profits. With the acquisition of two rival companies, Gunns took control of more than 85% of logging in Tasmania. Five years after Bacon won government Gunns was worth more than $1 billion, with shares trading in excess of $12. It had become both the largest logging company in Australia and the largest hardwood-woodchip exporter in the world, its product flooding in from the state's fallen forests.

The state government, which a century ago paid people to shoot the Tasmanian tiger, now provided every incentive to destroy old-growth forest. One of Bacon's first acts was to make 85,000 hectares of previously "deferred forest" available for logging. Gunns paid only paltry royalties to Forestry Tasmania, the public body charged with getting a commercial return from the crown forests that were the very basis of Gunns' record profits. When in 2003 Gunns posted an after-tax profit of $74 million, Forestry Tasmania made a hardly impressive $20 million. By 2005, when Gunns after-tax profit had soared to $101.3 million, Forestry Tasmania's profit had slumped to $13.5 million. Its projected profit for 2006-07 is break-even: a return of zero dollars, nothing, to Tasmanian taxpayers on the estimated $700-million value of its publicly owned forest estate.

But it wasn't just that public forestry resources were being systematically handed over to a single company's shareholders; it was that much of Gunns' profits were coming out of taxpayers' pockets. On private land, Gunns made a second profit from the federal tax breaks that made tree plantations - with which clearfelled native forests were replaced - one of corporate Australia's favourite forms of tax minimisation from the late '90s.

On top of all this, Bacon's government accelerated a familiar pattern of ongoing handouts to an industry that constantly shed jobs, devastated the environment and sought to manipulate the political system. Between 1988 and the present, the Tasmanian forest industry has received a staggering total of $780 million in taxpayer handouts, $289 million of it since 2005, much of it being used to facilitate further old-growth logging. If an accounting were possible of the taxpayer-subsidised plantation schemes and added to this sum, the real subsidy paid by the Australian taxpayer to an industry that destroys the nation's heritage would approach a billion dollars.

But then, not the least shocking thing about the destruction of Tasmania's old-growth forests is that the state's logging industry is in the end not a commercially viable industry at all, but a massive parasite on the public purse, an industry as driven by ideological bailouts and hidden subsidies as a Soviet-era pig-iron foundry.

Worse still, at the moment when Tasmania was acquiring a global reputation as an island of exceptional beauty, the forces that would destroy much of the island's unique nature had been unleashed. This sad irony, denied in Tasmania, did not escape the more astute of the world's media: major features began appearing in the Observer, Le Figaro, Süddeutsche Zeitung and the New York Times - mounting evidence that what was happening in Tasmania was more and more recognised as an environmental catastrophe of global significance.What might be read about Tasmania's forests in New York or Paris, though, was not information found easily in Hobart or Launceston. Apart from a few brave journalists, a generally craven Tasmanian media rarely questioned or challenged the woodchipping industry during these years. The Launceston Examiner ran a four-page feature on Gunns' pulp-mill proposal directly lifted from Gunns' advertising. Necessary fictions were repeated until they became accepted as truth: that, for example, the industry's main concern is sawlogs, when even Forestry Tasmania had admitted that sawlogs are chipped, and had been since 1972. The government's own reports reveal that approximately 90% of Tasmania's logged native forest is woodchipped.

To this day, the forestry industry and the Tasmanian government withhold key information, fudge definitions of forest types and felling practices, and distort statistics to prevent the truth of old-growth logging becoming publicly known, diverting debate into the dullness of disputed definitions and clashing numbers. It's a familiar tactic of sowing semantic confusion that has worked well for the tobacco and oil industries. Beyond it, forests unique in the world continue to disappear.

*

Thanks Richard

Kim

Photokina – luxury goods and real cameras

Hasselblad lost, Leica under pressure, Sony flexes its muscles, Nikon steals the show, Fujifilm has a winner

The last thing I saw from the once great Swedish camera maker was one of its medium format cameras in Ferrari livery. Now Hasselblad has put its name on a $1000 Sony NEX, added some Hasselbling (thanks to Mile Chisholm) and added $5000 to the price. Of course, that's pocket money compared to the $35,000 plus Hassy charges pro shooters for its HD-series medium format cameras. That’s all about to change, CEO Larry Hansen told the press at Photokina: in addition to the Sony-based mirrorless compact, the Hasselblad Lunar, there will be a full-frame DSLR and high-end compact camera.

Luca Alessandrini from Hasselblad explained: ‘The Lunar is a celebration of the passion that the company’s founder Victor Hasselblad had for photography. For the first time the market now has a camera embracing traditional Hasselblad state-of-the-art image capture combined with stunning Italian design features. And for the first time ever we are using carbon fiber, titanium, wood, leather and precious metals – including gold. The camera grip itself offers unparalleled ergonomics and has been developed to embrace both compact E-mount and the larger professional A-mount lenses.'

5,000 dollars? For pimping a Sony NEX-7? Would you buy one?

LEICA CUTS PRICES

Meanwhile, Leica announced that all Leica rangefinder-type cameras from now on will be called "M." Not M9 or M10, just "M." The new M uses a 24-MP CMOS sensor made by the Belgian company CMOSIS. It will fall in line with competition by offering live view and focus peaking. The M will use the same EVF as the much cheaper X2. The M will be a little cheaper than the M9 (about $7000).

The M9 will continue at a reduced price - $5.5K – under a new model name: M-E. Mike Johnston of TOP asked: ‘who really wants to spend $5,450 on a camera widely understood to be a status symbol but also wants to broadcast to the world the fact that he's too cheap to spend an additional $1,500 [on the top model]?’ Good question, but Mike forgets that the people Leica buyers will try to impress will only see the famous brand and the red dot. They'll have no idea that it's not the top model.

Leica’s medium format S2 will now be called the ‘S’, after a minor upgrade. It all looks a bit like they’re rearranging the deck chairs, doesn’t it? With Hasselblad, it looks more like capitulation, going with Sony and adding expensive touches of luxury. Earlier this year, we witnessed the disintegration of the once mighty Kodak. This is all a bit painful, but don’t let anyone tell you that these companies are victims of the digital revolution – they are victims of poor management that lacks essential vision.

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/47542/fujifilm-x-e1-compact-system-camera-pictures-and-hands-on

NIKON D600

Meanwhile, Nikon released the D600 for real photographers, working photographers and others who want the best IQ money can buy. The Nikon D600 sits in third place on the DxOMark sensor quality scale, right behind the D800 and D800E. Ahead of the D4 and various D3s. Way ahead of Hasselblads and Leicas. Just look at these DxOMark comparisons:

The D600 is a $2000 Full Frame camera in a D7000 body. Or a D3x in a D7000 body, as Thom Hogan put it. Only a year or 2 ago, the D3x cost as much as a Leica. The D600 sensor is a more sensible 24mp variant of the new D800 36mp FX sensor. On the DxO sensor scale, the D600 sits in third place behind the D800E/D800 pair.

$2100. Canon was quick to announce the 6D, a smaller version of the 5D MK III, for the same price. The difference is that the D600 is already shipping, the Canon will ship by Christmas. Canon enthusiasts rightly complain that the DxO system is hard on their sensors. They argue that the 5D MkIII is pretty close to a D700 in dynamic range and low-light performance, out there in the real world. And they have a point most likely, but DxO is all we have when it comes to independent sensor testing. 

The D600 uses an FX version of the multi-CAM4800 39-point autofocus system. The viewfinder is huge of course, compared to the D7000, and bright and detailed with plenty of info to let you keep shooting without the need to take your eye off the action. Compared to the D800, limitations include a 1/4000 sec maximum shooting speed (vs 1/8000), 1/200 Flash Sync speed (vs 250), and 2 SD cards (vs 2 CF cards).

The D600 has pretty decent build quality, including a metal frame and some dust sealing. The smaller body size and weight is appealing but is soon cancelled out by the fat FX lenses you'll screw on it. You can use DX lenses on this body, but you’ll be using about 2/5ths of the FX sensor. That means 10mp files, still big enough for everyday shooting. If you want lots more detail on the D600, Thom Hogan has all the answers here:

http://www.bythom.com/d600.htm

SONY MUSCLE

If Nikon stole the show with a full-frame DSLR that set a new bar for price / performance, Sony produced the biggest surprise: A compact, mirrorless, full-frame camera with a fixed lens 35mm f/2 Carl Zeiss lens. Those who got their mitts on one of these say that the RX1 oozes quality, from the magnesium alloy body to the controls. The body isn’t that much bigger than the RX100’s, so that fixed lens looks really lumpy on the front.

The $2,800 price doesn’t buy you a system, merely a fixed camera/lens combo. It doesn’t buy you a viewfinder either. You can buy the electronic finder add-on, but you lose your flash shoe. At least it has a built-in flash.

The RX1’s format is so outrageous, it doesn’t have many direct competitors. The price is outrageous too, at $2800. The cheaper Leica X2 comes to mind, which makes do with an APS-C size sensor and a price tag nearly a grand less. Then there’s the cheaper again Fuji X100, which also uses a APS-C size sensor. That’s about it. Maybe its for people who want to hold up outrageous gadgets saying: look what I’ve got! More here:

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/sony-rx1/sony-rx1A.HTM

After years of full frame neglect, Sony also produced the long awaited successor to the much loved a900: The SLT alpha 99. Its body is even more compact than the Nikon D600’s but the price is closer to $3k. In line with recent practice, Sony has tossed out the traditional optical-viewfinder, moving-mirror system and replaced it with its translucent mirror technology. The a99 gets the same 2,359k-dot OLED viewfinder as the NEX-7, and it’s built in. A new autofocus system uses two phase-detection sensors for increased speed and accuracy when trying for locking on to a subject.

The a99 is a serious video camera that shoots 1920 x 1080 at up to 60 frames-per-second. It also provides continuous autofocus while shooting video. Like Nikon’s D800, the a99 can output uncompressed data to an external monitor or recorder. More serious goodies include built-in microphone and headphone sockets, and 32-step input control. Then there’s a customizable silent control dial next to the lens, which lets you adjust various settings without knocking the camera or adding noise to the footage being captured. It’s pretty clear which market Sony is going after with the a99.

Fujifilm X-E1

Fujifilm launched the X system early this year, with the X-Pro1 leading the charge. It was an instant success with its unique hybrid optical/electronic viewfinder, solid metal body and old-fashioned dials. Here was a great modern interpretation of the classic rangefinder concept. Fuji makes better lenses than most people realise, mostly fast primes in the Leica fashion, so the whole package was a winner with the Pros.

The price tag was a bit high for us ordinary punters, though. Then Fuji announced the X-E1, just before the Photokina show in Cologne got going, and it will compete directly with the top dogs in the EVIL patch, the Sony Alpha NEX-7 and Olympus OM-D E-M5. The X-E1 misses out on that hybrid viewfinder but gets a 2.36M dot OLED unit instead. The rest of the story is much the same.

The X-E1 keeps the excellent sensor and the traditional controls, despite a reduction in body size. Like the Nikon D800E, the X-E1 sensor doesn’t have a Bayer filter, and the pixel count is ‘just’ 16mp. The X-Trans CMOS sensor uses a novel colour filter array to suppress colour moiré, which means there’s no need for an anti-aliasing filter. As a result, the X-E1 offers superior resolution to other cameras with the same 16MP pixel count.

The X-E1 also gets a new autofocus algorithm and a different sensor drive mode. The result is AF speeds that are competitive with the top dogs Sony and Olympus. There's also a new 3x magnification mode to assist manual focus. This looks like the perfect compact system for people who have 2-3 grand to spend on body and lenses, and a great system to get your hands on what Leica purports to offer – simplicity, compact size and brilliant lenses. Fuji does it all at a brilliant price as well. More details here:

http://www.dpreview.com/previews/fujifilm-x-e1/5

Kim

Australian Wine Shows have a bright future?

Not if past performance is anything to go by

‘We as an industry constantly talk to each other and no one else.’

‘Some of the best and brightest talent of the Australian wine industry gathered in the Hunter Valley last weekend,’ the press release tells us, ‘to celebrate Len’s birthday and to discuss the future of the Australian Wine Show System in the 21st century. … the resounding outcome of the TalkFest was that Australian wine shows have played a critical role in shaping Australia’s wine styles and trends …’

The forum was the Len Evans Tutorial, LET to its friends. The headline of this post is the headlines of the press release, without the questionmark. Philip White, the gadfly of the Aussie wine business, calls it ‘a quaint annual affair’ and explains that ‘Evans’ business cronies and admirers maintain this annual wine judges’ school in his honour. While it was designed to program prospective wine judges to conduct their work in a more scholarly and informed manner, it leaves itself open to accusations of clubby exclusivity, a trait which makes it seem more of a homogenizing exercise.’ http://drinkster.blogspot.com/ 

Tyson Stelzer has posted a rough transcript of the LET discussions, unedited, here: http://www.winepress.com.au/wine-show-conference-transcript.pdf . I think this is a pretty brave move and applaud the openness. Sadly, the discussions show just how out of touch these folks are. Not surprising perhaps, given that the Australian wine show system has grown into a gigantic, self-serving monster over the decades.

Australian Wine Shows have a shameful track record

White quietly reminds us that the current wine show system was, inter alia, ‘responsible for destroying for years the reputation of Max Schubert, whose early Granges were viciously derided by the powerful judges of the day.’ Philip’s blog post is headed: Oz Wine Shows In Disarray. Judges Gather: Big Interface. Hunter Summit Attempts Fix. And it's worth reading.

He’s dead right but that’s just one of the sins the system has on its ledger. From where I sit, our wine show system has a great deal more to be modest about. Over the four decades that I’ve enjoyed Aussie wines, our show system has

• Failed to produce consistent results across various shows in different states
• Failed in its role to guide Australian wine styles in a consistent direction
• Failed to improve the breed other than in a technical sense
• Failed to steer growers toward planting more suitable varieties
• Failed to educate the public about the benefits and workings of the show system
• Failed to connect with consumers in any relevant way

Meaningless Medals

There was a lot of debate in the Hunter Valley about medals versus point scores, about the 100 point system vs the 20 point one, about the current system vs the Olympic system of 1^st, second and third gold, silver and bronze. There were people arguing that consumers don’t understand medals or point scores, yet no one raised the real issue: consumers can’t work out why truly awful wines win so many trophies and gold medals.

A few recent examples I covered in previous posts include

• Annie's Lane Quelltaler Watervale Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon 2010, which won Gold medals and trophies including the top Trophy in The Great Australian Red 2011 comp
  
• Taylors 2010 Promised Land Shiraz ($10), which took out the Trophy for Best Shiraz Under $25 and second place overall in the Visy Great Australian Shiraz Challenge
• McWilliams Hanwood Estate Shiraz 2010 (trophies and golds) - a $7 wine
• Wolf Blass Red Label Shiraz Grenache 2010 – another $7 wine
• McWilliams Mt Pleasant Elizabeth 2005 – trophy and golds

The Wolf Blass won the Montgomery Trophy for Best Wine under $20 at the 2011 Royal Adelaide Wine Show, plus the Radoux Trophy for Best Commercial Red Wine at the same show, plus a Gold Medal at the same show and another Gold at the 2011 Royal Melbourne Show. And to top it off, James Halliday rated it at 94 out of 100 (another gold). The wine was so bad I decided not to risk using it in a Beef Bourgignon but poured it down the sink instead. I did the same with the McWilliams, an unripe, unpleasant concoction if ever there was one.

The Annie’s Lane is a $20 wine, and really not worth it. It's soft and ripe and dressed in aromatic oak, just another tired old wine made to a tired old formula. The others are dirt cheap. Now winemakers aren't fools: if they thought these wines were trophy winners, would they have stuck their cheapest labels on them? Of course not. It’s the judges who are the fools here.

The trouble is that punters see these trophy and gold medal stickers and they think these wines are the bargains of the year. Perhaps they figure that the winemaker tried to tell the marketing guys how good these things were, but the marketing guys weren’t listening. Marketing people are fools too, aren't they? Then they open the bottle and get a hell of a shock – I mean the three cheapo wines here are real shockers.

Meaningless judging contests

Quite a few winemakers don’t believe in the system or find the entry conditions unacceptable, and don’t enter their wines at all. If I look at the wines that stood out like beacons in my reviews this year, medals are not that common.

• Teusner Avatar 2010 – not entered in shows, I suspect
• Wynns Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 – no awards I know of
• Mountadam High Eden Chardonnay 2010 – no gongs, probably not entered
• Hoddles Creek Estate Chardonnay 2011 – no gongs, probably not entered
  
• TarraWarra Estate Chardonnay 2010 – no gongs, same
  
• Jim Barry Watervale Riesling 2012 – yes, a couple of golds
• Woodlands Cabernet Merlot 2009 – no medals, probably not entered
• 42° South Pinot Noir 2008 – no medal, same
  
• Thorn-Clarke Shotfire Ridge Quartage 2009 – no medals
• Amberley Secret Lane Cabernet Merlot 2010 – lots of gongs

Makers of our top boutique wines such as Giaconda ad Mount Mary never enter their wines, nor do companies like Penfolds or Henschke enter their top wines, and that goes for dozens more. It's like running a Formula 1 race without Ferrari and McLaren Mercedes. If the system doesn’t judge our best wines, how can it claim to reward the best wines made in this country? How can it claim relevance?

Missing consistency

The Amberley Cab Merlot is an interesting example: in a display of remarkable consistency, it won a gold in almost every state show. That's very much the exception. As a rule, a wine that wins a trophy and top gold in Perth will win nothing in Melbourne, a silver in Sydney, and nothing in Canberra or Brisbane. And vice versa, and many variations on the theme.

There’s clearly something wrong here, isn’t there? I mean, we’re talking about a range of 15 – 19 points from just below bronze to gold here. Or 84 – 95 on the 100 point scale. How can there be that big a variance if we have reliable judging standards of any kind? One answer is that the judges have to work through an average of 150 wines a day. Several times, that is, as they slowly work out the short lists.

‘Adelaide in 2011 was gruelling to judge,’ one of the guys at the Hunter Valley meeting said. ‘In all of my years of judging I cannot remember not being rushed,’ said another. ‘When this happens, the crowd pleasing wines in the middle ground win the awards.’ That’s exactly how we get so many mediocre medal winners: the obvious wines get the gongs, the wines with immediate appeal. The subtle, shy, more reserved things get overlooked. 

Thanks to Philip White for this. His description: The most radical wine crew on Earth at the time; perhaps ever? Rock'n'roll: Penfolds has a little wine show of its own in the lab at Grange in the 'fifties. Penfolds winemakers and scientists, left to right: Murray Marchant, Gordon Colquist, Ivan Combet (father of Federal Cabinet Minister Greg Combet), Perce McGuigan (father of Brian and Neil), Jeffrey Penfold-Hyland, Max Schubert, John Davoren, Don Ditter, Harold Davoren (John's father) and Ray Beckwith. http://drinkster.blogspot.com/

Trophies by the truckload

The number of wine shows we put on in this tiny (in wine producing terms) country is heading toward 100 a year. It’s a ludicrous gravy train that grows longer all the time, and everybody loves it. Lots of wine writers and volunteers get to rub shoulders with winemakers and judges and enjoy wine dinners that are breathtaking by most standards.

I’ve no idea how many medals are handed out at these shows but, at the Sydney Show alone, 35 trophies were awarded last year. Yes, 35 trophies at a single wine show. Hotels donate trophies, wine merchants donate trophies, banks donate trophies, airlines … Even a regional show like the Hunter Valley Show hands out 25 trophies!

You thought a trophy was something special, didn’t you? Next time you see a trophy sticker on a bottle of wine, just remember that it’s just one of about a 1,000 trophies handed out every year. Nothing special. And a gold medal? How many thousands of those are thrown around? Literally confetti.

Wine shows guiding wine styles?

In the fifties, Grange was ridiculed because it didn’t conform to the judges ideas of red wine style. In the seventies, a smart young Wolf Blass took the show system for a heady ride when he won the Jimmy Watson trophy several years in a row with his designer reds. He was the Lance Armstrong of the wine business, and he won without resorting to drugs. He simply worked out the obvious charms the wine judges always fell for – ripe, juicy berry fruit and aromatic oak in a plush, soft envelope.

Wolfgang 'Amadeus' Blass, the little master who showed the rest how it's done

That should’ve cause a major rethink in the people running the show system, but the judges sat on their hands as Blass promoted the Jimmy Watson as the holy grail of wine trophies. The JW is awarded for the best one-year old red, a wine that wasn’t yet bottled, and pretty meaningless. Len Evans was there, a young Halliday coming up behind him. Here was a big chance to set the record straight and to establish tougher guidelines for style. Nothing changed.

The copycats won the day

Winemakers across the country copied Wolf Blass or tried to outdo him. Can we blame them? No, they wanted to win medals, and they did. In the eighties, right across the country, the copycats were winning medals with a stretched Blass formula of overripe, extracted reds dressed in toasty, coconutty oak.

One aberration was what we ended up calling ‘Lindeman Essence’, that overdone stewed prunes character which suddenly appeared in the company’s Coonawarra reds. In the nineties, our wine judges did nothing to rein in Coonawarra winemakers who made Cabernets with 15% alcohol and more. Nor did they tell Robert Parker that those monster McLaren Vale reds were port wines in disguise.

On the white side, it was big buttery, oaky Chardonnays that won the trophies. Oak chips were in short supply, then oak essence. The judges, the custodians of our wine styles, failed in that task every way you look at it. Just after the turn of the millennium, they had a change of heart. Suddenly all those big over-extracted oaky wines were ‘old-fashioned’, and cool climate styles described as fresh, crisp and elegant were in – from Coal River in Tassie all the way to Tumbarumba.

These wines were crisp and elegant alright, but they often lacked one essential ingredient: ripe fruit. No matter, now the trophies went to Chardonnays reminiscent of Twiggy that struggled to register 12% alcohol, and anorexic Rieslings with 11%, and the judges applauded. Some of the reds showed strange characters that evoked green capsicum, bay leaves and peas, but on the whole fared better on the ripeness scale. 

Steering growers toward planting more suitable varieties

In his blog piece, Philip White says ‘Under Evans and his gang, the Australian wine show circuit had a deadly stranglehold on the development of new varieties and flavours in Australian wine, and can be accused of stifling the development of many more varieties ...’ In other words, the judges pushed for French styles and varieties like Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, when they should’ve encouraged growers in our Mediterranean climate to stop pulling out Grenache and Mataro vines, and plant more Marsanne and Roussanne.

Philip recalls ‘handing Len Evans himself a glass of delicious Yeringberg Yarra Valley Marsanne Roussanne in the Universal Wine Bar after a Royal Adelaide Wine Show. This was simply too much for Australia’s most evangelical Chardonnay proponent, who took a sniff, went back on his heels, and delivered a derisory tirade about how such lumpen things were below him, and never could catch on.’

We've gone past improving the breed?

That was the consensus at the Hunter Valley conference. ‘Bury the phrase improving the breed,’ one of them said and no one argued. This floored me when I read it. Are they saying the wines we turn out these days have reached a level of perfection that can’t be improved on? Can't go any faster?

I’m thinking about my wine reviews and all those crook wines under the AVOID heading, and the ordinary ones under NOT CONVINCED, and I wonder what vineyard these guys live on. Maybe they’d argue that sub 10 dollar wines like the Wolf Blass and the Taylor’s winning major trophies proves that we’ve reached the highest possible level of perfection. How can it get any better?

It could be my aging eyes, of course. I see lack of standards, consistency and integrity where they see perfection. Still, from the hands-on (or is that lips-on?) perspective over the decades, the current system of awarding medals is a crap shoot. Simple as that. Or it might as well be. I know the judges and winemakers who drive the system are men and women of good intent, so it must be the system that is broken. 

We’ve left the wine punter behind

OK, the system was never intended to serve as a guide to wine drinkers but as a guide to winemakers. The wines that won the trophies were held up as leading lights to the rest. It's the wine companies and their marketers who began using show results to flog the grog to us punters, and then convinced the wine shows to change the system to produce more medals and trophies to help with the marketing. Nice one!

Now that ‘we’ve gone past improving the breed’, that obvious conflict of interest is resolved and the system should be able to serve wine drinkers better. At the LET gathering of wine wise men and women in the Hunter Valley, there was indeed a section dedicated to the consumer.

Len Evans Tutorial comittee

The consensus was that consumers don’t understand the system. Oh, really? I’m sure they understand one thing: that it can’t be trusted. ‘After brand and price, the gold medal or any medal is the third most important piece of information,’ says one participant citing some research.

‘7.5% of people say a gold medal makes a impact on their choice, says another.’ And someone adds: ‘5 stars has more meaning - most [punters] don't understand what a medal means.’ Funny that – I suspect you have no one to blame for that but your obsession with putting more carts on the gravy train instead of introducing wine drinkers to its inner workings.

They talked about a stronger representation of media, buyers, sommeliers, retailers and general wine trade with a closer connection with consumers. Notice how the punter is always at the end of the queue. One of the LET participants nailed it when he said: ‘We as an industry constantly talk to each other and no one else.’

So whereto from here?

These are my suggestions:

• Toss it all out and start again
• A hundred shows and thousands of medals? That’s a joke. Major Rethink
• Run few shows, give out fewer and more meaningful medals
• Find way to ensure that the judging is consistent across all the shows
• Work out a better system for sifting out the ordinary wines and the rubbish
•  Re-taste short-listed wines several times over two days, once with food
• If you can’t get the best vineyards in the country to submit their wines, go and buy their wines so you can judge them or call the whole thing off
• Repeat ten times that improving the breed is an ongoing challenge
• Have a meeting with key winemakers to agree on benchmarks for styles.
• Set standards and appoint guardians to uphold them.

What did the good people in the Hunter Valley come up with? This is what the press release says: ‘Some of the outcomes and recommendations included:

• The establishment of an Association of Judges and a central register, similar to the current ASVO system, of current judges
• The enhanced focus on consumer engagement and marketing and the importance of strong, relevant communication of wine show outcomes
• The continued focus on best practice and the communication of agreed standards for the conduct of wine shows
• A continued commitment of the agricultural Societies to meet collectively
• Moving the dialogue about the purpose of Shows from “improving the breed’ to the “pursuit of excellence”

Ah, there we have it: the pursuit of excellence. Committee member Samantha Connew added: ‘It is hoped that future changes that result from the reunion weekend will give consumers a better understanding of the integrity of the wine show system, as well as continuing to provide winemakers with the forum they need to benchmark their wines.’

I really think we need a brand new system, and new judges. A fresh approach.

You be the judge!

Kim

 

Bargain time – Leconfield, Woodlands, Paringa, O'Leary Walker

Leconfield Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 for $18

This red from one of the best Coonawarra vineyards is collecting great reviews. We drank it on the weekend, and it’s everything Huon Hooke says: ‘An outstanding young Coonawarra, loaded with bright, blackcurrant and cassis aromas and flavours, with nicely handled oak and delicious fruit sweetness backed by good tannins.’ 95 Points; Huon Hooke. Ray Jordan gives it 97, Winestate gives it 5 stars. More details here: http://www.winestar.com.au/prod2746.htm

The RR price is over $30, and the best price around the traps is $25, but Kemenys sell the same wine under a Hidden Label for $18. How do I know? Because Huon Hooke’s quote above is next to it https://www.kemenys.com/go.jsp#!class=Product&spn=1093931.

Check this post for more bargains lurking under Kemenys Hidden labels - I managed to unmask a dozen of them. One of them is Leconfield's 2009 Cabernet, also for $18
http://briard.typepad.com/get_the_picture/2012/08/kemenys-hidden-labels-uncovered.html

Last of the Amberley Secret Lane Cabernet Merlot 2010 for $14

This wine was one of the great bargains of 2012. I recommended it 6 months ago and wish I’d taken more of my own advice. It’s grown in bottle, put on weight and muscle I kid you not, and it tastes like a $25 wine. Yes, it’s that good. For once, the judges got it right when they gave this wine 2 trophies and 5 gold medals. There’s some left at OurCellar over at Rosehill in Sydney, but they’ll ship anywhere http://ourcellar.com.au/p/8175/amberley-secret-lane-cabernet-merlot-750ml

Woodlands Cabernet Merlot, Nugan and Paringa Chardonnay at Chambers

Chambers Cellars is not one of my favourite places to buy wine. The website is close to useless, the prices are uncompetitive except for specials you don’t want to buy, and you have to buy a dozen to get the top discount. Add that the chain operates in NSW only, and ships to NSW only, and the appeal is strictly limited.

http://www.chamberscellars.com.au/Home/tabid/40/List/0/Default.aspx

If all that doesn’t put you off, Chambers has a 30% off sale on (you wouldn’t know from the website). Here’s what that means when you pick the right wines:

Woodlands Marg River Cabernet Merlot 2010 - was $24, now $17.50

O’Leary Walker Cabernet Sauvignon – was $22, now $15.40

Paringa Estate Chardonnay 2009 – was $29, now just over $20

Woodlands Marg River Chardonnay 2011 - was $24, now $17.50

Nugan Estate Franca’s Lane 2009 King Valley Chardonnay – was $20, now $14

I don’t know the Paringa (big reputation though), but the two reds are terrific wines and the Woodlands Chard is good too. The Nugan is a steal at this price. Never seen them at these prices before. There are lots more wines at Chambers but these are the ones that caught my eye. The 30% of sale is on until the end of September but you might want to be quick. Store locations: http://www.chamberscellars.com.au/Home/StoreLocations/tabid/84/List/0/Default.aspx

Good Drinking
Kim

Nugan Estate Cabernet, Belgravia Chardonnay, Mountadam Pinot Gris, Forest Hill Cabernet, Henschke Louis Semillon

A better than average haul with some real bargains, a couple of great finds and no wines to AVOID

Readers ask me how I select the wines that I review. The answer is simple: they're usually wines that are being promoted by the major merchants, and wines I see offered at special prices. They are almost always wines that are out there at the time of writing, being promoted one way or another, and easy to get hold of.

BUY

Canobolas-Smith Chardonnay 2009

Let’s start with something to brighten up your day. This Orange Chardonnay was a surprise over lunch with a wine-loving friend. Some barrel ferment and yeast lees characters here, and quality oak but there’s stone fruit pushing through the nutty complexity. Big on flavour already, but should improve for another 3 -5 years. Quality Chardonnay, totally silly label. $24.50 from a smart trio of Sydney merchants, and more than worth it. http://www.annandalecellars.com.au/4583/Canobolas_Smith_Chardonnay.aspx

Belgravia The Apex Chardonnay 2010

From Orange as well, and the top wine made that year at this winery. Had the kitchen sink of winemaking tricks thrown at it, from whole bunch pressing and wild yeast fermentation to new French oak maturation. More delicate than the Canobolas-Smith, oak less pronounced, more citrus fruit but changing to white peach and nuts over a couple of days. 13%. $22 at Porters. Not much of this left now.

Nugan Estate King Valley Frasca’s Lane vineyard Chardonnay 2009

The Nugan group began its business life as a family of Spanish immigrants who set up a fruit and vegetable packing business in the Riverina in 1940, then graduated to fruit juice and to table wine in the nineties. Today Nugan has about 1000ha of vineyards in the Riverina, McLaren Vale and King Valley. It also buys in fruit from Coonawarra.

This wine revealed its grapefruit side first but began to show some white peach after a day or two in the open bottle. The oak is French, fine and restrained despite 15 months in new and used barrels. The wine has the depth and length and acid backbone to mature nicely over 2-4 more years. 13.5%. It grew on me as I got to know it, and I suspect it’ll grow into a lovely Chardonnay. $18, 1^st Choice.

St. Clair Premium Sauvignon Blanc

Taut and terrific Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc. Lovely herbaceous nose of gooseberries flows through to the long and lean palate, plenty of flavour but savoury not tropical fruit. Tightly focused and perfect with medium rare ocean trout. The kind of Sauvignon Blanc the Kiwis should make more of. About $17 most places but Dan M has had it as an online special several times for $14. Bargain at that price, good buying at $17.

Tahbilk Marsanne 2011

Now this is a surprise. The last time I had one of these about … let me think, about a decade or two ago … it was a closed book needing years to open up. This one’s happy to be enjoyed as a crisp young thing of no great consequence, much like a young Hunter Semillon but made from riper grapes. Actually it’s only 11.5% but it avoids those green flavours. Great easy-drinking summer white now, but history suggests it’ll turn into a honeyed old charmer over many years. A bargain at $11, Kemenys.

Dopff Au Moulin Riesling 2010/11

This is the last of the 2010, already sharing shelf space with the 2011 at Dan Murphy’s (the direct importer). Made from Dopff’s vineyards near the old town of Riquewihr, this is a restrained wine that will take time to develop. In its youth, it’s fresh and fine and long and elegant, with faint floral and delicate pear notes. Very long finish, and good depth with more minerals than citrus, with a different mouthfeel from our Rieslings. Classy number, no idea how they put it on the shelf for just over $13. 12.5%.

The 2011 is a bit more closed at this early stage. Same length and mouthfeel, and will very likely develop the same way. Same price too, and same alcohol.

Huia Gewurztraminer 2008/9

The Kiwis make terrific Traminers, and the Huia is one of the best. All the usual suspects are assembled here, from fresh lychees to candied fruit and that typical hint of hair oil. Big and rich enough to stand up to pork fillet in a mustard and green peppercorn sauce with sour cream. Not subtle but great with real food. The 2009 may be easier to get hold of, and is made in the same style. 14%. $23.50 at 1^st Choice.

Richard Hamilton Hutt Block Cabernet Sauvignon 2010

This wine tasted more like a Shiraz Cabernet, with a spicy lift and fruit in the red current/ pomegranate spectrum. The real surprise is the elegance here – after all, this is a McLaren Vale red. 13.5%. The Leconfield from the same stable which hails from cooler Coonawarra runs to 14.5%. Work that one out. This wine is well-made, easy drinking and great for barbies with close friends. Super value at $13, Kemenys.

Forest Hill Estate Cabernet Sauvignon 2010

Forest Hill is the oldest winery in the Mount Barker region of Western Australia, east of Pemberton. Their wines aren’t easy to find over on the east coast, where Porters outlets are the best bet. This wine is built for the long haul, that much is clear from the start. It’s a closed book, and it never really opened up even given several days in the open bottle.

There are lots of goodies buried in there, from brooding dark fruits to a hint of mint and the pencil shavings of French oak; there’s depth and length and a degree of elegance. The finish is long and tight with fine tannins. It’s good to see reds that are still made for the long haul in a world that gears everything for immediate consumption. This wine will reward patience, as they say. 14%. $22 at MyCellars, $25 + at Porters. 

Nugan Estate Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2008, Alcira Vineyard

This is more approachable, with ripe cassis fruit wrapped in fine vanilla oak and slightly dusty tannins. An admirable balancing act between ripeness and restraint, the wine dances on the palate and makes you come back for more. Has the room and the structure for improving over the next 2 – 4 years. Classic modern Coonawarra Cabernet, ripe and generous but no more than 14%. $18 at 1^St Choice.

Smithbrook Cabernet Merlot 2009, Margaret River

The winery is at Pemberton near Manjimup, between Margaret River and Albany. The 2009 vintage was close to perfect in the south of Western Australia and this wine reflects it. Rich, ripe and luscious with fruit flavours running from plum to cassis, finished off with smoky oak and soft tannins. Plush drinking right now and for the next year or two. 14%. $17 at Cellarmasters and David Jones wine club.

NOT CONVINCED

Henschke Louis Eden Valley Semillon 2009

It’s not often that a Henschke wine falls into my sub $25 price range. The last one was Henry’s Seven 2009, which also didn’t convince me. 2009 was a harsh year, culminating in the 46° black Saturday in February. This wine is made from 50-year old grapes in Henschke’s Eden Valley vineyard, and named after the late Louis Edmund Henschke.

This is what Henschke’s website says about Louis: ‘Gold straw with green hues. Fragrant aromas of lemon blossom and citrus zest are joined by exotic gooseberry nuances and notes of crème brûlée and poached pear. Zesty lemon curd, lemon peel and white currant flavours are accented with a delicious lime acidity, creating a wine that is crisp with excellent balance and a long finish.’

Stephen Henschke’s copywriter has quite an imagination. I didn’t find any notes of crème brûlée and poached pear, let alone zesty lemon curd, lemon peel and white currant flavours. This is a fairly soft, round Semillon already showing hints of honey, and of white peaches and honeysuckle suggesting Viognier or Marsanne. While you’re taking this in, you realize the wine has made an abrupt departure. No lingering finish here. The other problem is the price: over $22 at 1^st Choice. Halliday gives Louis 89 points. I’d give it 90.

Mountadam Eden Valley Pinot Gris 2011

Since I’m a huge fan of the Mountadam Chardonnay, I thought I’d give the Pinot Gris a go. It pretty well shouts cool climate: long, tight, restrained, plenty of acid and a hint of minerals – this is not one of those fruit driven Pinot Gris. It’s more serious, and I suspect it will need a year or two to show its full range of charms. At the asking price, I can’t get excited about it though. $20, 1^st Choice.

Paxton AAA Pinot Gris 2011

Very restrained for a McLaren Vale Pinot Gris, obviously made to keep everything tightly focused (you know how flabby this variety can get given half a chance). They may have taken the restraint a bit far, since the fruit character is subdued to the point of extinction. The wine shows nice balance, length and acidity but it doesn’t sing or dance or make you want to rush out and buy some. $15 on special at Porters, otherwise over $20.

Kirrihill Regional Selection Clare Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2011

This is alcoholic Ribena, something this winery seems to specialise in. The next level up Tullymore Cabernet 2010 tried a few months ago was much the same, only more concentrated. There's no acid and no tannin, so it's bound to be a big hit with people who like their wines just soft and fruity. Well made, good fruit, good price - $11 at Dan M. 14%.

Hollicks Shiraz Cabernet 2009

I haven’t tried any Hollicks for years, for no particular reason. This is the bottom of the line, made from Coonawarra and Wrattonbully fruit, and made to be enjoyed sooner rather than later. There’s a lively lift from the Shiraz, and a solid backbone from the Cabernet, overlaid with appealing Vanillan oak. After a couple of days, a hotspot developed on the middle palate which spoilt the show a bit. Could’ve been a bargain at $15, Dan M. 14%

Mockingbird Hill Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon Malbec 2010

I just wrote a post about Woolworths and Coles and their private labels, and this turns out to be one of those. From Cellarmasters, to be clear, which is now owned by Woolworths. Curiously, my partner’s mum got it from David Jones like the Smithbrook Cab Merlot. Not sure how DJ’s fits in with Woolworths, but I suspect this is an arrangement DJ’s has long had with Cellarmasters to supply it with private label wines.

At $19, it’s not cheap, and it’s surprisingly full of character. Big fruit typical of Clare reds but not jammy, bigger than its 13.5% suggests, the Malbec adding an exotic touch. There’s a strong seam of dusty tannin running through this wine which is a bit overdone. It’s an Interesting red but not really great value. $19 from Cellarmasters and David Jones.

Kim

It's feedback like this that makes the blogging worthwhile

This came from a man I admire, a man who earned his stripes in the London wine trade and then learned all about German wine in Geisenheim, a man who speaks fluent German and knows more about wine than I ever will.

'I’ve been reading and relishing every word on your blog, Kim. You have a really great gift for wine description and in a relevant way which mercifully avoids all the Ann Noble inspired bullshit about the aromatic nuances of pear skins and Virginia tobacco leaf etc (you know who I mean!). And most of all I love the independence and fearlessness of your individual assessments. Bravo!'

Kim

Sony RX100 sensor beats Nikon V1 in DxO Mark Test

And the Panasonic GX1 in overall score

DxOMark is the image software company in France that provides us with objective tests for the Image Quality of various camera sensors. The results for Sony’s new RX100 are just in (or out), and I ran a quick comparison with a couple of other compact cameras. The Sony’s sensor beats the Nikon’s on all counts, and the bigger Micro 43rds sensor of the Panasonic GX1 on all but low light performance.

http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Cameras/Compare-Camera-Sensors/Compare-cameras-side-by-side/%28appareil1%29/812|0/%28brand%29/Sony/%28appareil2%29/754|0/%28brand2%29/Panasonic/%28appareil3%29/745|0/%28brand3%29/Nikon

These results may not exactly reflect real-life differences between cameras, but they are a fairly reliable guide to technical Image qualitiy. A good friend has bought one of these RX100s and will lend it to me for a review after he returns from Africa. I look forward to that.

Kim

Woolworths and Coles, Masters of Wine?

They own Dan Murphys, BWS, Wine Market, Langton's, Vintage Cellars, 1^st Choice Liquor and now Cellarmasters - is it too late?

We can only wonder whose side the ACCC is on. It let Westpac take over St George a few years ago, which reduced competition in the banking sector. Last April, the ACCC allowed Woolworths to buy Cellarmaster, which increased the duopoly position of Woolworths and Coles. ‘The big end of town and their well paid advisors,' writes frank Zumbo in The Punch, 'will be quick to welcome the ACCC decision because these people do well out of mergers.’ We mug punters, on the other hand, can go to hell.

image courtesey of Choice

We’ve seen our favourite brands disappear from Woolworths’ and Coles’ shelves in recent years, to be replaced by more and more products under their own labels. The same is happening with wine. Many of those $10 labels you see at Vintage Cellars and Dan Murphys are designer labels stuck on anonymous bulk wines: Crittenden and Co., Baily & Baily, Robinsons, Rau, Pensilva Estate, Parson’s Paddock, James Busby, Penola Estate and many more. It’s not just wines, it’s beers like Maxx Blonde, Dry Dock and Platinum Blonde, and spirits like Mishka vodka and Napoleon 1875 brandy. A very full list of all private labels is here http://whomakesmywine.com.au/thelist.html

Private labels are a growing market, say the big guys, but the truth is more likely found in the attraction of fatter margins. It’s no secret that we have a surplus of some 100 million cases of table wine, and Woolworths and Coles are doing their bit to shift it, no doubt squeezing the life blood out of desperate suppliers in the process. And pushing branded wines off the shelves. We know the story, we’ve seen it with groceries. The difference is that the labels don't mention Woollies or Coles.

Sly grog

They used to sell cleanskins, those $5-7 wines with black &white labels, but now they’re selling similar wines under much flasher labels for much more money because most punters have no idea that they’re buying cleanskins. Overseas, the big supermarkets are promoting their private labels under their own names. They’re using these labels to offer better value and to build loyalty, and to build their own brands.

Tesco in the UK has built a range of private labels with Tesco branding, and is building on that success with a higher quality range. Customers buy these wines because they trust the Tesco brand. That’s not what’s happening down under. Perhaps Woolworths and Coles are worried that the punters don’t trust them. Maybe that’s because their brands are down there in the public opinion stakes with those of the big banks - monopolies pushing out the little guys and screwing customers and suppliers alike.

Vintage Cellars has its modest Chalkboard range, wines that are clearly labelled as selected by the VC people for quality and value. However, the bundled deals they offer involve their private labels, not Chalkboard wines. Kemenys take a slightly different approach and buy currently available branded wines for their extensive Hidden Label range - we’ve uncovered a number of them here http://briard.typepad.com/get_the_picture/2012/08/kemenys-hidden-labels-uncovered.html .

Hollow Logs

Stephen Strachan, CEO of the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia, told Max Allen at The Australian: ‘We have a situation now where our customers [the supermarkets] are also our competitors. We believe that private labels simply take market share from our members’ existing labels, undermine the established brands and make it harder for us to clear the oversupply of wine afflicting the industry.’

Ross Brown of Brown Bros recently told The Age the same thing: that the big retailers’ private labels were crowding out quality Australian wines. He made the point that people thought these labels were brands. ‘I call them hollow logs,’ he said, ‘because they masquerade as brands but in fact they are just a label, which has none of the values traditional family wine companies bring to the market ...’

He also made the point that these private labels showed no innovation or leadership. They simply copied the styles serious winemakers had developed over the years. ‘It’s not going to develop a wine industry that’s very serious in the future,’ Brown said, ‘and will just turn wine into a commodity.’ That about sums it up.

A Big Crush

The big boys aren’t standing still, however: they’re going into the wine making business, no doubt chasing even fatter margins. All they have to do is buy cheap grapes, which is not a problem given the current surplus, and buy a winery. How convenient that Cellarmasters already owned a huge winery: Dorrien Estate, which crushes some 12,000 tonnes every year for Cellarmasters, the New Zealand Wine Society and third-party distributors such as David Jones.

Philip White calls Dorrien Estate, ‘one of the Barossa’s bigger wine refineries,' and says it 'is expanding into Beckwith Park, the old Southcorp winery at Nuriootpa. At Dorrien, Woolworths already crushes about as much as Penfolds do at Nuri; the humungous volume of bulk wine that also passes through these Woolworths joints for finishing after being crushed somewhere else is nobody’s business but their own. Consider it big.’

Cellarmasters also owns Australia’s largest independent bottler, Vinpac International, which brings another 500,000 case warehouse, and an outfit called Nexday Logistics for rapid dispatch. Cellarmasters also brings a telephone list of 330,000 customers. All of this gives Woolworths a huge leg up, and shows beyond doubt that the ACCC is embedded with the big end of town. Bugger the consumer, and choice, and ...

David Farmer talks about Beckwith Park, a facility jettisoned by Fosters a few years ago, as a place that ‘slowly filled up with an array of local businesses renting office space, taking over sheds for wine making and leasing the stainless steel tanks for wine storage.’ Then he adds: ‘Into this happy family scene has wandered the giant Woolworths group ...’

‘These big chains can make life extremely difficult by refusing to stock your product,’ writes Philip White in The Land, ‘or by stocking it, then destroying your market and reputation by discounting it to the point where it’s not only cheaper than you can afford to sell it at your own cellar, but cheap enough to destroy any image of prestige you may have struggled to build over the life of your business.’

Giaconda and Kooyong – coming to a supermarket near you

So why on earth would premium boutique wine makers like Rick Kinzbrunner at Giaconda and Sandro Mosele at Kooyong want to make deals with the devil? Vintage Cellars and 1^st Choice sell GK Chardonnay for about $50, and Kooyong's Ballewindi Chardonnay and Pinot Noir for about $30. Alterum is another label developed for Vintage Cellars by Shaw and Smith – why on earth does Martin Shaw want to make wine for Coles? Or David Bicknell at Oakridge in the Yarra Valley?

Sandro Mosele of Kooyong Estate

I haven’t the faintest idea. Even Philip White concedes that the Chardonnays in question are very good wines, but why not put them under a second label as some of the French estates do when the fruit or the vintage isn’t quite up to grand cru standards? What happens when these guys decide to bottle wine under a second label of their own, will Coles stock these wines? Unlikely. It’ll be like Monty Python and the Holy Grail – ‘he’s already got one ...’

The End?

I wish I could end on a positive note, but the only threat to Woolworths' and Coles’ domination of the wine trade comes from Costco. There’s no joy in that – it’s monsters slain not by knights in shining armour but by yet another monster. Costco sells over a billion dollars’ worth of wine. The market will be split three ways instead of two – what’s the difference? Don’t ask me – I’m going to pour myself a glass of wine.

For those of you who like to know not just what happened but how it happened, here’s the timeline courtesy of Choice http://www.choice.com.au/reviews-and-tests/food-and-health/food-and-drink/supermarkets/supermarket-liquor-sales.aspx:

How Coles and Woolworths cornered the liquor market
1998:	Woolworths has 38 freestanding liquor stores, including five Dan Murphy’s stores it has acquired in Victoria.
1999:	Coles opens the first Quaffers Wine Superstore.
2001:	Woolworths opens its First Estate outlet for fine wines. It acquires 43 Liberty Liquor stores, bringing its total number of stores to 130. It has approximately 15% of the liquor market.
2002:	Coles buys the NSW arm of the Theo’s Liquor chain, adding 49 liquor stores and four hotels to its stable.
2004:	Woolworths acquires ALH Group for $1.3bn, netting 130 pubs and 400 liquor shops.
2005:	Woolworths has 938 liquor outlets, including 192 freestanding ones. Coles begins its push into large-format liquor stores, opening two 1st Choice Liquor Superstores, with 47 new liquor stores opening in total. Coles owns 31 hotels nationally.
2006:	Coles acquires Hedley Group, including 36 hotels and 103 bottle shops. Coles has an estimated 20% of the off-premises market, Woolworths has 23%.
2008- 2009:	Woolworths buys a 25% stake in Gage Roads Brewery, and the Langton’s online wine auction business. Woolworths opens two new liquor distribution centres and 77 new liquor stores.
2011:	Woolworths expands Dan Murphy’s to 140 stores, with plans to have 200 open in the next three to five years. Woolworths buys Cellarmasters, Australia’s largest online wine retailer, for $340m. It is now also the owner of the Dorrien Estate wine production centre. Market share of Woolworths grows from 15% to more than 35%. 70 new private label beers, wines and spirits are introduced onto shelves. Total number of Woolworths liquor stores is 1250; Coles has a total of 785 liquor stores and 93 hotels.

Mistakes with words that make you look silly

Small errors that can trash your credibility

Whatever you tend to write or speak about, and whoever you write for or speak to, one of the fastest ways to lose credibility with your audience is to make silly grammatical errors.

Sure we can argue that what we’re writing or saying is more important than some minor slip in our grammar, but that’s missing the point: these little slips often turn into almighty clangers once the audience has processed them.

Our Prime Minister talked about accomplishing something ‘in one foul swoop’ recently. She might’ve dismissed this as a minor slip after the event, but in the minds of many citizens it would’ve reinforced the long-held suspicion that the PM is out of her depth. There’s an old saying that ‘great leaders are great readers’, and great readers tend to have a firmer grasp of language and grammar than non-readers.

I’m not talking here about intentional errors that make fun of something or draw attention to a problem, or about formality. Good bloggers use a conversational style for a reason, and often they’ll write the way people actually speak but it should be obvious that it’s deliberate. It’s just as obvious that the mistakes we’ve listed below are not deliberate.

They’re a sign of ignorance, and ignorance is a tough handicap to overcome when you’re trying to reach people or teach people or preach to people. These little slips are enough to make people opt out of your email list or unsubscribe from your blog, or turn away and listen to someone else. Let’s look at the most common errors people make:

 

Getting lost among similar words

YOUR - Your car, your time

YOU’RE - You’re off to work, you’re good-looking

 

ITS - It’s a great idea, and its time has come

IT’S - It’s time to start the meeting

 

THEIR - Their meeting had been postponed

THEY’RE  - They’re very disappointed

THERE - There will be another meeting

 

THEN - and then there were three

THAN - three is more than two

 

LOOSE - I have plenty of loose change

LOSE - I don’t want to lose all my change

 

FEWER - after war, there were fewer men

LESS - after the war, people had less money

 

AFFECT - how will that affect me?

EFFECT - what effect will that have on my future?

 

COMPLEMENT - additive

COMPLIMENT - flattering

 

PRINCIPAL - he’s the principal of the firm

PRINCIPLE - he’s built his business on sound principles

 

HISTORIC - an important, momentous occasion

HISTORICAL - an event in the past

 

Random errors

APOSTROPHES

WRONG - CD’s and PC’s, Latte’s and Cappucino’s

CORRECT - CDs, PCs, Lattes and Cappucinos              

One simple rule: Don’t use apostrophes to form plurals

 

APOSTROPHES, possessive

This is a more complex subject. Let’s look at some examples

The boy’s soccer game belongs to one boy

The boys’ soccer game belongs to many boys

The people’s choice (because the people is a singular group name)

The children’s playground (same)

 

NAMES ENDING IN ‘s’ are a problem and follow convention

The boss’s temper, but

Alan Jones’ radio program

 

COMPOUND NAMES AND JOINT POSSESSION can also be tricky

Her father-in-law’s house

Susie and Greg’s wedding

 

PLURAL PROBLEMS

WRONG - The London Philharmonic were playing to a full house

CORRECT - The London Philharmonic was playing to a full house

WRONG - The Labor Party were polling worse than ever

CORRECT - The Labor Party was polling worse than ever

(parties, orchestras, bands, associations and other groups are single entities)

 

THE DANGLING PARTICIPLE

A dangling participle modifies the wrong noun, for example:

‘Being in a dilapidated condition, I was able to buy the house very cheaply’

The next sentence is correct, ‘Having been to Bali a few years ago, I knew what to expect’

Good writers avoid starting a sentence with a dangling participle altogether. It’s better to say: ‘I’d been to Bali a few years ago so I knew what to expect.’

TWO MORE LITTLE THINGS:

i.e. stands for ‘id est’ – that is to say ... in other words

e.g. stands for ‘exempli gratia’ – for example ...

 

Down Under Specials

CONDITIONAL BLUNDERS

In Australia, we hear this often:

‘If I had have known what I know now, I’d be a millionaire’

‘If I had’ve gone there, I wouldn’t be here today’

(The US equivalent is ‘had of’)

Correct in both cases is: ‘if I had known ... or if I’d known’

Another thing that gives us real problems down under is the word ‘Drawing’, which most people pronounce ‘Drawring’. For a long time, I wondered where that extra R had come from until I heard someone talk about next Febuary. So that’s where the R was lost.

Kim