In The Picture

Gallipoli – without words

The Gallipoli art prize – a silent affair

This weekend a year ago, there was a tiny notice in the SMH about the Gallipoli Art Prize and an exhibition of the entrants at the Gallipoli Club in Loftus St near Circular Quay. We went to see the paintings, and there’s not much I to add. We were the only visitors there last Sunday, which is strange. Please click on the images to see a larger file.

BEN HOLGATE Everyman

AEK PHAKITI
The Reflective Soldier

AEK PHAKITI - The Reflective Soldier

DAVID J CURNO - Am island, am sea, am father, farm, and friend

Peter Gardiner - They Wore Feathers (Uncle Jim)

Judy Uehlein Nelson - The Ephemeral poppy

Here's a larger selection (23) of the works entered for the prize in the Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/nsw/2012-gallipoli-art-prize-20120423-1xgvp.html

And here's where you can see the originals - The Gallipoli Memorial Club in Loftus Street down by Circular Quay in Sydney http://www.gallipoli.com.au/index.html

Kim

 

Britain’s great German Monarchy

And now for something completely different - did you know that Huns occupied the British throne for 2 centuries?

Central Europe was officially known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (German: Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation, Latin: Imperium Romanum Sacrum Nationis Germanicæ) by 1450.

After Queen Anne’s death, at the age of 54, George I ascended the British throne as the first monarch of the House of Hanover. Over fifty Catholics bore closer blood relationships to Queen Anne, but the Act of Settlement 1701 prohibited Catholics from inheriting the throne, and George was Anne's closest living Protestant relative.

George was and remained unpopular in England throughout his life, partly because of his inability to speak English. His son George II succeeded to the throne on his father's death on 11 June 1727. His wife was another German: the Margravine Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach. George II died in 1760 and was succeeded by his son George III.

George III was King of great Britain and King of Ireland from 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he became King of the United Kingdom of Britaion and Ireland until his death.

He was concurrently Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and prince-elector of Hanover in the Holy Roman Empire until his promotion to King of Hanover on 12 October 1814. He was the third British monarch of the House of Hanover but he was born in Britain and spoke English as his first language.

You think this was the end of the Germans in Britain? No way! George was succeeded by two of his sons George IV and William IV, who both died without surviving legitimate children, leaving the throne to their niece, Victoria, the last monarch of the House of Hanover. That wasn’t the end of the Germans either because her son King Edward VII belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha.

Victoria was German, of course - the daughter of Prince Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent and Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and the grandaughter of George III. Queen Charlotte of Wurtemberg was her aunt, and her maternal grandmother was Duchess Augusta of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.

The young Princess Victoria, as the only legitimate child of the fourth son of George III, became heiress presumptive after the death of George V in 1830. In 1837, William IV died from heart failure at the age of 71 and Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom at the tender age of 18.

 

And whom did Victoria marry three years later? Her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, another German. He was loved by the British but died at a very young age (42). Victoria and Albert’s story is well-known, but the reason the Irish didn’t like her is not: During the potato famine, Victoria donated 2000 Pounds to help Ireland. The Ruler of the Ottoman Empire offered 10,000 pounds, and Victoria asked him to reduce his offer to 1,000 so as not to embarrass her.

Another little-known fact is that Victoria and Albert’s first language was not English (German). In fact, English wasn’t even their second language (French) Victoria had a long reign as we know and died in 1901 at the age of 81. By her side was the first of her grandchildren: Wilhelm II, the German Kaiser during the first World War.

As her husband Albert had belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Victoria’s son and heir Edward VII became the first 'British Monarch’ of this new house. In 1910, George V became King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperoro of India until his death in 1936. He was the first British ruler of the House of Windsor, so you might think the Germans were finished at last.

But you’d be wrong. George V had created the House of Windsor from the British branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. You see, anti-German sentiment reached a peak in Britain in March 1917, when the Gotha G.IV, a German aircraft capable of crossing the Channel bombed London.

Gotha G.IV became a household name and King George V and his family were forced to abandon all titles held under the German Crown, and change German titles and house names to anglicized versions. They adopted the name Windsor by a royal proclamation in 1917. At the same time, Prince Louis of Battenberg adopted the surname Mountbatten.

Upon hearing that his cousin had changed the name of the British royal house to Windsor, German Emperor Wilhelm II joked that he planned to see Shakespear's play The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The two cousins had been previously photographed riding horses together in 1910 at the funeral of George's father, Edward VII, and again at Potsdam palace circa 1913. This is why the first World War has at times been called a family feud, albeit an incredibly bloody one for the millions of innocent people who perished.

We’ll skip the two Edwards and go straight to Queen Elizabeth II who was the daughter of King George VI, the son of King George V who created the House of Windsor from its German origins. And what does she do? She marries another German: Lieutenant Philip Mountbatton.

German, you say? Wasn’t he known as Phil the Greek? Yes, he was, but he was the son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg. His mother’s origins are clearly German, and Philip’s father hails from the old-familiar House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg. Not exactly Greek.

So Philip was a royal Prince of Greece and Denmark, and also a member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderberg-Glucksburg. The standard practice for a prince was to adopt his family’s household name but Phillip did not do that and renounced these titles before his marriage to Elizabeth. He also adopted the surname of his maternal grandparents to become known as Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten.

There you go!

My thanks to Wikipedia for most of the information and images in this story

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_George

Len Evans, Anders Ousback & Les Années de Pèlerinage

Stories from the Bulletin Place front line, with apologies to Franz Liszt

My brief review of Len Evans’ memoirs provoked some fascinating contributions from those who were there in the wild old days of Bulletin Place with Len and Anders Ousback and John Parkinson and Anne Tyrell. These anecdotes and contributions came in by email rather than as comments on the blog post, so I’ve listed them here in ascending date order. They add colour and dimension in a way that I could not.

Kim 

Hello Kim,

I appreciate your discourse on Len Evans. It opened many memories of obsessive passions given to wine around Len. I loved this era and the times I spent with him, in particular with the younger members of his staff from the beginning of the 70s, a number of whom became life long friends. I also made similarly close friends amongst other moths drawn to the bright Evans flame.

I first met Paul Ferman at Lens ‘Bulletin wine club’ premises on Parramatta Rd, Leichhardt, in 1971. Also Nick Bullied. This Est. was being run by John Parkinson and offered a tasting room full of now mythical Oz wines. Len created this wine club through the Bulletin magazine column he was writing in and was prompted to do so by its editor (?) who loved long lunches and much wine. It was a big cash-cow contributor to Bulletin Place. 

One Saturday afternoon in May 1971, during a drop-in visit, John opened Penfolds 1962 Bin 60a and Woodleys ‘56 "skeleton". (When I ordered 2 of the 60a, John dialled a number and pretty soon a blue Lancia sports car pulled up and out popped Anne Tyrrell with bottles in hand. We drank another of the 60a and went out to dinner.

Slippery devils, I don't know what happened to the second bottle but I didn't go home with it!!  Anne was managing Lens Bulletin Place rooms. John managed the club for many years, assisted by Hellen Guy (married to Colin ). Anne (now Anne Ellis, Hanging Rock ), John and Paul became my life-long, close friends. 

Anders Ousbach was another, rather gifted member of Lens team. I got to know Anders well, but he too was a very complex, flawed, intriguing character that gave Len oxygen, adding to Lens mystique.  Anders opened many Great wines for me, and I remember one lunch at his Hunters Hill home (actually, he was living with David Ell, who had exquisite taste in esthetiques) with myself and Tony Bilson, where Anders opened a 1911 Haut Brion, which was incredibly youthful.

Anders broke many a bottle. He was showing a Bulletin Place patron how he dropped an incredibly rare and expensive German wine (1959 Erbacher Marcobrunner Beerenauchlese ..... I really can remember most wines I've had over 40 years of drinking... It's amazing, but I can) by juggling it, and dropping it, so, true to Anders style, he started juggling, and dropped the second bottle. Len was soooo pissed-off. 

Len, I believe , loved the trio of Anne, John and Anders. He thought highly of Ferman and shaped his palate. I met Peter Snowball in the early years of the 70s, introduced by Anne at one of Lens wine tutorials. I instantly liked Peter and observed he had an "Englishman's palate" with a love of German whites and "Claret".

Len ran many great tutorials in the 70s. We hear of the " Len Evans Tutorials " of the modern era post Len, but in the 70s they were truly amazing. I remember seeing O'shea wines from the 40s. The number of DRCs we could easily then buy and frequently drank via Evans Est. would today seem a lie to the Parker generation. Len  was above all very generous. Incredibly so. He opened many , many Great wines for Ferman and me over various occasions and I saw the private man that people mystify about.  

I owe him!!  I won't argue with the Philip White assessment. I too have thought those things about Len. He had big faults, but he had a big, generous heart for those he liked. Loyalty was sacrosanct to him. And, as I have just said, I owe him.  

Thanks Kim. Your jottings on this last of Evans is truly a sketch of a very real, human character we were luck enough to have had. Love him or criticise him, I certainly loved this era.                      

Very best Regards.  

Jeffrey Daley. 

17/11

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Thank you Jeffrey for your detailed reminiscences, and how well they resonate with me, although I arrived on the Sydney scene somewhat later and never even knew of the Leichhardt establishment you describe.

Kim, I hear what you say, and it is fair and reasonable, but the fact is, Evans was a great ball of FUN. That is why rich businessmen lent or gave him their money... they did it because they loved to be around this great character, and he put fun back into their lives.

I have never heard anyone complain about the money they invested or lost in Evans's various ventures. That says a lot.

And as you say, Jeffrey, he was an enormously generous person. Often with other people's money, and/or wine, but generous nevertheless! One of the many mysteries is that Len was great at talking about wine, at educating people verbally, but he wasn't actually much good at writing; certainly not at communicating as much in writing as he did in spoken word. 

I have just re-read the little book "How To Taste Wine", which was the first of the two books the family published posthumously. They arguably shouldn't have bothered. It is a thin, poor effort. I was shocked at how poorly written it is, how little thought seems to have gone into it, and the slapdash feel it has. I found myself asking repeatedly: "How come the man who many, including the wonderful Hugh Johnson, described as the greatest palate they had known, had so little wisdom to impart in a book with such a grand title?" How many little pearls of wisdom or insight are contained within its covers? Hardly any.

Disappointed, but my curiosity stirred, I then picked up Michael Broadbent's tiny Mitchell Beazley pocket book "Winetasting", and what a contrast! This is beautifully written, thoughtful, detailed, practical, and full of the kind of insight you might expect of a man who has been at the top of his game for so many years and drunk more great wine than we could ever imagine. 

Kim was disappointed in the second book: "Not My Memoirs". I found it a lot of fun, a very enjoyable read. Yes, it's a bit superficial, but that's OK, it is not pretending to be profound. There is room for that kind of book, full of witty anecdotes. 

Best wishes to all,

Huon Hooke, 17/11

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Hello Kim.

‘A confession! I was filling in time last night past midnight, the Rugby game @ 1.15am my goal .....when I had finished my jottings, satisfied , I closed the pad down and went off to bed forgetting completely about the game minutes away. Was it the Chambertin Clos St Jacques?  I dreamt about my Bacchanalian adventures, the bucksome wenches...the wild dancing.... er....well, no, I always drank too much and was no threat to anyone except myself. Ahh!

Yes, an Evans story ...! One tutorial, he was wound up following the description of the Le Chambertin we had just looked ( tasted ) at  and described the scene of a Napoleonic officer doing what I dreamt and, finally hauling the drunken wench over his shoulder,a bottle of Chambertin in the other hand, he climbed the stairs to finish off the night. In the morning he couldn't remember the wenches name, but could remember the wine was "Chambertin!!!" . I can't help feeling my life is incomplete …       

Very best Regards
Jeffrey Daley 

18/11/2012

Bulletin Place today, looking rather lifeless without Len and friends

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Hi Kim, Jeffrey, Huon, Chris and all,

I have thoroughly enjoyed Kim's critiques and the comments and reminisces from you all. I only knew Len Evans briefly but his ebullient and generous character were self evident. What Len Evans did know and has Been a wonderful and very enjoyable part of my life has been the unifying influence of the love of wine.It has meant knowing  and loving many great people including you bunch. That is one of the great legacies of Len Evans.

Warmest Regards

John Levi, 18/11

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In the book, Len makes mention of Anders Ousback more than any other individual so one can conclude that Len learned plenty from Anders, as well as the other way around.

This is a small Anders story – I was working at the Wine and Spirit Buying Guide as Advertising and Sales Manager when John Parkinson was the Editor and Colin’s wife Helen his assistant. At one of the regular monthly wine tastings, all conducted formally, white coats and masked bottles etc., Anders, who was one of the tasters, declared that a blend of three particular wines would be better than each individual one. The date was 3^rd April 1978 and he picked up an empty Redman magnum and wrote on the back label  as follows

2/5 Birks Shiraz 1976

2/5 Bowen Estate c/s 1976

1/5 Leconfield Coon. Cab sauv

He jammed in a cork gave me the bottle and told me to drink it in twenty years. I did not follow instructions and opened it in 1996 and it was superb. That man had real natural talent in many areas – just look at his obituaries.

I still have the empty bottle – do not ask why!

Peter Snowball, 18/11

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Hello Kim. Hello young Peter. 

Ah, yes , Anders Ousback.  Now he really was an intriguing fellow. He was admired greatly, beyond this countries embryonic food & wine scene, by the likes of Michael Broadbent and Hugh Johnson. They thought his palate was exceptional and his knowledge of great French wine quite unusual. He moved to England in the late 70s/early 80s, although he had confounded Broadbent in Australia on prior occasions ... picking at blind tastings what Broadbent thought was impossibly difficult French wines. He even gave some lectures at the ' Masters of Wine ' program in London, but I don't know how this came to pass. 

Anders had an intuitive feeling for wine. He 'understood' it, if that's possible to claim. And blending opened bottle left-overs at the end of an evenings tasting at Evans Est. was his skilful play thing. Peter Snowball remembers well this game of his and the longevity of his blended concoctions would surprise even the most seasoned wine maker. Even Broadbent fell for one....  .. ‘You rotter !!!’ ( Terry Thomas style ).

Blending:

At lunch one day in the late 70s , Anders plonked down on the table a masked bottle and asked me ' local or imported ?' Hmmm?  Welllll, ‘LOCAL’, I whimsically cried.  He paused, then as if he were addressing an audience, then he declared  'all those who said BOTH are correct.’ The bugger had blended classed Bordeaux slops with Coonawarra slops. Actually, it was very good as I recall.   

Then, he plonked down another masked bottle...' Local or imported ?' Oh, alright , I'm up to your little game, I cunningly thought.... ‘IMPORTED AND LOCAL’ ....just try and trick this little rooster again, will you. ‘All those who said imported ONLY, are correct .... it's 1928 Montrose!' ‘Ohh, double bugger!!!???’ He too, like Evans, was incredibly generous with wine friends. 

Catering:

Anders moved back to Australia in the early 80s and tried his hand at catering, anywhere!. But he remained incredibly clumsy . He was an accident in waiting. Murray Tyrrell was throwing a grand lunch at his Pokolbin home and called Anders in on advice from possibly Paul Ferman??

So I meet Anders in the kitchen. He looks thrown, somewhat not his confident self. He explains .... ‘I was turning into the gate of the homestead, off the Broke road, when we became somewhat "airborne"...'.  Airborne!!!???  He was taking the turn and entrench a little too fast, cleared some space between the tyres and surface as the drive quickly descends , and landed, fish-tailing and skidding sideways for 20 feet. Ooops!!! Lunch nearly gone ... and nearly an angelic Anders, probably. Murray had no idea.  

While we are talking of the near death experience, Murray, who was impeccably empathic as ever, popped his head into the kitchen and gruffed ‘when are you poofters going to serve lunch?’  

At the end of the day , Anders and his team quietly packed up and slipped away.  

You want some more tales about Evans??..... Well that's for another day. 

I think some Murray Tyrrell stories are more fun!!??  He did the Chicken dance at my wedding.   

Very best Regards to all. 
Jeffrey Daley 20/11

Anders and the chef at The Clock Hotel circa 1999

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Peter and Jeffrey,

I decided to crawl the web to find out more about the late Anders Ousback. Here’s some of what I found:

‘Before becoming a major style maker of Sydney cafes, Anders ran a catering business. This came about after he was asked to review a book about New York caterers called Glorious Food, which convinced him this was what he had to do. He had no funds and the deposit he asked of his first clients was not because he didn't trust them, but to fund the purchase of the food. The party was a success. As with everything else that he has applied himself to Anders became a great caterer.’

This piece, which has no other attribution than miettas, is much more generous to Anders:

‘Is it possible to ever catch Anders Ousbach (sic) off guard? He has perfect timing and always seems to know when to appear and what to say. I remember him as sommelier at Hermann Schneider's Two Faces, then with Gay and Tony Bilson at Berowra Waters Inn, but his experience and influence in both front and back of house in the restaurant and catering industry is hugely more extensive than that.’

‘Talking to him at Sydney's revolving restaurant, The Summit, the renovation which he realised in 1999, he was ready for the inevitable questions about his past and his answers are exquisitely to the point - "What goes around comes around. It is funny when you stand back from things and you look at starting points and you realise that every time you think that was the starting point it actually goes back to something slightly more cataclysmic. I worked here 25 years ago as a trainee manager, so I walk around and my past comes before me." ‘

More photos from the Clock http://miettas.com/photopage/one?id=75_all

http://miettas.com/Photographs/Chefs_O/Clock_Ousback_anders/Anders_Ousback_The_Clock_1999

http://notjustcake.blogspot.com.au/2011/10/anders-ousbacks-grilled-pepper-relish.html

[Anders Ousback took his life in 2004, and I’ve included these two obituaries]:

Lonely death of restaurateur with perfect taste, by David Dale and Valerie Lawson, May 31, 2004 http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/30/1085855437766.html

A man born with good taste, John Newton, SMH, June 3, 2004

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/02/1086058912666.html

This is a really good piece - anyone know John Newton?

Kim, November 20, 2012

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Kim,

John Newton lives in Glebe and is one of the Australian food writers I most admire. He has written on food for Good Living on and off and has penned some books, including the annual SMH Foodies Guide to Sydney. Also the memorably titled Wog Food - about olive oil, garlic, etc. 

Re Anders, a very special person. There are some people who seem so rare and gifted that they make you want to believe in the Buddhist idea that we have all lived before. Their intuitive abilities, talents and superior insights make sense if you can believe that they possess the accumulated wisdom of past lives. Many of the anecdotes about Anders, including some of these, give a sense of his evanescence.  

Some of us of course were mere plodders in our past lives!

HH 20/11

---------------------------------

Thanks for those insights, Huon.

John Newton’s obituary got so much closer to Anders Ousback than that from David Dale and Valerie Lawson. At least that was my impression. Clearly a most inspiring character, and someone I really wish I’d met and got to know a little. Some of us are plodders in our current lives, Huon, but I’m working hard to run faster.

Kim 20/11

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Australia farewells wine pioneer Ray Beckwith

The scientist behind Max Schubert is out after a century

Although history will remember Max Schubert as the creator of Penfolds Grange, he couldn't have done it without Ray Beckwith’s groundbreaking science and flair. Beckwith won the prestigious Maurice O’Shea Award in 2005, was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Adelaide, and in 2008 the Order of Australia 'for service to the Australian wine industry through contributions towards enhancing the quality and efficiency of the winemaking process.'

It's just as well Ray Beckwith lived to 100. For most of his life, he was the unsung hero in the Penfolds saga. In a recent interview, he said: 'All these things have come only after the last few years. It’s a good thing I didn’t conk out earlier, otherwise I wouldn’t have known!'

Ray Beckwith left, Alfred Scholz centre and Max Schubert right - in the sixties, enjoying a spot of Grandfather Port - photo courtesy of Philip White / http://drinkster.blogspot.com/

The following is an extract from Penfolds - The Rewards of Patience, 6th Edition (2008), by Andrew Caillard MW, Allen & Unwin.

Dr Ray Beckwith is one of the unsung pioneers of the modern Australian wine industry. His contribution to quality control and wine stability is of major significance. His influence was far reaching, yet his name is barely known. In 1932, he returned to Roseworthy Agricultural College with a cadetship in oenology – a paid position – after having graduated earlier in the year with an Honours Diploma in agriculture.

His interest in the performance and efficiency of winemaking yeasts lead to an important association with Alan Hickinbotham - a pivotal figure in Australian wine science and whose work in pH and malo-lactic fermentation would have profound generational effect on winemaking philosophy. The project involved the identification and analysis of a high performance yeast of Portuguese origin – a yeast later designated A1 – and used commercially by Penfolds in the production of millions of litres of fortified wines.

After a brief stint with Thomas Hardy working with Colin Haselgrove and Roger Warren, he was poached by Leslie Penfold Hyland – who read about Ray Beckwith’s findings and the potential economic benefits of pure yeast culture in an Australian Brewing and Wine Journal.

'As Mr Hyland had asked for a decision and a convenient date to start work at Nuriootpa, I wrote and suggested December 13th 1934. He replied and sent a cheque for £4-10-0 for one week’s holiday pay with the instruction to start at Nuriootpa on 2nd January 1935.' Ray Beckwith

Beckwith joined Penfolds at Nuriootpa in January 1935 where he was immediately impressed by 'the row upon row of stacks of American oak hogsheads (300Litres), filled almost exclusively with port' – the drink of preference of the time. Submerged cap fermentation – still a classical method of vinification – was used extensively throughout Penfolds cellars – even prior to the production of Grange.

In later years – the drainings the last free run but thick unctuous highly concentrated runnel of new wine from the cap of skins and pips - would be sent down to Max Schubert at Magill to beef up some of the premium and special bin reds. Beckwith observed, however, that 'the heat of fermentation was a major problem because too much heat resulted in the loss of quality and the prospect of bacterial spoilage.'

Crude copper heat exchangers – using bore water - were brought in around this time (Later, these would be replaced by stainless steel). Presses, must pumps and crushers were all driven by a shaft with pulley and belt drive – all powered by 60HP electric motors – which had only recently replaced a powerful steam engine – still mounted on the front deck opposite the boiler house.

In 1935 Penfolds did not own any vineyards in the Barossa - all the grapes were purchased from independent growers – many who still used 'German wagons and horses to deliver their crop. Indeed the only company vehicle at Nuriootpa was a 'heavy masher dray pulled by a Clydesdale horse.' Wine – in hogsheads - left the winery by rail.

Beckwith immediately set about building a new laboratory and a yeast propogation tank – made from an old gin still. Observation and innovation saw new ways of making wine at Penfolds. He introduced a highly analytical and practical winemaking regime – many practices now standard in the modern Australian wine industry.

Bacterial spoilage of wine, however, was a major problem in the early 1930s. Initially Ray Beckwith’s role was to find ways to treat the wine through fining agents, ozone injection, pasteurization and re-fermentation with fresh juice. The quest for stability lead Ray Beckwith down cul-de-sacs and new pathways. As one problem was solved, new problems arose. Out of frustration he introduced a philosophy of preventative winemaking which was to become a key to Penfolds reputation.

Ray Beckwith’s interest in wine acidity lead to the important and far reaching conclusion – in 1936 - that 'pH may be a useful tool in the control of bacterial growth.' Beckwith knew of John Fornachon’s work with the disastrous sweet wine disease, identified as being caused by lacto bacillus – and damaging Australia’s reputation in its key United Kingdom market.

On reading Fornachon’s report, Ray Beckwith understood the influence of pH. He persuaded Leslie Penfold Hyland that Penfolds needed a pH meter with the Morton glass electrode – a highly expensive piece of equipment. He then experimented and applied new winemaking standards using the addition of tartaric acid – a natural constituent of wine – to lower pH. Ray Beckwith once said 'maybe its overstating the case but bacterial spoilage could go through a winery like a bushfire. But with proper control, a winemaker could sleep easy at night.'

Certainly this discovery was critically important in the development of all Penfolds dry red wines – and notably Grange. Beckwith also noticed that on adjusting pH to his new standard, the 'colour brightened and with it a sheen.' Interestingly many believe that Ray Beckwith’s discovery – the application of pH to the control of bacteria in wine – was the first in the world.

The Penfolds team in the lab in the fifties. 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 - photo and info courtesy of Drinkster

Ian Hickinbotham – veteran winemaker, winewriter and ex-Penfolds manager – writes in his autobiography Australian Plonky 'Beckwith applied his unique knowledge to the making and husbandry of all wine types – with remarkable cost savings – when employed by Penfolds for the rest of his working life. In a nutshell, he saved the 25% wine component that previously had to be destroyed by distillation due to bacterial spoilage. From that time, around 1940, Australia became a world leader in the making of table wine.'

'After World War II, the engineers and metallurgists made a contribution (to fine wine production) with the provision of new and improved equipment such as refrigeration and heat exchangers, hermetic centrifuges, filters and sterile filtration equipment, pumps and bottling equipment and so on - all in stainless steel, thereby eliminating the earlier problem of metal contamination from brass and copper construction. Stainless steel tanks gradually came into common use, especially as the cost came down to practical levels. Insulation of these tanks against extreme temperatures improved their value.' Ray Beckwith

Vigilance, care and attention to detail were important to Beckwith. He developed systems which are now standard throughout the industry. This went beyond the laboratory to practical winemaking solutions at every quality level. The list of innovations and inventions is extraordinary. He designed and improvised new plant and equipment, introduced new technology and quality control procedures. He was arguably the first person to introduce paper-chromatography as a test for completion of malo-lactic fermentation.

He designed quality standards in a time before consistency and standardization became an industry norm. His early work with the mass production of flor sherry and solving the issues of contamination were critical to the success of Penfolds during the 1940s and 1950s. Indeed his work was so important that management told him he could go to the local horse races, but was not to talk to any other wine people on technical subjects.

Ray Beckwith was the quintessential winemaker’s 'boffin’ – a brilliant chemist and scientist. Clearly Max Schubert relied greatly on Beckwith’s intuition and quiet determination. History will remember Max Schubert as the creator of Grange. Without his contribution the fame of Penfolds Grange may not have eventuated. Now approaching his century, Arthur Ray Beckwith’s work has finally been recognized by the wine industry and the wider community.
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More information here, including Ray's own 100th birthday speech and Who really employed Max Schubert:

http://drinkster.blogspot.com/2012/11/dr-ray-beckwith-oam-dies-at-100.html

 

The Mayonnaise jar - A life lesson that'll make you smile

Once in a while, a story comes your way that you just have to share

A professor stood before his philosophy class, with some unusual items in front of him on the desk. When the class began, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly and the pebbles rolled into the small gaps between the golf balls. He asked the students again if the jar was full, and they agreed that it was.

Now the professor picked up a small box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up all the remaining gaps between the golfballs and the pebbles. Once again he asked the students if the jar was full, and the response was a unanimous ‘yes.’

Now the professor produced two glasses of white wine from under the table and poured their contents into the jar, filling the remaining air pockets in the sand.

The students laughed.

When the laughter subsided, the professor said: ‘Now imagine that this jar represents your life:

The golf balls are the important things – family, children, friends, favourite passions and your health. These are the things that, if everything else were lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like, your job, house, and car.

The sand is everything else — the small stuff.’

The professor continued: 'The moral of my story is this: it’s important to get these things in your life in the right order. Here’s why:

If you put the sand into the jar first, there won’t be any room left for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you’ll never have room for the things that are important to you.

So take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. The rest is just sand.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness:

• Play With your children
• Take your partner out to dinner
• Talk to your friends.

There will always be time to clean the house and fix the garage door.’

One of the students raised her hand and asked what the wine represented.

The professor smiled and said, ‘I’m glad you asked: The wine just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room to share a glass or two with a friend.’

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

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

 

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

London Olympics - will the drug cheats win again?

What are the chances of a drug-free London Olympics?

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) is finally going to charge Lance Armstrong with using performance enhancing drugs. For several years now, various ex-teammates of Armstrong have been telling the media what was going on. Tyler Hamilton told 60 Minutes recently that riding in Armstrong’s team was ‘a life filled with secret code words, clandestine phone lines and furtive conversations.’ He said, ‘Riders led double lives that revolved around performance-enhancing drug use, while publicly insisting that the team was clean.’

Hamilton talked about white lunch bags filled with the blood-booster EPO, human growth hormone and testosterone being handed out by team doctors ‘as if those bags contained sandwiches and juice boxes. The riders were also given little red pills that contained a testosterone oil they squirted beneath their tongues for a performance boost.’ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/sports/cycling/tyler-hamilton-lance-armstrongs-teammate-describes-doping-system.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Drug Testing? What drug testing?

It wasn’t just Armstrong or Floyd Landis or Alberto Contador – in 2006 and 2007, entire teams were sent home for taking PEDs. The list of Tour de France riders caught doping is a long one, but I suspect the list of those who weren’t caught is much longer. What does it say about the effectiveness of drug testing, when a team like Armstrong’s can use all kinds of drugs year after year and pass every drug test? Armstrong says he passed 500 of them, and never tested positive.

Landis told the NY Times that the US Postal team's former doctor, Garcia del Moral ‘worked out of an office in the back of the team's bus, where he administered drugs and blood transfusions to the cyclists behind closed doors.’ Landis also said he used to go to del Moral's office in Valencia to have blood drawn and this blood would then be transfused back into him appear at the Tour de France. Meanwhile, Italian investigators say they’ve uncovered an almost half million dollar payment to another team doctor who has been sanctioned for doping – Michele Ferrari  http://www.businessinsider.com/four-lance-armstrong-teammates-support-doping-allegations-against-team-doctor-2012-6

Not just Cycling

Garcia del Moral works with many other athletes in other sports such as tennis. How widespread is doping in tennis? This game has become very physical in recent years. And what about the London Olympics? Will these games be clean or have the cheats just become smarter? In the run-up to these games, the BBC ran a documentary on Olympic history called Faster, Higher, Stronger http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00v9bs4 .

In a review of that program, The Guardian’s John Grace said: ‘It should be impossible to make a documentary about the blue riband of the sprints without mentioning the use of illegal drugs, but this film just about managed it. Anyone with little knowledge of sport would have come away thinking that Ben Johnson was a lone rogue athlete ... ‘

As it happens, SBS ran a program last week titled ‘The Dirty Games’, which probed into the 1988 Olympics at Seoul and revealed that 6 out of the 8 runners in the 100 meter men’s final had used drugs. When you look at the muscle mass and their striations here, it’s pretty obvious.

Modern era sprinters have come to look like body builders, and that’s a worry. Here are some recent champs who’ve never tested positive: Maurice Green from the USA, Ato Boldon from Trinidad & Tobago, and Asafa Powell from Jamaica.

They sure look more like bodybuilders than sprinters, don't they? Have a look at Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics, where he ran a still almost competitive 10.2 seconds. British sprinter Adam Gemili next to him is only 18 but has run a 10.05 and won a gold medal at the World Junior titles in Barcelona just now. Surely he’s too young to be doping, and he looks refreshingly normal.

 Seoul 1988 - the dirty games

Anabolic steroid use tends to be easier to spot in female athletes. Flo-Jo famously set records at the 1988 Seoul Olympics that have not been equalled since. 12 months earlier, sports writers recalled, she hadn’t been running anywhere near as fast. Others reported that her muscles grew bigger and her voice deepened. The after and before photos here are pretty dramatic yet she never tested positive. She died at 38 from a seizure.

Note the complete lack of muscle definition in Flo-Jo’s legs in the early shot, and the enormous, ripped leg muscles in 1988.

The Seoul Olympics became known as ‘the dirty games’, but the LA games four years earlier may well have been worse. There were lots of positive drug tests, but they simply disappeared (they were lost in transit). In the run-up to the LA games, at least 34 U.S. track and field athletes had tested positive or had possible positive tests during six weeks of testing by the U.S. Olympic Committee in 1984, according to the Orange County Register. The USOC simply covered it all up http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/2009-08-03-1984-testing_N.htm.

It is now well known that the US cycling team used systematic blood transfusions – either reinfusing their own blood (‘autologous’ transfusion) or the blood of relatives/friends – to improve their performance at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. By the 1990s, EPO injections had become a more effective and convenient means to blood dope than transfusions. http://siab.org.au/what-is-blood-passport/passport-explanation.php

Sydney 2000 - systemic doping

The 2000 Olympics saw another female athlete win a string of gold medals (three gold and two bronze): Marion Jones. Here was one of the most frequently tested athletes in her sport yet she never tested positive. She only admitted to using drugs after her husband C.J. Hunter revealed all at the infamous Balco trial, and she was charged with perjury.

The picture tells the story once more. Victor Conte was the brains behind the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), which produced and supplied designer steroids to many top sports stars in athletics and baseball. Conte has served time in jail, and seems to have gone through a reformation of sorts. Last year in an interview with La Gazetta dello Sport, he said all eight 100 metre finalists at the Sydney Olympics were drug cheats – including Maurice Greene, Ato Boldon and Obadele Thompson.

Little change after the BALCO affair

Conte told the magazine: ‘I believe that, before the Balco affair, 80 per cent of athletes were using steroids, today that figure stands at about 65 percent. Conte also said he believed the enormous success of Jamaica’s athletes was suspect. He said: ‘It is very obvious that Bolt, Powell, Gay, Cheryl-Ann Fraser and many others are doping. Cheryl-Ann dropped her time by half a second in 2008. The ONLY way that is possible for a world class sprinter is to use PEDs.’

He said he’d heard they were given testosterone, EPO and other drugs, and that the Jamaicans were applying the same protocol that Conte had created at Balco at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. http://thehypelifemag.com/2011/10/22/american-doping-expert-victor-conte-claims-usain-bolt-other-jamaican-athletes-cheated-during-2008-olympics/

At the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, Usain Bolt ran the fastest ever 100 meter sprint in a time of 9.58 seconds to win the gold, taking over a tenth of a second off the previous best mark - the largest ever margin of improvement in the 100 meter world record. He also won the 200 meter sprint with a time of 19.19, and won by the biggest margin in World Championships history.

Whenever a sprinter wins by a huge margin against a world-class field, as did Flo-Jo and Marion Jones, there's a problem. After all, the other guys in the race are in the top ten sprinters in the world, and their times should be extremely close over these short distances. It's even more suspect when it happens all of a sudden, as it did with Bolt at the Beijing Olympics where he broke 4 world records and simply ran away from the rest.

There is another problem: 'To assume Usain Bolt is running clean,' as J.B.Cash points out, 'one must put forth the idea that not only is he able to run faster than everybody out there now, he is able to run faster than anybody who ever “cheated” by using PEDs.' http://www.castefootball.us/archives/better-running-through-chemistry/

Cash is talking about the eight 100m finalists in Sydney, among others. That Bolt can run much faster than they did without the help of drugs is hard to believe. Cash points out in passing that Glen Mills, the head coach of the Jamaican Olympics athletics team and Usain Bolt’s trainer, has also trained Kim Collins, Dwain Chambers and Ray Stewart. All three of them have been found guilty or strongly implicated in the use of PEDs. http://www.castefootball.us/archives/better-running-through-chemistry/

Steve Mullings is another Jamaican sprinter who tested positive for the drug Furosemide, a masking agent, in August last year. The Jamaican Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel handed him a lifetime ban from athletics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mullings.

Where is WADA?

Of course, it’s not just the Jamaicans. US sprinter Justin Gatlin, who won gold at Athens 2004, and set a World Record at Helsinki 2005, received a 4 year ban after testing positive. Disgraced former world record holder Tim Montgomery recently said he took testosterone and human growth hormone before the Sydney Olympics, and does not deserve the gold medal he won in the 400-meter relay. Montgomery never tested positive for drugs.

In August 2008, the International Olympic Committee disqualified Antonio Pettigrew and his gold-medal-winning 4x400-meter-relay teammates in the 2000 Sydney Olympics because he admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs. Pettigrew had never failed a drug test. But he testified in May 2008 under subpoena at the federal trial of his former coach Trevor Graham that he’d used performance-enhancing drugs at the Sydney Games and had been doping from 1997 to 2001. Pettigrew died two years later at the age of 42. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/12/sports/12pettigrew.html

A point Daley Thompson makes in teh MailOnline is that 'The World Anti-Doping Agency has spent £118million since 2001, and £18.6m in 2010 ... and they have caught virtually nobody. That’s before you add the almost £200m spent annually by international federations and national anti-doping agencies.' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-2108454/LONDON-OLYMPICS-2012-Daley-Thompson-wants-drug-cheats-kept-away.html

The main thrust of Thompson's piece is the British Olympic Association’s lifetime ban of sprinter Dwain Chambers and cyclist David Millar. They appealed their ban at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, which ruled that the BOA’s lifetime ban did not comply with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) code and was therefore unenforceable. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/olympics/article-2132301/London-2012-Olympics-Dwain-Chambers-David-Millar-win-drugs-fight.html .

Chambers and Millar will both compete at the London Olympics. It's enough to make you sick. Not only are athletes cheating the system almost at will, but even when they're caught they want to be allowed back to compete in the next Olympics. And WADA thinks that's just fine.

What happened to the Olympic Spirit?

Can anyone remember what it is? After all these years of drug cheats winning medals, in sprinting and weight-lifting and who knows where else? And just now the admission by John Coates that Aussie Olympians will be paid a bonus for every medal they win in London. 'The new pay structure rewards performance,' The Australian reports. 'The top athletes are paid up to $25,000 initially, with the added potential to earn an additional $35,000 for an individual Olympic gold medal. The relay teams will split a $60,000 bonus. The pay debate was triggered early this year when Swimming Australia signed a major sponsorship deal with Energy Australia.' http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/london-games/pay-row-olympic-games-swimmers-should-think-themselves-lucky/story-fne3a96w-1226422894906

That's enough. I'll only add just one more thing: I won't be staying up to watch the Games.

Kim

Penfolds launches $168,000 wine – Gago gone Gaga?

Price includes senior Penfolds winemaker at opening ceremony

Penfolds has just released its 2004 Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet in a limited edition, hand-blown glass ampoule and a bespoke glass plumb-bob that suspends the ampoule within a wooden Jarrah cabinet. Only twelve ampoules will be made, individually numbered as you’d expect for such ‘a beautiful, thoughtful, unique objet d’art, designed to store wine in an ideal environment.’

‘The Penfolds Ampoule is not only a compelling work of wine art,’ the press release goes on, ‘it also provides a truly memorable experiential and sensory engagement. When a decision is made to open the ampoule a senior member of the Penfolds Winemaking team will personally attend a special opening ceremony for the owner (essentially your very own master-class). The winemaker will travel to the destination of choice, where the ampoule will be ceremoniously removed from its glass plumb-bob casing and opened using a specially designed, tungsten-tipped, sterling silver scribe-snap. The winemaker will then prepare the wine using a beautifully crafted sterling silver tastevin.’

We assume that the Penfolds winemaker will also blow your nose and wipe your bottom after the event, most likely with a handkerchief made from spun gold.

http://www.tweglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/MEDIA_FINAL_Penfolds-Media-ReleaseAMPOULE.pdf

The launchpad? Moscow!

The wine is made from 130-year-old vines on Penfolds’ Kalimna vineyard near Moppa in the Barossa Valley. As the Australian newspaper points out, Dan Murphy’s will sell you a bottle of the 2004 for $850. Decanter reports that the 1996 sells for around £2,500 a case in London. Neither comes with a senior Penfolds winemaker to attend the opening ceremony.

The Australian reports that Penfolds chief winemaker Peter Gago unveiled the ampoule in Moscow this week at a dinner for wine collectors. ‘Asked who would shell out so much for a bottle of wine, he replied: "Wine lovers, collectors ... we'll wait and see!" The decision to reveal the wine to the world in Moscow follows last year's launch of Penfolds Bin 620 Coonawarra Cabernet Shiraz 2008 - at the time Australia's most expensive wine - in Shanghai.

‘Mr Gago said neither venue was chosen due to the large number of local billionaires who were the most likely buyers of the wines. "No, not really, it's about showcasing premium Australian wine on a global stage," he said. The price of the ampoule suggests Penfolds will get to keep the 'most expensive' crown for some years to come, with the winery's famed Grange having lost the title several years ago to wines such as Henschke Hill of Grace, Torbreck The Laird, and most recently Parawa Estate Ingalalla Grand Reserve 2007, which has a price tag of $1100 and is being sold exclusively for export.’

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/food-wine/penfolds-releases-168000-cabernet-sauvignon/story-e6frg8jo-1226411602349

I found this tasting note by Neal Martin in the Wine Journal ( September 2010) for a magnum of the 2004 Block 42 Kalimna Cabernet: ‘Tasted at the Fine Wine Experience “Dream Fourteen” tasting with Peter Gago. Sourced directly from Penfolds’ library reserves, the Kalimna Block 42 has a deep garnet/purple core. A huge, ostentatious bouquet: macerated black cherries, orange liqueur, over-ripe tangerines and a touch of cloves. You just want it to calm down but you will have to wait a decade. The palate is full-bodied with chewy tannins, a touch of spice, exuberant summer fruits, a touch of fresh fig. Bizarrely there is a flavour profile that reminds me of a Tokaji Essenzia on the finish and yet I cannot deny that this wine is beautifully balanced. Decadent, brazen and outrageous.'

And a footnote saying: ‘eRobertParker.com: 97 Points!'

The wine sold for $250 a bottle when it was released 5 years ago. As I said in my last piece on Penfolds 2012 Icon and Luxury Release, Penfolds would do better to put their efforts into making the best wines they can, rather than trying to compete with famous couturiers and sculptors  

Constantin Brancusi - endless column

http://briard.typepad.com/get_the_picture/2012/04/penfolds-2012-icon-and-luxury-collection-the-headline-says-it-all.html

Kim

The Hundred Years' German War

A good friend sent me this brilliant commentary on current events in Europe by Victor Davis Hanson, written on December 15, 2011

The rise of a German Europe began in 1914, failed twice, and has now ended in the victory of German power almost a century later. The Europe that Kaiser Wilhelm lost in 1918, and that Adolf Hitler destroyed in 1945, has at last been won by German Chancellor Angela Merkel without firing a shot.

Or so it seems from European newspapers, which now refer bitterly to a "Fourth Reich" and arrogant new Nazi "Gauleiters" who dictate terms to their European subordinates. Popular cartoons depict Germans with stiff-arm salutes and swastikas, establishing new rules of behavior for supposedly inferior peoples.

Millions of terrified Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, Portuguese and other Eur opeans are pouring their savings into German banks at the rate of $15 billion a month. A thumbs-up or thumbs-down from the euro-rich Merkel now determines whether European countries will limp ahead with new German-backed loans or default and see their standard of living regress to that of a half-century ago.

A worried neighbor, France, in schizophrenic fashion, as so often in the past, alternately lashes out at Britain for abandoning it and fawns on Germany to appease it. The worries in 1989 of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President François Mitterrand over German unification -- that neither a new European Union nor an old NATO could quite rein in German power -- proved true.

How did the grand dream of a "new Europe" end just 20 years later in a German protectorate -- especially given the not-so-subtle aim of the European Union to diffuse German ambitions through a continent-wide super-state?

Not by arms. Britain fights in wars all over the globe, from Libya to Iraq. France has the bomb. But Germany mostly stays within its borders -- without a nuke, a single aircraft carrier or a military base abroad.

Not by handouts. Germany poured almost $2 trillion of its own money into rebuilding an East Germany ruined by communism -- without help from others. To drive through southern Europe is to see new freeways, bridges, rail lines, stadiums and airports financed by German banks or subsidized by the German government.

Not by population size. Somehow, 120 million Greeks, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese are begging some 80 million Germans to bail them out.

And not because of good fortune. Just 65 years ago, Berlin was flattened, Hamburg incinerated and Munich a shell -- in ways even Athens, Madrid, Lisbon and Rome were not.

In truth, German character -- so admired and feared in some 500 years of European literature and history -- led to the present Germanization of Europe. These days we recoil at terms like "national character" that seem tainted by the nightmares of the past.  But no other politically correct exegesis offers better reasons why a booming Detroit of 1945 today looks like it was bombed, and a bombed-out Berlin of 1945 now is booming.

Germans on average worked harder and smarter than their European neighbors -- investing rather than consuming, saving rather than spending, and going to bed when others to the south were going to dinner.  Recipients of their largesse bitterly complain that German banks lent them money to buy German products in a sort of 21st-century commercial serfdom.  True enough, but that still begs the question why Berlin, and not Rome or Madrid, was able to pull off such lucrative mercantilism.

(Germans also love to get their gear off - this photo is from Der Spiegel)

Where does all this lead?  Right now to some great unknowns that terrify most of Europe.  Will German industriousness and talent eventually translate into military dominance and cultural chauvinism -- as it has in the past?  How, exactly, can an unraveling EU, or NATO, now "led from behind" by a disengaged United States, persuade Germany not to translate its overwhelming economic clout into political and military advantage?

Can poor European adolescents really obey their rich German parents?  Berlin in essence has now scolded southern Europeans that if they still expect sophisticated medical care, high-tech appurtenances and plentiful consumer goods -- the adornments of a rich American and northern Europe lifestyle -- then they have to start behaving in the manner of Germans, who produce such things and subsidize them for others.

In other words, an Athenian may still have his ultra-modern airport and subway, a Spaniard may still get a hip replacement, or a Roman may still enjoy his new Mercedes.  But not if they still insist on daily siestas, dinner at 9 p.m., retirement in their early 50s, cheating on taxes, and a de facto 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. workday.

Behind all the EU's 11th-hour gobbledygook, Germany's new European order is clear: If you wish to live like a German, then you must work and save like a German.  Take it or leave it.

(Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of the just-released "The End of Sparta." You can reach him by e-mailing [email protected].)

David Dees on Barack Obama's failures

David Dees is an in-your-face cartoonist. There's nothing subtle here, but then there's nothing subtle about US politics either. It's worse than ever, and the system is broken. Here is an excerpt from a SPIEGEL article about 'The President of Disappoimtments':

'The United States of America, where yet another mammoth presidential campaign is taking shape, makes up less than 5 percent of the world's population. Yet it consumes about 25 percent of the world's oil. It has close to $16 trillion (€12.8 trillion) in debt, its expenditures will exceed its revenues by $1.3 trillion in this fiscal year alone, and the war in Afghanistan is costing it $2 billion. Each week. Many in this country are demanding peace in Syria, even as Washington quietly fights a dirty drone war in Pakistan. Some 169 prisoners are still stewing in Guantanamo. In Washington, D.C., the divide between the two political camps is so deep that it resembles an abyss. Is the current president of the United States really named Barack Obama? Is the era of George W. Bush really over?

'Obama's first term in office will end in just a few months time. The giant, many-faceted country, 27 times the size of Germany, needs a new plan -- a new project for the staggering global superpower. A president will be elected in November for 314 million citizens. A new president? Perhaps. It is conceivable that the first black president, Barack Obama, hailed as a savior when he came into office, will be replaced by the pale Mormon Mitt Romney, a Republican with somewhat dubious conservative credentials.'

The rest of the article is here:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/president-barack-obama-has-disappointed-in-his-first-term-a-838648.html

Here are a couple of Dees' cartoons that got my attention: