And how to Avoid them

I came across an article by Matt Kramer at the Wine Spectator: Rookie Mistakes. We’ve all made them. What are they?

Matt says: ‘If there’s anything that wine lovers of experience share—apart from the never-ending search for a good deal—it’s the wincing memory of rookie mistakes. No one is exempt. Anyone who’s bought wine for a few years and caught the collecting bug has, over time, looked back and said, “What was I thinking?”’

I suspect that rings a bell with most of us, but I’d argue that rookies aren’t alone here. I’m the first to admit that I still make mistakes, and I’ve been tasting and buying and cellaring wine for over 40 years. Let’s have a look at the most common bad buying decisions.

1. Mistaking Power for Beauty

This is not a rookie mistake, as we see it time and time again at wine shows where experienced judges fall for the perfumed, busty blonde or the tall, dark and manly looking guy. It’s easy to succumb to the obvious charms of a wine that leaps out of the glass and kisses you on the lips, and to miss the more subtle characters of a classy fine wine. Think of the big, buttery, oaky chardonnays of old.

Power is strength of flavour and size, meaning high alcohol, and here’s the rub: the current fashion of high alcohol reds – 14.5% has become the norm – has less to do with global warming than their greater glycerol content, which adds perceived sweetness and viscosity, That’s why big reds often come across as plush and velvety, which makes them easier to sell to judges and punters alike.

More in: Aussie Reds – so much alcohol, so little finesse.

More up-front fruit is another cheap trick that works an easy magic on most of us when combined with high alcohol, therefore the ‘Barossa fruit bombs’ we see so many of these days. A Thorn-Clarke Shotfire Quartage comes to mind, a Bordeaux blend that is choc-full of sweet cassis and ripe black currants. A 2009 I opened the other day was somewhere between jam and Ribena.

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‘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 headline of the press release, without the question mark. 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/

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10 years ago, no one drank Rosé. This year it’s the hottest drink around

‘I haven’t seen this much excitement over a wine style since Marlborough sauvignon blanc first started to take off in the market,’ Dan Murphy’s Peter Nixon tells Max Allen. ‘We have seen sales growth of between 200 and 300 % in the over-$10 rose category over the last twelve months. It is that dramatic.’

A cynic would argue that Semillon outsold Rosé by a factor of 10 to 1 a year ago, but the trend for Rosé is up all in the northern hemisphere as well. So who’s drinking so much Rosé all of a sudden? The same people who were drinking Kiwi Savvy last year? Cool youngish female professionals? No. It’s young males, the ABC tells us.  Gen Ys, Millennials and Hipsters. For decades, no one drank Rose. Suddenly it’s hip. Last year, my hip daughter who is always ahead of the curve told me she was drinking Rosé almost exclusively.

Pretty as a picture

Most people don’t see Rosé as a serious wine. It’s on the frivolous end of the spectrum: The colour ranges from pale salmon to bright red. it’s pretty, and so is the package it comes in as a rule. You don’t need to know much about wine to enjoy Rosé either. It’s a pretty wine, it’s cool, crisp and refreshing, it rhymes with spring and summer.

You can drink it without second thoughts. You can drink it on its own or you can drink it with food. You can just chill out on it. ‘Rosé is a wine of the moment,’ says Ray Isle at Food & Wine. ‘It’s a fling. People get married to Burgundy. Rosé, they wake up in the morning and realize they’ve forgotten its name.’

Rose is a style that can be made from a range of red grape varieties that include Grenache, Sangiovese, Pinot Noir, Shiraz, Cabernet and more. The pink colour comes from leaving the juice on the skins just long enough. The same goes for pink champagne.

What foods do you drink Rosé with?

The kind of fare that’s popular at hip food places, of course: antipasto, tapas, pizzas, pasta, tacos, burgers, pink lamb, cold meats, salads and summer picnics. Crisp and dry is best with these foods. The full-bodied, fruity style will go better with spicy and sweet-and sour Asian dishes, and with curries. The people at Big Oven tell us that cool Rosé is a perfect match for warm-climate cuisines such as those of Asia, India, Mexico and the Mediterranean.

The lighter styles of Rosé that serve up strawberries and cream can go with light and fluffy desserts but are best drunk on their own. That’s the simple end of the story.

If you want to dig deeper into matching Rosé and food, Fiona Beckett is a rewarding destination. She lists 8 types of Rosé and various foods that go with them, but please take it all with a pinch of salt because some of her ideas are pretty dubious: drinking elegant fruity Rosé with lobster, seared salmon or tuna for example. Same goes for the list from Lindsay Hunt at Buzzfeed (porterhouse steak??), but some of the dishes look interesting.

What’s the damage?

The good news is that you can buy good Aussie Rosés for little more than $10: Angoves Nine Vines and Deep Woods Harmony are a couple of good examples. $20 will buy you de Bortoli’s La Boheme Act III or Charlie Melton’s Rosé of Virginia. The fancy Pitt & Jollie Miraval will set you back $30, but I’m not sure how it’s holding up after recent events.

As usual, your sharp sommelier will find you more obscure Rosés from the far-flung corners of France or Chili, but hey: let’s not get too serious. My advice is to stick to the simply joys Rosé has to offer.

Dan Murphy’s Peter Nixon reckons that Rosé will outsell white wine in 10 years’ time, but I reckon he’s wrong. Why? Because it’s fashion driving the current boom and, like bubbles of soap, fashion doesn’t last long. The Hipsters will find another cool drink next year, but some of the more mature drinkers may rekindle their Romance with Rosé in the meantime.

Kim

It’s a simple little show, so what went wrong?

It’s become a popular event in the show calendar, attracting over 500 entries. Ferngrove Wines from Frankland River in W.A. took home the top trophy at this year’s CIRC for a 2016 Off Dry Limited Release.

Photo Credit: Graham Tidy

Wines are judged by region, style and vintage. The entries are divided into dry, off dry and sweet, as well as current vintage, open vintage and museum classes.

Bird in Hand from Adelaide Hills won the Best Dry Riesling trophy with a Clare Riesling, the Robert Stein Vineyard picked up Best Museum Class Riesling, Mount Majura won the trophy for Best in the Canberra District and Chartley Estate the award for best Tassie Riesling. The winning sticky was the Heggies Vineyard Botrytis Riesling 2015 with a score of 96, a wine we’ve recommended more than once.

The Good News

The good news is that the Jim Barry Watervale Riesling 2016 scored 96 – a couple more points than it deserves – and so did St John’s Road Peace of Eden 2016, which I scored at 97. The Robert Oatley Signature Series Riesling 2015 scored 95, a few points more than I had on my score card.

Devil’s Corner Riesling 2015 is another affordable Riesling (from Tassie) that scored 95. The outstanding bargain among these is the Jim Barry, which you can pick up for as little as $13 or $14 when the chains put it on special.

The Usual Issues

You know that I have reservations about wine shows, and the way they judge wines. The wines below all scored 93 to 96 points in my book; in other words they’re of the same quality as the wines we listed above. In Canberra, only the Vickery Eden Valley Riesling got a medal, a measly bronze. John is Australia’s greatest Riesling maker, and 87 points for a great wine like that is hard to fathom, but it gets worse:

• Vickery Watervale Riesling 2016 – 82
• O’Leary Walker Polish Hill 2016 – 83
• Pikes Traditionale Riesling 2016 – 83
• Leo Buring Clare Valley Dry Riesling 2016 – 85
• Mountadam Vineyards Riesling 2016 – 88

What were the judges smoking?

More Surprises

We haven’t tried these wines yet but their past form has marked them as some of the best Rieslings you can buy:

• Clos Clare Riesling 2016 – 85 (made by Tom Barry)
• Crabtree Watervale Riesling 2016 – 83
• Wilson Polish Hill River Riesling 2016 – 84
• Eden Hall Reserve Riesling 2016 – 85
• Penfolds Bin 51 Eden Valley Riesling 2016 – 85
• Seppelt Drumborg Riesling 2016 – 84
• Jacob’s Creek Steingarten Riesling 2014 – 84
• Leo Buring Leopold Riesling 2015 – 85
• Tertini Semi-Dry Riesling 2015 – 84
• Dopff-au-Moulin Riesling Grand Cru Schoenenbourg de Riquewihr 2011

I think that’s enough to make the point. From a judging point of view, this is an easy show because there are just 512 wines, and they’re all Rieslings. So what went wrong?

Here’s my take on the 2016 vintage so far: It’s official: 2016 is a Great Riesling Vintage.

Kim

Youth can be Raw and Brash

This week, I had a group of South Australian Shiraz reds to taste and review, and what struck me was the difference a year or two in bottle makes. Of course, this is not news, but sometimes an illustration underscores the validity of a well-known idea.

The 2015s were simply not ready to be let loose on the world, and they were $20 reds from Head Wines and Wirra Wirra. A 2014 Bremerton Selkirk Shiraz showed better (and scored higher) simply because it had a chance to settle down for another year. The 2013 Yangarra was more settle again.

Why are wineries releasing 18-month-old reds? I can understand a small operator like Alex Head doing this, but Wirra Wirra should have enough in reserve to keep the reds a bit longer. The Church Block 2014 is a case in point: it needs more time for the various components to make peace with each other.

Maturity is Satisfying

We have a choice, that’s the good news. Lots of wineries have already released 2015 reds and 2016 whites, but we also have wineries like Mitchell in the Clare which releases its reds up to 8 years old. You can buy the Cabernet 2008 at Dan M’s, or the Semillon 2013 at Kemenys.  There are also wine merchants with good stocks of older wines, and then there are the cellar releases from Dan M. The other good news is that most of these older wines are no dearer than their younger counterparts.

Here’s a shortlist of good examples:

Hidden Label Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 – $10. This is Wynns The Siding Cabernet

Hidden Label Central Victoria Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 – $14 at Kemenys. This is Tahbilk Cabernet under a Hidden Label

Penfolds Thomas Hyland Shiraz 2012 – $15 at Kemenys

Wirra Wirra Church Block Cabernet Blend 2013 – $15 at WSD. IMHO a better wine than the 2014

Mojo by Rockbare Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 – $16 at Kemenys

OLeary Walker Shiraz 2013 – $18 at WSD

Hidden Label Langhorne Creek Cabernet Malbec 2012 – $19 at Kemenys. Bleasdale Frank Potts Cabernet Blend under a Hidden Label

Leasingham Bin 56 Cabernet Malbec 2010 – $19 at Kemenys

Hewitson Miss Harry Dry Grown GSM 2012 – $20 at WSD

Mildara Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 – $20 at Dan M’s

Sons Of Eden Sons of Eden Pumpa Cabernet Shiraz 2013 – $21 at Winelistaustralia (WineSellersDirect and Winelistaustralia are both owned by the di Pietro family in Melbourne).

Yalumba The Cigar Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 – $22 at Jim’s Cellars

Rosily The Cartrographer 2012 – $23 at the winery

Alpha Crucis Titan Shiraz 2010 – $24 at Kemenys

Wynns Coonawarra Cellar Release Black Label Cabernet Sauvignon 2006 – $40 at Winesellersdirect.

So here is another advantage we offer at Best Wines Under $20: most wine review sites review only the latest releases, often so late that you won’t yet see them in the shops which wastes time and cause frustration. We tell you where to find older gems that for reasons beyond our ken are still in stock somewhere.

Kim

‘The launch of The Penfolds Collection has become a carefully stage-managed affair,’ Jancis Robinson tells us. These days, Peter Gago has become Penfolds’ chief promoter, flying round the world with the latest wares in his luggage. To what extent he still has a hand in making the wines is anybody’s guess.

As usual, Grange leads the charge this year with a new price of $850 a bottle. Clearly, Peter Gago and his masters want to push the famous Aussie red up to 4 figures. 2012 was a good vintage in South Australia, and the Grange from this vintage is said to be top notch. Huon Hooke gives it 98 points, and he’s a pretty hard marker.

Peter Gago is fond of telling the punters that they’ll never lose when they invest in Grange, which is absolute rubbish as we show in our piece Penfolds Grange – rich wine, poor investment. Virtually all Granges back to 1966 sell at auction for much less than $850, including the best Grange I’ve tasted: the 1966, which I gave 100 points to a few years ago when it was at its peak.

The Ugly Side of the Grange Coin

Yes, it’s so ugly that Perth wine merchant Vince Salpietro of Grand Cru Cellars emptied 2 bottles of the 2011 on the floor of his wine cellar last year, and took out a a half-page advertisement in The West Australian newspaper telling Penfolds that their $750 asking price for the 2011 Grange was an insult, given the poor quality of the 2011 vintage.

In view of the enormous margins Penfolds makes on Grange, you’d expect them to take a leaf out of the book of top Bordeaux chateaux which declassify the fruit of a bad vintage to their second labels. If the vintage is really bad, they’ll just sell it to the local merchants who’ll bottle it under their own label as Bordeaux Superior.

That Penfolds didn’t do this with a wine most reviewers scored in the low nineties shows TWE’s insatiable greed. That they got away with it shows how gullible Grange collectors are, but then Grange hasn’t been about wine for many years. It’s about luxury goods, and that market has little to do with the wine in the bottle.

Poor Man’s Grange is heading for $100

That’s what the old Bin 389 Cabernet Shiraz used to be called when it was affordable. I remember buying the ’96 for less than $20 a bottle; now the RRP is $90. Same for the Bin 407 Cabernet Sauvignon and the Bin 150 Marananga Shiraz. Even the humble Kalimna Shiraz, which comes from everywhere in South Australia except Kalimna, now has an RRP of $45.

Climbing up the price ladder, we find St Henri at $100, and the RWT Shiraz up at $200. The elusive Bin 707 is now $500, clearly destined for superstardom – Gago has taken to calling it ‘our Grange Cabernet’. For reasons not stated, there’s no Bin 169 Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon in the 2016 collection. I suspect it went into the Bin 707, which is much more profitable.

Same Same

At a Penfolds collection lunch a couple of years ago, the overwhelming impression I came away with was the great similarity of the reds. They all offer rich, even voluptuous fruit, bright and polished, supported by classy oak treatment. It’s obvious that the more expensive wines get more expensive treatment, so they show more polish, more intensity and more oak. The other overriding impression was that all the reds were too big.

For those who don’t mind spending $100 on a bottle of wine, the pick this year may be the Reserve Bin A Adelaide Hills Chardonnay 2015, which is as modern as Aussie chardy gets. The fruit is sourced from cool climate sites across eastern Australia, and the wine gets the full treatment. Huon Hooke calls the 2015 ‘an outstanding vintage of this wine, with the funky, wild-ferment characteristics in full expression as usual, but I fancy the wine is better balanced than ever.’

For those who pay attention to these things, the 2015 Reserve Bin A won two trophies at Royal Adelaide Wine Show, and topped the 2016 James Halliday Chardonnay Challenge (which has as much to do with Halliday as the Bin 28 Kalimna has with Kalimna).

Penfolds – Australia’s Ambassador?

‘Big company ownership and tall poppy syndrome,’ writes Tyson Stelzer, ‘not to mention ever spiralling prices, have triggered Penfolds grumbles among Australian devotees and wine trade alike, but the fact remains, no company is contributing more to the global standing of Australian wine right now than Penfolds.’

What a pile of rubbish: TWE promotes Penfolds. TWE doesn’t promote Australian wine regions. Most Penfolds wines are blends of material from different wine regions. Consumers who’re introduced to Penfolds learn almost nothing about Australian wine regions or styles, yet learn lots about Penfolds.  Tyson Stelzer’s article is headed ‘The Truth about Penfolds,’ just to make it more dubious. A couple of years ago, I wrote that he sounded like Penfolds’ PR agency; now he sounds like he is Penfolds’ PR agency.

The final proof of Penfolds’ boundless greed is the way it exploits its hero Max Schubert, and the rubbish it puts his name on. Greed is good, and Bad Taste is Better.  Shame on you, Penfolds.

Kim

Serious Sommeliers

OK, I’m a simple soul. I love simple food that’s tasty, and wine that doesn’t pretend to be anything but wine. Occasionally we visit a trendy wine bar in town, where sommeliers practice their solemn craft in serious outfits that laugh at their silly haircuts, beards and tattoos.

What do you have for us today? A Vin Jaune from some unknown corner of the French Jura? A Clay Amphora wine from Georgia perhaps? Or just a plain old Teraldego from a boutique in the Northern Territory on the edge of Kakadu? How much for a glass? And it’s not even half full?

‘Their job has no English word,’ says Dom Knight in Daily Life, ’the wine-snob industry prefers just to use the French term, which I would argue speaks volumes about their profession.’ Here’s his advice:

‘Whenever I’m confronted by a sommelier in future, I shall fix them with my most intimidating gaze, and say “Everyone says you should just order the second cheapest bottle on the menu. But I’m a bit of a connoisseur in these matters, so why don’t you bring me the third-cheapest?” ‘

Master Sommeliers 

Image Source: Wine Searcher

Ron Washam, the satirist known as the Hosemaster of Wine, wrote about a scandal that rocked the fine dining world of New York last year, ‘a cheating scandal run by a now disgraced Master Sommelier, as if there were any other kind. The wine world moves on, unconcerned with ethics and truth, as well it should. Ethics and truth are Roundup for the wine business. You don’t want to use them liberally, or at all, they pretty much destroy the ecosystem.’ 

The New Yorker tells us that ‘the chairman of the Court of Master Sommeliers (which administers the Master Sommelier exam) announced, over raised glasses of champagne, that a record twenty-four candidates had passed.’ Five weeks later, the court revealed that one of the test’s supervisors, a Master Sommelier, had leaked details about the blind tasting to an unknown number of examinees. The leaker was stripped of his Master title, and 23 newly anointed Master Sommeliers were stripped of their titles.

‘The revelation of deceit in fine wine’s most sacrosanct circle has rattled the tight-knit world of sommeliers,’ reports the New Yorker, ‘who pride themselves on presenting a decorous, unflappable face to those outside their ranks. Sommeliers have entered a period of mourning for their defrocked colleagues. (“Friday tasting group felt a little heavy this morning,” one wrote on Instagram.) … Master status comes with the industry’s top bragging rights, plus a hefty raise. But for many sommeliers it is an honor imbued with almost spiritual significance—the oenological equivalent of running a marathon, winning an Oscar, and being canonized, all rolled into one. “For some people,” one sommelier told me, “this test is life.”

Trendy Trattorias

Years ago, before sommeliers became a guild of masters in down under eateries, we were meeting some friends over in Bondi, so I asked a wine friend for a restaurant recommendation. Sean’s Panorama, he said without hesitation. We made a booking and found a hole-in-the-wall  place with the menu spread over various wooden slabs up near the ceiling, tiny tables with tinier stools, and we were all squashed together like passengers on a peak hour bus.

The food was awful, conversation was impossible, and I can’t remember the wine we had. We were embarrassed, our friends were gracious to a fault.

My good friend Jeffrey put it better than I could, when I shared the experience with him recently. He said: ‘Oh, Sean’s lovely panorama over at Bondai! Yes, a friend took me there once, years ago. I had a terrific time … I looked around, saw the trendy folk all around, got thoroughly pissed to antidote my trauma, and had a lovely time. Cockroaches there too. Think I even ate one … and the bastards charged me for it. Loved the wine I bought.’

Hi Guys!

Jeffrey shared a more recent experience at BENTLEY, – ‘those wankers. Gee they pissed me off.’

I can only add that Jeffrey is one of the most polite and gentle men I know. He is also kind, and this is what he said to me in a recent email:

‘My dear Kim,

You are the only clear breath of practicality in a storm of farts, in today’s world of wine & food. I don’t get these open factory trendy inner city – fringe suburb wine bar restaurants. You would have to keep the rats down with a whip!  Rats arm wrestling with cockroaches over dropped crumbs.

The food is too trendy bullshit (just reading what’s in a dish makes me impotent) and the wine is equal in the disappointment – at exhorted prices.  A glass of Nose-bleed Rose made from ‘non irrigated old vine, organic, non sulphur added natural wines’ that smell of rancid jock-straps; ‘pan seared rooster- cock served with jus on blinis, tapas’ – “that will be $50.00 x two please sir!” Oh, forget “Sir” it’s “Guys!!!”

“Hi Guys” is the only term of greeting obnoxious young bearded trend-oids know how to address the collective male/female diners in these trendy places now … SPARE ME FROM F—ING “HI GUYS!!!”

I can’t improve on Jeffrey’s take, but here’s a pictorial review from Adventures with a Gourmand that will fill in more blanks.

Avagreatweekend, guys.

Kim

A meal without wine is like a day without sunshine. Brillat-Savarin

Can you imagine the French or the Italians sitting down to a meal without wine? No? So how come Aussies do? We watch food shows like MKR from time to time, and are often surprised that wine plays no role in the lives of people who are great cooks and love good food. How do we know?

Black wine glasses are a dead giveaway, aren’t they? You can see Pete Evans staring at them in disbelief, can’t you?

I can’t believe that serious foodies deprive themselves of the extra pleasure that the right wine contributes to a great meal. On the reverse side of that coin, I don’t know any wine lovers who don’t care about the food they eat.

When the Experts Get it Wrong

That spells serious trouble, because they really should know better. Here’s a Wine pairings for chicken list from US magazine Wine & Food:

• Sautéed Chicken with Olives, Capers and Roasted Lemons – Rosato
• Herb-and-Lemon-Roasted Chicken – a crisp, citrusy Sauvignon Blanc
• Chicken and Cheese Enchiladas Verdes – a spicy, dark-fruited Malbec
• Chicken Breasts with Potatoes and Mashed Peas – a dry white sparkling wine
• Basque Chicken with Sweet Peppers and Tomatoes – a red with bright flavours and soft tannins
• Chicken Chow Mein – a fruity, sparking wine, like a Prosecco
• Pan-Seared Chicken Breasts with Jamaican Curry – a low-alcohol, off-dry Riesling
• Chicken Sofrito, a rosé sparkling wine
• Chicken with Slow-Roasted Tomatoes and Cheesy Grits – a rosé sparkling wine
• Mexican Chicken Pozole Verde – a rich but unoaked white wine such as an Alsace Pinot Gris
• Thai Chicken Stew with Potato-Chive Dumplings – a lemon appley Chardonnay.

You see what I mean? Herb and Lemon roasted chicken and crisp Sauvignon Blanc? Chicken and Cheese Enchiladas Verdes with a dark-fruited Malbec? Thai Chicken Stew with Potato-Chive Dumplings with a lemon appley Chardonnay? And the only time Riesling gets a look-in is with a Jamaican curry? I’d probably drink beer with that dish.

For almost all of the above, a full-flavoured, dry Riesling of the style made in Oz and Alsace is the best fit. There is a case for red wine with chicken in a red wine or tomato sauce, such as Chicken Cacciatore or Coq-au-Vine, but I’d pick a light red like a Beaujolais or Pinot Noir or a basic Montepulciano. I rest my case.

It’s Pretty Simple Really. There are 3 simple ways to match Food and Wine: Like & Like, Contrast and the Unexpected.

Like & Like

This is pretty simple, self-evident even – like white wine with white meats and red with red:

Contrast & Unexpected

A lot of Asian food is cooked in sticky, often slightly sweet sauces, and the common pairing is off-dry whites (Like & Like). IMHO, contrast works better here. Also, some foods just don’t go with wine and you’re better off drinking beer with them.

The unexpected pairings include cheeses, which most people would match up with red wine when old whites work much better.

Please Don’t Follow these Rules Blindly

With Pizza and Pasta, match the wine to the main ingredient, i.e. seafood or salami, white or red. Dishes like Paella can be tricky to match because we may have seafood mixed with chicken and chorizos. Here I’d suggest a middle course: a big Chardonnay or a white Rhone style – Marsanne, Roussanne, Viognier – with a bit of age. That’s also the best option with a Salade Niçoise. 

These subtleties can make a big difference. Recently, we had rack of lamb with a rich Barossa Shiraz which was all we had handy other than a Pinot Noir which would’ve been too subtle. The chunky Shiraz overpowered the lamb, and a medium-bodied Cabernet blend or straight Cabernet would’ve been a much better match.

Kim

What do you do when you can’t unscrew the inscrutable?

You become a hacker!

You’re enjoying dinner with friends; they’ve done the cooking, your job was to bring the wine. You’ve brought a Yealands Single Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc 2015 to go with the Snapper pie. Lovely savvy, one of our favourites.

Only one tiny problem: I can’t get the screw cap off. We found that hard before with this particular wine, so we look for the oyster knife to cut deeper into the separation between cap and neck piece. No luck this time.

We try a moist, grippy cloth. Still no luck; the screwcap won’t budge. We start looking for pliers, but the ones in our friends’ kitchen aren’t big enough. This is becoming tedious. The only option left is to hack the screw cap, which of course is metal.

Eventually, we work the old corkscrew through it, and we use the oyster knife to widen the opening. The screw cap still won’t budge, but at least we can pour the wine.

The wine was lovely, and so was the Snapper pie.

I also brought a 1993 Wendouree Shiraz Mataro which was a great red in perfect condition, opened at the peak of its long career. The cork had broken in half but I got it all with the old Ah-So two pronged opener. It’s much better at getting fragile old corks out of bottles than any corkscrew but it takes practice to get the hang of it.

As a footnote, I keep meeting wine lovers who think the Stelvin cap has solved all the old problems that can befall wine. That’s not so: the only problem the cap solves is that of cork taint, which was fairly common in the wines of the nineties. All the other problems are still with us, so we still strike wines that are in poor health or off. Just thought I’d add that caution. And keep your sturdy old corkscrew handy for a bit longer.

Kim

Tuscany is not where the Value is

When you focus on a special area in the wine business, it’s easy to lose the big picture. Put another way, how can you follow the whole story when you’ve only got a few chapters? That’s why I go to tastings that keep the broader horizons open, either because there are more expensive wines to compare with the samples I drink mostly, or because they’re from another part of the world. Or both, as in this case.

I decided long ago that certain wine areas in Europe had built a reputation for their wines that was matched by their prices but not by the content of the bottles. Tuscany has been one of those since all things Tuscan had become the subjects of bestsellers these last three decades. Tonight was a confirmation that nothing has changed: the labels are exotic and the prices are in the same territory, while the quality lagged way behind.

The Chiantis were from 2012, 2013 and 2014, cost between $25 and $65 yet I didn’t score a single one more than 91 points. I liked the elegance and finesse but many of these wines simply lacked depth and real flavour.  The rest of the wines came from Montepulciano, Montalcino and Toscana, and I found a couple of 93 point wines among them.

I don’t see how the GTW panel came up with 95 point scores, not many to be sure. I only scored a couple of wines at 93, and they were Col d’Orcia 2012 and Fuliigni Ginesttreto 2013 from the Rosso de Montalcino appellation. A bit more Italian charm, and a bit more to them , but hey cost $49 and $62 each. I liked the Podere 414 Morellinin di Scansano 2013 for its rustic charm but $42 for  92 point wine?

Tuscany is not where the value is in Italy but some of the labels are pretty, aren’t they? I’m looking forward to the The Italian Wine + Food Festival in Sydney on Saturday August 21^st, where I’ll be searching out wines that are better value. We’ve recommended Puglia at the heel of the boot that is Italy as the region where the value is in Italian wines and Sicily south from there, and Lange in the north.

We can buy Lucarelli Primitivo and Negramaro reds from Puglia for $14 a bottle, and the Pico Maccario Barbera D’Asti DOCG and Maretti reds from Lange for around $20. Madeline from the Wine Folly suggests Puglia and Lange as regions for value reds, and recommends Aglianico from Basilicata and Campania, and Nero d’Avola from Sicily.

At the bargain end, we have the Gran Sasso and  Vendetta whites and reds, polished commercial styles that drink well but lack real character. I think the Spaniards do these wines better on the whole, but that’s another story. The take-away from the tasting for was that these reds weren’t heavy or heady like Aussie brutes, and left the taster relatively intact.

Here’s an Introduction to Italian Wine from Nicks, if you want to get your head around the basics. And here’s the list of wines from the current issue of Gourmet Traveller Wine.

Kim