Wine companies are getting mean with samples, so my friends in the industry tell me. Yes, I understand why wine companies would feel that way. They used to send samples to a handful of reviewers and wine magazines and, now that the internet has spawned dozens of wine bloggers, the list has grown and so has the cost of distribution. We can’t blame them for closing the gate on some reviewers.

For Best Wines Under $20, samples have been a problem from the word go. Many wine companies don’t want you to know where to buy their wines at bargain prices. Others don’t fancy any association with a site that is focused on the value end of the market. When I ask wine companies for samples, I often get this response: we don’t make wines under $20. I give them half a dozen links to their $25 or $30 wines selling for $15 to $20, and half the time that’s the end of the conversation.

It’s a tough world out there

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Please Note: We use real scores, not Halliday scores.

Taster’s Choice Clare Valley Riesling 2015 – $8.50 at Dan M’s. This wine won a gold medal (95 points) in the Canberra International Riesling Challenge late last year. It’s a straightforward, full-flavoured aromatic white at bargain price but I can’t see a gold medal here. 90 points

Richland Pinot Grigio 2015 – $9 at OurCellar. Good Pinot Grigio, with apples and pears that aren’t too ripe or too green, supported by a lovely fine acid. Everything’s in perfect balance here, and the wine is drinking well. 90 points, bargain.

Miamup Estate Chardonnay 2014 – $10 at Kemenys.  As bright as a summer’s day, full of gleaming energy and pristine fruit – white peaches and melons – full-flavoured, with a lick of oak adding a creamy texture. Gorgeous wine, off the scale on drinkability. 93 points. Back up the truck.

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It needs the Defiance of Guaranteed Success, says Wine Spectator

‘You know what really makes a wine fine?’ asks Matt Kamer in Wine Spectator, and answers: ‘The root is: It’s not a sure thing.’ He adds that he has long seen ‘finesse and nuance and harmony, along with layers and even a sense of surprise (never mind somewhereness),’ and complexity and originality, as elements that make a wine ‘fine’.

Somewhereness? Yes, it seems Matt is fond of inventing words. Anyhow, he argues that these qualities are the results, rather than the source which is wine ‘not being a sure thing. Fine wine comes from a defiance of guaranteed success,’ he explains, and insists that this is true everywhere in the world regardless of grape variety or region.

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‘Not so long ago, the wine writing business had a reasonably tidy trans-Atlantic division of labour,’ writes Mike Steinberger in the New York Times. ‘The United States manufactured wine critics, Britain produced wine writers. We gave Cabernets points, the British gave them poetry.’

I belong to an email group of wine lovers who share interesting stuff. One of them asked if anyone had tasted a particular wine, and Ralph-Kyte-Powell who writes for THE AGE sent a review he’d written for the wine. He added an apology for the tortured prose in his review, which prompted me to reply to Ralph with these comforting words: You’re a long way behind the best. Here’s why:

‘Top Sauternes will never be cheap but the alternative labels of Ch Suduiraut are very much worth looking out for. Slightly confusingly, they make two of them, Castelnau de Suduiraut and Lions de Suduiraut.’

If serious writers would rather be seen dead than stand accused of using adverbs, then 2 in a row amount to a hanging offence. There’s worse to come from this writer Decanter Magazine calls ‘the most respected wine critic and journalist in the world.’ Yes you guessed right, it’s Jancis Robinson who has written more about wine than the next 10 wine writers together.

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March 2016 Update016 updatexxxxxx

The Quest for Perfection

‘Kim, the world wine industry is soooooo full of bull-shit and false direction that I sometimes think I need out, to sell off my wines and go vegetarian just to escape, to regain perspective. Honestly, I’m sick and tired of the bull-shit journalists, the pretension, the hustling, the egos, the point scoring, the investment portfolios. Can you tell me what I can do to regain my lost respect, my lost interest, even my sanity? I want imperfection. A little bret. A wine that says ‘up yours’ Mr journalist … Mr connoisseur … just drink me with a piece of good cheese.’ Jeffrey D, Best Wines Under $20 subscriber.

The Aroma Wheel: Juniper berries and Tea Leaves

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Diversity

Australia is a land of enormous contrasts, ‘a sunburnt country of droughts and flooding rains,’ in Dorothy McKellar’s famous words. It’s the same when it comes to wine: on one hand, the variety is enormous from Margaret River to the Hunter Valley, with truly diverse regions in between. Many of these have been cultivated in the last 4 decades by young men and women with crystal clear visions of what they sought to achieve, making truly individual wines and working hard to capture the characters of their regions.

The Great Divide

It runs down the east coast of our continent, and it has an equivalent in the wine business. On one side, we have artisans hand-making wines in small quantities, on the other we have corporations making industrial wine much the same way oil refineries make fuel: Treasury Wine Estates, Jacobs Creek, Australian Vintage (McGuigan), Casella and more.

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Barossa Vintage 2016 Declared

It didn’t look good late in November last year when dark clouds form the huge Pinery Fire darkened the skies. The bushfire had started in the Balaclava / Roseworthy area 60 kms north of Adelaide, and swept south-east toward the Barossa where it singed the edges of some vineyards. According to Business Insider, the fire killed two people, tens of thousands of livestock, destroyed 87 homes, 300 farm sheds and outbuildings, and burnt more than 85,000 hectares.

source: Business Insider

It was a dry, early growing season with warm, cloudless summer days and cool nights until some welcome rain freshened up the vineyards late in January. Milder weather slowed things down and allowed phenolic ripeness to catch up with sugar ripeness. The vintage was declared on February 23 in the traditional style by the Barons of the Barossa marching down the street and then handing various awards to deserving wine people.

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I like these trade tastings at the Oaks hotel in Sydney are compact and manageable, and the wineries well chosen. Y&R is a distributor mainly to the restaurant trade, so some wines aren’t easy to find on retailers’ shelves. Also, the vintages served here may not be out in retail land yet. That makes these events more useful as a guide to how and where wineries are going, checking old favourites and discovering new labels.

I loved the Chard Farm Pinot Gris 2015 from Central Otago for its wonderful restraint and texture, but I can only find the 2014 at Just Wines for $26 in a straight dozen. Kemenys sells the Rabbit Ranch 2014 PG for $19, and the Pinot Noir 2013 for $22; it’s the same story at Dan M’s. The Pinot Noir we tasted was the 2014, and it’s in the usual fruit-driven drink-soon style i.e. very easy to like.

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I wrote a post last year on this subject under the heading Who Makes my Wine, and Who Cares? The only people who care as far as I can see are reporters looking for another story about Woolworths and Coles strong-arming their suppliers and squeezing out their competitors – horror stories about winemakers who say they can’t go public for fear of reprisals, stories about tax avoidance by buying in bulk, and stories about wine merchants the big guys push to the wall. This week, Channel 7’s Today Tonight got into the act as well.

‘Independent merchants across the country are closing down,’ writes Max Allen in the Australian: ‘two of Australia’s leading retailers, Randall’s in Melbourne and Ultimo Wine Centre have been bought out by Coles; others are sure to follow.’ David Prestipino in the Sydney Morning Herald says: ‘By developing their own private-label and exclusive wines, Coles and Woolies are now competitors to the very wineries (and consumers) they are meant to serve.’

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Greater brains than mine have been scratched to come up with a reason why Riesling is so hard to sell to people.  There’s no question in my mind that Riesling makes Australia’s best wines, year in and year out. The quality of so many wines in the $15 to $20 range is breathtaking, and the Aussie style of Riesling we’ve evolved is distinctive from Tassie to the Great Southern.

Why am I beating this drum again?

Because I went to the Riesling tasting put on by GTW (Gourmet Traveller Wine) at Mojo in Waterloo last night, and there was hardly anybody there. 20 people tops, when these events hosted by Peter Bourne – fourth from the right – usually attract 100.

This was a more instructive tasting than usual because the wines were presented in pairs, one bottle of the current release and a second of an older vintage – between 5 and 15 years of age. It was fascinating to compare the two and see how they had matured. The wines from Tassie impressed me with their richness, and those from the Great Southern in Western Australia surprised me with their staying power.

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