This comp is the brain child of Tyson Stelzer and Matthew Jukes, an enthusiastic Australian / British alliance. ‘For the first time in 2013,’ says wine journalist Katrina Holden, ‘Tyson and Matthew have created somewhat of a ‘road trip’, taking the Great Australian Red to a tasting and dinner in London recently, and in late September, to Sydney. Next year, 2014, will see the roll-out of The Great Australian Red tastings in both Hong Kong and New York.’

Last month, we had the 2013 GREAT AUSTRALIAN SHIRAZ CHALLENGE, won by a $20 red. This competition celebrates the unfashionable but very Aussie red blend of Cabernet and Shiraz. Just why this blend has fallen so much out of favour has more to do with fashion than with the quality of the blend.

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‘Lindeman’s is to focus on wines from the Hunter Valley as part of a drive to push the more premium, regional wines in its portfolio.’

Yes I know. It’s hard to believe but that’s the sub-heading of a short piece in DailyWineNews. Chief winemaker Wayne Falkenberg explained that the Hunter Valley was the “birthplace” of Lindeman’s, hence the reason for pushing the region. ‘Since it’s been our home, we really want to bring it back into the portfolio,’ he said. ‘At bin level we’re still a major player in quality but regionally we’ve lost a little ground so we’re bringing back regional wines.’

Falkenberg also tells us that Semillon is ‘a really underrated Australian white variety.’ He says he’s also keen to get ‘more bottle-aged Hunter wines back on the market – a style with which Lindeman’s used to “dominate” the tasting circuit.’

Why I want to scream when I read this crap

All these years of Southcorp, Fosters and TWE laying waste to what was once Australia’s greatest wine company, and now you remember the Hunter Valley, your great Semillons and the mature releases that used to give us so much pleasure?

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What happened to the Big Guns?

When I looked at the list of wines, I wondered why so many big names were missing: Grosset, Petaluma, Pike’s Traditionale, Paullett, Pewsey Vale, Wilson, Mitchell, Plantagenet, Larry Cherubino and Leeuwin Estate come to mind. Nick Bullied writes that they limited the number of wines to 70, but only some 30 are reviewed. The list stops at 90 points (see copy of the full list below) – does that mean the rest didn’t make the cut? Hard to believe.

The Hidden List

Leafing through the mag, I discovered some of the missing Rieslings in the New Releases section. It felt a bit like stumbling into a parallel universe, but it was a worthwhile stumble. Here’s why:

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The latest edition of GTW is out with reports on several interesting collections. We’ll start with ALL THAT FIZZ, a rundown on our best sparkling wines by Ken Gargett.

Ken came to wine from the legal profession. Now he ‘has a regular column in the Brisbane Courier Mail, Sunday Herald Sun newspapers and is an occasional contributor to Gourmet Traveller Wine Magazine. Ken is a winner of the prestigious Vin de Champagne Award in Australia, recipient of a Len Evans scholarship and judge at The Royal Sydney Wine Show … Ken’s love affair with Champagne has been recently recognized when he was made a chevalier of the Ordre des Coteaux de Champagne.’

Sadly, most of the bubblies listed in Ken’s article aren’t in our range of $25 or even the extended range (for special occasions) of $30.

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A few of the wines on JH’s list got away from us, some for good reasons, others unintentionally. This morning’s Winestar newsletter helped us refocus.

Thomas Wines Braemore Semillon 2013 – 97 points and $24 at Winestar

This is traditional Hunter Semillon, early-picked (10.8%) and full of grass and lemon extract – probably needs 20 years to show its best. If you like the style, this looks like a real bargain.

Mount Adam High Eden Chardonnay 2011 – 96 points – $26 at Winestar or Winelistaustralia – we’ve drunk this wine on 3 occasions and loved it. It’s not a big Chardonnay, but a very fine one. Still, it leans toward the stone fruit and cashew side of flavour rather than the grapefruit and lemon curd end. All good, and it’s worth going over our self-imposed limit for. A big surprise is that you can still buy the highly-fancied 2010 Mount Adam Chardy  for $29 at MyCellars.

West Cape Howe Cabernet Merlot 2011 – Everybody loves it and it’s just $15 at Winestar.  Yes, just about everybody as you see from Bert’s notes. We’re the odd lot out here because we found this too big and too obvious (14.5%), and lacking the elegance and polish we love in this style from the west. We like other WCH wines too, and all we can say in our defence is that the folks there would’ve put it out under one of their pricier labels if they thought it was that good. Try it.

De Bortoli Windy Peak Pinot Noir 2012 – 92 points from JH and 90 from the Winefront. $12 at Winestar makes it look like a real bargain. That said, we’ve yet to find an Aussie Pinot at this price level that delivers more than a very ordinary Beaujolais Villages.

Kim

The Heart Foundation’s TICK says Junk Food is good for us

I really wanted to leave the heart disease thing alone after I said my piece. Then came more ridiculous news on statins, so I had to add an update. The new US guidelines virtually mandate that everyone over 60 takes these drugs, no matter how healthy they are.

Last night I was watching 7.30 on the ABC when a report on teenage depression made me switch channels. Italian cooking on SBS was boring (when is someone going to tell Maeve O’Mara that her hair style went out in the early nineties?).

The Trick with the Killer Tick

I got stuck on a Current Affair on Channel 9 (a program I have a really low opinion of), where I saw a young woman called Jessie Reimers who’s running a petition (she has 23,000 signatures already) to stop the Heart Foundation from slapping its red TICK of Approval on just about everything that claims a low fat content.

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Separating the rewarding wines from the elusive esoterica

In later November, The Wine Companion Team publishes Halliday’s Top 100 wines, on its website and in the Australian. The team used to group them by RRP into under $20 and over $20. We’ve teased out the pick of these, not an easy task.

Price groups

This year, the folks at WC seem to have followed our lead and used street pricing – very sharp street pricing in some cases. For example, Petaluma White label Chardonnay  sells for well over $20 in most places (but our tireless team came through with an $18 special and free Spiegelau glasses). Then again, $16 wines end up in the over $20 group – the Mount Pleasant Elizabeth Hunter Valley Semillon 2006 for example.

Availability

As usual, this is a problem when you invite everybody out there to send you samples. We’ve marked a few of these in the groups below.

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It’s not as simple as it should be

We often choose the wines we review and buy the samples. We also receive samples from friends, distributors, major retailers, minor merchants and some wineries. We try to limit these samples to relevant wines that fit our model, both in terms of price and quality. We’re about finding the best value wines for you under $25 – we don’t intend to drown you in bulk reviews of everything out there. We’re looking for wines with a great quality to price ratio: a 90 point wine for $10, a 95 point wine for $20 and so on.

Homework

We know most of the wines that are good value by now, and we know most of the labels that produce really ordinary fare. Of course we keep an eye on the wine industry so we don’t miss a significant change, such as a change of owner or winemaker. And we do some homework to help us find suitable wines for review, mostly by checking other review sites such as these:

James Halliday’s Wine Companion (print and online versions)

The Winefront – Mrs Mattinson, Bennie and Walsh

The Gourmet Traveller Wine magazine crew – Peter Bourne et al

Huon Hooke

We also check the reviews of others from time to time, such as Chris Shanahan, Nick Stock, Jeremy Oliver and Tony Jordan.

We also pay some attention to wine show results or those of wine competitions or challenges. However, we take the results with a grain of salt since our wine judging system has been broken for a long time, and there’s no will to change it.

Our Scoring system

We use the same 100 point system as everybody else, for the sake of consistency, even though I argued here that 10 points were more than enough. Sadly, consistency turns out to be an empty term: Robert Parker’s 100 point system is different from James Halliday’s. Since JH is the kingpin down under, we’ll stick with his system (more or less). We push it a little harder, though, while James likes to be generous to everyone.

We stop where we do because scores much lower than 90 don’t excite consumers or wine writers. Huon Hooke is the exception, at times listing bargains of the week with points scores as low as 85.

An essential adjunct to the number scores are the prices of wines, at least for us consumers. A $10 wine that scores 91 is a serious bargain, while a $50 wine that scores 91 would not get a BUY recommendation from us. In the context of our website, the relationship between score and price is crucial.

Kim

It’s official: forget about cholesterol and LDL

A couple of weeks ago, we changed the subject and engaged with the debate started by the ABC’s catalyst program on cholesterol and heart disease and statin drugs. Once a month I attend a book club evening at my friend Andrew’s place, where we discuss fine literature and drink fine wine.

Fine wine attracts medicine men, and at the meeting last Wednesday we had a robust debate about the cholesterol and statin story until the wines induced more mellow feelings.  I really want to get away from this subject now, but the story just gets worse and worse – see NEWSFLASH below.

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More proof that price is no guide to quality? Or is it the judging?

You decide. This year’s outright winner of the 2013 VISY Great Australian Shiraz Challenge is Pepperjack Shiraz 2012, a commercial red made by Saltram (part of TWE) that is on regular discount for less than $20. It’s usually a great big steak and eggs Barossa Shiraz, fairly typical of the obvious reds that tend to win at wine shows because they stand out like dogs’ balls. The 2012 is only 14.5% but this line often runs into 15 or more.

The under $25 category winner is the 2012 Ingoldby Shiraz, an even more commercial drop with no great pretensions that rarely rises to even modest heights and is often discounted to $10 a bottle. The ultra reliable Campbell Mattinson at the Winefront gives it 88 points.

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