‘The biggest wine contaminant (far worse than sulphur) is money. I don’t know how to put it any other way. The contamination is growing worse all the time. The better the wine, tragically, the more money it contains. Fine wines are now brimfull of money.’ Andrew Jefford

Yes, the prices of the world’s great wines have risen to ridiculous heights, with the most expensive wines testing the leap into the hyperspace of 5 figures – for a single bottle. Price has become the ticket to an exclusive club that is not open to most of us simple wine lovers.

Just as serious is the loss of the great benchmarks that are so essential for our education and orientation.  What are our chances of ever tasting a Chateau Petrus from Pomerol, a Montrachet or Domain de la Romanée Conti Burgundy, a Chateau d’Yquem Sauternes or a JJ Prum Wehlener Sonnenuhr Trockenbeerenauslese? Or even a Screaming Eagle Sauvignon Blanc from California?

Image Source: Californian Wine Report

Wines like these make the near-1000 dollar price tags of Grange and Hill of Grace look perfectly reasonable, don’t they, yet even our home-grown heroes have become luxury goods to impress friends or business people with. They’re collected and cosseted, adored and admired, bought and sold but rarely opened.

Where Value is Tough to Find

$50 will buy you a decent Bordeaux Superior, which will not give you much of an idea why some people spend thousands on a bottle of Chateau Petrus. Even the wines on the next level down from the top guns fetch $400 or more: Chateau Léoville-Las Cases or Chateau L’Evangile, for example. A $100 Margaret River red from Moss Wood, Leeuwin Estate or Woodlands will be a close match in quality terms, and far better value.

The Brits know their way around the bargains in this part of the world, and here are some recommendations from Decanter’s Jane Anson.

CHATEAU LES TROIS CROIX 2015 – $56 at PWS. The mainly Merlot grapes (usually 80% in the blend, with 20% Cabernet Franc) are grown on the same type of limestone plateau that you find in St-Emilion and are rounded out with a oak ageing that usually sees around 30% new barrels. I have loved pretty much every recent vintage here, but maybe search out the 2015 for its damson fruits rippling with minerality.

Chateau Grand Village 2014, Bordeaux, Merlot and Cabernet franc  – $46 at Mosaique Owned by the Guinaudeau family of Château Lafleur, this is becoming a don’t miss wine in the AOC Bordeaux appellation.

CHATEAU MONTLANDRIE 2016 – $52 at PWS  I couldn’t finish without adding one Denis Durantou wine. The prices are, sadly, now starting to head upwards, but you can still find some in the range for £20 or under in the UK market, and if you do see them, snap them up. Durantou is without doubt one of France’s most talented winemakers, and Montlandrie has been owned by him since 2009, planted to 65% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc and 15% Cabernet Sauvignon.

Other Choices

The typical advice from leading wine writers and judges is to look further afield. Just down the road from the grand crus, they tell us, you’ll find many close cousins at much more friendly prices. If top red Burgundies from the Cote de Nuits are out of reach, what about a Clos des Myglands from Mercury? If Chassagene-Montrachet is beyond your budget, what about a Pouilly-Fuissé or St Veran from the Maconnais?

These are solid, honest country wines, affordable alternatives for sure at $25 to $50 a bottle, but they won’t give you the faintest idea why some wine lovers are driven to writing poetry about great Burgundies and spending small fortunes on a few bottles. You’d be better off spending your money on Pinots or Chardonnays from Tasmania or Victoria. Most of the time, you’ll get a better product.

There’s a Fly in my Wine Glass

Parker perfection – 100 points – comes at a price, but there’s more: some of these reds are caricatures that have more in common with Grange than top Bordeaux: refinement, charm and balance have given way to wines that are rich, ripe, muscle-bound and headache-inducing (15% and more). That’s the style of red Parker loved and promoted. More Here.

White Burgundies have been plagued by different challenges, and the Brits tell us that we’re better off with top-notch Aussie Chardonnay. This is what Pierre Mansour form the UK’s Wine Society told Brits a few years ago: ‘ … with the [premature oxidation] issues [white] Burgundy has had in recent years, I’d urge Decanter readers to look to Australia – these wines are brilliant.’

The ‘premox’ issue has tarnished the reputation of expensive white Burgundies for over a decade now, and neither the cause nor the extent of the damage are clear – check the gory details Here.

There’s More to France

France has a lot more to offer than Bordeaux and Burgundy. Even Bordeaux offers serious treasures once we open our eyes and minds. South of Bordeaux on the banks of the river Garonne, we find the great dessert wines of Sauternes and Barsac. They’re much better value than the grand cru reds, even without factoring in the high cost of making these wines: The grapes are picked almost one at a time, over several rounds, and a single vine makes one glass of dessert wine. With dry white or red, one vine makes a whole bottle.

Stickies seem to have gone out of fashion, which has kept prices reasonable, and these are wonderful wines with few rivals. While Chateau d’Yquem has carved out a reputation that puts it on a lofty pedestal, with a price nudging $1000 a bottle, the next best wines are very close in quality and much more affordable. Here are a few choices:

• Chateau Coutet 2014 – $87 at Nicks
• Doisy Daene 2015 – $99 at Nicks
• Chateau Rieussec 2014 – $120 at Nicks
• 2011 Chateau Guiraud Sauternes (375 ml) – $95 at MWG
• 2015 DV by Chateau Doisy-Vedrines Sauternes (375ml) – $20 at Nicks

There’s More Again

Just north of Sauternes lies Graves, an area that makes stylish and affordable whites from Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon and Muscadelle. Sadly, new see very few of these wines down under.  Here are a couple

Chateau du Cros – Sauvignon Blanc – 2014 – $22 at French Wine Collective. ‘You won’t pay more than €20 in France for this brilliant Fronsac, owned by Patrick Leon, ex-Mouton winemaker,’ says Decanter’s Jane Anson.

Jane also recommends Clos Floridene Grand Vin de Graves – $50 at Cellarit. This spot in Pujols-sur-Ciron used to be a fully red wine property,’ she tells us, ‘but [Professor] Dubourdieu recognised its sand-red clay-limestone terroir as an exceptional one for white (he compared it to Chassagne and Meursault), particularly as its location in the Ciron valley also means some of the coldest nights in Bordeaux – perfect for encouraging aromatics.’

The Loire

The river Loire flows across France from east to west, through what is truly picturesque wine country. There are many lovely wines made here, from the Muscadets near the Atlantic to the gentle reds of Chinon and Bourgeuil, to Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume further upstream. These wines are not considered classic wines on the same level as the top Bordeaux and Burgundies, but they’re affordable at $25 to $50, and worth trying. Once again, hardly anyone imports these wines.

Muscadet Sèvre et Maine “Briords” Vieilles Vignes, Domaine de la Pépière – $36 at Andrew Guard ‘From 70-year old vines, on granite. Pure bright fruit on the nose, which is clear, lightly creamy, with some fresh herbal and mineral nuances. The wine has terrific tension and a lovely mouth-feel. Really fine potential here.’ Says one reviewer.

Marc Bredif Classic Vouvray 2016 – $25 at Nicks. Made from Chenin Blanc on the lower Loire, these wines remind me of Hunter Semillons: when they’re young, they smell and taste of apples and lemons, when they’re old they taste of lanolin and wet straw.

Chablis

Chablis is another classic area, just north of Burgundy on the way to Champagne. The premier grand crus are expensive, if not in the same league as top white Burgundies, but the premier crus, the next level down, are much more sensibly priced.

Andrew Jefford tells us that co-ops are an unrivalled source of affordable, dependable wine from proven terroir, and cites the long-established La Chablisienne in Chablis. Vintage Cellars imports these wines

La Chablisienne 1er Cru Lechet  2013 – $40 at Vintage Cellars. The web page seems to have problems loading, and the 2013 vintage most likely needs updating. Here’s the page with the 3 wines they import

Nicks has a few Chablis wines for us, and the William Fevre Chablis 1995 makes a really good start at a decent price: $30. Premier Crus are much dearer, of course.

Maison des Hates Chablis Premier Cru Beauroy 2016 – $60 at Nicks. Check the reviews at the links.

The Rhone

The Provence is fertile ground for us, at the southern end of the valley. The further up the river you go, the further up the prices go. Chateauneuf do Pape is not a good value proposition because it’s so well-known. Gigondas and St Joseph are affordable destinations, Cornas and Crozes-Hermitage less so, and Hermitage and Cote Rotie are at the top of the price range. The prices are up there for a good one.

• Chateau Beaucastel Chateauneuf du Pape 2015 – $165 at Nicks.
• Guigal Brune & Blonde Cote Rotie 2012 – $120 at Vaucluse Cellars. Serious wine made by one of the pillars of this region.
• Domaine Jean-Louis Chave, Hermitage, Rhône, France, 2016 – $90 at Nicks

The next group is more affordable

• Saint-Damien Gigondas Vieilles Vignes 2015 – $40 at Nicks
• Domaine Saint Damien Gigondas Vieilles Vignes Rouge 2015 – $40 at Nicks
• Ferraton Père et Fils La Source Saint Joseph Syrah 2015 – $48 at Euro Wine Store
• Cave de Tain Crozes-Hermitage 2015 – $38 at Dynamic Wines. Another do-op that comes highly recommended by Andrew Jefford

There is great value to be found among the basic appellation wines, and the boys at Nicks do a pretty good job sorting the best from the rest

• Guigal Cotes du Rhone 2015 – $19 at Nicks. This is the benchmark of sorts, but there are better wines from single domains
• Chateau Juvenal Les Ribes du Vallat – $25 at Nicks
• Saint-Damien Plan de Dieu Vieilles Vignes Cotes du Rhone Villages 2015 – $25 at Nicks

There’s enough to keep you amused here, so we’ll leave the second part of this post until next week when we check the best value wines of other countries such as Italy and Spain.

The trouble starts with labels that feature George Wyndham’s head exploding in various colourful ways. Pernod Ricard Australia has built a huge marketing campaign around this new range, which celebrates the spirit of George Wyndham who left a childhood of privilege in England to explore the world.

‘With Meg, he braved the voyage to Australia,’ the story goes. ‘George battled frost, fire, storms, bushrangers, disease and more … George didn’t just create a wine. He created a legacy. He proved that with conviction and confidence, anyone can forge a new life for themselves.’

What the story neglects to tell us is that George established Dalwood (later called Wyndham Estate) near Branxton in the Hunter Valley, and planted Shiraz there in 1830 – years before the first plantings of Shiraz in South Australia.

Instead we’re treated to videos of George the Fixer, George the Wizard, George the Illustrious, George the Unbound and George the Lover, would you believe?  This is classic marketing mumbo jumbo, removed from reality, suspended in outer space by marketing minds with no connection to the real story.

There’s not a word about the recent sale of the historic Dalwood property, years after Pernod Ricard closed down the operation. Nor is there a word about shutting down another historic winery PR acquired some time back: Morris of Rutherglen, snapped up by Casella just before it was mothballed.

These days, Wyndham Estate is just another brand in the Pernod Ricard Collection that includes Jacob’s Creek, Chivas Regal, Wild Turkey, Beefeater, Glenlivet, Kahlua, Ballantine’s, Perrier-Jouet and Mumm. The stories are pure fantasy; you can watch them here https://www.iamgeorge.com.au/george-stories.html

With a treasure trove of real stories of the men and women pioneers in Australia’s wine industry, why do we need these fairy tales spun by adolescent minds? Why do big wine companies lose the essential connections with the vines, the people and the vineyards that produce their products? We asked the same question in our story on Lindemans – Death By a Thousand Cuts.

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The core concept of Best Wines Under $20 has always been to find wines of distinction at every day prices. In a business where high quality wines tend to sell for $100 and even $1000 a bottle, that’s not a trivial challenge. Yet it happens, and subscribers tell us when we get it right.

Sometimes such wines are new discoveries, new stars on the horizon that have not yet attracted attention; other times these are commercial wines that transcend their humble origins in a given vintage. The Topers Chardonnay 2013 was a great example of the former, Wynn’s black label Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 was a lovely example of the latter.

Known Unknowns and Known Knowns

I’m one of many who wish they’d bought more cases of the glorious Topers from a vineyard in Cowra, at the ludicrous price of $13 a bottle. I found it by accident: our webmaster asked if I’d like to see a sample from a client of hers who made wine. I said: sure. That’s easily said but it’s the hardest thing to assess a wine with no history, no show record, no reference points and no entry in Halliday’s Companion. You have to make your judgement and be prepared to back it.

The Wynns Black Label was the opposite: a racehorse from a famous blood line, and a family history spanning 6 decades. The trick here was that TWE decided to offer heavy discounts on the wine soon after its release. It would’ve been released in 2012/13, with an RRP between $35 and $40, and here it was on sale at Vintage Cellars for $19 a bottle. The reviews from the Winefront and Huon Hooke were positive but their scores were just 93 with a + added by Gary Walsh.

I thought it deserved 94 points at least, and 2 ++. James Halliday scored the wine 96 points, but we know his scores are inflated.  His review matched my impression though: ‘Deep colour; it spent 15 months in a mix of old and new French and American oak barriques, giving rise to a fragrant and expressive bouquet of black fruits, spice and cedar nuances. The palate really sings with dark berry fruit, oak and tannins the supporting orchestra. Right up there with the best Black Labels. 96 points.’

I ended up buying cases of the Wynns 2009, a typical black label to my mind. The best of these are Peter Pans, wines that retain their youthful vigour as they grow older. At nearly 10 years of age, the 2009 follows that blueprint; it will last for a long time.

Unsung Heroes

Pewsey Vale Rieslings are the white foil to Wynns black label, a long line of wines going back to the sixties. I’ve enjoyed most of these wines since I came of drinking age, but lost touch with them after turning my back on a fine wine world gone nuts in the late 1990s. In 2011, with my interest in wine rekindled, I saw the 2006 at Dan Murphy’s in the form of a cellar release selling for $20. I bought a bottle, then a case. I’ve bought most vintages since.

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Last week, I put up a post headed $7 Wines Win Big Trophies at the Latest Shows. In a nutshell, I asked how the judges could get it so wrong: how could they give the lowliest wine made by Jacobs Creek a trophy and 96 points, while they scored the same company’s flagship Riesling, the $30 Steingarten Riesling 2017, a measly 83 points?

I thought that comparison was pretty compelling, but one subscriber came to the JC Classic Riesling’s defence in a well-researched email.

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The International Riesling Challenge 2018

It’s an annual event staged in Canberra, with local and overseas judges doing the tasting and the scoring. The maths always provide some overall clues. 567 Rieslings were judged in various categories, and 2 out of 3 won a medal.

• 70 gold medals
• 104 silver medals
• 205 bronze

That’s a pretty high ratio, and not uncommon these days. Winemaking standards have improved out of sight, they tell us. To be fair, the majority of medals were bronze so the marking was reasonably tough.

Photo © Chris Holly

The Crème de La Crème

Let’s just look at one category: Elite Gold Medal winners, wines scoring 96 points or more.

Here we find a surprise entry in a Jacobs Creek Classic Riesling 2018, which we can buy for $7 at Liquorland. So how did a wine mass-produced to a price win an elite gold medal? This is the lowliest wine made by Jacobs Creek. The company’s flagship Riesling is the $30 Steingarten 2017, which scored a measly 83 points, just about off the bottom of the scale.

There are lots more weird scores: the 2017 Ottelia Mount Gambier Riesling that James Halliday gove 98 points to scored just 83 points. Jim Barry’s top-of-the-tree Florita Riesling 2017 scored just 84.

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The wines may not take your breath away, but the prices sure will

TWE has shown no shame when it comes to squeezing money out of its Grange brand. Peter Gago has been  a great ambassador for the prestigious label, while his masters screwed the price up higher and higher. It’s been easy lately, with the Chinese willing to hand over big money for prestige bottles. The RRP for the new Grange is $100 off $1000.

Most of the Grange bottles made are never opened. Collectors show them to friends at dinner parties, investors buy and sell them, but very few people drink them. If you actually want to buy some Grange to drink, I have wonderful news: the average auction price for older Granges runs around $400 to $500 a bottle, half the cost of the current wine. Plus the auctioneer’s take and freight, of course.

I’m talking about every vintage going back to the 1976, which can fetch up to $800. I shared a bottle with good friends a few years ago, and on that day it was the perfect red: a genuine 100 points. There are lots of good Granges made in the 40 vintages since, and the older ones are mature, ready to enjoy now.

The Burning Question  

Tyson Stelzer’s piece on the 2018 release says: ‘Penfolds Collection 2018 – An outstanding release… but there’s a twist: The pertinent question this year is whether these wines can sustain such ever-spiralling domestic inflation.

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The first time I heard of this winery was when it won some major award with its 2005 Shotfire Shiraz. That wine flew off retailers’ shelves in a matter of days, and I was too slow off the mark. My next encounter was with the 2008 Shotfire Quartage, a Bordeaux blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot. It was a pretty plush wine, Bordeaux with a sunny Barossa smile.

The 2009 was just as seductive, and for some reason 1^st Choice Liquor decided to run a special on the wine at $14. I only bought one case at that price, thinking the wine’s fruit was so plush that it wouldn’t keep for long. We drank the last bottle a few years later, and it was delicious. Ever since, the Quartage has been one of our favourite reds.

Mount Crawford vineyard, Eden Valley

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Are you over the exaggerated ratings that help retailers sell wine? Do you want to know the real score, from the ugly truth about a gold-medal wine to the unsung gem at a bargain price? We’ve built a dedicated following of wine lovers who want straight talk, and our Best Buys Weekly mailer has become essential reading for them. This is what they say:

You tell it like it is, Kim. Honesty, there is no one else in Australia I really I trust … I’m so tired of all those the 90+ scores that are meaningless. Brett B.

Your wine site is my bible and I love it, and your mailer telling me the best places to get good wines saves me a heck of a lot of time. Merryn O.

I’ve built my cellar on your recommendations, Kim, and so far haven’t struck a bad bottle. Len T.

Best Buys Weekly is the only wine mailer I take notice of these days. Jeffrey D

I’m a wine novice but I can now take a bottle to dinner with serious wine friends, and raise compliments on my selections.  Safe to say you can a lot of the credit for that. Phil G.

Please remove me from your mailing list … my husband is a paid subscriber to your fantastic newsletter and forwards it to me every week  🙂 Lee G.

I was blown away by the quality available for this kind of money. Carl S.

Weekly updates. Huge devotion. Great result. A really useful consumer service. Warren M.

Keep up your no-nonsense, honest , reviews and comments ,they’re very much appreciated. John McL

Listen to Kim talking about exaggerated scores on Fran Kelly’s ABC RN Breakfast Show

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The oldest Wine Family in Australia