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The Rant continues...Down Under! - Printable Version

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- Botafogo - 10-05-2000

This is from this Wednesday's Adelaide Advertiser (the major newspaper in Adelaide Australia)

Last of the Behemoths by Philip White

My e-mate, Roberto, runs a famous Santa Monica, California, wine shop variously called Wine Expo, Enoteca Centrale or Champagne World HQ, depending on what you want to drink. His enlightened wine patois leaves the literary presumptions of most Australian merchants for dead. I respect him. So I gulp when he asks me:

" .... sometime I would really like to chat with you re the actual function of the steroidal wines you guys make down there. Is there some BBQ joint with roast rack of mastadon in a primordial oooze sauce that I need to know about? ....I just can't seem to figure out what to do with some of those wines: kind of like a stripper with 70 inch tits. You can't really take her to the mall you know .... "



Roberto explained that while he specializes in Italian wines of "literally thousands of distinct styles" his Christmas specials, twenty of Australias hottest, most discussed, most tantalising and rare red icons, right inside the front door, just sat there for months. Eventually he sent them back. In the meantime he sold whole lakes of more elegant, finer wines at higher prices. "Truly interesting", he wrote, "but then, we have deliberately cultivated a food oriented clientele".

Food oriented? So that cuts Aussie out, eh?

I explained that rare, special, small dry-grown vineyards do crop up, capable of producing wines of high alcohol, AND enough acid and life to remain in balance. Sure, these may be best consumed with diprotodon, mastadon, or the sort of smoky, fatty food habitually devoured in the Barossa. But the rare ones are in balance, putting them far ahead of the horde of dumbo jumbo copyists who imagine that big numbers will impress powerful critics like Robert Parker Jr., regardless of their balance or intelligence, and that once he has beatified them unseemly wealth is instant.

Grossly imperfect though it is, the Australian wine show circuit cannot be blamed for the proliferation of these silicone-busted bimbos, for many of their makers claim moral superiority through their habit of avoiding wine shows. But a beatification from the Parkerilla is something they simply cannot turn down, regardless of whether or not he really understands the wine, or whether or not they really believe him.

Pity they werent at the born-again, revamped and rejuvenated Barossa Wine Show last week, listening to Very Big Winemaker Robin Day address the tuxedoed throng. Robin explained that as a kind of roving oenologist for the French-owned Orlando-Wyndham, he has worked in ten different countries in the last six years, and made it clear that Australia has the best quality grapes and the best quality equipment it has ever experienced and that this has led to dangerous presumption and a loss of passion for great wine.

Then he talked about the sorts of wines that sat there in Robertos doorway.

"The average alcohol of the labelled wines in the shiraz class in this years show was a little under 14%" he reported. "This indicates that quite a few wines are well in excess of this, prompting the suggestion to award the medals to the consumer for courage instead of the producer for excellence. If the demand is for this extra belt of alcohol then it is surely best delivered as a seamless, well-balanced shiraz - followed by a brandy."

Day suggested that the Barossa should not entirely change its direction, but learn to offer a wider range of more drinkable wines. Given its history, and geographic and geological realities, I doubt that the Valley as we know it is capable of producing many more styles without salting itself to death. Perhaps it should turn the taps off, sit back and fine tune what it does best, even if this does means a new threat to the mastadon population. It would certainly point to a cessation of the enormous new opportunist vineyards, and real reduction in the scale of unsustainable viticulture. Contrarily, Day says Italian varieties are one solution, and has planted his very own selection just to prove his point.

Day may be correct in asserting that Hill of Grace, Three Rivers and Torbreck Rig Run "are some of the most seamless and Rhone-like shiraz wines produced in the Barossa", but if hed been brave enough, he could have suggested that these are not Rhone-like at all, as a ten year scan of any will display oaking that no Frenchman would consider, and alcohol that the premium Rhone could rarely achieve if it tried, which it wouldnt.

Whether you like it or not, these wines are Barossa essence, not Rhone shiraz. If Barossa makers took Days advice and chose to "take advantage of the 800 years of experiments French producers have done for us in the Rhone Valley" Barossa shiraz would be a very different drink indeed, and very much better. But it would not be Rhone shiraz.