Screwcaps!

And the blinds remain shut

2006-03-17T13:17:00.000+13:00

Thanks to all who have written. Real life has intruded a bit too much to make this missive a regular event. Allow me to let this lie fallow for a while, and see if either free time or free head space or renewed energy bring it back to life. If not, it was fun while it lasted, wasn't it?

Yours in the spirit of wine,

10X5

Ringing in the 90s

2006-01-10T05:07:00.000+13:00

Spent part of the holidays traveling, and whilst happily ensconced in the bosom of the enormous Brussels, Belgium-based Screwcaps fan family, attended a nice 5-hour lunch commemorating the 1990 vintage.

Now I don't know about you, but I certainly didn't have any 1990 NZ wines hanging around my cellar, so even though I was the only representative from the Southern Hemisphere, I had to make do with a 90 Veuve Clicquot Grand Dame (still a baby, by the way, needing hours in the glass to put on its full show.)

Most of the other wines were Bordeaux:

1990 Trotanoy was the flashiest out of the gate--very soft, feminine, Burgundian, as befits a middle-aged Pomerol. It was the wine of the night for the first hour, but faded quite a bit as it aired.

The 1990 Lynch Bages remains a chunky, monolithic wine, not of the breed of the 89, and still way too young to evaluate as aged Bordeaux. Whether it will gain a huge amount of complexity with another decade is anyone's guess (I would guess no.)

The 1990 Pichon Baron started out the least evolved and accessible, but by the end of the meal was singing, clearly the finest of the the three. All the cedar and graphite aspects of Pauillac, and still very young, it opened to layers and layers of complexity. Wish I had a case of this to enjoy over the next few years.

The 1990 Prunotto Cannubi Barolo seemed to be hitting its plateau of full maturity, which was a bit surprising, as I'd expected it to be the youngest of the reds. Great out of the bottle, filled with leather and tar and bitter cherry; it remained that way until drained, the first bottle to be finished (the fact that the food was Italian and not French might have had something to do with that). Great wine, perhaps a touch more feminine and Barbaresco-like than I was expecting, but a pleasure anyway.

The surprise of the day was a half-bottle of the Avignonesi Vin Santo, Occhio di Pernice. This is a legendary wine, bestowed with a 100-point score from the Wine Spectator some years back, and deserving of it: thick as 50-weight motor oil, cut from the same cloth as a PX Sherry, but with much more acidity and a finish that goes well into dinner. Thanks so much to the chap that brought it--what a treat.

So, anything interesting happen while I was gone? I see Graham posted with a spirited defense of Keith Stewart's book. Thanks for that: I still think the book is absurd, but your response was cogent, rational, and better written than what you were defending. Huzzah!

10x5

Happy Kwanzaa!

2005-12-25T13:49:00.000+13:00

Don't know what it is? Look it up, you multicultural philistine.

On holiday break until late Jan. My advice: make your own scandals for the next few weeks.

Oh, and do look hard for the 04 Rhone and Southern French whites that are rolling in now. They are the best in years.

Smooches,

10x5

The Order of Events

2005-12-13T09:49:00.000+13:00

1. Press release from Winegrowers becomes article screaming "biggest export month ever" for New Zealand wineries.

2. A few well-placed winery owners happen to mention to the Gregans-that-be how most intelligent people--notably that gadfly 10x5--aren't buying all this "good news" about how increased export numbers equate to unprecedented prosperity in the wine industry.

3. A follow-up purposefully placed article has Gregan tactfully and soberly pointing out how export numbers don't necessarily equate to increased profits.

As modest a chronology as this is, you can call it a tiny victory for honesty in the wine biz.

In other news, Cuisine is out, and that preternaturally prescient moi sees the Shingle Peak Sav has nailed the Best Buy award. 'Course, as our astute readership pointed out earlier, this should have been a no-brainer after seeing it was wine of the year in The Moustache's book, but I'll take credit wherever I can get it.

Final Savvy note: Ignore what you read about the St. Clair Pioneer Block 2 in the Top 10. If you find somewhere selling both, get the Block 1. It's markedly better, and is a candidate for "shameless tiny-production, award-whore wine of the year from a giant company". Yum!

10x5

Going to the bookstore...

2005-12-03T12:38:00.000+13:00

...so you don't have to! Inspired by this hard-hitting TV One report (watch the video, it's better), I went and had a nosy through Keith Stewart's new book, The Great Wines of New Zealand.

After watching the typically incomprehensible TV One segment, I had no idea what the book was trying to accomplish, only the vague sentiment that if Sam Neill hates it, then it might actually be pretty good. If there's anything I hate worse than over-oaked young-vines Pinot, it's agreeing with any Hollywood actor-turned-gentleman vigneron.

But as hard as you might try to find even one redeeming feature about this book...well, let me save you the effort. It is the single most ridiculous, irrational, moronic, pandering, kiss-ass, knee-jerk, utterly misguided wine book ever written in any language about any topic.

Don't hold back now, 10x5. Say what you really feel!

Seriously, though, I've not a clue even what to say. First, to group grape varieties into Maori-language categories, such that Pinot and Syrah, for example, share the same name, is enough to get Stewart kicked out of wine journalism forever. Second, to defend it by saying that we need to "brand" our product in order to be recognized internationally is to boldly, in print, declare that he knows not the first thing about global marketing. Third, to invoke the French AOC system or the 1855 Bordeaux classification, to run a photo of Robert Parker in your book...oh, oh, the horror. Keith, Fat Bob will burst a blood vessel in his brain laughing at your proposal (and what a mess that will create at table).

What's most shocking of all is his quality metrics. It smacks of cronyism at its most shocking to see who he has included and lauded with his Atua (top) ranking (of course, don't be surprised to see that virtually every winery bum-smooched in his previous book, "Taste of the Earth," is top-ranked here.) And then to follow up the main body of the book with a list of the wineries who were too young or not quite in the first rank yet, and include the Felton Road Block bottling Pinots in it (whilst putting Chard Farm in the main part of the book) borders on the unbelievable. If I were Blair Walters, I'd...I'd...well, I'd pay no attention to this whaledreck, which I'm sure is what he's doing.

My favourite of all is the inclusion of ol' David Glover from down/up/over in Nelson in this second section, with two of his wines, one given the category of "Rising," and one "Hopeful." If you've ever stumbled upon Mr. Glover (and if you've not, you should), you'll understand what a hoot this is.

Good on ya, Keith! Your book made me laugh harder than anything this sorry week has delivered.

10x5

All lost in the supermarket...

2005-11-29T21:54:00.000+13:00

Went on down to the local Progressive box to have a holiday nosey. A couple wines stood out:

2004 Esk River Chardonnay, Hawkes Bay, $7.95!!
No tears were shed at Screwcaps Central when the Herald announced the demise of the less-than-venerable Esk River. The other, other Esk (after Esk Valley and Eskdale) never flew high enough to even register on most folks' radars. While their wines were not expensive, neither were they great values--purely middle of the road. Well, Foodworths had apparently bought out their stocks at pennies on the liter, because they're selling this perfectly fine Chardy at $8. It's a case buy no-brainer if you're entertaining the family this holiday, or hosting the neighborhood shindig. Can't say the same about the Merlot/Cabernet, which was eminently forgettable, but the Chardonnay has enough purity of fruit and a fair whack of oak that manages to not overwhelm, wrapping up a decent enough package. $8?? Amazing.

2002 Crossroads Destination Series Cabernet/Malbec/Franc, Hawkes Bay, $9.95
Another odd visitor to supermarket shelves, albeit from their purchased-grape range, I would assume. A pretty decent wine, lightweight and with the faintest touch of green from the Cab Franc, but possessing good purity of fruit, cherries and plums on the palate and a moderately long finish with a tannic edge that promises to soften in three years. It can't compete with Cr$ggy's Red Rock, but at half the price, it's pretty impressive.

2005 Shingle Peak Sauvignon Blanc, Marlborough, $14.95
The Cuisine Savvy issue is due out soon, and we can expect the usual flurry of Villas and Matua Valleys, and St. Clairs in the Top 10, I assume. I'd not be surprised to see this one there, Matua's big Marlborough operation. At this price point it's a pretty good buy, managing as it does to skirt the overripeness that haunts so many 05 Sauvs. It certainly lacks the intensity of the St. Clair Wairau, but its drier, and what it sacrifices in weight it makes up for in seamlessness. And, duh, price--again, half the price of the benchmark, and almost as good. For what it's worth, it blows the Astrolabe out of the water. That's reason enough to give it a try.

Three varieties, three bargains, three spot-on holiday buys. Who says you don't get great advice here?

10x5

24 hours of binge

2005-11-24T09:27:00.000+13:00

More than a few people here will be keeping an eye on Londoners' drinking patterns when closing times for pubs in Britain become a thing of the past today. The legislation allowing this was fought for, railed against, and anguished over for years, before finally passing a few months back.

Battles like this make for interesting bedfellows and unlikely antagonists: Conservatives vs. big business (in this case, pub owners, grocers, and brewers), Liberals siding with Big Alcohol, and the like. Some great statistics here, and some numbers on how many pubs and stores will be extending here.

This is of course a salient point for us, because there are periodic attempts to bring 24-hour drinking here. Once again, the 18-24 year old set is staunchly allied with the companies who would love to pour more profit-making product down their throats, while virtually everyone over 50 seems to be dead set against it.

For this observer, the concept of universal opening hours would be more palatable if it weren't backed by Big Booze Inc., who have long believed that the solution to our social pathology of binge drinking is to encourage more alcohol consumption over longer stretches of the day.

Having never been much of a pub crawler, I'm not qualified to speak for the binge-drinking hordes, but it seems to me that if you like the feeling created by pushing the boundaries of alcohol consumption, you will eventually craft that altered state for yourself, be it at 11PM, 2AM, or 6AM. It's a matter of urges and feeling, not a desparate need to hydrate in the last 15 minutes before closing time. At least, that's how it looks to me.

Most conflicted in this are the various police forces around the country. You hear the most wildly divergent opinions: Relax the closing times so that we don't get all over-taxed by having all our call-outs at the same time; or don't give us endless opportunities for call-outs by de-containing the danger zone.

We've always been looked at by the Commonwealth as a social and economic experimentation zone. This time, it's the Poms we'll be keeping an eye on. With all the various spins put on by all the interested parties, we'll likely get no clear story, with each side claiming either resounding success or dangerous failure, but I'll be most interested to see what the "official" line from the police union is, say a year down the road.

10x5

2005-11-23T09:37:00.000+13:00

Hundreds of you have written to me, pleading for more frequent posts. You all say "10x5, how are we to navigate the treacherous waters of NZ wine without more direction from you?"

Okay, no one's written ('cos how do you write to a figment of your own totured imaginations?), but there's still this vibe out there that your friendly host is bailing on his wee creation here.

Not true. But, see, sometimes there's not a heck of a lot to write about, and I'm not inclined to fill these pages with fluffery. Additionally, I'm not convinced you need more wine reviews. There's enough in the world, many of them bad (hey, the Mustache's new annual is out!), some good, and some just downright ridiculous. Why in the world do you need me adding another voice to the mix?

On the other hand, if one saves these pages only for scandal, innuendo, libelous rumour, and the like, the choice morsels are few and far between. Which is it to be, then? Fluffery or scarcity?

Your thousands of comments will decide the day.

10x5

Hot air rises in the Wairau

2005-11-11T10:07:00.000+13:00

Been poking around in Marlborough recently, which is always interesting. Just when you start to think that Hawkes Bay or Central has finally taken the award as most pretentious, most full-of-itself, most littered with starry-eyed Americans, most convinced that it is the world center of the wine world, you come back home to Marlborough and realize that this will always be wine buffoonery central.

My favourite recent trend is winery owners shouting loudly (usually with bits of gob spraying you in the face) about hillside plantings. Gravitas, Terravin, Churton, Clayridge, William Thomas...everyone's planting on a hillside and claiming a sudden new kinship with Cote Rotie, the Mosel, and the hill of Corton. Certainly not the first time this has been used as a marketing tool--Bilancia in Hawkes Bay has very effectively touted their La Colline Syrah as unique, and they actually might be on to something, in truth--but it's just funny to see it in Marlborough, as all the gravel flats land is being sucked up by large concerns and lifestyle-bent Americans (I see Kerner showing up in various shows now), French, Dutch, and Pom-eranians.

Will better wine--read: Pinot--be made from hillside sites in Marlborough? It's hard to say. One might be tempted to compare the quality of Pinot from the Nelson plains (almost universally mediocre) to the Moutere Hills (all over the map, but markedly superior across the board). The problem is that the soils between those two areas are so utterly different, that they don't even belong in the same viticultural region. The hillsides within the confines of the Wairau Valley differ in their soil from below because they were untouched by the alluvial river plain gravels, but below that are of similar composition. Yes, it's a sun thing and a drainage thing, but it's also a fashion thing. I'll remain skeptical and see how this plays out.

One thing that is very nice to see in Marlborough is the emergence of a young, second generation of wine folks, who are throwing down roots in the valley and creating a family tradition where there was none before. This is a major evolutionary shift in the fairly recent timeline of New Zealand wine. Yes, there have Brajkoviches and Soljans and Babiches up north for generations, but Marlborough is so recently on the map, and was first peopled by large Montana-esque companies and mostly emigrant winery founders, that it was hard to see a family tradition emerging for yearst to come.

But emerge it has, and from an interesting source: grape growers. You've got Jason Flowerday, he of the long-time Flowerday growing family, and William and Thomas Hoare, also vineyard whelps who grew up around the early years of Cloudy Bay. These are true, second-generation Valley kids, and there are more waiting in the wings. Their wines are by and large restless, exciting, experimental, and bold. Give them a few more years, and they could be some of the best ever to come out of the region.

A friend opened a few of the William Thomas releases for me. While the 05 Savvy was forgettable in the way that almost every other 05 Marlborough Sauv has been--competent, thankfully unacidified, but a bit ripe and blowsy, and verging on too much RS--his Pinot and Merlot were killers. Considering they were both from the washed-out 04 vintage, they are trebly impressive. The Pinot has a purity and balance you'd expect from a very seasoned winemaker, and the Merlot is a study in power and chewiness that makes it a dead ringer for the 02 Cr$ggy R$nge Sophia--who would have thought a Marlborough Merlot could lay claim to that. There is alledgedly a Syrah, and I'll be hunting down one in the days to come, though I'm told less than 200 bottles were made. Impressive debut and good news for the shambolic, messy world that is Marlborough.

10x5

The Australian Wine of the Year

2005-10-21T11:44:00.000+13:00

Yes, I know it's only October, so a bit early for wine-of-the-year awards, but this one will stand the test of time and makes for a great object lesson about the wine industry. And it's great stuff. And it's $22.

Australia is a country floating, not between the Tasman Sea and the Indian Ocean, but upon endless quantities of mass-blended, mass-produced garbage. The overplanting and conglomeratization of the industry has resulted in the default Aussie product being a "Wine of Australia," or "Wine of South Australia," with no more story to tell, or essence of the land to reveal than a box of Just Juice.

Adding to that, many of the wineries that have niched themselves into the super-premium price bracket and become Robert Parkerized may draw from individual vineyards, but have adopted a style that makes them as faceless and anonymous as their other $75+ peers--huge, overextracted, alcoholic messes.

There seems to be almost no choice, and little hope for the small family-owned winery that farms its own grapes, believes in the land they've chosen, rolls with what nature brings each vintage, and tries to create something faithful to the uber-concept of wine-as-living-thing. A few wineries successfully swim against the tide: Clonakilla, Tahbilk, Wendouree. But it's rarer and rarer.

Imagine my surprise then when I first opened a bottle of the 2004 Kalleske Clarry's Red Grenache/Shiraz. A proprietary name after a colourful family member: bad sign. A blend, and the cheapest wine in their range: bad sign. But hold up. First off, the wine is sensational. A huge snootful of cherries and berries, with glamour and sexiness from the Grenache, and structure and firmness from the Shiraz. The oaking is almost invisible, though clearly there to provide framework. Just a lovely, expressive, joyful wine that laughs with you instead of at you.

The information on the back label is what seals the deal. A single-vineyard wine, from the famed Greenock Creek site--all family owned and family farmed. Hand picked, obviously hand made with great enthusiasm. When you can taste the winemaker's excitement in the wine itself, you know you're on to something.

And it's basket-pressed. And it's in a screwcap. And it's $21.95. There's not a New Zealand red out there that can touch the quality at this price. I've no idea whether the other Kalleske wines, which are all more expensive, will impress as much once the price is taken into account, but for this wine, in this kind of wine economy, in these mega-faceless times, I say bravo.

10x5

Too Easy a Target

2005-10-06T12:08:00.000+13:00

Rant on:

Get your new Cuisine yet? See the Top 10s? Y'know, I'm not even going to go off on all the easy rants that come to mind, but can we just stop for one moment and reflect on the fact that EVERY SINGLE PINOT NOIR in the Pinot Top 10 is from Marlborough?

Huh?

Can you imagine how embarassing it must be to The Mustache to look over the entries he received and see nary a Central Otago Pinot, achingly little from Martinborough, almost every big name missing. So has to give the entire Top 10 to Villa Maria and a couple of other Marlborough wineries.

I can only imagine he's beginning to rue the day he took over The Hat's spot at Cuisine. It is such an inaccurate reflection of New Zealand wine, and such a vehicle for Villa, that it's going to very soon laugh itself out of our consciousness.

Rant off.

10x5

HUGE BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!

2005-10-05T17:19:00.000+13:00

Yawn.

Astrolabe SB 05 wins Liquorland.

Yawn.

Back to sleep now.

10x5

Speculation

2005-10-04T11:39:00.000+13:00

My friend Mina in Queenstown rang me with a funny story. Seems a young Aussie couple have been scouring the country for every last bottle of Mt. Difficulty Target Gully Pinot Noir they can find, at virtually any price. They bought out the cellar door at the winery, including 7 magnums at something like $180/per, and were seen paying over $90 a bottle at the Wine Deli. They weren't buying anything else, just Target Gully Pinot.

Why, you ask? What possible reason could they have? Do they love the wine that much? Well, who know, because they aren't drinking any of it. They are apparently buying it as an investment, guessing it will become as collectable and valuable as, I don't know, Grange or something.

The fact that there is absolutely no precedent for this in New Zealand wine history seems not to have deterred them. A check of auction sites for other Pinot rarities, such as the Felton Block bottlings, Dry River, Ata Rangi, etc., show no appreciable price increases, or at least none that would justify spending thousands (or tens of thousands, more like) buying out the whole country of a single high-priced wine in order to corner the market.

I struggle to understand this. Auction prices for wine that people buy purely as an investment seem to correlate directly with the longevity of the wine, hence the collectability of Penfolds, Henschke, Wendouree, and their ilk, not to mention Bordeaux and Burgundy. But New Zealand Pinot Noir?

There seem to be California and Oregon Pinots that appreciate in price in the short term, especially on the back of a high score by Mr. Parker. But even they don't seem to have much of a long-term return-on-investment track record. This is very confusing to me. Do they know something we don't? Is Mr. Parker or his Pinot-reviewing minion Mr. Rovani, about to bestow a perfect score on the ol' Target Gully? Or is this wealthy couple from Aussie going to be like the fellow in Texas some decades back who bought up all the silver in the world in a bid to control silver prices, only to have the bottom fall out as soon as he got all of it.

Any ideas? In the meantime, you might want to ring around to some of the big shops in the country and see if they have any Target Gully left. Bet they don't...

10x5

Everything you know about Savvy and food is wrong

2005-10-02T11:27:00.000+13:00

Barbara tagged me to talk about wine and food, but I'm going to mutate the meme, and talk about Sauvignon Blanc and how to match it with food. I am of the belief that most of the recipes mentioned on the back of wine bottles or in marketing material for wineries is misguided at best, and apt to ruin the wine at worst.

The three most common ingredients mentioned as a match with Sauvignon Blanc are scallops, salmon, and mussels. I think none of them go with good Marlborough SB. Scallops are far too delicate in flavour to stand up to an assertive wine, and if you even touch them with cream, forget it. A lightly oaked or unwooded Chardonnay is your only hope--Chablis, if you've got it, is perfect. Or in a pinch, a bottle of Pelorus or Nautilus bubbly, something delicate.

Salmon is a completely different story. Having been lucky enough to consume a lot of wild Scottish and Irish salmon in my life, I find our farmed salmon to be very rich and fatty, sometimes unpleasantly so. Sauvignon Blanc, unless it's fairly sweet (ACK!) will never meld properly with a fatty fish. Luckily, we've got heaps of Pinot Gris to save the day. A nice Brick Bay or Quartz Reef will do the trick, or that aforementioned-in-this-blog wonderful Neudorf Moutere PG that Steven Tanzer awarded an astonishing 86. If you throw the salmon on the barbie and give it an assertive rub, you might find that a more delicate Pinot--something from Winslow, Porters, or Schubert up Martinborough way--will work well.

And mussels? Well, the little buggers have no flavour, so they're merely a vehicle for what you're boiling them in. Use a half-bottle of Savvy in the pot and drink the other half? Sure, but you can't give the mussels any credit for that!

I hereby not-so-humbly submit the Perfect Sauvignon Blanc dish. It's incredibly simple--only six ingredients. But getting it right is a real trick, because it's all about the balance of the flavours, and in this case, all about the sweetness or sharpness of your lemons, to whit:

Groper Steaks in a Sicilian Marinade
(note: in order for this to work, please don't substitute any ingredients, and you must go for absolute freshness in what you use. Trust me on this--you will be delighted with the results.)

2 large, very fresh Groper steaks
(Yes, groper: a low-fat but very flavoursome fish, much more complex than terakihi or snapper. And don't use fillets, please--all the flavour is stripped away when you remove the bones and skin)

2 fresh bay leaves (not dry!)

2 large sprigs of fresh oregano

2 heaping tablespoons of salt-packed capers, rinsed well (not the ones in brine!!!)

2-3 fresh lemons (off a tree, please--there must be one in your neighborhood, don't use a supermarket lemon)

3 tablespoons verjuice

1/3-1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil
(note: chances are you won't find any decent fresh imported oil that still has flavour and is not rancid, so use the best New Zealand oil you can find, and nothing previous to the 2004 harvest)

Crush the bay leaves and oregano leaves a bit, and put in a small mixing bowl with the capers, verjuice and lemon juice. The exact amount of lemon is dictated by the acidity of the lemons. If they are very sweet, use a bit more; if the are sharp, use less. Stir in some salt and pepper to taste. Again, the amount of salt is somewhat dependent on the lemons' sweetness plus the style of the verjuice. Keep dipping your pinky in, you'll get the balance. Drizzle the oil in while whisking briskly, to form a loose emulsion.

Place the groper steaks in a glass baking dish and pour the marinade over, massaging it all over with your fingers. Cover and marinate for up to six hours in the fridge, or 2-3 hours at (cool) room temperature. Periodically turn the fish and spoon the marinade over.

You can cook the dish two ways: Scrape off the solids and barbeque the fish, salt and peppering it just before putting on the grill. Be sure and cook only until it abandons its pearly rawness but is still pink inside. Alternatively (and better, I think) bake the dish covered in a pre-heated 175-degree oven for approx. 1/2 hour, depending on the thickness of the groper steaks. Again, salt and pepper the fish just before placing it in the oven, so the additional salt doesn't dry it out. DONT OVERCOOK IT!

Serve with the pan juices and some fresh couscous to absorb the liquid on your plate. Open as a dry a Savvie as you can find: the 04 Churton or the 04 Peg Bay come to mind. I've yet to try an 05 that's dry enough for my taste, but the St. Clair Wairau Reserve that won the NZIWS SB trophy is passable at 4 grams. If you don't think this dish enhances the flavours of the Sauvignon (and is duly enhanced by it), then I will eat my own shorts.

10x5

We Suck! No--We Rock!

2005-09-23T09:35:00.000+12:00

A friend in Amerika sent me a list of NZ wines reviewed by the "other" wine critic in the U.S., Stephen Tanzer, and told me to have fun. That's not exactly the descriptor I would use. More like disgust.

First off, if you don't know, Mr. Tanzer has a reputation as being a slightly tougher score-giver than Robert Parker, the man most famous for the 100-point scale. That being said, he's also taken some heat this year for falling prey to the same kind of "score creep" for which Mr. Parker is now mostly known. The joke with Parker is that he will soon be introducing a 105-point scale. It's not quite the same with Tanzer, but for a critic who almost never, ever gave a 95 or above except to the odd sticky, apparently some of his recent reviews of California, Bordeaux, and Rhone wines have had a bewildering amount of 95s, 96s, and 97s, the last of which is roughly his equivalent of a Parker 100.

Unfortunately, perhaps he is smarting from this criticism a bit, and if so, it came at a bad time for New Zealand. Out of around 190 wines he reviews, two (both dessert wines, of course) got a 92, seven wines got a 91 (including two more stickies, and two Felton Road Block Pinots), another handful got a 90...and 170 got essentially lost and squished between 85 and 89 points.

This is more or less the vinous equivalent of a kiss on the lips from your sister. How helpful to retailers and consumers alike to be able to choose from the 12 87-point Savvies on offer! Hold me back--I need to purchase by the caseload. If I were an Amerikan consumer (I assume these ratings are for use by the points-mad U.S. public) would I opt for the 89-point Seresin Savvy over the 87-point Palliser? Why would I care even one tiny little bit about these two points?

My answer to that is absolutely not. The message being sent is that 90% of the NZ wines he tasted were all lumped together in his scoring into one blurry, competently-made-but-on-the-whole-unexciting mass of wine. The two 91-point Savvies, Cloudy Bay (gee, what a surprise, wonder if the fact that he tasted it at Cloudy Bay with a Cloudy Bay sign in front of him, no doubt reminded by the marketeer at his elbow that Cloudy Bay is the original "cult" Kiwi icon, never you mind that there 100,000 cases floating around every year, made any difference?), and Peg Bay (good on ya, oh Famblyof12member) will get a bounce from this, but everyone else feels left in the dust.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not complaining about low scores or high scores. I just wish there were as many 79s and 80s as 90s and 91s. Let's see some differentiation, some yardstick from someone other than the Mustache and the Hat, that tells us something substantive about the wine. Mind you, I bitch and moan the same way when the US-based Wine Spectator releases its annual New Zealand issue, in which we see high scores by such venerable Kiwi advertisers, er, wineries such as Mt. Cass...and, again, everyone else gets an 88-point kiss from their sister.

Contrast this with the inaugural New Zealand International Wine Show, where everbody got a medal, including over 100 golds out of 600-something entries! Uh, guys, also not useful. It's either death by faint praise or death by hyperbole.

But I did love how the NZIWS' very first Lifetime Achievement Award (or whatever they call it) was given to its very own Chairman of Judges: The Hat! Someone's arm must be so tired from patting his own back. At least I hope it's just his arm that's tired.

Emma gets her own post

2005-09-09T14:27:00.000+12:00

Dear Emma,

Your comment to the last entry just presented so many possible avenues to explore, that I'm going to repeat it here, and weigh in with a few comments. Remember, you asked for it. :-)

Emma wrote:
At the risk of attracting your sarky attention, I would just like to point out (re: your May posting on Caro's, as I am a latecomer to the site) that us weirdo oddballs in Taupo also bring in Gruner (Sepp Moser's) and import Garofoli wines, including the lovely Podium Verdicchio. These are merely a few amongst all the other treasures, of course. Do try to keep up. Your postings are most clever and amusing (perhaps you should try for a column in the NZ Wine Grower)and I am very much enjoying reading them but they would be even better if you improve the fact checking. Can't say I've ever managed to find Peter Maude's in Wellington...

Emma, Emma, Emma, Emma, Emma. You have indeed risked my sarky/snarky attention, and like the Eye of Sauron my gaze lifts over the horizon, burning into the very soul of that rambling manse of wine known as Scenic Cellars.

First the good news. I love your shop. It's the most fun in New Zealand. It has the strangest, most eclectic offerings, and some real gems that no one else would dare keep in stock. Ridge Geyserville from California? Allemand Cornas? Gunderloch BA? Ridiculous, fantastic stuff. Good on ya, keep it up.

Now for the bad news. You folks have the worst wine e-commerce website imaginable. It's ugly, squat, painful to navigate, uninviting. If, after browsing there as many times as I have over the years, I still didn't know you had Austrian wine, how in the world will I ever find out? Why, it's so intuitive: one simply clicks on the ever-popular "No Group Selected" and looks for Austria. Oh, but Austria isn't even there, is it? It's co-mingled with the Germans, and nearly indistinguishable. There are no photos, some wines have descriptions, some don't. Your advertisments follow a similar invisible design style. It makes it a very, very difficult place to shop. I think you should fire ol' Easyshop, or whoever your e-commerce company is, and find someone who knows what they're doing.

And I actually don't say any of this to be gratuitously bitchy. Heaven knows, people like me always root for the independent retailer, and will go out of our way to support you. But a little help is always nice. Remember, you're competing for my dollar against the likes of Caros, Fine Wine, Regional, et. al., with their photos of every bottle, easy navigation, buyers details database, and, ahem, lower margins. That last is a delicate point, I realize, but it feels like you do take a pretty big mark-up on the wines you bring in yourself. I'd love to see a special section featuring your own imports, with special pricing perhaps, as a way to hit directly at, say, the Auckland consumer that already is surrounded by people like Maison Vauraon, Caros, and the like.

Since you mention the Podium (great wine, by the way, best Italian white in NZ along with the Anselmi Capitel Foscarino, and blows away its nearest Verdicchio competitor, the Umani Ronchi Casal di Serra, which was a flabby mess in 2003), may I also volunteer that, if you wanted, you could own the market for Italian wine in NZ. The range is despicable, as any Kiwi wine lover who's spent time in Italy can tell you, and it's largely controlled by the Allied Domecq and Antinori imports. There's a handful of smaller players, but no one is paying attention, cultivating customers, offering diversity, finding better quality. You do a lot in the lower price brackets with Italy: why not take over the entire niche between Citra and Sassicaia?

Okay, I think I'm done beating on you. Hope you had fun. What else: Peter Maude doesn't have a storefront, as far as I know. His website is pretty poor also, but my guess is that he lives by a private mailing list, and couldn't care less about the average consumer.

Lastly, I would think that NZ Wine Grower would pay me more money to stay away from their publication than to be part of it, but thanks for the compliments.

10x5

Worst Pinot Gris Ever?

2005-09-07T16:25:00.000+12:00

At least from New Zealand. Over the years, there've been some pretty scary ones that have shown up on these shores from Alsace, the generic releases of people like Kreydenweiss and Deiss. But, let me tell you, it's hard to make Pinot Gris taste like sour apple juice but that's what Isabel did with their 2004 version. No wonder Fine Wine was flicking it off at $17.95, but it's not worth $7.95, believe me. Can't figure out what in the world happened. This goes beyond watery, dilute, overcropped grapes. No oak or malo for excuses either. Makes any other crappy NZ PG--think Canterbury House or Drylands--look like something out of the Hengst vineyard. There's certainly nothing wrong--and in fact much to be applauded--in attempting a very dry style of PG. The world needs more of them. But not more of this one. Whew!

One wonders how long the mis-steps can keep coming at poor old Isabel...

10x5

Wherefore Art Thou?

2005-09-05T09:25:00.000+12:00

The Bragatos are out, and so is the news about the Liquorland results, though mortals like ourselves don't get to find out about the latter until next month. If you've got winery friends, they'll likely whisper to you if they won (no whispers my way yet, so I know what that means), and keep their mouth shut if they didn't.

But let's pause a moment and take a look at the Romeos. Is anyone else struck by what a strange set of results emerged this year? You can get a handy PDF breakdown of the awards here, and play along yourself.

Remember last year there was a controversy in the judging at the Romeos, with one senior judge livid over the cavalier awarding going on. I wrote about it in this post. If you look at the breakdown this year, there are only three Golds for the approx. 71 2005 releases--two for Savvy, one for Riesling, and nothing for PG, Gewurz, and others. Statistically, that's barely a blip on the radar, a tick over 4%. The rest of the white wine golds went to 04 Chardonnay (five Golds) and stickies (three Golds).

My, how the pendulum seems to have swung from last year!Is the 2005 vintage really that unexciting, or are the judges overcompensating for their performance in 04?

On the red side, there were four Golds given to 56 non-Pinot 04 reds, a more respectable 7%. 04 Pinot yielded a remarkably poor two Golds out of 53 entries, or 3.7%. Not surprisingly, 03 Pinot was closer to 9% Gold, including the Show Champion, the 03 Lowburn Ferry. (Which, if I may so rudely interject, may have been the only good 100% Lowburn-fruit Pinot yet made, but couldn't hold the knickers of its gold stablemate, the Mt. Difficulty Target Gully--which, granted is twice the price, but is more than twice the wine.)

Taken as a whole, the Gold medals were at 4.6%. Not radically different from years past as a total, but there were 640 wines entered this year! Ladies and gents, the pendulum has indeed swung.

10x5

Finally, a few words about wine

2005-08-31T11:31:00.000+12:00

Here it's time to write about 2005 wines and WineNZ, and I've already started to forget everything. How could that be? First, it's because this was the weirdest WineNZ ever. First off, no one was talking about wine. Well, of course they were talking about their own wines, but it was amazing how muted the overall buzz was--either about the vintage, or about any stand-outs amongst the other wineries. Second, without a public day which, while admittedly a nuisance for many attendees, seemed to up the excitement level a bit, it seemed like the mood could have been a trade show for electronics or tyres, or whatever. Frankly, there was a lot more excitement and hype over at the Foodshow, which strikes me a bit strange.

I think the underlying reason here is two-fold. First the modest number of 05s that were on display were not just typically shut down from bottle shock, as they always are at WineNZ, but they revealed that at least some of the hype of the vintage is wholly unjustified. The first couple early-release Savvies--Lake Chalice and Astrolabe to name two--were all juiced up with added acidity, and didn't give a clear indication of what the true theme of the vintage is: over-ripeness. Your faithful reporter has never tasted more pineapple and melon flavours in one place since that last can of Watties Fruit Salad. Even perennial acidifiers like Wither Hills have a tropical lilt (it actually helps them, and Spy Valley, and a few other early releasers, because it meant less acidifying and chaptalizing overall, methinks).

But the Savvies are, by and large, a bit flabby and undistinguished. The few that seemed well structured--Cloudy Bay being the perfect example--are so tight and so shocked right now that they are difficult to assess. A few I liked included Gravitas (very hard to admit that when you think of all the marketing puffery they wallow in), Te Whare Ra (my notes say 12.5% alcohol--could that be right?), which was an obvious blend of at least two separate passes through the vineyard, resulting in a wine that had more pronounced grassy flavours from the lower brix grapes, and a bit less of the over-ripeness from those harvested later. A good strategy in this vintage and well done. The aforementioned Wither Hills was better than expected, and I notice that Allan Scott picked up a Bragato for their 05--not a bad one from them, again seeing the rare benefit of the overripeness balancing their usual overly lean style.

Rieslings and Gewurz were ho-hum, but there wasn't too much of the latter in 05s on offer. Te Whare Ra pops up again for their Gewurz--an incredible blast of lychee overpowering the rose petal and Turkish delight, but good acidity to keep it from becoming syrupy. Riesling seemed to do well in Nelson overall, my notes say, but nothing is starred. I always look forward to the Muddy Water table for a good calibration of Waipara Riesling (my favourite spot in the country for Riesling), but the wines were not showing well this year. I didn't taste a Pinot Gris that is anywhere near to being ready. People who release Pinot Gris 4 months after harvest should be ashamed of themselves.

The 04 reds on offer continue to display the remarkable unevenness of the vintage. A few Pinots have overcome my initial doubts: Felton Road, Pegasus Bay, and Peregrine (all tasted in several different contexts over the last couple weeks) have been more impressive than I would have thought. Cr$ggy's Struggler's Flat '04 could be the best $20 Pinot in the country for that vintage.

Hawkes Bay reds are even less exciting in 04 than 03, which I thought a poor vintage. There's a nasty streak of shrill acidity in the wines. That being said, I think the wines from Sileni have gone from strength to strength lately, and deserve more attention than they tend to get. One wine that continues to mystify is the Bilancia La Colline Syrah--will it's tightness ever begin to unwind? Hillside vines are a great idea, but don't carry a wine by themselves...

Amor-Bendall's wines out of Gisborne continue to underwhelm, and, yes, that Savvy was a bit weird (though not as weird as a couple others, like, ahem, Woolaston). They sure do have an, er, shall we say overly enthusiastic new marketing guy though! The TW wines are nice--you still want a little less oak in the Viognier, but it's getting better. Millton remains strong across the board, not just with the Chenin I wrote of earlier. From a price/quality perspective, they were my winery of the show.

So what were people talking about if they weren't on about wine so much? The most common theme I heard and overheard was the blast of PR laid on by Winegrowers about exports being up over 30%. There was talk of new plantings to meet the apparent growing need for more wine, equally balanced by others shaking their heads at this foolishness. The spectre of naive Kiwis taking Winegrowers words to heart and investing their life saving in new Savvy or Pinot Gris plantings, only to see the market fall out the first year there's a big harvest, was brought up no less than three separate times by different growers.

I continue to take my hard-line stand on this issue: Don't believe the hype, don't believe what Gregan and his stat-loving cronies are saying. We are over-planted here in all varietals, grapes are not a good investment at the moment, we are one healthy vintage away from a Barossa-style scenario here. There were as many like-minded thinkers at the show as there were speculators--one very wealthy winery owner (I won't say who, but his winery is mentioned above), told me that he's just sitting back waiting for the bottom to fall out so he can buy up all the great Pinot vineyards that will be foreclosed at dirt-cheap prices. Now if that's not a ringing endorsement of the Gregan party line, I don't know what is!

10x5

Live from WineNZ

2005-08-21T21:16:00.000+12:00

Hey Barbara!

Thanks for posting. You got me off my ass and writing. Actually, this is a stalling action. I can't do a proper post right now, but will send along some impressions of the 05 wines this week. It's been a crazy last couple weeks...changing jobs, traveling, no time for an ear to the ground, nothing to write about.

But here's a teaser: the '05 Savvys are MUCH less interesting than rumoured to be.

Oh, and Philip Gregan is dropping acid if he thinks that there's no worldwide grape glut.

More soon...I promise...

10X5

So let me get this straight

2005-08-03T10:40:00.000+12:00

It's taken a while to post again because I'm just so bloody confused. Confused about so many things. Allow me to share my confusion--perhaps some of you brighter stars out there can make sense of this for me.

1. Oyster Bay is suddenly the hottest prize in the wine world. Its value has been calculated at approx. $2/share, but Peter Yealands and Delegats are having an ego-drenched slugfest over ownership that sees offers going to $4/share.

2. This is Oyster Bay I'm talking about here. Right? Oyster Bay?

3. Did I mention this is Oyster Bay? So someone, probably Yealands, is going to gain control at $4/share. The company's valuation is $2/share. Then what? Is Yealands just doing this to gain an enormous tax write-down? Does he believe Oyster Bay will be able to double its worth? It's already making some of the least interesting Sauvignon Blanc in New Zealand, and since it's basically just a collection of growers, it's those growers who will have to--what? Double their yields for the same costs? And then sell double the amount of wine worldwide?

4. Now, bear with me here. Like you, I'm picking up my newspaper and reading about this every day. But I'm also suddenly deluged with articles like this, and this, wherein I read that Australia has woken up to the reality that there is SO MUCH WINE IN THE WORLD that it is more prudent from a business perspective to let the birds eat the grapes than to pick them and hold the resulting wine in storage. This, from growers in places like Barossa Valley, not the Languedoc.

5. But then, we are spoon-fed stories like this, where we find out that wine consumption has grown 30% in Japan, and this, where we are told that wine is now more popular than beer in the U.S. How to reconcile all this? My immediate impression is that the articles about wine becoming more and more popular, and the statistics from Winegrowers about the massive increases in exports, are smokescreens designed to prop up a bloated, over-planted, over-subscribed, over-weight industry that is teetering one huge vintage away from collapsing in on itself.

6. To support my theory, I read with glee Joelle Thompson writing about 4--count them, 4--new labels from PernodRicardAlliedDomecqMontana, all designed to quietly flick off more mediocre wine without drawing attention to its source. The aforementioned-in-these-pages Triplebank, plus BenSen Block are the two that are masquerading as "serious" vineyard specific wine, but most of it (and here I--gasp!--disagree with Joelle) is shite, no matter what the label looks like, and smacks of desparate measures to capture more of the supermarket customer's attention.

7. Wouldn't you love to know how much 04 Oyster Bay Sav is still available? It's in my New World for $12.95 right now, and if the marketeers here weren't so scared of transgressing the $10 barrier, I'm convinced it would be $9.99. We'll still be seeing a lot of 04 wine for sale through the entire 05 selling period. With the warm weather country-wide this winter, bud break may come several weeks early in 06; if we get a late frost like last year, yields would be drastically reduced for the second year in a row. And if so, you'll see another spate of articles about how everything is wonderful, how exports are up, how it's never been a better time to invest in wine.

8. And then we wait for 2007.

9. Do you see my confusion?

10x5

Resolutions I Will Not Keep Today

2005-07-23T10:34:00.000+12:00

1. Must put down Harry Potter while peeing.

2. Must put down Harry Potter while stirring boiling hot soup over the hob.

3. Must put down Harry Potter while on business conference call.

4. Must put down Harry Potter while playing with cats.

4. Must put down Harry Potter while applying Dettol onto scratches caused by cats.

5. Must put down Harry Potter while trying to write cleverly about wine on blog.

Anyway, the only interesting thing today was that Thornbury "merged" with Villa Maria. Which means they were going to lose the fight to build their monstrously inappropriate winery up Waihopai Road and were thus going to have to close their doors. I know a few neighbors up that way who are looking for some Pol Roger in the cellar at this moment.

Gee, I love the way Hermione scrunches her face up when she gets mad at Harry. Gotta go...

10x5

Attack of the Garnachas!

2005-07-15T14:52:00.000+12:00

I believe the most dangerous opening line in a blog entry of any kind is: "Let me tell you about my boss."

Well, let me tell you about my boss. He only drinks Spanish wine. Well, I should say he only buys Spanish wine, because I assume he drinks whatever's on the wine list when he goes out.

This is weird behaviour. Very weird. I've asked him many times why in the world he does this, seeing as he is a) quite knowledgeable about wine, b) not given to Lady Macbeth-style obsessional fits, at least not visibly, and c) LIVES IN THE FREAKING SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE!

He has tried to explain it to me before. The story has many variations, depending on how moon-eyed he gets, but it involves his O.E., an olive-skinned Catalonian princess, and the sweet smell of the night-blooming jasmine climbing the walls of the Alhambra. Or some such rot.

Other times he tells me he likes earthy wines. Period. Okay, I'll give him that. A few less than stellar experiments here and in Aussie with Tempranillo is about the extent of what might pass for Spanish, and it don't pass (anyone try the execrable Trinity Hill model this year? Yeesh) Oh, and someone in New Zealand is planting Albarino next year, 'cos that's what's coming out of MAF quarantine on the horizon.

Unfortunately, the days of earthy Spanish wines seem to be numbered, if one is to account for the oceans of sweet, ripe, Grenache that have suddenly appeared by the container-load on our shores. You got yer Albada, Armantes, Artazuri, Baltasar, Borsao, Coto de Hayas, Cruz de Piedra, La Riada, Tres Picos, and that's just off the top of my head. Having tasted most of these, I can attest that they are all essentially the same wine, some kind of cross between bubble gum and cherry cough syrup. They are not earthy. They are barely recognizable as Spanish.

Even weirder, you can barely find any 100% Grenache from across the ditch. There's the Yalumba Bush Vine, which tastes a heck of a lot like the Spanish wines, there's a pricy Penfolds Cellar Selection, maybe the odd small producer here or there...and that's about it.

So what gives? Why has New Zealand become the Garnacha dumping ground of the world? Someone alert the High Commissioner! Inform the Family of 12! Helen needs to take a stand before the polls!

Meanwhile, my boss, who won't exactly admit to hating these wines, was last seen buying up all the remaining stock of the 98 Gran Feudo he can find. It least that wine's got some dirt in it.

10X5

Gris for the mill

2005-07-11T12:12:00.000+12:00

Abel's comment in the previous post about the dearth of decent Pinot Gris deserves a longer post. I actually don't think it's quite as dire as he does (though close), and will share a few of my favorites below. But a first a bit about PG in NZ.

It's a variety that has been around since way back in the mid-1800s, an Alsatian clone brought over by missionaries. The Mission clone is the one you'll in all the older plantings still in use. There's only ever been one other clone available here, also Alsatian (and apparently one no longer in favour in Alsace). MAF has a couple newer clones in quarantine that could prove very interesting (one is a Zind-Humbrecht variation, and I think the other is an Italian Grigio clone), since they are much smaller-berried and more concentrated.

In the late 70s there were only 20 or so hectares of PG in cultivation. By 97, there were still only 32 according to The Mustache. Then things exploded, and we're over 500 at this point. The very reliable Sue Courtney says that a shortage of Chardonnay cuttings began the trend, but I also wonder whether the global Chardonnay glut didn't have something to do with it, or the nagging realization that NZ Chardonnay is very difficult to do well, is expensive to do well (i.e. new oak), and sells rather slowly UNLESS it's done well.

Pinot Gris, on the other hand, was perceived as fairly easy to make (hide your mistakes with an off-dry finish!), crops well in dry years given recent viticultural advances in canopy management, etc. As it turns out, of course, if you make it with these precepts in mind you get an innocuous, sweetish, utterly unmemorable wine--the 21st Century Muller-Thurgau, if you will, albeit one with a higher profit margin.

The current thirst for this wine seems to be dying out as more people realize that they're often spending $20-25 for a wine that no more than a trifle. There are so many indifferent Pinot Gris on the market now, it's amazing, and I definitely see the ones in my local Foodtown increasingly gathering dust on the shelf.

All that being said, there are some very good examples out there. Here's my very short list:

Amisfield (Jeff Sinnot strikes again)
Quartz Reef/Rockburn (both made by Rudi Bauer in the same style; both disappear in poor vintages, so there's not a lot of either around)
Peregrine? (contrary to Mr. Abel, I'm not sure about this one; I like the dryness, but there's a lack of concentration following the 2000 vintage that keeps me from putting it on my personal list)
Kaituna Valley Canterbury Vineyard (a true vendage tardive style, unashamedly sweet, stuffed with personality; great wine)
Neudorf (both bottlings, though the Brightwater is a bit overly heavy)
Brick Bay (a mighty fine wine from Matakana, even in 04)

That's about it. No Dry River (too sweet and unctuous, not enough acidity, perhaps it ages well according to those who tasted through older vintages recently, but I just don't get it), no Escarpment (ruined by new oak) no Martinborough Vineyard (just tastes anonymous to me), and not one from the entire region of Marlborough that I've cared enough to try twice (well, the Villa Maria Seddon bottling was very good in 03, but too flabby in other years to make the list).

Not a heck of a lot to choose from is there. A few individual bottles have been good (Bilancia 03, but not the horrible oaked Reserve), a Rimu Grove from a couple years back, the first vintage of the Kim Crawford Boyzone (but not since), you get the idea.

Any others?

10x5

Things not to say in Marlborough

2005-07-07T10:58:00.000+12:00

1. "Jeez, mate, how come you're using a MACHINE to harvest those grapes?"

This whole machine vs. hand-harvesting question is quite topical at the moment. First, you have all the cheap labour in New Zealand (i.e. South-east Asian migrant workers) being shipped out of the country during pruning. Notice how this always becomes a problem during winter. Can't use a machine to prune. Second, this week wine shops around the country are holding tastings for the Cuisine Magazine Top 10 New Zealand Chardonnays. This is an interesting exercise, especially since the Top 10 has some significant winners that were machine-picked.

Now, one tends to equate Marlborough with the machine, because it seems to have most acceptance with Sauvignon Blanc. The reasons for this (beyond the obvious economies) tend to be that it's become accepted practice to harvest SB at night, so that the grapes stay cool on their way to the crusher; that extended contact with the picked grape on the skin might yield unwanted flavours; and that, in the words of a contract grower, "a little leaf in the mix is not a bad thing."

Some of this is very curious to me. I asked that same grower about the early days of Cloudy Bay, Isabel, Hunters, and the like, that first made world-wide impact with NZ SB.
Were they machine picking back then? No.
Did they pick at night? Can't hand-pick at night, mate.
Did they hand sort? Yes.
Is there any sorting done at the crusher with machine-picked Savvy grapes? No, not really, unless you happen to eyeball a rotted bunch.

Hmm. Could it be that some of the most interesting Marlborough Savvies of recent memory--Clos Henri, Richardson, Gravitas--are all hand-picked? Well, yes.

Is this another case of winery greed getting in the way of quality, or is it that the sheer human capital required to hand pick a large winery's Savvy would be impossible on our little island? I suspect a bit of both, and certainly most of the wineries in NZ aren't trying to make Dagueneau-level Sauvignon Blanc. Yet there are many who position themselves as doing just that, but wouldn't deign to hand-pick, and these are the ones who really cream my pavlova.

Which brings us to the Cuisine Top 10. Interesting bit of candour from Kim Crawford on his website, wherein he reveals that his top Gisborne Chardonnay, which came third in the Cuisine tasting, is machine-picked, like so many Gisborne wines. So, too, would be the Old Coach Road Chardy from Seifrieds, a winery that moved down from the Moutere Hills and their original old-vine plantings to be on the flats so they could machine-pick and make some decent money. I would bet a couple more of the Top 10 were machine-picked as well.

I would posit that a machine-picked Chardonnay will never be as good as a hand-picked one, because you simply must sort the grapes will picking; there's too much chance of rot or mildew getting in. And yet, the Cuisine tasting panel obviously thought differently. To top it off, Crawfie gets $30 for his machine-picked Chardonnay, as much as the #1 wine, the Odyssey, from nearby vineyards and hand-picked. Go figure...

Only Wine That Matters, this week's version:

Neudorf has released its 140 cases of 2004 Moutere Pinot Gris. Their website notes that it was held back for 6 months to futher develop, and that it was fermented with wild yeasts, partly in older oak. It's a massive conundrum of a wine in the glass--at times a soaring nose of baked cinammon quince, at others no nose at all; sometimes a long lingering finish, sometimes the finish clipped short by the acidity; a similarly contradictory range of flavours. In short, a fascinating wine, barely registering its 13 grams of RS thanks to the vibrant acidity. The oak is thankfully not noticeable. I simply adore wines like this, that make you think, that offer almost nothing to the casual imbiber, that evolve in the glass, that will grow over the next few years. It tastes like the work of an insane genius--hardly perfect, but totally human. So worth the $30 and so much better than almost every NZ Pinot Gris. Period.

10x5

Whither the Gimblett Gravels?

2005-06-27T16:34:00.000+12:00

Correspondent Eden sends me this in an e-mail:

"Had a 2002 Craggy Range “Le Sol” Syrah the other night that
didn’t seem much like anything I’d ever tasted from NZ
didn’t seem overly identifiable as Syrah
didn’t seem worth its $65 (US) pricetag
didn’t go particularly well with the bacon we were tasting alongside the wine

Is this the shape of things to come in general, or just the shape of things to come in terms of what we’ll begin to see in the US market?"

Folks, she brings up some pretty interesting questions, not just about the Cr$ggys, but about our Hawkes Bay reds in general, and in a larger way, the overall direction of New Zealand wine.

That last is too big a question to tackle in one post, so let's talk about the Gimblett Gravels. This is proven soil, dating back to some fine wines made in the 90s, crowned by some particularly long-lasting 1998s (and a few 2000s as well). In fact, some of the 98s are still infants, a decade from showing any secondary flavours. The fact that truly hot vintages come along rarely (in the last 10 years there were really only 3, the 98, 00, and 02) are a built-in handicap. Producers who are not very careful or very lucky, will see their warm-year ripeness start tasting lean and green in a 2001 or a 2003.

But when those warm years hit, there is every opportunity to make big, bold, ripe, high-extract, and (if you follow the Robert Parker/Michel Rolland formula) low acid wines. These wines are comparable in size to some of the Aussie Shiraz, Cabs and Merlots, though usually differentiated by more sensible oaking.

It was some combination of Cr$ggy and Trinity Hill (and to an extent, I would guess, Esk Valley and Millsreef with their Elspeth wines) that embarked on a formula to design wines that would compare favourably with the big Cabs and Cab/Merlot blends of the Bordeaux garagistes, the California cults, and the Oz big boys (Greenock Creek, et. al.), and the kinds of luxury Syrah wines that you see from pricey Southern French and Californai wineries (and of course Australia again). Cr$ggy hired an American winemaker (now sadly deceased), and its wines from the beginning were big and extracted.

Syrah has been touted for the last few years as the hot new grape down in Hawkes Bay, so it's no surprise that Cr$ggy and Trinity Hill rode that wave with a $70 and $100 respectively set of releases. In a public relations coup, they also managed to get samples in front of Robert Parker in Paris last year, and his predictable reaction was, "Wow, I didn't know New Zealand could produce these kinds of big wines! These are great."

Well. Are they really great? They are certainly big. They certainly lack individual personality, I fear. For what it's worth, I slightly prefer the Cr$ggy style for their Le Sol to the Trinity Homage, which, like their regular Gimblett Syrah is marred by (added?) acidity--look, if you're going to make RollandWine, then you have to follow the formula to the end, chaps. But I don't know if they are really "good," or individualistic wines. Individualistic for New Zealand perhaps, at least at the moment, but is it a good thing to make a Hawkes Bay Syrah that tastes like the Negly Porte du Ciel? I guess it depends on what position you're willing to defend.

But Eden is asking if this is the way NZ non-Pinot reds are going to go. With Te Awa in U.S. hands, it's certainly possible they will make a play for Parker points and big-dollar sales. Bilancia has released a limited-edition big-shouldered Syrah through Fine Wine that was of this ilk. Grant Edmonds makes an $80 Merlot (called humbly The Merlot) that is something of a cousin to the style. I think everyone else is waiting and seeing if the international attention will translate to increased sales for anyone except the deep-pocketed Cr$ggy. After all, it takes a lot of money to make this kind of wine. Yields have to be extremely low, hang-time as long as possible (which risks writing off most of a entire vintage, such as 03 for Cr$ggy), lots of new oak, and, most of all, oceans of marketing money to raise awareness. I don't know that many of these wineries have the wherewithal to do this, even if Cr$ggy becomes the first internationally recognized NZ cult (Dry River was first, but I'm not sure how international their reputation really was).

No answers for sure, but this is something to watch carefully. Stripping away the true taste of a region to make "big" wines is something I doubt anyone favours. But it might just happen in the race for mega points and mega dollars.

10X5

Odds and Sods

2005-06-17T18:29:00.000+12:00

A few odds and ends on a soggy Friday:

First off, from the frost-tainted 03 Hawkes Bay vintage, we find out that Cr$ggy R$nge has only produced 100 cases of Sophia. And of that 100 cases, only 30 are destined for our shores. 30 cases for the whole country. I know a couple restauranteurs who are a bit unhappy with that situation. Still trying to find out exactly how much Block 14 Syrah was made. Apparently, it was a similarly small amount that was made available for New Zealand (despite the fact that the Le Sol grapes went into the blend), but I wonder how much was shipped off-shore. And did anyone else but me notice the price increases the between superior 02 vintage and the crummy 03? Sigh...

Oh, and did you see a large retailer mentioned earlier in this blog selling 03 Akarua Pinot Noir for $29.99? What the @#$% is up with that? Akarua's decidedly inferior second label wine, the Gullies, normally sells for $6 MORE in that vintage. Methinks the ol' "cancelled export order" will be invoked here, but one must wonder at the state of affairs at Akarua now that Carol Bunn is gone. Will they go the way of Isabel, mired in mediocrity and periodic price slashes since the departure of Le Sinnott? Stay tuned, and load up your shopping cart with cheap 03 Aky, 'cos it's pretty good stuff.

Speaking of pretty good stuff, big congratulations are due to Millton for its 2004 Chenin Blanc, the greatest one they've ever made. It's a near-perfect wine, albeit in its infancy, with soaring lemon, cream, and beeswax, no noticeable oak, brilliant acidity, two decades of life in store. Truly a milestone for New Zealand wine, and one that will be roundly ignored by most, thanks to ignorance of the potential greatness of Chenin. If you're of a mind, pick up one of the decent Loire Valley Chenins available around: the 03 Bourillon-D'Orleans Vouvray Demi-Sec, the 02 Champalou Vouvray, maybe a recent vintage Marc Bredif or Baumard Savennieres. I will come to your house and give you a pedicure if you serve any of these blind against the Millton and don't find the latter a far superior rendition of classic Chenin. Bravo, sayeth I.

Finally, Screwcaps central sees that the World's Greatest Wine Show Featuring Wines That Aren't Ready To Drink (TM) is slated for the week of 20th August. Yes its WineNZ again. When, oh, when, will the boobs that run this show realize that they are forcing the hand of wineries who depend on domestic distribution to sell their wine, to show Savvys and Rieslings that are nowhere near ready to evaluate? Almost invariably, most responsible wineries are just in the throes of bottling their 05s, which means pouring wines that are so badly bottle shocked, without any conditioning, that they are across-the-board horrible. These morons don't know that they are doing just as much to ruin the New Zealand wine industry as the big conglomerates that come in and reduce our once-proud winemaking heritage to a series of line items on a ledger.

But enough of playing the same loop over and over. I'll probably be there with the rest of you, tasting glass swinging around my neck, swilling the same acidic crap, desperately trying to figure what is and what's not drinkable.

But, unlike you, I'll be wearing hot pink and pigtails. Woo-hoo!

10X5

WineNZ

The days of yore

2005-06-11T13:22:00.000+12:00

My parents weren't really wine drinkers, so growing up I never paid much attention to it. Truth to tell, I didn't start becoming interested in our New Zealand wines until the mid-90s. By that time, I could walk into a bottle shop and see scores of varietally labeled wines from dozens of wineries. It seemed to me that the wine world was in full flower, and boy, did I have a lot of catching up to do.

Which makes the book I found in a used shop the other day all the more interesting. It's by Michael Cooper, the Mustache himself, and it's called The Wines and Vineyards of New Zealand, and it was published in 1984. It's my new favourite wine book, and certainly the best I've read from Lord Michael.

There's a great history of the wine industry and photos of the original Babich and Corban families, etc. The Mustache reveals his transcendent moment with wine, upon tasting the 1970 McWilliams Cabernet Sauvignon, from Hawkes Bay, and realizing the true potential of New Zealand wine, heretofore the domain of sweet, brandied, cheap swill that largely seemed to exist to service punters allergic to beer and immigrants who missed the fruits of the motherland.

The snapshot of the "modern," wine industry, circa 1983, is fascinating. Montana had its first few vintages of Marlborough Savvy out, Danny Schuster had just produced his one shining moment, the 1982 St. Helena Pinot Noir, upon which his career has largely been built, the 30-year old John Milton was already planting organic vineyards in Gisborne, Tim and Judy Finn had just made their first 300 cases at Neudorf. In many respects, modernity had arrived.

However, the most widely-planted variety in the country was that king of grapes: Muller-Thurgau, with just under 32% of 5876 hectares under cultivation. (In contrast, there were only 388 total hectares planted in 1960.) Palomino, for making sherry, was third after Cab Sauv, with 408 hectares planted. Muscat outpaced Sav Blanc 331 hectares to 200. Just try and buy a New Zealand Muscat today. Am I correct in thinking that the only one produced is by Milton, and they {{{{{{{shudder}}}}}} add grape spirits to it? What a shame.

Other oddities: In 1980, there were 157 acres planted to Baco 22A, a cross between a Labrusca variety called Noah and the infamous Folle Blanche, of Cognac and Armagnac fame. It was prized because it crops around 20 tonnes per hectare!

There was a hectare of Syrah planted in 1980, but it was apparently in poor favour due to its inability to ripen in our cool climate. Interesting how factors in the vineyard, such as reflective mulching, open canopies, green thinning and the like have changed opinions about that. Though it still seems to me that Syrah will only truly ripen 5 out of every 10 years, even in Hawkes Bay. We'll have to check back in a couple decades on that prediction.

Tip of the cap to The Mustache for a good read, and if someone could pass me a glass of the Continental Wines 1979 Chasselas Hock, I'd be much obliged.

10x5

Kingsley, liquefying?

2005-06-05T09:35:00.000+12:00

Had a conversation with a smug, sneery correspondent from Hawkes Bay. Must be something in the water in HB--almost everyone seems smug and sneery there. "Kingsley Estate is in liquidation," he preened, with all the enfranchisement of someone who's been to an air show and actually seen a plane crash. "Just the first of many, mind you, just the first of many," he expounded with a big grin.

Now I have no way of knowing if this is true, so I'm passing on hearsay. I knew that Kingsley had fallen out with John Hawkesby, his investor, and was looking for alternative sources of funding, plus a more permanent winemaking base. But my primary reaction to the news was this: Of all the wineries in New Zealand to succumb to...well, whatever, call it 500-winery syndrome...this would pretty much be the LAST one I'd want to see go away. Good vineyard, admirable vineyard practices, a nice person at the helm, occasionally excellent wines. There are dozens of other multi-tentacled conglomerates, agenda items at Board of Director meetings, annotations on a balance ledger, vanity projects by ridiculously rich people who just want to be good at something else out of boredom, et. al., that I would love to see crash and burn before a decent, well-intentioned project like Kingsley.

And if it's true, the game will soon begin of Who Gets The Vineyard. Given the karmic roll of this, it will probably be Te Awa, and we'll lose Hawkes Bay's only organic vineyard to the Americans.

If so, it will be another victory for sneering smugness...

10X5

The 1st Annual Savvy Survivor Award

2005-06-02T14:37:00.000+12:00

Since today marks the release of the first 2005 Sauvignon Blanc in New Zealand (the Lake Chalice, and good luck with that, chaps), this makes it a perfect time to hand out the ONLY SIGNIFICANT WINE AWARD IN NEW ZEALAND. That's right: It's the Screwcaps Savvy Survivor. Y'see, there's a lot of ways of making SB. If what I read in sources like the NZ Winegrowers magazine is true, there's a lot of folks out there making Sauvignon that doesn't age very well, and in fact in some cases doesn't even really live out the vintage. Anyone who's recently tasted, say, the 04 Wither Hills (winner of the Bragato Award in its first 3 months of life), can attest to this fact.

So, okay, we've got a bevy of Savvy that's not keeping its end of the bargain, to whit, lasting one measly, stinking year. At least one of the culprits here is the utter horror of the 04 vintage, but we'll see how that stands up in what is probably a very good SB vintage in Marlborough this year. But how about the wines that do last a year or--gasp!--more? Who pays any attention to last year's Savvy when the NZ wine-drinking public is licking its collective chops over the fresh new wines.

I do!

So, without futher ado, I give you my choice of the Savvy Survivor of 2004, a wine you can open today, next week, next month, and well into 2006, and be confident that you're getting something special. If my assistant would kindly prefer the envelope, please............

..........it's the 2004 Richardson Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.

Made by Michelle Richardson, the perenially-in-a-foul-mood but very talented winemaker, late of Villa Maria, late of Peregrine, and now with her own label. She's also put out a Central Pinot of real character, without the jamminess and excess oak, but the Savvy is the real winner here. Made in the luxurious style that marks the ultra-premium range (i.e. the Saint Clair Wairau Reserve, which pales by comparison in 04, or the Villa reserves)it practically screams extremely low yields, lees-aging, a tiny bit of barrel ferment, and best of all no chaptalization, and if there's acid correction I can't taste it a bit. Oh, and it's, are you ready, about $22 a bottle. Brava, La Richardson!

It (the wine, not Michelle) is an extremely pungent, herbaceous, gooseberry collision of flavours: no quarter asked, none given. It's filled with armpit sweat, but it's Kirsten Dunst sweat, not Helen Clark, if you catch my, er, drift. A real highwire act, but pulled off with a deft, very confident hand. And it's definitely still unfolding.

I didn't think it was possible to make Savvy like this in 04. The other icons couldn't do it, but Michelle did and she deserves big props for that. Congratulations, Ms. Richardson. You have our permission to put a big, honking, shiny gold sticker on the bottle that says: "Screwcaps actually liked this wine!"

10x5

Ouch!

2005-05-29T17:13:00.000+12:00

Still hungover from the Super 12 Final. Fucking beer.

How's that for a clever post?

Actually two quick vintage notes: John Porter, of Porter's in Martinborough, said in the Sunday Dominion that 05 was looking very smart outside of the small yields. And Grant Edmonds from Sileni/Redmetal, but speaking for the latter, is quoted elsewhere as saying that 05 has given him the best reds he's seen in 5 years.

As they all say, time will tell.

Now the pass the Panadeine and keep it down, will ya?

10X5

Geographical sleight-of-hand

2005-05-27T12:25:00.000+12:00

I sit here with an open bottle of 2004 Olssens Nipple Hill Pinot Noir at my elbow. I'm not going to write a review of it (okay, it's thin, shrill, and acidic, much like the other 04 second-label Pinots that have come out so far), but I am going to comment on the back label:

"The first time we drove in the gate of our vineyard, back in July 1989, we were immediately conscious of the hill that provided its backdrop[...]and it's been Nipple Hill to us ever since.

It never of course lent itself to a wine label before, but now is the time to craft a new wine. A wine that is light and elegant..." blah blah blah.

Now, you probably think I'm going to make some kind of wisecrack about the name, but I won't lower myself to such an easy target. A transparent attempt at eye-catching branding? Whatever.

What bugs me is that the owners have used a geological feature on their property to imply that this is an estate grown wine, when in reality there is no such proof of this at all. I will even go out on a limb and predict that this is most certainly from contract grapes or bulk juice. And that really frosts my cake.

To be sure, there is ample precedent for this kind of duplicity in the wine world, most spectacularly evinced by our friends across the ditch. You don't really think that the St. Hallets Old Block Shiraz still comes from the Old Block vineyard, do you? (Last vintage that it was true was what, 1985?) Or that the Wirra Wirra Church Block is from the Church Block vineyard? There is a time-honoured tradition there of pushing a estate-evocative name on you with the front label, and then obfuscating on the back about the actual source of the wine.

Rule of thumb #1: If it doesn't say Estate Grown somewhere on the label, it is always going to have at least some, if not all, contract grapes in it (unless it's from Montana, who doesn't care). Rule of thumb #2: If it does say Estate Grown, it still might have contract grapes in it, especially if you're talking about Marlborough Savvy.

But there's something about the Nipple Hill that bugs me. Olssens have a reputation of estate-grown Bannockburn grapes--a nice antidote to the vague, ultra-blended wines that make up the vast bulk of Central Pinot. Granted, they're not geniuses at wine names (calling your Reserve Chardonnay "Charcoal Joe" doesn't exactly make me want to grab a bottle), but if this wine is indeed a purchased bulk blend, I think it's a bit of a slap in the face of the consumer.

Or am I being hopelessly naive?

10X5

The Splendour and Misery of Caros

2005-05-24T13:33:00.000+12:00

(Huge extra bonus point for anyone who gets [without googling] the obscure science-fiction allusion in the post title.)

Love 'em or hate 'em--that is the question? Well, not really a question, because Caros is, like it or not, the only wine shop that matters in the country. Here's my reasoning:

Wine shops that also import are invaluable for wine geeks. Rather than rely on wholesale distributors and whatever (usually crummy, mass-produced) wines they have on offer, a handful of retailers/e-tailers have started importing directly. They are divided into a few discreet categories. There are the snooty ones, like Peter Maude in Wellington, there are the populists, like Regional and Fine Wine, there's the oddball Scenic Cellars, who make the weirdest choices (but also bring in the only decent California wine, Ridge Vineyards), and there's Caros.

Things to hate about them:
They are Parker whores, especially with Australian wine, but it also unhealthily creeps into their French choices.

They sometimes "accidentally" ascribe old reviews to new vintages. Ooops!

They've certainly been guilty of doing some questionable parallel importing, as when they undercut the price on Veuve last year by selling what I guarantee you was heat-damaged NV Yellow Label at $20 less a bottle. They almost lost me as a customer for pulling that.

They heavily advertise wines that they may in reality only have 10 cases for the whole country.

But, but, but:

Who else would bring in Austrian Gruner Veltliner?

Who else would stock Italian whites like the Capitel Foscarino from Anselmi or the Podium Verdicchio from Garofoli?

Who else has pushed so hard to gain an audience for Schoffit's Alsatian wines?

Who else introduced garagiste St-Emilions like Rol Valentin on futures into NZ?

Who else goes for producers like Magnien and Fevre in Burgundy/Chablis and goes out and gets the 02s? Or does the same for Clos des Papes and Janasse in Chateaueuf du Pape in 03? Yes, granted they are once again chasing Parker points here, but if they didn't do it, who would?

Bottom line, for every shrilly declaimed Amon-Ra and Possum Ridge I have to climb over to get to a Heidler Maximum Weissburgunder 02 is more than worth it. Those guys can bring a tear to a wine geek's eye.

Now if only they could actually get me some o' that Gravner...

10x5

Two wines ya hate to like

2005-05-17T11:44:00.000+12:00

2003 Vinoptima Gewurztraminer, Gisborne
2002 Heathcote Estate Shiraz, Victoria

First, the executive summary: I very much liked both these wines. But I didn't want to. I really didn't. And therein lies the story...

Let's talk Gewurz first. Overlooked sometimes, mispronounced almost always, but one of the best varieties in New Zealand. Along with Riesling, NZ Gewurz has the potential to be on the same level with the greatest Alsatian and German examples, far outclassing anything else out of the New World.

But Gewurz here usually fails to live up to its promise. And this is most egregious at the high-end of the price scale. There are some perfectly decent under-$25 Gewurzes that, while not likely to generate headlines anywhwere, are user-friendly and varietally correct. The more flash and costly examples, the ones designed to turn heads, are usually over-the-top sweet, heavy, cloying, and flabby. The missing key is acid balance. Producers trying for attention-getting Gewurz tend to pick very late and very ripe. They get concentrated flavours, in some cases Vendange Tardive levels of sugar, and then vinify to retain as much of this oily power as possible.

Problem is, there's no acidity left, and the wines lack complexity, food-friendliness, and any moreish qualities. The worst purveyor of this is Dry River, whose Gewurz gets people swooning and inspires bursts of orgasmic praise from The Hat and The Mustache. Stonecroft goes for the same effect, as does the atrocious Cloudy Bay Gewurz. Now, a lot of this is personal taste--I'm much more a Trimbach fan than one of Zind-Humbrecht, which means I favour elegance, minerality, and a bit of acidity over ripeness for ripeness' sake. But a lot of this is that same old simplistic mentality that the NZ press has about premium wines, i.e. if it's expensive and/or made by an iconic winery, then it must be great.

Which is all a exhaustingly long way of saying that I expected to hate the $50 Vinoptima Gewurz. It has several other strikes against it going in, besides price: it's the project of Nick Nobilo, whose last name is sometimes, er, a bit of a quality red flag, shall we say; and it's part of an "own-your-own-grapevine" scheme that sounds a lot like the guy who's selling real estate on the moon.

Anyway, as you already know, it turns out to be really good. It's certainly got a lot of intensity and all the requisite flavours--rose petal, lychee, Turkish Delight--but it's moderatly restrained, finishes with an acidic lift, invites you back for another sip. Apparently, this project is aimed solely at producing world-class Gewurz. If they can keep the wine balanced, they'll be on to something in a big way. Grudging congrats on that, Nick.

The other wine sports a similar story. It's another one-wine project with big, big money backers, aiming to make a world-class example of the variety. Exactly like the above, except it's Shiraz, and located in the Heathcote district of Victoria, in Australia. So many reasons to be skeptical and hate it on sight. Oh, and it's got Larry McKenna of Escarpment as winemaker--not the most modest guy in the NZ winemaker firmament, though certainly no Danny Schuster. Again, so many reasons to expect it will be the Shiraz equivalent of a Dry River Gewurztraminer.

Wrong again, sport. It's a wonderful Shiraz--tightly wound, oak in check, extraction levels well-managed, not a Parkerbomb, very elegant, almost velvety in a Burgundian way, while still true to the purity of the Shiraz grapes. Great quality fruit, from very young vines. And, like a broken record, I'll say that if they don't cock it up and shamelessly pander to a Show Reserve style, they're going to have a timeless wine on their hands.

Two wines I expected to hate. And loved. Even a curmudgeon like me gets surprised sometimes.

10X5

Truth in mailers

2005-05-13T13:34:00.000+12:00

Boy, this really bugs me: I get a mailer for the Fall releases of Martinborough Vineyard wines. Read the write-ups, feel the pulse-quickening excitement of being given the opportunity to order as much second-label Te Tera Pinot (yuk!) as I want. Hmm, only a six bottle limit on the 03 Chardonnay and 04 Pinot Gris. And, look: The Mustache has graced these wines with 5-star rave reviews in his 2005 Buyer's Guide.

So I do what any red-blooded paranoid Kiwi wine geek does: I cross-reference the ratings by checking The Mustache's book. And, what do you know? The reviews they printed in the mailer are not for the wines they are selling--they're for last year's wines.

That really frosts me. As a postscript, I noticed that the Chardonnay was made in tiny quantities, around 300 cases. What a surprise to find it in my local Woolworths then! And for cheaper than the the cellar door price! Well, lucky me. So I bought a bottle.

Will I never learn? More oaky battery acid NZ Chardy. There is some fruit hiding in there, and the wine is very tightly wound, so I can't really tell you how it will taste in 5-7 years. It actually might turn out decent, but it's not approachable now, and I would be suprised if The Mustache gives it 5 stars. (Well, not surprised, he being The Mustache and all, but you get my point.) Maybe the good folks at Burnt Martinborough Spur thought the same. So they lied in their mailer.

And I bet they thought no one would notice... :-)

10X5

Corrections and amendments

2005-05-11T10:37:00.000+12:00

First off, it seems this Blog was defaulting to a status such that only registered users could comment. That sucks! So, I've turned it off and now anyone can commment. Let the unwashed hordes descend.

Speaking of comment, correspondent Snick e-mailed to inform us that a) Brett is a fungus, not a bacteria, numbnuts (point taken, thank you), and b) that Brett is a famous flavour component in Guiness! How do you like that? I always thought that Guiness tasted like cigarette ashes mixed with unsweetened cocoa (but in a good way) 'cos of the roasting process. Never smelled barnyard poo in it. Snick also pointed me to a line on some wines that use very high levels of Brett as an active flavouring agent, the most famous being Chateau Musar in Lebanon. Again, I've had older Musars in my life, and while they've never struck me as being much better than your average Cru Bourgeois from Bordeaux, albeit at a high price, I've never been struck by noticeable fecal taint. Successful Brett management, I guess...now there's a concept!

Finally, I appear to have been overly optimistic in some of my Vintage Round-up notes below. I didn't, for example, take into account the 6 INCHES of rain that Martinborough got prior to harvest, nor the true condition of some of the red grapes in Hawkes Bay (is it true that Stonecroft will be producing a Zinfandel Rose???)

So let me amend my predictions, in quick summary: Northland/Matakana/Kumeu and Gisborne look pretty good. Hawkes Bay and Martinborough look fairly disastrous. Nelson appears way way (as much as 60%) down in yields, but potentially exciting quality. Same with Marlborough Savvy, which will save the country in '05. Other Marlborough varieties are a crap shoot. Waipara, very mixed, tending toward lower quality. Otago...well, there are still some vineyards that haven't gone through veraison yet. You can tell, if you can see the green grapes through the dusting of snow.

Now, you can listen to what I tell you, or you can believe PR shills like this idiot on the harvest: "The quality of this year's vintage is great and wine prices could soon be the cheapest they have been in 10 years."

Lord save us from the media...

10x5

Not my stink

2005-05-07T13:32:00.000+12:00

Brett--it's back!

Always a topic of lively discussion 'mongst winemakers, the humble brettanomyces bacteria has suddenly raised its public profile thanks to this article in Harpers UK.

Apparently, fully 2/3 of all red wines tested (granted, they were likely all French wines, but still), have levels of Brett well above the threshold of acceptability. So what's Brett do to a wine? If you've ever had something that smells and tastes, well, fecal, or perhaps more politely like an unclean barnyard, that's Brett.

New Zealand tends to ignore this problem, since Brett doesn't show up much in white wine. But it most certainly gravitates to Pinot. And once you get it in one barrel, your entire winery is at risk. Kumeu River released a premium Pinot Noir a couple years back that stank of Brett, and it reportedly caused a major cleanup operation throughout the winery as a result.

Another wine label in Martinborough sports a $60 top-end Pinot out on the market right now that is so badly infected with Brett it's almost impossible to open in a room with other wines. Rumour has it than when the barrels earmarked for that particular wine showed up in the place of production (this producer does not have winemaking facilities themselves, so contract out), the manager of the winery demanded they be quarantined. How nice of the producer to foist that upon us.

Now, mind you, there are low levels of Brett that can add complexity to a wine; hence, the ability of Beaucastel to continue to exist. I don't know about you, though, but its presence in Pinot is a bit dicey. Even then, I suppose I'm more inclined to forgive a slightly stinky Nuits St-Georges than a similarly per-Fumed NZ Pinot. And I wonder how long it will be before we get Brett-infected Syrah from Hawkes Bay? Yum...

10X5

More vintage round-up

2005-05-03T10:15:00.000+12:00

Lemme see here, what else is going up, as we put they year to rest:

Central: We've talked about it enough; not much more to say. There'll still be a decent amount of wine coming out, since few people actually rely on Gibbston and Lake Hayes plantings as the cornerstone of their releases. You didn't think that Chard Farm makes all their wine from that picturesque pocket of land perched over the Kawarau Gorge, did you?

Canterbury: Tiny amounts of fruit, in some cases down as much as 60%. Which means not much Daniel Schuster Petrie Vineyard Chard this year, and the local blocks for Kaituna Valley are a ghost of themselves, apparently. The north part was a bit better, but don't expect even any 375 of Late Harvest Gewurz from the likes of Melness.

Waipara: Even with production down, folks seem excited by what's been picked. Those who panicked and picked early will have green Pinots and bell peppery Savvies, but rumour has it that Muddy Water brought in some magnificent fruit.

Nelson: Most everything is in, except for Riesling in a few pockets in the Moutere Hills. Gewurz and Pinot Gris is down by at least half across the board. Savvy looks very good, but there's less of it as well. Some cooler-climate people got their highest ever brix for SB--up to 23.5, which will make some nice, tropical-scented styles. The remaining Riesling is up around 23...but there may have been rain last night, so we wonder if the pickers will be out today...

Marlborough: Hit and miss. The much-ballyhooed frost that came from the Southerly of 2 weeks ago seemed to be largely a non-issue. All the fruit is in except for some LH Riesling that may or may not get picked. One grower quietly said that the fruit was the most beautiful he'd ever seen. As with Nelson, Alsatian varieties are way down, as much as 1/2. Chardonnay is spotty, too, but this might be a fine SB year, especially for those who did a green thin in spite of the December rains.

Martinborough/Waipara: Things are a bit quiet at the moment. The general consensus, as with Hawkes Bay, is potentially exciting reds in small quantities, generally lower quality whites. Late harvest wines, what there is of them, might be special. 'Twill be interesting to see if there's a LH Riesling from Martinborough Spur or Dry American River this year.

Hawkes Bay: Crappy whites, good reds. Better reds than '03 and '04, for sure--that's the universal sentiment. Of course, the fact that '03 was a weak year in HB isn't stopping the critics from falling over the wines (c.f. this issue's Cuisine); but early indications show great ripeness.

Gisborne: One of the few areas not affected by December rains as much. Fairly large quantities of decent quality whites will emerge. In fact, there's already white grapes, even Gewurz, available on the bulk market. A rather distinguished Gisborne winery is actually selling lots of Gewurz to an equally distinguished South Island winery. Wonder if the label will be a regional hyphen? Bet not!

Auckland/Northland: Quantities seem closer to normal than points further south, since fruit set was occurring before the rains. But there will be an issue with dilute flavors and swollen fruit. Some splitting was seen, and there's a bit of rot and botrytis in the Kumeu region. Not heard from Matakana--anyone out there with some news? Northland is reporting a brilliant vintage.

That's it for now...

10X5

Not murdered!

2005-04-27T15:14:00.000+12:00

Come on--be truthful. You thought I'd been knocked off by a pack of crazed P-sotted thugs hired by Cr$ggy R$nge. You know you did. But 'tis not true. I'm still here...well, actually just back in front of a computer, after a bit of time bothering winery friends during harvest.

I find that's the best time to go and really get in their face: when they're picking 3 weeks late, praying that that snow on the hills isn't going to be a frost tomorrow, trying to supervise a mangy hoard of hippies and Cambodians as they toss wasp nests into the bins, attempting to stem the flow of botrytized chickens in with the hens. You know the drill. Great time to get them to say things they wouldn't normally admit. Manna from heaven for a low-life like me.

And actually, things looks pretty good, at least in the areas I visited. Good bit of frost in the southern Waipara, but what's hanging still is late harvest (maybe no Aria this year?), and except for the lunatical, most of the grapes are in.

Different story in Central, though. Hoo-boy. There's going to be a lot of rose available next year, if anything. Didn't get up to Bendigo, but Lowburn was picking--not a lot, but they'll take what they can get. White wines you can forget about, but there'll be a bit of Pinot, and some of it might be pretty good. Munching on sweet grapes when it's 3 degrees in the morning is a scary thing, but not necessarily a bad thing.

Pity the poor sods in Gibbston and Lake Hayes, though. They're still waiting to pick...well they were, until it hit -3 the other night. You should heard the racket of the helicopters. Not good news for some good people, and not good news for some real cads that are planted up there. Perhaps it just karmically evens out that way.

So far I like what I'm seeing from Martinborough. Marlborough is hit and miss, Waipara the same. Hawke's Bay looks set to be miles better than the boring '03 vintage. Nelson had too many problems with fruit set in December--the aromatics will be tough, maybe some decent Savvy. Kumeu should be good. Central you know about (didn't get to Bannockburn--any thoughts anyone?) And Gisborne...well it doesn't matter does it, because it's all going to taste like oak anyway!

Back in black,

10x5

Oh, the humanity!

2005-04-13T16:02:00.000+12:00

Have I mentioned "Sideways" yet? Has it made it to your town? I saw it in Wellington recently. Didn't know much about it, but saw that it had picked up an award for writing and it was about wine. So I went.

After I got home, I got on the internet--imdb.com, to be exact--and followed the links to about 40 reviews on the movie. I read reviews from the UK, USA, and France. 39 of the reviews absolutely loved it. Thought it was just great. 1 review (someone named Hoberman from The Village Voice in New York) hated it.

Thank god for that one review, or else I would have thought I was the only one in the world that thought it was the biggest piece of shite ever bruited as quality cinema. In history.

I was so flummoxed by it that I found a copy of the book and read it. And you know, the book's not that bad. There's a trace of humanity to be found in it. The characters aren't all as loathsome as the movie depicts. I'll not say more, lest I provide spoilers for the five people who will read this, but I can confidently say that I now officially hate everything that Alexander Payne has directed, and that his misanthropic take on the human race, which affects each of his movies, runs rampantly out of control in "Sideways," stripping any last vestige of decency in an attempt to "artsify" the brutal reality of screwed up people.

What a piece of crap. And it's actually causing an increase in Pinot Noir sales in the USA. It made me want to take a bath in Riesling, but that's just me.

As always,

10x5

P.S. Get well soon Richie McCaw!

Could we do this?

2005-04-09T18:43:00.000+12:00

A friend opened up a French white wine the other night, of such rarity, age, and breeding, that no other wine region could bear up to it. 'Twas a Muscadet, that drink-it-while-it's-young $10 wine that gets consumed almost entirely by Parisians eating oysters.

Except this one was from 1989. And it was one of the best white wines I've ever tasted. Imagine that: a delicate, seafood-oriented, simple wine that had not only lasted 16 years, but had transmuted into something otherworldly. Does no one else wonder why we can't achieve the same thing with our Savvy or Riesling? I think we can. All it takes is a willfulness on the part of the winemaker to maximize natural acids, use what comes from having the wine on lees, bottle late, use sulfur intelligently...in short, listen to the vines.

16-year old Muscadet! This is nuts. And it was truly superb, deathless wine. The oldest Sauvignon Blanc I've had from NZ that's actually improved in the bottle is a 2000 Staetlandt, drunk a couple months ago, and still vibrant and alive. Good on them--small vineyard, hand-made wine, why not? But 16 years? That's like a Hunter Valley Semillon, and goodness knows if the Aussies can do it, we can do it. So here's my challenge: One winery is all it takes; make a Savvy that can improve for a decade. I dare you. If you do it, you will change the face of New Zealand wine forever.

Are you out there? Will you rise to the challenge? Stay tuned.

10X5

Well, it starteth

2005-04-07T11:55:00.000+12:00

Got a call from a buddy at a winery the other day.
"Harvest has started!" spaketh he.
"You're picking grapes already?" rejoindeth I.
(We will dispense with the -eths now.)
"Us, mate? Are you kidding? No, blah-biddy-blah down the road brought 10 tons of Pinot over, 'cos their destemmer broke down."
Hmmm, thinketh I. (Sorry, couldn't helpeth one more.) "How's it look?"
"Like rose."
"So what's he going to do with it?"
"Make rose. Lots of rose." Pause. Eth. "Lots and lots and lots of rose."

Funny, I heard the same thing from someone in Central this morning. Let's hope the movie "Sideways" does as much for Rose of Pinot as it's done for Pinot Noir. Maybe there should be a sequel, "Standing Somewhat Diagonally," for Rose. The Virginia Madsen character, instead of waxing eloquent over what was happening in the world the year the grapes were picked can muse instead on what was taking place three weeks earlier, when the grapes were picked. "Ooh, I remember it so well. I split a fingernail, started my period, ate an apple with a worm in it, flipped a mighty heap of compost." Stirring stuff. Might need to unwind with a nice glass of rose.

So spaketh...

10x5, thankful for this bit of sunny weather. More please!

Find me a good Chardonnay

2005-04-03T18:33:00.000+12:00

Well, here we are on Sunday night. A weekend of Super 12 is put to rest, with the powers of good (us) defeating the powers of evil (them) in all contests. A great sigh of satisfaction goes out from the collective Kiwi spirit. Time to open something to celebrate New Zealand rugby supremacy. How about a nice Chardonnay?

Braaahhhhnnn! Sorry, wrong answer. Because you're not going to find one. Let's cut to the point, shall we? There are no world-class New Zealand Chardies, despite the hoo-hah, despite the hullabaloo, despite the fact that it's our second most widely planted white grape. This realization has been a long time coming. In fact, it really showed up after opening a bottle of the execrable 03 Matua Valley Judd's Vineyard Gisborne Chard tonight--a top, single-vineyard wine that tasted like water poured over raw oak boards.

Let's look at some of the other suspects: Felton Road? Lack of fruit, too much charred oak. Neudorf Moutere? Overripe, way too much oak, ages like a horror. Cloudy Bay? What, are you joking? Herzog? Like dragging your tongue across a lumber yard. Dog Point? Again, the char on the barrels is all you taste. Dry River? Overripe, and then too much acid, as if someone was trying to compensate for the ripeness. Ata Rangi? Actually, not bad, but not very exciting and it costs $40+. Clearview Reserve? Like popcorn with too much butter on it.

We arrive at the famous Kumeu River Chards--famous because they showed up in the Wine Spectator's Top 100 a couple times, the first and only NZ Chards to ever draw attention. And I've had some good ones. The 98 was a cracker. But the last few years have been the same pattern as the aforementioned: too much oak, too much ripeness, too much new oak. And no balance. The Mate's Vineyard is the same but more.

Now, $500 White Burgundies are often guilty of the same sins, and goodness knows Aussie and California Chardonnay can be Sin City. But there are exceptions in both regions, and it all comes down to balance--yeah, it's $90, but the 01 Leeuwin Artists Estate Chardonnay from Margaret River is what we should be aspiring to in our country. The only great NZ Chardonnay I've had this year, and I'm ashamed to admit it, because it's made by Cr$$ggy R$nge, is their $60 Beaux Caillou, which was a tightly wound riff on a high-end Puligny-Montrachet. In the last couple years, Villa made a couple of good, minerally ones from their Fletcher Vineyard (the other single-vineyard Villas are horrific). But that's pretty slim pickings from a whole country's worth, and these are among the most expensive.

A note about unwooded Chards. If you make a wine like this and put it through malolactic fermentation, you should be shot on sight (Are you getting all this down, Mr. Crawford?) The few wineries that make unoaked Chardonnay with good ripe grapes that don't go through excessive amounts of malo--Chard Farm Finla Mor, Kahurangi, hopefully a couple others--actually can achieve good results in warm years. Wish there was more of this.

Next time someone offers you a glass of Chardie, ask yourself if you really enjoy it. If it tastes like raisins steeped in vanilla and served in a wooden tankard that's been soaked in battery acid...it's probably from New Zealand. And that's a shame, because we should be making some of the best Chardonnay in the world.

More on that down the road...

10x5

Reading Between the Raindrops

2005-03-31T14:16:00.000+12:00

Hello, and welcome to Weather Central, 2005. It's currently, let's see, cold, rainy, windy, very still, humid, getting warmer, sunny, hailing. All at the same time, if you're in Wellington.

None of this is good news for growers. Interesting reading in the Marlborough Express today. Hunters viticulturist Brian Vickery, in a rare outbreak of winebiz honesty, reveals that the cold December did not just inhibit fruit set and lower yields (the PR equivalent being: smaller quantity, higher quality), but that it "resulted in large savvy berries."

Oh. Really? Well that takes care of Higher Quality in that varietal, despite the warm January and February. and it's a very important piece of information, especially as some of those swollen grapes will be splitting from the rain just about now. And then can you say botrytis? Not a good thing in your basic NZ SB grapes.

But, y'know, as Marlborough again sweats this one out, hoping for some stability for another two weeks, we move down to Hell, er, that is Central Otago, where contract growers have been heard to mention that they're still waiting for veraison.

Oh. Really? Y'mean the grapes are still green? They haven't coloured yet? For you Northern Hemisphere types, this means green grapes on October 1. The growers think they'll be picking in May, which is Centralese for they won't be picking, because there will be a euthanistically minded frost, a Terry Schiavo of a frost, that will howl down from the Remarkables long before then, and put a merciful end, yet one more time, to the grapes.

Who again in their right minds (which discounts American Gary Andrus) thought that it was a good idea to plant a quintillion hectares of Pinot anywhere outside Bannockburn down there?

I's just asking, is all...

10x5

And now...Barrelgate

2005-03-30T21:35:00.000+12:00

In cased you missed it, the story broke over the weekend that our new High Commissioner to London, Mr. Jonathan Hunt, had accepted a barrel of 2004 Pinot Noir from Vavasour Winery as a "gift" for being an honorary ambassador for all New Zealand wine. And, of course, every time he serves or gives away Vavasour it will be speaking for all the wines of NZ...not just for Vavasour, naturally. Yeah, yeah, yeah--all typical back-room politics, enlivened only by the cherubic Terry Dunleavy, a staunch National member, having to lambaste an MP from his party in the press. That was fun.

But there's one great unasked question going begging here. Has anyone at all wondered what in the world a person in their right mind would want with 288 bottles of mediocre Awatere Valley Pinot from the horrible 2004 vintage? Is this what we're going to use to get the Poms (re-)excited about our wine? This cherry cola juice? Good Lord! I mean, give the man a barrel of 02 Dog Point or a bleedin' hogshead of Fromm, or something drinkable!

And how is Lord Hunt going to take possession of this swill anyway? Is the barrel itself being loaded onto a Tall Ship and sailed through the Suez Canal? Will he tap it at his manse and offer ewers of it to guests? Or will it simply be yet another shrink-wrapped half-pallet of crap being unloaded at the docks of Portsmouth? A barrel is so romantic. A half-pallet is so boring. As befits the wine, bien sur.

10x5

The Ugly, The Bad, and The Good

2005-03-27T17:55:00.000+12:00

Eeee oooo eeee oooo eeee...bam bum bam (Ennio Morricone backwards)

Musings on an Easter Sunday.

The Ugly:
Make that a rainy Easter Sunday. Rainy and a bit cool. Uh oh. Shades of last year creeping in at this late date. In the last few weeks, winemakers that cared have been begging, pleading, praying, slaughtering goats on obsidian altars, what have you--all for a good three more weeks of sun and warmth. Brix are averaging a 1-2 degrees below where they should, and even all that warm breezy weather in January and February couldn't get all those hens n' chickens from the miserable fruit set in December to ripen fast enough for a "normal" harvest. The rain by itself is no big deal, as long as a breeze blows it away before rot can set in. But cooler, overcast temperatures across the whole country will bring a familiar conundrum: either don't play the odds, pick early and physiologically unripe, and get on the lab coat (the choice of the Bloated Empty Multinationals--oh let's just call them BEMs shall we?); or wait it out and hope for one last gasp of sunny, breezy weather to dry out the moisture and finish browning those pips in the grapes. Stay tuned...this is going to get interesting. (Cue the Morricone).

The Bad:
Speaking of harvest, here's one to watch out for if you have a high-powered torch and some crystal meth to stay awake. Most Marlborough wineries and contract vineyards pick their Savvy at night, so they can keep the grapes cool before getting them to the crusher. This necessitates machine-picking, since even Cambodian boat people gang-impressed for cheap labour can't afford to lose a finger in the dark if the picking is to get done. A few wineries have continued to buck the trend, picking by hand early in the morning. And a few BEMs like Spyte Valley have giant purpose-built chillers so they can do their machine picking at a civilized hour of the morning, get their 50 tons (!) a day in, and move on to smoko (that's coffee break for you non-smoking countries). But the Spytsters are way too easy a target to pick on.

Today's target is a real high-end, premium, some might say snooty Marlborough institution, that goes out of its way to trumpet the fact that their wines are estate grown. Here's where the torch and the speed come into play. One black night, whilst the harvest machines are toiling away plucking grape and leaf into the bins, park your ute oh, let's just say, somewhere on the Wairau River Road, and have a gander at the front entrance of said snooty winery. Hear the machines at work. Watch the army of workers toting the grapes to the crusher. And see the trucks rolling in, filled with grapes from contract wineries, destined for this winery's premium, estate-grown wine. Oh, the humanity! Now, if these folks had a second label, this might all make sense. They do not. And this is today's "BAD, very BAD, very lyingsneakingnaughty." (Cue the Morricone).

The Good:
I've already, in only the first month of this on-going missive, been accused of never saying anything nice. So I'm going to tell you about a NZ wine I recently drank that I really, really liked. It's the 2001 Schubert Cabernet/Merlot from the Wairarapa. Now, I don't know Kai Schubert, but have heard he's quite a nice guy. Which is a good thing, since we all like drinking good wine made by nice people. The best thing about this wine is that most people won't like it. The Mustache damned it with faint praise, which is the closest he can ever come to dissing anything. The Hat wouldn't get within a mile of a wine like this. Why? Because it's funky, reductive, herbal, a bit green, unfiltered, cloudy as, and just a great, stinky, weird, wonderful mess of a wine. It's not clean, it's not pure, it's not reeking of new French oak, it might have the teensiest touch of brett. Are you with me so far? Can you tell why I like it? Because it's honest. It's real. It tastes like handmade wine. It's fantastic with food. It's telegraphing the vision of the winemaker, and it's not about generic, varietally correct beverage units. It's about soul. If someone knows Kai Schubert, tell him for me he made a real New Zealand wine. Good on ya, mate--you should be giving lessons to the androids at Scaggy Range.

(Cue the Morricone, and send this baby home.)

10x5

What was that about terroir again?

2005-03-24T18:15:00.000+12:00

We interrupt this long-winded, un-ending diatribe against foolishness in New Zealand wine to wax, er, poetically, about European foolishness. Recently, the Guardian announced the death of terroir, courtesy of academician Victor Ginsburgh:

French Bitter over Wine Study

If you care to read the paper, itself, here you go (it's a 64kb PDF file):

Natural endowments, production technologies and the quality of wines
in Bordeaux. Is it possible to produce wine on paved roads?

Basically, it studies a hallowed piece of French ground, the Haut Medoc, and postulates that auction prices (an indication of how good the wine is, apparently), are far more influenced by technology (what can be done in the winery) than climate or soil content. The fact that people like Robert Parker (well, there are no people like Mr. Parker, so let's just say him and his sycophants, shall we?) vastly prefer wine that is made from technology rather than the vagaries of nature, and that Parker's scores directly effect auction price, does not seem to be adequately taken into account.

But why quibble with an academic? It's a fruitless exercise. The reason I point all this out, for my legions of Kiwi fans, is that terroir gets bandied about in our little country quite frequently, especially regarding Pinot Noir. The fact that absolutely no one has been making Pinot long enough to really understand their sites, the fact that Dijon clones, Davis clones, Pommard clones, and Happy-as-Larry Clones, are being planted willy-nilly, just to see what produces, the fact that the real Pinot-heavy region, Central, sports a total lack of terroir arguments since everyone blends from anywhere that's not frosted (Felton Road and the couple other Bannockburn residents are excluded from this), seems to stop no one from trying to identify unique New Zealand terroir. The limestone rocks under Danny Schuster's gumboots. The hallowed Moutere Clay, bastion of minerality. The loamy Martinborough Terraces, tantamount to Chambertin, bien sur, are all sure signs that we are grasping at some mighty big straws here.

And yet. And yet. To this person's palate, terroir exists. Call it hopeless romanticism on my part, but I do taste a whiff of the place in a Piemonte or Northern Rhone wine. Or a Pantelleria Passito, or an old-vines Silex from the Loire. My favourite comment on this has come from another wine site, which I'll re-produce without permission, but the writer, John Blackwood is a really cool guy, so I expect he'll take it as the complement it's meant:

On terroir:

1. Only an idiot, or someone with a lack of experience, could fail to understand the primacy of terroir.

2. Only an idiot, or someone with a lack of experience, could fail to understand how critical the winemaker is to fucking up or maximizing the potential of No. 1.

3. Every year hundreds of new vineyards are started somewhere new based on a combination of research, ego, hubris, a love of wine and wishful thinking. I wish them the best -- I buy a Powerball ticket every week myself.

4. Next week there will be another article explaining how the French or Italians will soon fold up their tents since the geniuses in Ca., Chile and Australia are hip to their secrets.

5. In 2050, wine futures for a couple bottles of Bordeaux estate wine rated most highly in the mid-nineteenth century -- Latour, Lafite and Haut Brion -- will, if life on this planet still exists, still be selling for more than a case of Genius Winemaker Wine being made in China or Chile.

6. Economists in 2050 will be publishing articles explaining why both (i) number 5 is true, and (ii) why French winemaking cannot continue as a going enterprise since people in Chile and China are hip to their secrets and the places the grapes are grown doesn't matter. These studies will all be based on micro-analysis of some place in France, and every study will be misreported in a glib, cursory fashion in USA Today or China Today.

And with that, I sign off as the only terroir-suggestive clone in NZ:

10x5

On the absurdity of wine shows

2005-03-23T10:12:00.000+12:00

The latest piece of piddling perfidy that passes for a wine awards just took place: the Royal Easter Show. A winery I know, new to the game but with a fairly impressive range given the age of the vines, submitted a number of their wines for judging. The vintner was quite distressed that they had not won any medals at all, not even a stinking Bronze. I tried very hard not to tell him how lucky he was (and failed in that attempt). I also tasted through his wines and they were all just fine, even possessing a bit of flair, an attempt to try something different poking out. Here, a Sauvignon a tad bit riper than the Marlborough style (but no appreciable RS); there, a rich Chardonnay with American oak rather than French--perhaps not my style (the only legitimate use for the Chardonnay grape is to grow it near Reims and call it Champagne), but a valid one by any definition.

So why were these wines ignored? Precisely because they are a bit different than the "benchmark." Look who won at the Royal Easter: wow, Villa Maria, a Famblyof12member! Trinity Hill--there's a shocka! A Central Otago Pinot! Imagine that! Does anyone besides Keith Stewart and yours truly see a pattern emerging?

Recently, trials were held around the country to try and recruit new wine judges, given that there are a dearth of qualified people here (lots of MWs floating around, but a few so spaced out that it seems their brains must be pickled from all the data points they've accumulated over the years). The test to be a wine judge works like this: you are given a wine to try and you must score it and describe it. If you score it and describe like the judge's reference standard says you must, then you are in. If you deviate you are out.

Think of the absurdity of that. Remember that we live in a country where it's very easy to try every wine released every year if you do so professionally. Wine hacks that have been doing judging for years know exactly what they're tasting. The idea of blind judging is ridiculous. These folks have defined their palates through decades of tasting Villa Maria Reserve wines, through tasting Central Otago and Martinborough Pinots, through tasting Trinity Hill, Cloudy Bay, Wither Hills. They are comparing wines every year to a set of norms that were burned into their palate by the large wine companies who dominate the market here. It's amazingly simple: Villa Maria knows exactly what the recipe is to wine best reserve Hawke's Bay red almost every year. Or best Reserve Pinot. Or Sav Blanc. And when they don't win it, their friends at fill-in-the-blank winery win it. And when an outsider sneaks in, they are either another generic benchmark-creator in waiting (i.e. Craggy or Mt. Difficulty or anything made by Alan McCorkindale), or an outlier that one year made a wine that aped the norm, such as the recent Olssen's of Bannockburn Pinot.

So when this sad-sack winery owner complains about not even placing at the show, I want to hug and kiss him. Your wines don't taste like Villa Maria, you twit! You should be the proudest person in New Zealand! Get thee to a publicist!

10by5

Stories from the Fambly, Part Deux

2005-03-22T16:00:00.000+12:00

Well lookee here: 52-million-dollar corporate shill Brent Marris is whining about the Fambly of 12!

National Business Review

Seems he takes exception to the concept that mega-sized multi-national wine investment companies might tend to make faceless, anonymous, internationalized swill in order to hit the targets on someone's ledger. You tell 'em Brent. This from a guy who runs a winery that last year picked their golf-ball sized Savvy grapes on March 27, at, who knows, maybe 17 or 18 brix, took all the natural acids out the juice, added sugar during fermentaion, added laboratory tartaric acid back to it at the end, and released it. Nice!

Oh, and then it won a Bragato Award. The story goes that a certain Bragato chief judge for the Savvies was so incensed by his peers scoring this chemistry lab masterwork as anything remotely resembling fine wine, that he demanded everyone re-taste it. To this day, he still can't believe it received a gold. That probably tells you a lot more about the wine award system than you want to know.

Meanwhile it's pop quiz time! Riddle me this: Which Fambly of 12 member who makes no Syrah had a truck delivering Syrah concentrate to it a couple vintages back? Care to guess, perhaps by the color and depth of the Pinot Noir, much beloved by such esteemed NZ wine critics as The Mustache and The Hat. Don't believe it? Well, seems the hysterical shrewish wife of an alcoholic winemaker who lives somewhere down the road/goat path/highway/track from said Famblymember winery managed to videotape the carboys of Syrah concentrate on the back of the lorry, when it stopped in her driveway to ask directions. Have we seen the tape? No. But has half the winebiz folks in the particular region in question seen it. Oh my, yes.

Next, more fun with Wine Shows! And more on The Mustache! And The Hat!

10by5

Stories from the Fambly

2005-03-20T15:39:00.000+12:00

As long as we're talking about the Famblyof12 (a Dysfunctional nuclear unit if I've ever heard of one), your correspondent heard a pretty good story recently.

Seems a certain Family member has been entreated by one of their local wineries to please, pretty please, double the price on their highest-end wine, a wine that is already in the upper price brackets of any NZ release. Why? Well, entreating winery happens to have their own luxury bottling that is ridiculously expensive, and sticks out like a, like a...well, like a tall poppy in the weed field of this particular wine region.

And it wants company up in that rareified air. Can you imagine the conversation. "Please, oh please, raise the price of your wine to $150 or so. It will make all the difference in the world." Snort.

To the Fambly member's credit, they've resisted, er, temptation. But for how long...

Tomorrow: The Black Sheep of the Family, stained with Syrah juice. Wee hee!

10by5

We are Family!

2005-03-18T11:55:00.000+13:00

Hey, the Family of 12 is here.

And now...the Family

This is actually a good idea: small, family-owned wineries grouping together to put an emphasis on quality, estate-grown grapes, artisanal styles, differentiation from the crappy, many-tentacled conglomerates that are quickly swallowing the industry here.

Let's see who's in the 12, shall we?

Hmm, Felton Road, Neudorf, Fromm. Very good, all quite worthy, small(ish in the case of Felton, but at least it's all estate-grown). Ata Rangi, nice, good reputation, not small, but quality-oriented.

Millton. Not all estate grown, but heart in the right place, organic, etc. Check.

Pegasus Bay. Good winemaking. Terrible site for year-to-year consistency thanks to frost, but that's not really their fault. Pretty big for a "family" winery, but family-owned I guess. I'll go along with it.

Kumeu River. Hmm. That's a hell of a lot of grapes to move up there. Some famous premium Chard, but an ocean of wine that neither they nor the public seem to care about.

Palliser, Nautilus. Lawson's Dry Hills

Huh? Big, rather indifferent wineries, the first of which is the main instigator of the digusting trend toward sweet Sauvignon Blanc, and the last of which has not made a memorable wine since they went on an insane expansion campaign a few years back. Talk about watering down the quality.

Craggy Range! Villa Maria!

Oh, okay. That makes perfect sense. The $5 million "family" winery and the second biggest winery in New Zealand. I get it now. This is a bunch of crap, a bunch of wineries that want to fight against Montana and Kim Crawford and Spy Valley. I hope Tim Finn and Blair Walters at least get a good laugh out of this. It's certainly making me laugh.

What a pathetic joke.

10X5

A Dry River digression

2005-03-17T11:01:00.000+13:00

Like you, I go to wine shops a lot, and where I live is blessed with a few good ones. This time of year, it's mostly tourists who come in, and the funniest ones seem to be the Americans. Some of them are undoubtedly perfectly decent people, but one often runs into the other kind of American: the scary, viral, wine geek. Although a few may well genuinely nice nice folks, those are, apparently, quite few and far between. The norm is the 21st Century version of what I used to call Homo Silveroakus, and I'm sure you know what I mean by this.

While browsing the racks at a local shop, the ultimate couple came in yesterday. Portly-bellied man, wearing a "Copa d'Oro, Napa Valley" golf shirt thrusts his way in the door. Wife is behind him, skin stretched so tightly and shinily across the bones of her cheeks and forehead that she looks for all the world like Joan Rivers crossed with the old Captain America nemesis, The Red Skull. She's wearing a sun hat and big sunglasses, so all I can see is her prodigous set of teeth sticking out of her thin, tightened lips like the Jaguar ornament on the hood of an XJ6.

They look dismissively around the shop for a minute or two, then stalk up to the counter. I inch over to listen.

Man, almost under his breath and already angry, like he's trying to buy crack from a homey and is disgusted with himself for it: "Got any Dry River?"

As you may know, Dry River is the darling of Americans who want to show they know something about the upper echelons of NZ wine. They can't get much or any of it, they've heard it's achieved cult status, and it drives them crazy.

Wine Store Dude: "No, sorry, they don't sell to trade. It's mailing list only, plus a couple restaurants around the country."

Man: "Well, of course we know that. We're friends of Reg's. We live...in NAPA VALLEY." (Reg Oliver, owner of El Molino winery in Napa, was one of the American buyers of Dry River year before last.)

Oh, god. They live in Napa Valley. Oh, god.

Man looks over at Red Skull wife. She opens her mouth to speak, and I am now convinced she is actually a manifestation of jackal-headed Anubis. What emerges from between these giant teeth can only properly be described as the bark of large, chained-up dog.

Woman, each word a separate, clenched-teeth snarly bark: "Felton. Road. Block. Bottlings?"

Thoughts of napalm and directed antimatter energy beams coruscate across my brain.

Wine Store Dude: "Um, no. They don't sell those wines to trade either."

Woman looks at man, furious: "I. Told. You. They'd. Have. Nothing!"

Man, a bit more indulgent now: "What's your biggest, butteriest Chardonnay? You know, we live in Napa Valley, so we're used to them big like that. Of course, you won't have anything near what we get."

The W.S.D. show him to the Chardonnays, and they sniff at the Kumeu River Mate's Vineyard, the Ata Rangi, the Neudorf Moutere. Been there, drank that, judged them inferior. Woman spies the $60 Craggy Range Beaux Caillou Chard, pert near the most expensive Chardonnay in NZ.

Woman, almost spitting with fury: "Well. At. Least. They've. Got. The. Craggy."

The man goes on to lecture the WSD on the wonders of Dry River. Having inched my way into the sphere of the conversation, I finally have to say something.

Me: "Couldn't help overhearing, but you know, most winemakers in Martinborough think quality is slipping pretty rapidly at Dry River as the original winemaker/owner steps away for good, as the plantings, marketing, and exporting gets more
aggressive, all of which is quite typical when new, offshore owners with business plans step in."

Man: "Well that's just ridiculous. Reg will have those wines on the French Laundry list in no time."

Me: "I just bet he will."

Moments later they stomped out of the store. Didn't buy anything, of course. I exchanged shrugs with Wine Store Dude, and we both had a pretty good laugh

In their honor, I opened the 2003 Dry River Pinot Noir last night. Dark as a Syrah. Tasted like a Syrah. In fact, it's got to have one of the highest amounts of residual dry matter in each mouthful of any Pinot in the world. Hours later, when I was brushing my teeth, I was spitting out mouthfuls of blackberry colored saliva, like I'd just drunk an Amon Ra Shiraz or something. I might be tempted to compare it with a Kistler single-vineyard Pinot, but I've never had one quite that heavy. Really bizarre wine.

So, there you go. No moral, call it a cautionary tale if you will...especially if you like Silver Oak...

Hammering in the first post

2005-03-16T11:30:00.000+13:00

I'd say it was about time someone started telling it the way it is about New Zealand wine. And why should that be little ol' me, you ask? No particular reason: I'm in the biz, hence the need for a cloak of anonymity, I hear some of what is going on in the wine world, and generally keep my ear to the ground for everything else.

What's often missing about New Zealand wine is the Truth. The Truth is that this country has the potential to make some of the best wine in the world. The Truth is that such a feat is so rarely accomplished. The Truth is that the industry is largely made up of large corporate entities that could care less about wine, balanced by small mom n' pops who care about wine but don't have the merest clue how to do business. Sprinkle in a few loud-mouth, cheerleading entrepreneurial types, and louder-mouthed American speculators, and you get a snapshot of the ripe, rich, loamy soil of our winebiz.

Another Truth? Every vintage is not wonderful here. Some really suck. Like 2004. We'll be talking a lot about that.

I look forward to talking Truth with you. Please join me.

Your correspondent in the vines,

10by5