This is the most exciting bottle of wine I have seen out of Heathcote. Colorino is one of the varieties traditionally blended with sangiovese to make Chianti. Colorino, along with other varieties such as Canaiolo, is seldom seen as a single-variety wine and Mark Walpole's Heathcote plantings have produced Australia's first straight bottling of this deeply coloured and well flavoured variety.
I first saw this wine about ten months ago at the Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show in Mildura, where it was the pick of the show stewards. In the intervening time, the plush waves of primary fruit have settled back a bit, revealing some of the character and detail in the wine. Purple fruits, flecked with red and black, now sit behind layers of good smells, including fresh bramble berries and a distinct blueberry perfume. Tannins are there, giving the deep colour and sturdy fruit rails to slide along. It is a wine of genuine interest and real refreshment. Hard to recall the last time I had a wine from Heathcote that could balance fruit, intensity and refreshment this well. The 13% alcohol may have something to do with this.
Hard to judge how this would age. Perhaps best to drink in the next two or three years, before that primary fruit backs away further.
And to finish, a story from Mark Walpole, one of the partners in Greenstone and a pioneer of Italian varieties in Australia. Usually, this fruit would be blended into the Greenstone sangiovese, for colour and other benefits. But in 2010, even a small blending knocked the sangiovese off its axis. The Colorino was too much, too assertive, too different and insistent on telling its own story. So a separate bottling for the first time.
Which brings me back to one of the questions threading through this blog: what if the Italian varieties that could perform best in Australia are not the standard front-runners from within Italy and the global experience of Italian varieties? Could some of these 'other' Italian varieties not just do better in Australia than back home, but what if they were able to outperform nebbiolo and sangiovese?
Sample. Screwcap. 13% alcohol. Should be $25-30 in retail.
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Show sophistry
Wine shows, and the Australian systems of them, seem to be somewhat topical at the moment. Some of the dullest wine topics imaginable ensue, front-running being whether to score wines out of 100 or 20, or perhaps 20 with small increments. The usual shibboleths trot their way out onto stage: shows are about 'improving the breed' of wines, shows are important for communicating to consumers about wines... I could go on.
But maybe there is a different kind of conversation available here. What if we started at the point of admitting the real reasons why the show system continues to function in Australia, and then went on to ask if there are other arrangements that could better meet those functions? What if we had no wine show system at all, but delivered the system's benefits (such as they are) in a different way?
Take 'improving the breed'. It's a fig leaf. The wines aren't the breed being improved. It is the people. That's the breed. The show system currently functions as a mechanism for 'training' wine people in wine opinion, including how to express those opinions and how to keep fitting in with shifting taste cultures. Some of this training function extends to people employed in wine but not currently judges or associate judges, through mechanisms such as stewarding and exhibitor's tastings.
The wines themselves are not the breed being 'improved'. What happens to the wines is a crapshoot. Assessments simply cannot be 'objective' or science-based under show judging conditions. Too many wines to taste, too little time, the absence of food, classed in muddles of different climates and styles, subject to the stylistic whims of un-published panel directions, taste assessments made about measurable attributes that then cannot be supported by measured evidence... It is an inherently-flawed process if the objective is to improve the breed of wines. It accelerates wine fads and style shifts, under the guise of vague rising-tide, all-boats-a-lifting metaphors. 'Elegant' cabernet, ripe shiraz from warm climes, rose that cannot be from bleeding juice, chardonnay full of bones or splinters... there is no linear trajectory of 'quality improvement' here, driven by the show system.
If we faced up to the function of the show system being to form and reform the people involved, to shape cultures of taste, then could we really say the show system is the best way to do it? Is it sensible trying to acquit what is really an educative and social-networking function by having wineries subsidise agricultural show societies who then subsidise wine people to drink together and learn from each other?
What would happen if every Australian wine producer put their budgets for samples, costs, staff time and travel related to wineshows into better education and training, including in local networks? More region-wide events for people in the wine game, buying in samples of wines for collaborative benchmarking exercises. More cross-region exchanges of information, including scientific and subjective information, could be funded through mechanisms more efficient and more proximate to the wine industry than outsourcing this to agricultural societies.
Would anyone in wine notice much of a difference in their sales and marketing from the absence of the shows, from the cursory or illusory marketing efforts of the show societies? I suspect the show societies would feel a loss from ripping up the current system and starting again, from scratch, at figuring out better ways to 'improve the breed' of wine knowledge and creativity. It might mean fewer exposures to the great and expensive wines of the world for some judges, subsidised by growers and wine businesses whose own people end up locked out of these experiences. But what if an alternative to the show system meant better, more capable people in Australian wine, leading to better wines as a result?
What do I come back to? The system does not do what it says it does. It accentuates faddish trends. It rips people off. It hides lifestyle subsidies for a privileged few. It is shockingly poor value for Australian wine businesses that send in samples. So tear it up. Boycott the shows. Let them wither and die. Face up to the hidden functions the system still serves, like improving the 'human breed' in Australian wine. And ask, squarely and clearly, if the real aim is people, their knowledge, networks and learning, then what is a better set of arrangements and institutions to get those benefits.
Australian wine, and those that drink it, deserve better.
But maybe there is a different kind of conversation available here. What if we started at the point of admitting the real reasons why the show system continues to function in Australia, and then went on to ask if there are other arrangements that could better meet those functions? What if we had no wine show system at all, but delivered the system's benefits (such as they are) in a different way?
Take 'improving the breed'. It's a fig leaf. The wines aren't the breed being improved. It is the people. That's the breed. The show system currently functions as a mechanism for 'training' wine people in wine opinion, including how to express those opinions and how to keep fitting in with shifting taste cultures. Some of this training function extends to people employed in wine but not currently judges or associate judges, through mechanisms such as stewarding and exhibitor's tastings.
The wines themselves are not the breed being 'improved'. What happens to the wines is a crapshoot. Assessments simply cannot be 'objective' or science-based under show judging conditions. Too many wines to taste, too little time, the absence of food, classed in muddles of different climates and styles, subject to the stylistic whims of un-published panel directions, taste assessments made about measurable attributes that then cannot be supported by measured evidence... It is an inherently-flawed process if the objective is to improve the breed of wines. It accelerates wine fads and style shifts, under the guise of vague rising-tide, all-boats-a-lifting metaphors. 'Elegant' cabernet, ripe shiraz from warm climes, rose that cannot be from bleeding juice, chardonnay full of bones or splinters... there is no linear trajectory of 'quality improvement' here, driven by the show system.
If we faced up to the function of the show system being to form and reform the people involved, to shape cultures of taste, then could we really say the show system is the best way to do it? Is it sensible trying to acquit what is really an educative and social-networking function by having wineries subsidise agricultural show societies who then subsidise wine people to drink together and learn from each other?
What would happen if every Australian wine producer put their budgets for samples, costs, staff time and travel related to wineshows into better education and training, including in local networks? More region-wide events for people in the wine game, buying in samples of wines for collaborative benchmarking exercises. More cross-region exchanges of information, including scientific and subjective information, could be funded through mechanisms more efficient and more proximate to the wine industry than outsourcing this to agricultural societies.
Would anyone in wine notice much of a difference in their sales and marketing from the absence of the shows, from the cursory or illusory marketing efforts of the show societies? I suspect the show societies would feel a loss from ripping up the current system and starting again, from scratch, at figuring out better ways to 'improve the breed' of wine knowledge and creativity. It might mean fewer exposures to the great and expensive wines of the world for some judges, subsidised by growers and wine businesses whose own people end up locked out of these experiences. But what if an alternative to the show system meant better, more capable people in Australian wine, leading to better wines as a result?
What do I come back to? The system does not do what it says it does. It accentuates faddish trends. It rips people off. It hides lifestyle subsidies for a privileged few. It is shockingly poor value for Australian wine businesses that send in samples. So tear it up. Boycott the shows. Let them wither and die. Face up to the hidden functions the system still serves, like improving the 'human breed' in Australian wine. And ask, squarely and clearly, if the real aim is people, their knowledge, networks and learning, then what is a better set of arrangements and institutions to get those benefits.
Australian wine, and those that drink it, deserve better.
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