Yalumba Y Series Vermentino 2011

Yalumba's work with viognier might offer a path for pushing an Italian white into an Australian mass market. The bet is on with vermentino. It might even pay off.

There is a bit to smell here: citrus blossom & light jasmine. But it's discrete. No hothouse rush up the glass like a malvasia or sauvignon pungency. The palate is even, citrus again, with a bit of citrus pith and a decidedly salty character I find distracting. Just a bit of chalky texture on the way out.

Good value if you get it closer to $10 than the rrp of $14.95. There's refreshment, but that salty note distracts like a skipping track on a compact disc. Screwcap.

Greenstone 2010 Colorino (Heathcote)

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.

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.

Isole e Olena Chianti Classico 2008 (Tuscany)

I cannot say I have my head around 2008 Chianti. Some big wines, some quite light & sprightly. No picture has gelled yet, so more shopping, tasting & drinking clearly needed.

Tonight, after a book launch and flying visit to Ainslie Cellars to taste Bryan Martin's new Ravensworth releases (including my second look at his 2011 sangiovese), it was time to grab a bottle and head to Pulp Kitchen for dinner. The bottle being the 2008 vintage Chianti Classico from Isole e Olena, one of my favourite Tuscan producers.

Deep, rich, dark. There are lots of purple fruits in this Chianti, with red fruits accents only to the main theme. But there is a beautiful wash of tannin; drying, ripe, nutty tannin, all through the wine. Ripe, but varietal. No loss of the sangiovese refreshment factor, even with the purple-fruited richness of the thing. Handled bread and oil, handled roast spatchcock, handled confit duck. Handled good conversation.

Not much more to ask of a Chianti, really.

$40, cork.

A wine review standard?

Wine scuttlebutt in Australia often includes the practice of wine criticism, especially around reviews, scores and what might be 'endorsements'. To me, wine journalism should follow the standards of journalism, such as sketched out in media codes of practice. But wine criticism, including the writing and publishing of reviews, tasting notes and scores, is in the main not done by journalists, nor done as journalism.

So what might a standard for wine reviews look like?

My initial thinking is that a wine review standard (something a reviewer or publication might sign up to in some fashion) could contain something like the following:

• A clear description of what the reviewer wishes to receive (if they receive samples) and what they are not interested in receiving. A general statement about how wines are obtained for review could accompany this.
• Any conditions for receipt and consideration for review. For example, does a price need to appear on the bottle? Are pre-final-label samples accepted for review? What images need to be supplied? Are there required types of information about the winery, importer, distributor or the wine?
• If samples are received but not reviewed, a commitment that they should not be on-sold at retail or by auction without the consent of the shipper.
• If scores, stars or similar rating systems are used, these should be explained clearly and obviously. For example, are scores 'within class' or universal. If there are standard conversions of your scores to other scales to hand (such as how your points convert to show medals), then this should also be clear.
• If price is part of, or excluded from, the consideration of scores or ratings, then this should be made clear.
• If there are charges for the publication of a review, or an image to accompany a published review, these are made publicly available. If charges vary depending on the type of wine, the treatment in the review publication, the size of winery or size of make of the wine, then this should also be specified clearly and publicly. If a reviewer is paid by a publication for a review, with copyright vesting in the publication, then the reviewer will not attempt to solicit additional payment from a winery for the review.
• A clear statement about conflicts of interest and how these are handled, including situations regarding accepting direct or indirect funding from wineries (indirect funding to include travel assistance, accommodation etc). This statement to also cover any practitioner involvement in the wine industry (such as if the reviewer also makes and sells their own wine, or has wine made by another winery which you may or may not review).
• If advertising appears in a reviewers own print publication or website, the conflict of interest statement should include words on the kinds of advertising accepted and the extent, if any, that this impacts review practice. 
• A publication with multiple reviewers should produce a common conflict of interest and advertising statement covering all participating reviewers, with any exceptions to be clearly specified. All advertorial or advertising content is to be clearly specified as such.
• A copyright and fair reuse statement. If small or large wineries are both free to use your notes, in part or full, with or without permission, payment or attribution, then spell this out clearly. A winery submitting you samples in the hope of getting a useful review should be able to know the conditions of review reproduction and use prior to sending samples in.
• If the reviewer tastes and reviews with the assistance of other tasters and reviewers, the specific author or authors of a particular review or tasting note should be specified directly and accurately.
• A common or default circumstance for tasting and reviewing should be described clearly and accessibly. For example, are wines tasted individually or in brackets? With or without food? Unmasked, blind or double-blind?
• If prices are published, the type of price should be clear. For example, is it recommended retail price as supplied by the winery or distributor? Is it a cellar door price or list price? Review readers and users should be able to tell which.

That is my first go, and not in any particular order, at what might make up a standard for wine reviewing. I would be interested to hear what people think about this. In the main, I think my practice with this site stacks up fairly well against that list, but there are some points I miss, including having some of these statements clear and separate from the run of posting.

Vinea Marson Sangiovese 2009 (Heathcote)

Recently, as well as getting through pruning, I have been reading Kerin O'Keefe's book on Brunello di Montalcino. Drinking the 2009 Vinea Marson Heathcote sangiovese brings to mind some of the wines O'Keefe writes about as too rich, too dark to be Brunello. To me, some difference is fine in an Australian sangiovese, as surely there are paths with this grape that do not start in Chianti and end at Montalcino.

But the wine, even stating a 13.5% alcohol, looks like Heathcote and warm weather to me, more so than varietal sangiovese. It is a good wine, will age well and sat up straight next to braised beef. The tannins say sangiovese but the heart of deeply purple, verging on black, fruits says something else.

Not $44 of value here, for mine.

Carpineto Chianti Classico 2010

Good, ripe but not stewy, food-friendly Chianti for $20 or less... that sounds like the kind of wine I want to buy, drink and recommend.

The 2010 Chianti Classico from Carpineto is brought in by International Liquor Wholesalers and is 90% sangiovese with 10% canaiolo. Six months in oak, then 4-6 months of bottle age prior to release. Alcohol is 13%. Available at Dan Murphys for a $20. Good colour. Some varietal tannin. It is a touch over-ripe and slightly stewy for my tastes, just out-of-focus, but it sounds like a good package, does it not?

There's even an Australian-market-friendly English back label with useful information.

But there is also a cork. And a cork-tainted bottle. The kind of taint is just assertive enough that many people would not return the bottle, instead choosing not to buy any more, perhaps writing off Chianti (and sangiovese) in the process.

Simply not good enough.