Received a letter the other day from a prominent South Australian winemaker who reckoned I’d got it all wrong. The gist of it was that having conducted a vertical tasting of his own wines, he felt they were capable of a substantially longer cellar life than I suggested in my book. Even though it wasn’t that long ago since I tasted several vintages of each of these wines, I accepted his offer to conduct a vertical tasting of his wines. The upshot? I saw no reason to extend their drinking windows and some are unlikely even to improve for as long as I initially suggested. They are not, nor ever will be wines that improve with time. As a group they were generous in flavour and proportion, very ripe and firm, alcoholic and robust. Almost without exception the most delicious to drink were the younger wines of each label, while their intense, thickly structured palates were at their most lively and interesting. But they tended to quickly lose whatever youthful attraction they enjoyed, revealing instead a disjointed substratum of hard-edged tannins, overly aggressive oak, spirity levels of alcohol and dirty secondary flavours. Nothing in their early phases suggested a understanding of winemaking commensurate with the necessary levels of balance, complexity and integration demanded in any wine destined to not only last the distance but to truly reward the owner of the cellar. Because I requested another tasting of the wines, it’s not fair to name either the winery or winemaker. Neither do I want to, since to do this would be to suggest that it was a rarity, or a company to be made an example of. That would be grossly unfair, since there are so many other Australian wineries guilty of making wines entirely incapable of improvement over any real length of time in the cellar. Worse still, most of them don’t even know how guilty they are. There are all sorts of pressures on winemakers to make young wine of almost unnatural complexity. Our wines, reds and chardonnays especially, are sold far too young, and this is when they have to look their best, or at the very least able to handle their opposition in the marketplace and on the show circuit. And in the media. Much of the blame for the overly evolved wine witnessed today simply stems from the wine industry’s desire to satisfy the demands of the wine media, most of which has absolutely no formal training in wine or wine making whatsoever. Many modern-day wine journalists are pre-occupied by wines that leave such an indelible impression when young that they fall all over the place shortly thereafter. Wine columns give excessive hype and attention to young wines displaying flavours described as ‘feral’, ‘farmyard’, ‘funky’, ‘wild’, ‘concentrated’, ‘aggressive, ‘soupy’, etc, when so often it’s the writer who is simply unable to recognise a fundamental winemaking fault for what it is. I wouldn’t care less if these articles weren’t affecting the way wine is made in so many Australian wineries today, but they are. It’s no secret that the highly influential American critic Robert Parker is so powerful a voice that he has affected the way that wine is made in the US. And in Burgundy; Bordeaux as well. While he does on occasion pay due credit to wines of elegance and fineness, his affection for highly concentrated and assertively oaked and tannic wines ripened to extreme is unquestionably affecting the approach of many Australian winemakers. Throughout the late ‘seventies and into the late ‘eighties Australian winemakers were excessively pre-occupied by a quest for elegance and restraint and were collectively guilty of making red wine from under-ripened fruit. The pendulum has since swung to the opposite extreme. Even after you take into account the viticultural improvements over the last fifteen years which enable growers in cooler climates to produce riper fruit, Australian reds are substantially more alcoholic than ever they were before. I’d argue that they’re riper than they need to be, so much so that this alone is substantially reducing their longevity. Winemakers are seeking the additional concentration, thickness and palate structure evident in more alcoholic young red wines, but once fruit is picked past optimal flavour ripeness it changes dramatically in character. The liveliness and purity of perfectly ripe fruit is first to be compromised, as the flavour profile in the grapes turns from pure sweet berry and plum flavours in red grapes to cooked, dehydrated and dried fruit flavours more suggestive of prunes, treacle and jam. Some are little more than dry, oaky vintage ports. In their youth some wines from such fruit almost get away with it, since their initial burst of intensity and texture is very appealing to many drinkers, trade, judges and media alike. But once the fruit subdues in its intensity with time in the bottle, all the underlying problems previously mentioned are revealed. Fruit loses intensity and focus, alcohol becomes more dominant, and hard tannins become more aggressive as balance and harmony are sacrificed. The number of high-profile Australian vineyards mistakenly making fast-maturing, porty red wines instead of the longer-living, better-balanced wines they could be making is not simply a minor problem – it’s a tragedy. Too many wines are compromised through a fashionable modern trend which takes non-interference in wine making that extra degree or two too far. Too many modern reds have high pH levels. Too many are made with inadequate racking and sulphur additions, as winemakers vie with each other to make the most ‘natural’ red wines, but with unnatural results. When tasting the greatest wines in the world directly out of barrel I’m always struck by how incredibly clean, pure and balanced they are. They’re not wines of artefact or intervention, often relatively uncomplicated, however explosive or delicate they may be. Great wines – which are by definition long-living wines – develop much of their complexity and character in the bottle, not in the cellar. They’re not forced, they’re not dirty, they’ve not been over-subjected to winemaking influence, either through inadequacy or excess. This sort of lesson has evaded the winemaker responsible for the timing of this outburst of mine. For despite the commercial success of his and so many other modern Australian red wines whose making I question, it’s only after a period of time that the problems associated with their practices will reveal themselves for what they are. By then it’s too late. But it’s not too late for him to take another hard, honest look at his own wines in direct comparison with Australian reds that genuinely do cellar.
