For better or for worse, Australia does have its cult wines. Cult wines are an interesting phenomenon, since they tend to disobey most of the conventions that have traditionally applied to other expensive wines. For a start, they tend to lack history or provenance. They’re new arrivals, often made by winemakers whose reputations were made elsewhere and at other peoples’ expense. While most expensive wines have had to earn their place at the top of the tree through years of consistent performance and excellence, cult wines often debut at absurdly high prices. They do this because sections of the media have made habits out of attempting to anoint future stars, because their publicity machines are unusually effective, or because their owners are often high profile and exceptionally wealthy individuals with massive reputations from other industries. As such, they are able to afford the best PR and get their wines in front of the journalists most likely to promote them. The other important thing about cult wines is that their production is minuscule, which helps to keep demand abreast of supply. Make too much wine, regardless of its quality, and this relationship might backflip. So then, will the wine’s cult status. From an Australian perspective, virtually all our cult wines are such because exceptionally influential American writers like Robert Parker have given them astonishingly high ratings. There are a few wines, such as Giaconda Chardonnay, Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier, Wendouree Shiraz, Giaconda Shiraz, Torbreck RunRig, Mount Mary Quintet and Yarra Yering Dry Red No. 1 which have acquired something akin to cult status through sheer merit and classical style, but they’re a minority. Most Australian cult wines are hardly available in their country of origin and are rarely, if ever, shown to Australian wine writers. I wonder why! Given Robert Parker’s well-known affection for highly alcoholic and ultra-ripe Australian shiraz, there is in my opinion a distinct sameness about many Australian cult wines, most of which are shirazes from either the Barossa Valley or McLaren Vale. Each of these are South Australian regions more than capable of producing the densely concentrated, porty, dehydrated and highly spicy wines so favoured right now in the US, to which winemakers are then encouraged to imbue with enough small oak to build a small beach house. Another thing about cult wines is that hardly anybody actually drinks them. Instead, they are traded like antiques and stamps. This is perhaps one of the reasons why some retain their cult status, since very few indeed have any potential to mature in the bottle whatsoever. One of these days people are going to open their old bottles of cult wines, wherever they’re from, and they’re generally going to be upset. In most cases, if they’re honest about it, they’ll see that they’ve blown their dough, to adopt the Australian vernacular. Here is a list of what are presently considered by the market to be Australia’s leading cult wines: Anything made by Greenock Creek, Noon’s, Two Hands and Mitolo Clarendon Hills Astralis Dutschke Oscar Semmler Shiraz Fox Creek Shiraz Henry’s Drive Shiraz Kaesler Old Bastard Shiraz Kalleske Greenock Shiraz Magpie Estate The Malcolm Shiraz Three Rivers Shiraz (now Chris Ringland Shiraz) Torbreck RunRig Shiraz Viognier Wild Duck Creek Duck Muck
