Trends and fashions have a predictable habit of making sudden swings from one extreme to the other. Being subject to a wide range of trends and fashions itself, wine is no exception. And just like nearly everything else, wine tends to perform best if it keeps a safe distance from those extremes.One of the extremes to which wine has recently been subjected is that of the ultra-ripe, ultra-high alcohol table wine åÂÐ especially red, especially shiraz and especially from Australia. And it’s a story that began in 1995.To appreciate the point I’m trying to make, we need to go back a decade earlier. It’s summertime in Adelaide, 1984. We’re at the Press Club Lunch in Adelaide at which the results of the Royal Adelaide Wine Show are being announced. At this time in Australian wine history cabernet is king. Cool regions were top of the tree and the South Australian Government was paying growers to pull vines out of the soil in the Barossa Valley. Shiraz is but a second-class citizen that was given oak and other winemaking priority only after the cabernet was safely in hand. It was difficult indeed to find a wine that was 100% unblended Barossa Valley. So, back to the lunch and to the awards‰Û_The wine that won two trophies that day in 1984 in Adelaide for the Best Cabernet and the Best Red of the Show was made by Geoff Merrill. It was around 11% or even less alcohol by volume and it was as green as grass. But, back then that’s what Australian winemakers and wine opinion leaders thought was world’s best practice! Little wonder they were shedding tears of blood in the Barossa‰Û_Australian wine producers wasted a number of good vintages throughout the 1980s, making under-ripened, under-weighted and green-edged wines from seasons that would easily have enabled growers to keep fruit out longer. Of course there were exceptions, but even the more powerful Australian reds of the time rarely touched even 12.8%.1990 was a magical vintage that saw the fashion pendulum begin to swing more quickly. Several Australian reds even made it to and surpassed 13%, including Penfolds Grange, a wine described by Robert Parker as ‘a leading candidate for the richest, most concentrated dry red table wine on Planet Earth’. Taste it now and you’d be forgiven for wondering what he was talking about. Weighing in at a mere 13% alcohol by volume, it’s a comparative featherweight next to the Australian wines that Parker has since rated most highly.Then the pendulum accelerated its swing, and before the close of the 1990s a growing band of Australian winemakers were nursing their premium shirazes, usually sourced from ancient, gnarled vines often more than a century old, towards alcoholic strengths well north of 15%, even above 16.5% in the decade just finished. Driven by high Parker ratings and an apparently insatiable American demand for such wines, families that had been grape growers for generations suddenly launched their own wine brands, attempting to cash in. ‘Cult’ shirazes that Australians had never heard of were fetching hundreds of dollars per bottle in the US. It looked too good to be true.And it was.Today ultra-ripe, but now ultra-affordable, once-super-premium Australian wines are cluttering the very same American market they once dominated. Why? Most of them, it has to be said, are rubbish. And with the declining level of respect shown to these wines in the US, so has gone Australia’s red wine reputation, which is now, as the Americans would put it, out in the doghouse.So what went wrong? Here’s a train of thought that might explain. It’s virtually a given thing in wine that for a red wine to be considered as prestigious, it should be able to cellar well over at least one decade. It should also be able to reflect its region of origin. Trouble is, when you leave grapes out to ripen on the vine for long enough to make a red of 15% and above, you actually tamper with the very balance of the wine that is responsible for its longevity and its identity.Once red grapes are picked past optimal flavour ripeness, they change dramatically. Their liveliness and purity of perfectly ripe fruit are compromised, and their profile changes from pure sweet berry and plum flavours to the cooked, tarry, dehydrated and dried fruit flavours more suggestive of prunes, raisins, treacle and jam. Australian winemaker Brian Croser applied the term ‘dead grape character’ to such wines. It’s his view that many winemakers have become convinced that the only way to achieve a wine of true concentration and complexity is through ultra ripe fruit. Compounding the felony, many winemakers then over-oak their ultra-ripe reds, because oak extract can restore some temporary measure of sweetness, and can partially smooth over the spirity influence of excessive alcohol. Hence the modern plethora of soupy, spicy, raisined, vanillin, chocolatey and caramelised red shirazes and blends. While most are simply too thick, concentrated and extracted to actually drink, some wines made from such ‘ultra-ripe’ fruit almost get away with it, for a brief time. Their initial burst of intensity and lusciously smooth texture is very appealing to many drinkers, trade, judges and media alike. But once the fruit subdues with time in the bottle it loses liveliness and focus, alcohol becomes more dominant, and hard tannins become more aggressive as balance and harmony are lost.As the Americans who paid for these wines have now discovered, after just five years or so in the bottle, the game is often up. These wines do not age, nor are they capable of reflecting their typicitÌ© or terroir. Actually, they mainly taste the same. Empirically, then, these wines cannot be regarded as ‘great’, and for me at least, they’re nowhere close.Wisely, the move in Australian winemaking today is to seek more balance. While it’s indeed true that some warmer climate wines may find this at higher levels of ripeness and alcoholic strength than those from cooler regions, it’s a brave or foolish Australian winemaker these days who is deliberately prepared to venture beyond 14.5%.Even up to 13%, the more reserved and savoury red wines are easier to drink. They’re finer, more elegant and more approachable, and there’s no reason at all for them to lack concentration and flavour. By and large, they work significantly better with food, unless you do Cajun or rare steak three meals a day. Their tannins are often firm but fine-grained, and they can exhibit the sort of balance and harmony required for long-term cellaring. They’re also better equipped to reflect the uniqueness of their own terroirs.To shift focus to Asia, it’s my view there are very few dishes in Asian cuisine Ð or any cuisine Ð suited to the ultra-ripe reds that have sadly become synonymous with Australian wine. Sure, many of these labels still attract the headlines, but one day they’re likely to be opened, at a table with food, and their deficiencies will again be exposed for all to see. I’m not remotely convinced that the Asian people presently buying these wines are aware of the mistake they’re making, but I am convinced they will find out soon enough.The issues with over-ripe fruit cross political and geographical boundaries and are in no way restricted to Australia. This is something that the buyers of ultra-ripe wines from Bordeaux and the RhÌ«ne Valley will certainly discover in time. I’d be just as careful buying the 2009s from Bordeaux and I would from the Barossa. Consigned then, as a fashion that failed, the ultra-ripe red was never likely to work and it never did, for long. And the more you appreciate the role of balance in wine, the more you appreciate that it was never going to.
