It’s been a long three decades for Australian cabernet. Back in the 1990s it delivered an extraordinary array of classic wines, most of which are still superb 20-30 years later – assuming of course decent cellaring and corks.
Margaret River was on fire at this time – with Vanya Cullen raising the bar to stunning levels, Moss Wood following excellent vintages one after the other, while brands like Cape Mentelle, Voyager Estate, Leeuwin Estate, Vasse Felix, Devil’s Lair and Xanadu regularly released high-level wines from cabernet and its family. Back in 1990 John Wade still had three spectacular vintages of Howard Park Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot to create – largely from fruit in the southern part of the Great Southern region – while from the same region came several top-notch vintages of Houghton’s Jack Mann cabernet blend.
Throughout the 1990s, labels like Petaluma, Parker, Katnook Estate, St Hugo, Wynns and Lindemans were on fire in Coonawarra – 1998 especially. Nearby in Victoria, the Yarra Valley experienced a stellar decade with makers such as Mount Mary, Yarra Yering, Wantirna Estate, Oakridge, Coldstream Hills, Yarra Yarra and Yeringberg regularly shooting out the lights. From other regions we also saw outstanding cabernet-based reds from Balgownie, Primo Estate, Coriole, Wendouree, Lake’s Folly and a host of others.
There are two key points to make about Australian cabernet around this time. Firstly, and pretty well without exception, each top-end release fitted into the expected range of styles that wine drinkers the world over had learned to expect from cabernet. They delivered perfume, length and tannin. They were handsomely but properly oaked. Unless the season dictated it, they were deficient in neither flavour nor structure and their acids were neither greenish nor sappy. Back in this time, and indeed into the warmer and often more challenging decade from 2000 onwards, makers of these wines were aspiring to release proper cabernet that would be recognised as such the world over.
That’s possibly the explanation for my second point: Australia’s finest cabernets sold out quickly. The top producers were well-known and recognised and demand for their wines was high. Cabernet was king. People understood it and hunted down their favourites before others nabbed them and they generally loved what they bought.
This is perhaps where things have changed the most. The Australian lifestyle is different to what it thirty years ago. Like many, I’m now living in an apartment, which isn’t something that thirty years ago I thought I’d be doing today. There’s not a lot of space for wine storage in most Australian apartments, so more Australians are buying wine to drink over the next week or fortnight, instead of over the next decade or more.
One of the more obvious features of classic cabernet is that it certainly needs bottle-age to reveal its best. Sure, the finest can be delicious while young but, to be frank, most of us would prefer the complexity and refinement that only time in the bottle can achieve. Compare a young, perfectly made and structured cabernet to the complexity and approachability often seen in modern expressions of varieties like shiraz, nebbiolo, pinot noir or grenache and the young cabernet will often appear simple, less approachable and relatively uninteresting. Little wonder that many of us who buy to drink shortly thereafter are seeking other varieties.
Then there’s the matter of price. I’ve written elsewhere about the steeply escalating cost of Australian wine. While we might splash out on the spur of the moment occasionally for a wine that’s more suited to drinking straight away, today there are less of us who are prepared to spend up for wine we won’t be opening for a decade or more. We’re collectively taking a shorter-term approach and cabernet has become more of a hard sell.
So what do you do if you own a wine brand and cabernet has always been your bread and butter? Some makers have adapted their approach – perhaps leaving the fruit out for longer in the vineyard to make a juicier, more forward style that they bottle with less oak and tannin. Others follow the same unfortunate trend we’ve seen across Australian pinot noir, grenache and cool-climate shiraz – harvesting earlier to make the more skinny, sappy and green-edged wines to which so many opinion leaders and wine show judges appear so inexplicably attracted.
Either way, you’re not making classic cabernet; you’re responding to a trend. If your site is most suited to cabernet and its family, you know you’re certainly not making the best wine it could produce. So you’ve consciously moved away from some of the most basic principles that wine producers the world over have used over the last thousand years to make the best wines they can.
The challenge, then, for cabernet growers is either to doggedly stick with what they do the best or to chase popular trends to make pleasing, simpler and largely earlier-drinking trend-following wines which might stand more of a chance of being purchased. Not for a moment would I pretend that this is an easy decision to make.
As buyers, it’s not at all difficult to decipher for yourselves when you taste modern expressions what decisions their brand owners have made, since there’s no escaping the obvious manipulations or deviations from classic cabernet. Today, regardless of price, it’s possible to buy greenish, sappy, under-structured and under-fruited cabernets at every price-point from producers who would never have previously chanced their arms this way. To reiterate, it’s not difficult to understand why such decisions have been made – businesses need to survive, and these are tough times indeed.
If you accept what I’m suggesting, it’s little wonder that while there are still some outstanding cabernets made in Australia, there’s certainly less top-level cabernet made these days than there were in the 1990s and in the early years of this century.
Incidentally, this is far from the first time in recent history that market trends have caused winemakers to alter the way they made wines from certain red varieties, delivering sub-optimal wines as varieties are tinkered with to follow a trend. We never saw the best from Australian shiraz throughout most of 1970s, 1980s and 1990s because back then the market was driven to buy the finer, more elegant cabernets made from the late 1970s through to the late 1980s – many of which were barely drinkable because they here so thin and herbaceous.
Don’t forget the vine pull scheme of the early 1980s in South Australia, when you could actually buy Barossa shiraz in muffins and barely a single Barossa producer other than Hoffmans and Peter Lehmann was bold enough to sell a 100% Barossa red. In 1984 the trophy for the Best Young Red at the Adelaide Wine Show was given to a Geoff Merrill cabernet of barely 10.5% alcohol – from McLaren Vale! Even though the trend bordered on the unconscionable, makers of shiraz had little choice but to try to emulate what the market – and their influencers – were telling them.
Then there’s Australian grenache, which for generations was largely made into simple, jammy, tutti-frutti reds lacking structure and balance. And then, having hit a beautiful sweet spot around a decade ago which prompted the variety’s genuine acceptance in the market – actually for the very first time – too many makers are today compromising flavour but over-delivering on greenish, sappy whole bunch ferment influences and pretending the outcomes rival red Burgundy. Hmmm.
If only Australian winemakers were less subject to fast-changing trends, frequently driven by opinion leaders ill-equipped to know better, perhaps they could simply do what largely happens around the rest of the wine world, which is to focus on refining their art to make the best wines their vineyards might deliver. Yes – style-driven trends do indeed exist across the wine world – but Australia takes this concept to an extremity we don’t see elsewhere with the possible exception of New Zealand.
However, there are still plenty of Australian wine growers and makers who aspire to make exemplary wines from cabernet and its family. The list is smaller than it’s been for a few years, but makers of fine, classical cabernet in Australia include (and I present them in alphabetic order and I don’t intend this to be a complete catalogue) Balgownie Estate, Coldstream Hills, Domaine A, Henschke, Houghton, Leconfield, Mount Mary, Peccavi, Penfolds, Vasse Felix, Wantirna Estate, Woodlands, Wynns Coonawarra Estate and Yeringberg.
In our cabernet selection at Oliver’s Wines we feature affordable style and quality from Zema Estate, a structured and stylish expression from Balgownie, a stellar individual vineyard wine from Wynns, over-delivering Clare Valley quality from Tim Adams, a suite of stunning cabernets from Peccavi, a superb long-term Bin 389 rival from Seppeltsfield, fetchingly priced charm from Ros Ritchie, Frankland Estate and Mitchelton, plus a Bordeaux collection that includes several exceptional mature vintages as well as a couple of delicious affordable chateaux, plus a stunner from Thelema Estate in Stellenbosch. As ever, our selection is tightly curated.
Give them a try if you’re wondering what on earth I’ve been talking about. Or indeed if you don’t need any encouragement to enjoy one of the world’s classic wine styles.
