Well, dang it. I’ve just given 100 points for the best young Australian red I have possibly ever tasted. And I recently published an article questioning not only the guy who wrote about not giving poor marks to lesser vintages of famous labels, but every one of the multitude of wine critics who follow the same deeply flawed process. So here I am with what might appear to be a conundrum.
About a year ago I gave my first-ever 100-point rating to a current vintage Australian wine: Giaconda’s otherworldly 2021 Chardonnay. I have no regrets whatsoever; the wine at its time of release was not only the best Australian chardonnay ever made but it also stretched the limits, globally, of what chardonnay could possibly deliver. It’s no shrinking violet, for sure, but big can indeed be beautiful.
Sitting a few inches in front of me is its successor, the 2022 vintage. Where the 2021 is bold, it is seductive. Where its predecessor has swagger, this one has sway. It’s not as emphatic, not as assertive and not as outright spectacular as the 2021, but it delivers an unreal level of fruit focus and a higher level of refinement. It’s perfectly weighted, astonishingly complex and utterly seamless. The 2022 Giaconda Chardonnay is actually at least as good as the 2021, to which I gave the maximum possible of 100 points. I even tested a ‘B’ sample to make sure. You can read my tasting note here.
It would be so easy to pin another 100 on this wine without thinking twice about it. But then I would have given 3 scores of 100 points in the last 12 months to current release Australian wines. Since I didn’t allocate a single score of 100 to a current release Australian wine in the previous 468 months, it’s not difficult to imagine how this might be received: ‘Oliver sells out’. ‘Oliver says one thing, does the opposite’. ‘Oliver was never to be trusted and now it’s obvious why’. It’s like I’m lining up to let others tear strips off myself. And I’m no masochist.
But it’s not about the writer; it never is. It’s all about the wine. Always. This is a conviction I hold dearly and for which I will be eternally grateful to the late Len Evans. I can hear him barking at me even now: ‘You absolutely have to do the right thing by the wine!’
It’s also about the readers who trust my opinion and to whom I must be unfailingly honest.
So, to let down neither the wine nor those who trust my opinion, I have just allocated another score of 100 to a current release Australian wine. And to two consecutive – if entirely different – vintages of one of the brightest jewels in the crown of Australian wine: Giaconda Chardonnay. And in case you think I’ve sold out all you need to do is to bring a bottle of the Giaconda 2022 and whatever you think is a perfect chardonnay and then we’ll have that discussion.
Great vintages occasionally come around in pairs and when this happens they’re usually very different from each other. Let’s look at the great examples of this in my lifetime (I was born in the fading days of 1961). There is 1961 and 1962 in southern Australia (which I came to understand after a few years had passed), there’s 1965 and 1966, 1990 and 1991, 1998 and 1999. And now there’s 2021 and 2022.
Australia’s a big place, but in the southern parts of the continent the latter vintage of the pair was cooler and later each time. Go figure. And would you believe, in each of these instances, it’s the second of the pair that has ultimately proven to be the superior, the longer living and the more classical. This is of course a generalisation and it’s only fair that I pay due respect to the astonishing Lindemans Hunter River shirazes of 1965.
This is certainly what happened at Giaconda and it’s a big, but not total part of the story. A repeating comment of mine over the years is never to ignore the human element of terroir. And Rick Kinzbrunner took a different approach to the making of the 2022 vintage by altering his oak regime. He matured this wine for less time in a different style of barrel whose oak impact was more restrained and subtle than that used for the 2021 vintage. Great makers can indeed become greater.
But for a wine to be considered to be great, it must have longevity and the ability to flourish as a consequence. Looking at scores given by others to many a wine, I’m perhaps part of a diminishing group of critics who value this, but I’m standing my ground. I’ve known every vintage of Giaconda Chardonnay since 1986 and you can mount a case that since the 1990 vintage, each of them should be re-evaluated after time in the bottle – just you find with most of the world’s finest wines. So, in around five years’ time it will be fascinating to check in on the 2021 and the 2022 Chardonnays, together, and to see if one has nudged ahead of the other. If that’s the case, I’ll then adjust my scores accordingly.
And if I was a betting man, which I’m not, I’d tip the 2022 by a nose.
