What is really going on at Australian wine shows? Supporters of the Australian system could only have gained cold comfort from the recent National Wine Show at Canberra, where the largely winemaker-driven judging panel heavily promoted several wines which simply fail to live up to the show system’s stated intentions. Underlined again at the presentation dinner in Parliament House by a former Chairman of the National Show, Len Evans, the show system is all about identifying the ‘Best of Breed’, for others to take to heart and learn from. Yet a winner of three trophies at the National Show, including the Best White Table Wine and the Best Dry White Table Wine, two of the show’s most sought-after awards, was a limited release special by Orlando, somewhat contradictorily labelled ‘1996 Jacob’s Creek Limited Release Chardonnay’. While the wine is certainly an acceptable modern style with mountains of ripe, concentrated fruit and lashings of rather assertive oak, it will mature for only a short term at best before its simplicity and essentially one-dimensional nature lead it down rather a steep gradient. What sort of message is this sending to the makers of Australian chardonnay? For with great respect to the makers of this not expensive Orlando wine, it is a nonsense to suggest it might represent any high water mark in Australian chardonnay. The Yarra Ridge Reserve Pinot Noir 1996, a wine of obvious jammy fruit and which smacks excessively of new oak and over-aggressive tannin, collected top gold in the class for ‘1996 Dry Red – Pinot Noir predominant’. Meanwhile, a glorious pinot, the Ata Rangi 1996, scored all of 49.0 out of 60 points, registering a bronze. Rated identically was the attractive, Beaujolais-styled, but infinitely lesser Lindemans Padthaway Pinot Noir 1996. Did the judges really believe they were the same standard? And you can’t blame palate fatigue in a class of only 19 wines! It’s worth asking some tough questions of the show system. Which wines are entered? Most large company wines, most of which are sound and professional, plus new entrants to the industry and a welter of mid-range wineries fighting it out with wines priced between $8 and $18 per bottle. There is also usually significant representation from makers of more expensive wines struggling to maintain a reputation for quality and value at their price points, to whom a gold medal or trophy would mean mountains of prestige. Few super-premium small makers, with the notable exception of Henschke, take the trouble to turn up. Most of Australia’s top chardonnays were not among the 120 to enter the premium chardonnay class which gave the Jacob’s Creek Limited Release Chardonnay its first gold and trophy and its opportunity to clean up the white pool of trophies. There was no Giaconda, no Bannockburn, no Leeuwin Estate and no Cullen. There was no Cape Mentelle, Pierro, Petaluma, Rosemount Reserve or Grosset. Who are the judges? The show system is carefully designed to bring up through its ranks as judges those who view wine the same way as those already installed as judges. As an associate judge, your invitation the following year depends largely on how closely your scores tally with those you judged with. View wine differently and you’re weeded out. By and large, our judges are winemakers for our top ten wine companies. Taking into account James Halliday’s position as Chairman of Judges, three of the ten places at Canberra were allocated to Southcorp winemakers, with a single place each going to winemakers from BRL Hardy and McWilliams. Three of the remaining five places were filled by international judges, the only non-winemakers. There’s a danger the show system is more concerned with cloning itself, rather than spreading sufficiently amongst the wide pool of tasting expertise that the wine industry can draw on. This may be difficult to correct, for many small winemakers harbour an innate disrespect of the show system and avoid it religiously and there are very few people other than full-time winemakers who can actually afford the number of days without pay away from their businesses or typewriters. For the record, I have been an associate judge. Even if I could afford to, I have no present wish to judge again. Are the classes too large? There’s a macho aspect about Australian wine shows that says a proficient judge can taste up to 200 wines in a single day, paying due and proper attention to each; a claim considered laughable in all other wine countries. 25 years ago celebrated oenological scientist and sensory specialist Maynard Amerine said the ideal number of wines for any class of wine was between 15 and 20. Results confirm time and again that more delicate, restrained wines do not do well in larger classes. Most large company wines are grown in warmer regions and are ready to drink virtually at their time of sale. It’s not the judges’ fault that something with subtlety and complexity falls by the wayside in large classes; they’re pushed towards the promotion of their own large company styles and are just doing their best dealing with large classes. In most classes with more than 80-100+ wines, the more oak the better, since the wine is more likely to stand out from the crowd. ‘No wood, no good,’ said Wolf Blass all those years ago. How right he still is. Are shows relevant? Something has to give or the wines selected by the show system as ‘Best of Breed’ will continue to be sound, but frequently soulless large maker wines. As such, they continue to light the path for other winemakers towards technical proficiency and stability. How relevant are they for consumers? For short-term wines priced around $15 and less, which accounts for most of what this country makes, very. But hardly, if at all, for anyone interested in serious wine.
