Appellation Australia

It has been a while since I’ve had a look through the always interesting records of searches used to find this site. Here are some that I have spotted over the last month or so.

cost of a nose reduction australia
poetry about how people would like to be treated
what if australia was french
how much is the fine for running red light in South Australia
little bit of toast 1980s hit
cullen furry

A 375ml bottle opened for my birthday recently. Disgorged in July/August 2004.
Displays a very fine bead with a small but persistent mousse. The nose is fresh and at the same time complex - mushroom, lemon zest, pear and peach, fresh wholemeal bread and marzipan. The palate has a lively, refreshing and creamy mouthfeel with a refined weight that builds and builds with time in the glass. Depth, balance, structure and length of the palate are all exceptional. I think Krug NV would make my “stranded on a desert island wine list” without too much trouble at all.

95/100

There has been some news recently about two $2AUD ($1.50USD) cleanskin wines being offered by Dan Murphy’s, who are owned by a major supermarket chain here in Australia.

I decided to see what a $2 wine tastes like and to put it into a blind test against another wine. My girlfriend poured the $2 wine and a $15 wine that I knew the identity of but hadn’t tasted before, in another room and brought me the glasses.

The $15 wine was purchased last year and is a 2001 Cabernet Merlot from Margaret River, the $2 wine was purchased this week from Dan Murphy’s and is a 2006 Cabernet Merlot South East Australian blend with code WE3. Despite the difference in age, I still feel it is a valid comparison of two wines that you can walk into a store and buy at similar periods of time at the different price points.

Both wines bottled under screwcap and both tasted from Riedel ‘O’ Series Cabernet/Merlot glasses. The $15 wine is 14.5% alcohol and the $2 wine is 13.5%.

Wine A

This really smells like Cabernet - tobacco, briar, blackcurrant, black olives, liquorice and well integrated dusty and cedary French oak. In a totally different flavour spectrum to wine B, much more savoury black fruits showing through. A balanced palate that has good texture, firm tannins and very good length. I think this is probably the $15 wine and for my taste it is streets ahead of the cleanskin with much greater depth and interest.

90/100

Wine B

A bright, fresh fruit driven nose of with dominant apricots as well as cherry and plum. The palate is driven almost entirely by juicy fruit sweetness, it is of medium length and it offers no depth of flavour, it is very linear right across the palate. Tastes like a “Generic Medium Bodied Red Wine”, but it is without major faults and pretty easy to drink if you don’t want to think about it. I am sure that this is the cleanskin and I’ve had worse wines that have cost $100, let alone $2.

85/100

Summary: My girlfriend unveiled the bottles and Wine A was the $15 wine and Wine B was the $2. This was as I expected, but the $2 wine put up a decent enough fight and I’m certain that some people would prefer it to Wine A. There are some interesting times ahead if this continues, there will be a lot of pressure on the other sub $10 labels if wines of this fault-free quality are available in the demanded quantities for casual drinkers for an extended period of time.

I have the $2 Chardonnay as well and I’ll be doing another blind taste test of that sometime soon.

Following on from the previous post about interesting search terms, I’ve been seeing some other strange/interesting ones appear lately.Some selected odd ones over the past month or so;

anthony bourdain gay? - Thanks to Ed saying that this was the most interesting search term that he received in a comment on the previous post, now I’m getting them!

CAM FRUIT. COM - Looking at the first result for that search, I’m again fairly sure that they weren’t looking for a wine review site.

WHAT POISON DO - This one has me slightly concerned but I hope they found some good advice eventually.

ontario cabbage king - Sadly, whoever they were looking for isn’t even the King of cabbage in all of Canada, just Ontario.

australia 431 connection type - No idea really - maybe it’s a spare part for one of those “all six wheeler ducks”?

signs that you have conceived - Not really my area of expertise at all, but I think that there are tests you can get for that sort of thing that are surely slightly more accurate than random web searching.

At least not to the best of my knowledge it isn’t, otherwise most of the wine lovers that I associate with would be in jail right about now.

Yet, last week I received the first threat of legal action against my site (after being around for 18 months now). I figure that it is probably a compliment as I am finally important enough for people to get angry over something I have written.

Ric from TorbWine has written an excellent article on the topic here along with the contents of first few emails sent between me and the winery, thanks to him for taking up the issue in the hope that those of us giving our genuine opinions will not face similar threats in the future. Welcome to anyone visiting my site after reading his article.

As part of my large write-up on the Victorian Winemaker Exhibition 2006, I reviewed a wine here that I believed to among the faultiest wines I had ever tasted. It smelt like burnt rubber, onions and the stable in a poorly maintained barnyard. I awarded the wine 50 points, which is the lowest possible score for the 100 point system. I also indicated in the review that I hoped that these were off bottles rather than representative, but that I can only rate what is in the glass on the day.

Despite what Graeme Miller from the winery of the same name may think, publishing a bad review on a wine is not against the law. All I am putting forward with each tasting note is my personal opinion, and as long as I do not make false allegations (ie this wine will poison you or similar) I am entitled to tell people what I think. In this particular case, I was not the only person who thought that the wine was faulty, a number of people I spoke to who work in the industry and have good palates were at the same event tried the wine, with one describing it as “Summer Nat burnout ring, mercaptan, DMS, DMDS it had the works”.

After I replied to the initial legal threat, indicating that I would not remove the review, I received another email telling me that critics enjoyed the wine, I guess with the implication that my judgement was incorrect. Wineries are going to have to get used to a big difference between old media (magazines, newspapers, books etc) and new media (websites, blogs, podcasts). Old world media is restricted in what they have the space and desire to publish, nobody wants to open the paper and read about three bad wines - so in general you will only see very positive reviews in these formats. With the internet, all wines can be reviewed - good, bad and indifferent; this gives some power to the consumer to look at various opinions, good and bad, and to make informed decisions.

The winery alleges that my review is incorrect and that as I am high on the Google results for their winery, I am doing damage to their business. The other good thing about the internet and wine reviews is that reviews will balance themselves out - if this was truly a good wine, there would be others commenting around wine forums and blogs to say that it was so. If the wine is good Graeme Miller Wines could have offered to let me retry the wines, or offered other wine reviewers the chance to try them, but instead they decided to try to bully me into removing my opinion.

In conclusion, I was speaking to some wineries during Wine Australia and they were divided, some said that publishing the bad review was the right thing to do, and some said that it wasn’t and that reviewers have a responsibility to ensure that they do not damage small businesses with poor feedback (those with power protecting those without, so to speak). What do you think wine reviewers should do? Get stuck into wine that we think is poor (preferably after trying more than one sample, but indicating that it was only one sample if that is the case) or keep quiet about poor wines and just talk about our positive experiences with wine? I know that making wine is not easy, and that it requires passion and dedication - so I do not especially want to cause hurt to any one, but on the other hand I do want to make sure that the readers of this site and those consumers that are looking for information on wines have as much information available to them as possible.

Another new Australian wine blog, this time started by the renowned taster David Lole from Canberra. He is just getting started, but there are a number of tasting notes posted already at http://www.davidlole.com.

I think I have most of the active Australian Wine Blogs (even though Gary from Winorama hates it being called a blog ) linked on the right hand side, but please let me know if I am missing anyone out.

It is interesting to look through the server logs and see what keywords are bringing people to my site (perhaps your idea of interesting is very different to my own, but that is alright).

Admittedly, search engines have gotten much better over the past few years and the majority of searches that lead here look about right, but the descriptions in tasting notes are liable to generate some unexpected or unusual results coming here (despite the summary of the content under the search result usually not coming close to matching the query details).

Some for this month so far;

all six wheeler duck - I’m not at all sure what that means or why someone would be searching for it.

having peaches and cream and liking it - I can 99.9% guarantee that they weren’t happy to find out that this is a wine review site.

Australian carrot salad texture - Why would it be any different from the texture of a carrot salad elsewhere in the world?

australian wine brand starts with “L” - I’m sorry, search engines are getting better - but I think you will have to try to be more specific. I hope the first result on my site “Leeuwin Estate” was what they were looking for.

australian funky straws - “No shopkeeper, you don’t understand, they must be australian.”

how did the parsnip get to Australia - I guess it is a legitimate question, but the search summary of “House-Made Black Pudding with Foie Gras, Seared Scallops and Parsnip Puree” wasn’t a sign that they were heading to the wrong place?

matching furnitures for butterscotch hardwood floors - If nothing else I hope they found something nice to drink while selecting furniture.

If you’ve visited the site over the past couple of weeks, you would have noticed that I was trialling limited Google Ads on some pages. There were a number of things that I didn’t really like about the Google ads. Primarily that I had no real control over what companies were promoted via the ads.

Thus, I am pleased to be able to remove the Google Ads and replace them with a business that I am happy to endorse, Wickman’s Fine Wine Auctions.

There are a couple of things about Wickman’s that sets them aside from other wine auction houses in Australia.
* An annual charity auction for the Multiple Sclerosis Australia charity.
* A charity section in each auction with unique donations from various industry sources and no commissions charged on lots.
* A “guaranteed provenance” system where they will take extra steps with certain lots to guarantee that they have been stored properly.
* Low commissions - 5% for the seller and 10% for the buyer.
* Reasonable shipping - it costs less to have a case of wine shipped from Wickman’s in Adelaide to Sydney, than it does to have a case shipped from a leading auction house in Sydney to me!

I’m glad to recommend them and I think it is worth checking them out, and if you are interested, signing up for their newsletter in advance of the next auction that starts in July.

Clonakilla is a well known, but still relatively small winery in the Canberra region, close to Australia’s capital city.

I had a less than ideal experience with one of the wines that I purchased last year from the cellar door and I wrote to the winery expressing my concern over the problem that night and to see if he had received any other reports of problems. The next day I had a response from Tim Kirk (winemaker/owner) acknowledging the issue and giving me a detailed rundown of the steps they were taking in the winery to prevent the problem occurring again. He should also be commended for taking an approach to make the situation right without me asking him to do so.

It amazes me that the attitude of some wineries is that customers almost seem to be too much of a hassle to deal with. In a industry where we read numerous reports of producers struggling with the over-availability of wine and other issues, it seems like it would make sense to ensure the customer is happy and remains loyal. Some wineries just don’t get it, there is a massive amount of brilliant wine out there and the amount that I can afford to buy is the tiniest of percentages, it makes it a lot easier to decide where my money is going to go when the winery shows loyalty to the customer, realising that it is not a one way street. You may be able to sell out of your wine every vintage and this year, but it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to the next year, or the year after when I’ve moved on to buy from other producers.

So a big “well done” to Clonakilla and Tim Kirk, you will have my loyalty in the years to come and I’m sure the loyalty of many others you have dealt with.

Since posting on some new Australian wine blogs a few months ago here, there have been a few more that have come along and are worth having a look at. I think I might have to narrow my niche again now that there are so many Australian focused sites - how about Barossa Valley Pinot reviews?

Bella Bacchante’s Wine Page! - A recently started blog by Caroline from Melbourne that is going to focus on her lengthy overseas wine focused trip.
The Wine Nazi - “Wine Reviews from a guy who is NOT actually a member of the Nazi Party.”

Anybody else out there running an Australian wine/food blog? Feel free to leave a comment below if I am missing anyone.