DanPhilips/Grateful Palate and Oz Wines??

Back in the day, DanPhilips of TheGratefulPalate was widely credited for the tsunami of Oz wines into this country.
He got a huge play in Monktown. Then this all played out, Oz wines lost their lustre, and GratefulPalate eventually
went under. Dan seemed to vanish from the wine scene.
Anyone know what DanPhilips is doing these days?
Any thoughts as to why the market for Oz wines sorta tanked it?
Save for an occasional Oz Riesling & Semillon, I seldom try any of the Oz wines I see on the shelf. Back in the day, I’d try
a lot of them. But I eventually lost interest in them, particularly Shiraz & Grenache, because they had a certain sameness
to them. Big/black/extracted/huge fruit/soft…they just started to bore me. So, anymore, I completely ignore the Oz wine section in my local stores.

Is it time for me to revisit Oz wines? What producers and winemakers should I be checking out? I understand that the Oz winemakers
are showing interest in some of the lesser-known European varieties? Any recs along those lines?
Tom

I don’t recall the conclusion, but Dan owed money to everyone, up to and including banks to the tune of somewhere near $30 million. WS had a few articles, but none of the true dirty laundry.

Classic case of live-by-the-sword, die-by-the-sword.

I don’t understand Australian riesling. Never have, never will. Semillon should be a national treasure. And cooler-climate pinots are interesting, if expensive.

We had dinner with Dan and his wife Tricia about 2 1/2 years ago at their home. He cracked some amazing wines and they were extremely hospitable. He’s doing some wines from Spain right now. He still has Grateful Palate: https://gratefulpalate.com

Hiding in plain sight?

The biggest reason Australian wines took a nosedive in this country is this -

The West Coast started emulating the wines. 'The Prisoner" is a classic example, and god knows how many other 15% alcohol wines we are seeing on a daily basis. Especially in the $20-$30 price range. When Marquis-Phillips were released on the public, no one had seen anything like that being produced ‘en masse’ - now they are being produced in California by the hundreds -

Must still be on their email list. Been getting a bunch of emauls for overpriced “pretty packaged” champagne.




Greetings Grateful Palate Customers,

My website www.gratefulpalate.com has just gone live, right now. In the weeks to come I’ll offer artisan products I’ve discovered over the past few years in my travels to 35 countries; and which will be available only on my website and nowhere else. You’ll also discover old friends like Allan Benton and new friends like Yolanda Herraiz.

My first offering is two Champagnes; they are extraordinary bubbly wines, born from a project that I made in collaboration with friends: James Jean in Los Angeles, Cedric and Karla Guyot in Champagne, Julian and Sissy Van Winkle in Louisville and JJ Bertram in Barcelona. As you can tell, this was an international operation on a scale I’ve never attempted before. Here’s a photo of the two Champagnes which I call Good Lord Blanc de Blancs and Bless Your Heart Rosé.


I’m modest but I’m unabashed in saying these may be the most beautiful Champagne bottles ever produced. They are extremely rare, only 400 bottles of each produced, artwork by and signed and numbered by world renowned artist James Jean, who I met years ago when we created Southern Belle together.

Go to my website for the full story, but there’s a super secret ingredient that a large Champagne estate owner called a “game changer.” By the way, I LOVE WORKING IN CHAMPAGNE. This is how my friends help me celebrate a bottling at their Chateau in Epernay.


I’m very happy to offer to all historic Grateful Palate customers and former Bacon of the Month Club members a free gift of their choice with their first order. To claim your gift, simply type your gift choice as an additional note in the cart when placing your order. You can choose:

A tee shirt (tell me your size)
A roll of bacon toilet paper (tell me your size)
A Bacon of the Month Club Apron (one size only)

Or, if you have old catalogs and see something you like and remember, write to me…I might have it and would be happy to make it your free gift (be reasonable please.)

I’m happy to hear from any and all customers. Write any time.

Warm regards,
Admiral Bacon (Formerly Captain Bacon, I promoted myself) aka Dan Philips




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Dan Phillips and Grateful Palate made wines for the US palate. No one in Australia drank the stuff, except for Parker worshippers.

Skip the goop coming out of the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale, and look towards:

Hunter Valley: Semillon, shiraz
Yarra Valley: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Cabernet blends
Mornington: Pinot Noir, Chardonnay
Margaret River: Cabernet Blends, Chardonnay
Coonawarra: Cabernet
Tasmania: Pinot Noir, Sparkling whites
Rutherglen: Fortifieds

My recollection is that Aussie wines, particularly Shiraz, kind of hit their peak in the vicinity of 2002. I recall John Alban and Mat Garretson featured Aussie Shiraz producers in 2001 and 2002 in their HdR seminars and right around then Mike Officer was up-front about his love for Aussie wines and crafting his wines with the Aussies in mind. To my mind the death knell of the ooze monster style was Marquis-Philips and all that occurred afterwards. As the price kept going down for highly rated Shiraz, the mystique behind Shiraz dissipated. One can never underestimate the role that mystique has in creating consumer demand. Suddenly Shiraz from the standpoint of image dropped. What had been seen as being sourced from prized, own-rooted, gnarly old vines was now seen as a manufactured commodity. Then shortly on the heels of M-P and it’s successors came the second doubts that what had been trophy wines were age-worthy. Clarendon Hills and Moon come to mind as producers who had high priced once-coveted wines being declared undrinkable and not age-able. Fu had his avatar of dumping Moon Eclipse down the drain for quite some time.

This should be interesting, especially if he still owes folks stuff, as Ian mentioned above . . .

I wish him nothing but the best - he road a tremendous wave for a long time and had quite a following - perhaps ‘round 2’ will offer a completely different type of wines?

Cheers

If the truth were told Dan Phillips was a tremendous catalyst for bringing Australia wines to prominence in the USA.
He found great wines and bought them to the USA, sadly the category ate its self and it was built too quickly on little or no foundations.
This is a very hard game to do very consistently for a long time, I very sadly attended Ben Hammerslag’s funeral earlier this year.
Dan’s business grew too quick and his Australian business ended in tears, but you can’t deny that he was an important man in the early Australia landscape across the pond and lets not forget that many producers have got very wealthy from the early confidence he installed in them.
MT

Thanks, Michael. I was hoping you’d give your perspective.
Tom

Thanks, Michael. Good to hear from you.

And Mitch - was it Noon or Screagle that Fu was pouring out?

Everything has its place. While I don’t hunger to drink these kind of wines daily, I do enjoy drinking one about every 3 to 6 months.

I certainly caught that wave and rode it for a little while. I like other things now. Met Dan twice. He was super cool, super nice both times.

Stylistic issues aside, one of the major contributing factors to the downfall of Australian wine was the exchange rate. The $AU spent a good portion of the first couple of years of the 2010s being above parity with the US dollar. Compare that to the start of the 2000s and you can see why Australian exports might have struggled. It was great if you were Australian and going on Vacation though.

I don’t know for sure but is seemed to me that a the large majority of the Australian wine brought in during that era was was from South Australia, largely the Barossa Valley and McLaren Vale. There was a 10 year drought at that time and perhaps a few less than stellar vintages that usual so there were a few factors at play.

There has always been a bit of tinkering with different varieties and a bunch of the Italian varieties have been around for a few decades now, but there is definitely more of the lesser known varieties and I think that is a direct result of the drought. Producers like Coriole are making some interesting whites in McLaren Vale and producers like SC Pannell are having some success with blending Tempranillo and Touriga, also in Mclaren Vale. Grenache is having a bit of a moment too - Lots of old vine stuff being made with more sensitive handling.
There’s plenty of interesting wines being made around the country. I’m from the Mornington Peninsula myself so I buy a bit of pinot from there. I think Macedon is under rated as pinot region and Bindi might just be my favorite Australian pinot. I think Canberra is pretty exciting right now, with producers like Ravensworth making some very good wine. Beechworth is a region I have found myself visiting a couple of times in recent years, and I think the quality of producers across the board there is pretty high.

Perhaps exchange rates affected demand for high end Aussies, but that wasn’t part of why I stopped buying them.

My interest faded due to stylistic issues and the wines not aging as expected. Even when these wines were popular ~20 years ago and Grateful Palate was going great guns we had Australian friends telling us that the uber-ripe and extracted high alcohol Barossa Shiraz and Cabs being exported to the US were not representative of all Aussie wines. There weren’t that many of the non-ooze monsters being sent here back then. Not sure about now but it’s worth a look if you’re interested.

For the most part, Australian wine placements have become thin at the shop. We still carry some Penfolds, Torbreck, Molly Dooker and Two Hands and have people who lay in wait for them. Back in the day, we had every Grateful Palate wine and many more. Marquis Phillips, Henry’s Drive, Hazy Blur, Wild Duck Creek, Henschke, Shirvington, Kangarilla Road, Cape d’ Estaing, Rusden, Greenock Creek, Dutschke, Kaesler, Samuel’s Gorge, Haan, Kilikanoon, Fox Creek, Leeuwin, Parringa, Burge Family, De Lisio, Oliver’s Taranga, Langmeil, Barossa Old Vine, Tatiarra, Troll Creek, Trevor Jones, Magella, and Two Worlds. We still have a few older vintages of the less fruit forward wines and they are singing. We had multiple cases of 2003, 2004 Two Hands Ares Shiraz and Aerope Grenache until somebody discovered them two months ago and bought all but two 3 packs. The older wines we have, with the exception of the Rusden Black Guts Shiraz, are drinking exceptionally well.

Since the luster and desire went away, we haven’t ordered much and not even sure what is still being imported. The collapse of Grateful Palate, Parker no longer reviewing OZ wines, increasing prices for OZ wine and then the recession may have been factors in the withdraw of OZ wines. Another possible impact might be attributed to the fact American wine makers chased Parker’s palate and started the American fruit bomb era.

I did a lot of exploration of Australian wines through the 90s, in part because I had an Australian boss, his boss the GM was Aussie, and I had several other Aussie colleagues who were heavily into wine - particularly Australian. Plus I had sales guys coming in from Australia bringing me the “good stuff” directly from there. So I needed to understand the wines to fit in. I had the Gold Book, drank and collected a fair number of what I think where “classic” producers of the time, before Parker got his hands on the industry: Cullen, E&E, Grosset, Howard Park, Lake’s Folly, Moss Wood, Penfolds (drank plenty of 389 for $15 at the time), Rockford, Turkey Flat, Wynn’s, and so on. You could even find some Wendouree once in a while up here.

I don’t remember exactly when Parker’s influence really kicked in, but it was definitely by the late 90s, and by the early 00’s we were seeing tons of new wines with high Parker scores up here. That’s when I stopped buying (and by that time I had started seriously to move more toward old world wines anyway). I haven’t bought an Australian wine, maybe outside of some Grosset Riesling, in a long time. Which doesn’t mean there aren’t great wines, just that we don’t see nearly the quantity we used to, and I think many of the best wines never leave Australia these days.