I am not sure if this is simply the “Jay Miller” effect, but the highly rated Aussie wines I’ve had lately have been BAD. Bad QPRs even at the heavy discounts. Many different vintages. Highly ripe, flabby, no acidity, not complex, etc. The only memorably good ones I can think of recently:
1999 Pearson Cabernet Franc - awesome
2003? Wolf Blass Platinum Label - fairly fruity but tight and balanced.
1998 Wynns John Riddoch - very good
2001 Barton Vale The Challenger - awesome balance and complex.
The others I’ve tried i have probably been overly generous on CT ratings. I think the Aussie style really needs a makeover with more cool climate plantings. I find they age terribly on average from the Dead Arm on down. Blah. I’ve got a Savitar, a Bogan, a Riddoch, a Graveyard, St. Henri, a Coppermine Road and a handful of other Aussie high scorers left in my cellar, but not expecting much at this point.
Dunno, possibly. For me, over the last couple of years I really have to be in the mood for an Aussie. They have seemed, to me, to be the same wine with different labels. Big fruity monolithic oak bombs. That’s fine sometimes, but I really hope they back off a bit on the alcohol and extraction. Maybe we should just talk to Ringland, as he seems to make 30 different wines!
Excellent question. To me, the overall answer is no. Many of the older ones that I have tasted over the past 3 years have SUCKED. So, for me, were they ever really good?
Nothing wrong with Riddoch, Graveyard, or St Henri (within vintage variation context). They all have 25+ year pedigrees and predate the arrival of American critics with extremist palates. Stop buying highly-rated Australian wines, and just buy the good ones…
cheers,
Graeme
It is a shame that Australian critics have not made significant in-rounds into the US. It would provide a better perspective. Someone like Jeremy Oliver.
I will move onto the next lying, cheating scumbag.
I will get my CIA friends to pull your file first.
Davis, just as an FYI, I have been ITB for 9 years and posting on Wine Bulletin Boards for 7. I hope you find some value in much of my posts, as many of them have not been and continue to have nothing to do with your buddy, Miller.
If it falls on your house, do you care if it made a sound or not?
A lot of people have been burned by some of the wines that didn’t hold up, that turned weird, or that never lived up to what they were supposed to have been in the first place. And as Eric mentioned, a lot of them seemed similar, which I think is one of the biggest problems. Side by side they aren’t the same of course, but if you’re primarily looking for size and power and saturation you end up with stylistic similarities. It’s like playing music at full volume all the time. After a while it doesn’t matter if it’s a symphony or heavy metal, you just want the noise to stop.
But I like many of them and there will always be a market for a good, fruit-forward and well-made wine. It’s just that maybe the market won’t be interested in paying $100+ for huge extract bombs. They’ll have to adjust and they will.
Check this out. I know nothing of this winery or quality of the wine, but this is the lowest alcohol Aussie shiraz I’ve noticed in years. This was posted on WTSO, but look at the alcohol and residual sugars, maybe there is hope for Australia?
The Yard 2007 Acacia Vineyard Shiraz
The Wine:… Deep dense plum colour. Aromas of blueberry, pepper and spice with vanilla and cedar hints. A medium bodied wine, with a sumptuous mid-palate of plums and blueberry, with complexing spice notes. A gentle tannin structure supports a long persistent finish.
Winemaker: Larry Cherubino
Vineyard: Acacia
Year Planted: 1997
Location: 15kms west of Frankland River township
Vines per Hectare: 2000
Irrigation: yes
Clone/s: 1654
Rootstock: Own
Aspect: North Facing
Soils: Deep Gravels over clay
Technical Data:
Geographical Indication: Frankland River
Variety: Shiraz
Picking Date: 23 March 2007
Sugar at Picking: 13.3 Baume’
Alcohol: 13.5% v/v
pH: 3.45
Total Acidity: 6.56g/L
Residual Sugar: 0.0g/L
Bottled: June 2008
Cellaring Potential: 5 years
I think a lot of that had to do with Parker cheating on the elbow grease necessary for proper reviews of [ostensibly] cellar-worthy red wines.
With great vintages of Bordeaux [such as 2000], Parker would typically spend about 14 days studying each bottle; with great vintages from Australia [such as 1998 or 2001], I doubt that he spent much more than 14 minutes studying each bottle.
I know this isn’t a very popular theory among some wine geeks, but I maintain that the best way to get insight into the ageworthiness of a wine is to follow its oxidation curve [over several days, or even several weeks], and when Parker was tasting 200+ wines at a time with guys like Dan Philips or Ben Hammerschlag, there just wasn’t any time for him to get a sense of how the wines were oxidizing.
I think an awful lot of Parker’s mistakes could have been corrected if only he had revisited these wines on Days 2, 3, and 4, and had witnessed them falling apart.
The same problem, of course, will befall JSM’s recommendations in Spain - you simply CANNOT award a reliable “cellar-worthy” rating of 96 to 100 points if you are devoting two or three minutes to a wine in the middle of a mass tasting of 200+ wines spread out all over an entire hotel banquet room.
Ain’t gonna happen.
In fact, I’d recommend that NO wine receive a score of 96 to 100 points unless a bottle of it has been followed for a MINIMUM of one week [and I’d prefer to see it followed for two weeks].
An interesting theory. I have indeed frequently been disappointed by the quality of some big Shiraz and Cali Cab on days 2 and 3, while young Bordeaux is still almost always good. Is it just the tannin that’s the factor here?
No, it has to do with a lot of things, including acidity, alcohol, and how much oxygen the wine saw in its elevage, but in any event it has nothing whatsoever to do with potential longevity. Some wines drink fine for days and can’t age more than a few years, some are undrinkable the second day but will age for decades. Can’t extrapolate one from the other.
I was being a bit flip, Greg.
For me, the niche that was/is steroidal Australian wines is something to which I’ve never really paid attention.
I buy, drink, and cellar Aussie wines, but not those types.
I sympathize with those who have gotten burned by following the critics’ reccos, but only to a point…
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