Red, Red Wine

National Liquor News - May 2004

Consumers might still be investing in big, tannic Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon but when it comes to choosing a wine to drink, their palates are taking them elsewhere, according to the man behind some of the leading labels of the 1980s and 90s. Peter Douglas has had a profound change in winemaking philosophy over the past few years, and he believes the market has too. “I once firmly believed that if you wanted a wine to cellar for a long time, it had to be massive, astringent and very oaky, whereas I now feel that as long as you’ve got fruit richness and pedigree of grapes, they’ll age just as well if not better,” he said.

Before leaving Southcorp Wines in 1998, Douglas did 15 vintages for Wynns Coonawarra Estate and was instrumental in lifting the profile of its John Riddoch Cabernet Sauvignon and Michael Shiraz. He also worked on Lindemans’ Coonawarra wines and some of the Penfolds Bin range, making the “biggest, most ballsy” red wines he could. Either the market expected it of him or he thought the market expected it, he’s not sure which. Douglas began having his doubts soon after he left Southcorp and went to work in California, where he found that winemakers were going so “over the top to achieve overripe fruit characters” that the wines were still difficult to drink after five years. In Italy, by contrast, he found “a desire to make wines that could be enjoyed at all stages of their life cycle - wines that could easily be enjoyed with food within a year or two of vintage, and that would look even better after five or six years in the cellar.”

The experience convinced him that the Australian industry needs to return to producing wines with “more fruit character … wines that are more supple and creamy”. Reflecting on the Australian approach to red winemaking over the past few decades, he said “Australia in the late ‘80s made Cabernet that was real herbaceous and capsicum. Then there was a knee-jerk reaction and it became unacceptable to have those vegetative characters; it was all blackberry, blackcurrant instead. “Then we followed that up by having a lot of oak. In the 90s, there was a lot of Cabernet with dead fruit character and a lot of oak to cover up for that lack of fruit.

“The philosophy was that time would take care of them and make them approachable and drinkable. Sometimes it did, and sometimes it didn’t. Quite often the tannins would outlast the fruit. “I’ve quite often said I would like to have been a fly on the wall of Wynns’ cellar in the 1950s and 60s, when the wines had much lower alcohol and much lower extract, and yet they’re still drinking nicely today.” Douglas is now a consultant and contract winemaker for several companies including Coonawarra’s newest label, Koonara, whose 1999 Ambriel’s Gift Cabernet Sauvignon and 2000 Ezra’s Gift Shiraz reflect his new philosophy. “How many times now have we heard the statistic that 85 per cent of wine is consumed as soon as it is bought?” he said. “Yet we persist in making wines to cellar.”

Victoria’s Water Wheel Vineyards capitalised on the ready-to-drink trend when it released its 2002 Memsie early last year. A blend of Shiraz, Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon with generous ripe fruit characters, it was fermented in two-year-old American oak. “We wanted a softer, rounder wine,” said Mark Murphy, adding that the response from consumers had been “sensational”. From an initial release of 5000 cases, the company ended up producing 12,000 cases in the first year. Murphy says the 2003 output is likely to remain the same because “we like the estate philosophy and unfortunately we can’t make a heck of a lot more”. He believes the company got a number of things right: people liked the blend and its immediate drinkability, and its screw cap closure appealed “to the barbecue scene and the casual dining set”.

Orlando Wyndham knows only too well the value of ready-to-drink wines. It sold its one millionth case of Jacob’s Creek wine in 2002 and the label continues to drive Australia’s export success. Its 2002 releases were some of the best to date, particularly the Grenache Shiraz blend, which has benefited from the replacement of Riverland Shiraz with Langhorne Creek Shiraz. The success of the Jacob’s Creek brand is pinned on blends, not just across varieties but also across regions. Its Shiraz Cabernet is by far the biggest selling wine in the stable, representing about 40 per cent of the brand in Australia and internationally. Chief winemaker Phil Laffer said there was currently an oversupply of Shiraz, Cabernet and Merlot in Australia, but it was important that the industry did not make the same mistake that it had done in the past and stop planting these varieties. “The message today is that we need to be looking at the red requirements six to seven years down the track so we don’t run into the same problem we now have with Chardonnay,” Laffer said, referring to Australia’s growing shortage of Chardonnay.

According to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, growth in premium red wine grape production is likely to slow over the next few years as plantings of red varieties continued to decline in 2002. “Red wine grape production is forecast to increase by a moderate 5 per cent in the three years to 2005-06,” said executive director Dr Brian Fisher in January. “Shiraz is projected to remain the dominant wine grape variety produced over the (same) period.” Shiraz is the leading red for Peter Lehmann Wines, which has the easy-drinking market covered with a Shiraz /Grenache blend that replaced its straight Grenache varietal last year. National Public Relations Manager, Malcolm Stopp, said a reduction in the price of Shiraz had allowed it to blend some in with the Grenache. According to Stopp, Peter Lehmann has “repositioned its reds” since the Swiss-based Hess Group won majority ownership of the publicly listed company last year.

The company has dropped its wholesale price by about $10 a case to enable its base-level red wines to retail for around $15, where it can compete more favourably against the “incredibly intense competition at that level of the market”. Stopp says Peter Lehmann’s flagship Stonewell Shiraz will always be scarce, even more so now that the company will be looking at US exports, but the company hoped to grow its Eight Songs label with a plan to double its production to 5-6000 cases in five years. It was also “looking outside the square” and was excited by its trials of the Spanish variety, Tempranillo, and the release of its new Shiraz Muscadelle blend called Mud Flat. Inspired by a wine Peter Lehmann made in the 1950s, Mud Flat was first sold at the cellar door in 2000 and is now sold further afield, with about 2500 dozen produced from the 2002 vintage. About 7 per cent of the blend is Muscadelle, just enough to add another layer of complexity to the wine, in the same way that some winemakers are using a small amount of Viognier to add another dimension to their Shiraz.

It was a small Canberra District winery, Clonakilla, which set tongues wagging with its wines made in the Cote Rotie style, especially when its 2001 Shiraz Viognier was named Wine of the Year in the Penguin Good Australian Wine Guide. Not surprisingly, Yalumba Wines, with the largest plantings of Viognier in the Southern Hemisphere, was quick to pick up on the trend, producing an excellent Hand Picked Barossa Shiraz Viognier. Torbreck has the sleek and expensive RunRig Shiraz-Viognier, while Yarra Burn has spiced up its offerings with a 2002 Shiraz Viognier which retails for around $18 to $20. Fruit for the Yarra Burn wine comes from the Pyrenees, Heathcote and the Grampians. Beringer Blass has used Adelaide Hills fruit for its Gold Label Shiraz Viognier, which is bottled under screwcap.

Like a number of other premium red producers, Beringer Blass has shown its faith in the screwcap by using it on its top wine, the $180 Platinum Shiraz. Taylors has also backed the screwcap closure by using it for its $65 St Andrews Merlot, the first merlot under its premium St Andrews label. After a record harvest in 2002, drought conditions caused grape production to fall significantly in 2003, according to figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Although the impact was felt more deeply in white grape production, the red grape crush fell 9.3 per cent to 0.825 million tonnes. The red wine market accounts for 46 per cent of all bottled table wine sold in Australia, and the figure is growing steadily.

According to Southcorp Wines, at the lower price points consumers seek softer, more approachable styles such as Merlot and blends, while in the over $14 bracket Shiraz and Cabernet dominate. Pinot Noir represents only a small percentage of sales over $19, while Cabernet blends are popular across all price bands. Southcorp’s Matthew Lang is the number one brand in the under $5 segment, with a 49 per cent share, while at the other end of the scale it also has the number one brand, with Penfolds holding a 30 per cent share of the over $35 segment. In May each year, customers anticipate the release of the Penfolds Super Premium wines, a collection of one Chardonnay and five reds that account for 1.5 per cent of volume but 8 per cent of value in the red wine market.

One of Penfolds’ most exciting releases in recent times was its 2002 Cellar Reserve Grenache, an opulent, aromatic wine made from dry-grown old bush vines. Chief winemaker Peter Gago expects that Grenache at this quality might be released only two or three times a decade, and indeed there was none from the 2003 vintage. Southcorp’s Thomas Hyland range has been performing strongly in the $14 to $19 range, while in the $11 to $14 bracket its Rosemount Estate Diamond Varietal range has been given a boost with the release of a Sangiovese, the first on the Australian market from such a mainstream producer. Australasian Marketing Director, Rosemary Scott, says the Italian variety could replicate the performance of Merlot, the volume of which increased sharply when Lindemans and later Rosemount introduced it to their stable.

Lisa McGuigan has added a Sangiovese to her Tempus Two Pewter range, in response, she says, to her customers “looking for varieties that are a bit different”. Sourced from around Beechworth, it will be followed by a Zinfandel as soon as McGuigan can find the fruit she is looking for. She likes Zinfandel because it is “spicy and not too heavy with tannin”. McGuigan thinks it is “dangerous not to experiment a bit” and so she is replacing her Hunter Valley Shiraz with a Tempranillo, despite the Shiraz selling 10,000 cases a year. The market, she says, is hungry for new varieties. “I feel absolutely confident that in two years I’ll get the sales of Tempranillo up to where the sales of Shiraz were.”

© Christine Salins

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