Having missed the annual Woodlands tasting (thanks Covid!) our little tasting group decided to have our own night. For a while I’ve been floating the idea of a comparative look at the even vintages of the Woodlands ‘Margaret’ from 2008 through to 2018. Numbers blew out a bit (not a bad thing) so we threw in a 2011 ‘Margaret’ and a 2020 ‘Emily’ for good measure. The aging curve of Margaret River cabernet remains a bit of a mystery to many including myself. Just when you think you have a foolhardy theory about when the wines might close down, a certain wine catches you off guard. So the premise of the tasting was to get a gauge on how a consistent label like this one changes over time and at what bottle age people might enjoy a wine such as this one.  

For those that aren’t familiar, Woodlands is one of the original Wilyabrup vineyards, establishing in 1973. Located quite close to Moss Wood, they have experienced a serious renaissance in recent times and the vineyard is clearly one of the regions finest. If one were to think in terms of Bordeaux wines, the ‘Margaret’ is their second wine, though made solely from the original vineyard. In my (semi biased: I’m a Woodlands tragic) opinion it is often amongst the best wines from the region in any given vintage despite sitting on the second tier at Woodlands. Price wise, the wine has gone from mid $30’s to $70: not an insignificant sum. So on top of looking at the aging curve, I was also keen to explore and discuss whether it still offered value at that price.  

The wines all came from my own cellar, with reliable provenance apart from the 2008, which from memory spent at least one or two summers in a Como laundry. All wines received a decant, with the youngest two wines getting close to three hours and subsequent wines between 30 minutes and an hour. There were no serious amounts of sediment in any of the wines. 

Earlier vintages state on the label 18 months in French oak, whilst 13.5% alcohol was stated on every bottle of Margaret.  

2020 Emily. 

Cabernet Franc 45%, Merlot 45%, Malbec 8%, Cabernet Sauvignon 1%, Petit Verdot 1% 

I’ve not tasted many wines from the 2020 vintage yet and I thought we should kick off with a younger wine than the newly release 2018 Margaret. One might consider the  ‘Emily’ to be the younger sister of the ‘Margaret’, offering up more of a right bank styled blend. Often seductive (the 2018 was glorious at this age) this was far more tightly wound, with coating tannins and fruit flavours dominated by the Cab Franc: think violets-meets-crushed gravel. Sound wine that needs more time to integrate. 

2018 Margaret 

Cabernet Sauvignon 80%, Merlot 10%, Malbec 10% 

This was my second favourite wine of the evening, and came across as a big step up from the Emily. The long airing seemed to mellow some of the glossy barrel notes I’d previously encountered, whilst another taster who’d also already tried the wine and thought the Malbec overpowering noted that it also seemed to be less evident this time round. Tonight this wine was putting on a show, classy and balanced, with a bit of more black fruits than usual. Very, very fragrant, invigorating and ambitious: this is a superb edition of this label. 

2016 Margaret  

Cabernet Sauvignon 67%, Merlot 17%, Malbec 16% 

The first thing I noted here was how noticeable the extra bottle age was: I was expecting this to appear far more youthful. Interesting. As a young wine this had a bit more of a harder, astringent, tannic edge & in a previous note I’d suggested it may need 5-7 years to lose that. That was not the case at all, this had soft fruit and excellent balance, is drinking well now though another 2 years would do it even more good just to slightly advance the nature of the fruit profile. 

2014 Margaret 

79% Cabernet Sauvignon. 13% Merlot, 8% Malbec  

The clear standout wine of the tasting, this was aristocratic and beguiling. 

Containing the purest of Cabernet flavours, the fruit was in a marvellous place, hinting at black olive as well as more earthy notes. The length was very impressive, the solidarity between fruit and oak even more so.  

2012 Margaret 

74% Cabernet Sauvignon, 14% Merlot, 12% Malbec 

My pre-game prediction was that this wine would show far younger than it is and thus very much ‘of the vintage’. And so it was, displaying a cherubic youthfulness with the still-very-primary fruit leading the charge. My very strong advice for this wine and other 2012’s is to hold them tightly and safely: they are going to be magnificent in time.  

2011 Margaret

70% Cabernet Sauvingnon, 16% Merlot, 14% Malbec 

The closest we came to a wine that was ‘shut down’, this made an interesting duo with the twelve, the two wines that were (in my opinion) neither here nor there on the aging curve. I found this less integrated and was less in love with the violets and dusty (almost furry) tannins. Others liked this more than me: personally I thought it lacked a bit harmony though I would love to try it again in another five years or possibly with a three hour decant.  

2010 Margaret

Cabernet Sauvignon 69%, 16% Merlot, 15% Malbec 

Another disappointing showing from a wine from 2010, a vintage that has quickly become my least favourite Margaret River year of recent times. There was plenty of pleasant enough tertiary fruit but this wine was unusually slender, lacked a vivacious liveliness and was by quite a length the weakest wine of the night.  

2008 Margaret

70% Cabernet Sauvingon, 19% Merlot, 11% Malbec 

Despite the question marks over provenance this presented well enough. It is certainly ready to drink and readers would not regret having a look now. The finish was slightly pinched however in a different context this would have been admired for what it was: a lovely mature Cabernet.  

On aging curves 

One of the frustrating things about Margaret River Cabernet (and Cabernet in general) is the propensity for wines to simply ‘shut down’ for periods of time, at seemingly random moments on the aging curve. Often enough I’ll encounter bottles between 6 and 10 years old that are giving away nearly nothing, only to see them emerge from the cocoon and blossom with further age. And whilst that was not the case here with a spectacular and open knit 2014, the 2012 and 2011 seemed to me to be an ‘in-between’ type place. Structurally they looked sound to revisit in five years or so, not withstanding the slightly disappointing 2010 and 2008, neither of which I am reading into. So perhaps the window of transition can be pushed back in certain cases, perhaps to 8-12 years. That said, much to my chagrin, it seems making hard and fast rules about aging curves is rather futile. Doing these types of tastings, and trial and error in general gives us a rough idea at least and there is always a more complete picture formed when you can compare on the same night. Indeed I was quite surprised at the pace that some of the younger wines were evolving, with each two-year interval showing noticeable differences. I have no doubt the 2011 and 2012 (and subsequent vintages) will be drinking magnificently at 15-20 years of age, but realistically getting bottles in good conditions to that age is a challenge for most of us.  

On value 

Someone told me today the Grand Vin will be $200 RRP next vintage and if true that marks a depressingly expedient doubling in price over the last few years. I respect the ambition of the vineyard to price its best wine so bravely, and, particularly in great years, without question the wine lives up to its reputation. There are improvements here year on year that absolutely justify a price rise here and there, especially when you throw inflation into the mix. But whether the market forces of supply and demand will consider $200 to be a fair price, I’m not sure. Hopefully the membership price stays reasonable as it is currently my favourite Australian wine. 

Andrew Watson made an interesting comment at last years dinner, casually encouraging people to ‘only drink the good stuff’, which by that he meant their most expensive Cabernet. I like the sentiment (wouldn’t that be nice!) and it was a throwaway line and not one to take overly seriously. That said, realistically for people who like the Woodlands style though are priced out of the top dog, the mid tier wines in the stable: the Margaret, the Emily and the Clementine need to offer value in comparison to their peers, and perform reliably in the cellar. On this showing I view the 2018 Margaret, at $70 retail ($59 members), as being right on the precipice of value. Personally I’m happy to have committed to six (I bought nine of the 2016) but it’s no longer a complete ‘no brainer’.  

Instead, it’s just a good, old fashion ‘brainer’.

Until next time.  

My first year helping out at vintage at Picardy was 2014. In late winter the year prior my (now wife) and I had been on a long and exploratory camping trip & on our way through Pemberton we managed to get an appointment at the winery. I’d recently become an admirer of their wines & also enjoyed Bills fantastic book. There I met Dan Pannell for the first time & he took the time to show us around, tasting various wines from bottle and barrel. I can still remember me naively asking in the barrel room ‘so are you sticking with the cork then?’ and receiving a fairly stern reply about oxygen ingress & the like. At that moment I knew I was in the right spot: this was my kind of place. A few days later we drank an intoxicatingly good bottle of 2011 Picardy Shiraz down at Shelley Beach: it a special ’time and place’ bottle, memorable for all the right reasons. Despite having no connection to Picardy or any understanding on how it all worked I made the decision I would offer to help out for the next vintage & see what happened.

As it so happened I’d lucked out, as the 2014 vintage was a rather special one. I arrived late in the day one afternoon in early March to mild panic relating to the cooling in the barrel room (which was promptly dealt with) and three or four people standing around and chatting about a Pinot ferment.  

My social anxiety quickly subsided & the week flew by as like a jazz club late on Saturday night, things were in full swing. The starts were early, bringing in pristine Chardonnay fruit in the cool mornings & then working in the winery in the afternoon. On reflection I was probably very little help, mostly getting in the way & asking annoying questions (which no one seemed to mind). Lunchtime was a real highlight: each day Sandra would cook up something wonderful & then frustratingly be forced to expel the same amount of energy trying to get Bill and Dan to sit down & eat when all they wanted to do was move onto the next job. As much as I laughed, I was also more than happy to sit down as each day we would sample some amazing bottles: Cote Roties & Burgundys were mixed in with back vintage Picardy wines & special bottles made by friends. Sometimes after lunch I’d sit with Sandra and chat about all different things & as you can imagine being a (lets face it – slightly strange) kid from a remote part of WA they were the kinds of conversations I don’t have often enough but desperately need. Each day I’d leave the table with some acquired wisdom and a refreshing sense of well being about the world and my own place in it.  

Late in the day, exhausted, we would go and smell the different ferments from different plots, opinions proffered and decisions made as the aromas progressed and changed day by day. I was very much made to feel a part of it all. Late at night two or three of us would wander down to the winery and plunge the Pinot ferments. I remember being lucky enough to plunge the 2014 Tete du Cuvee a few times & I can vividly remember the spellbinding aromas that emanated. Even without context I knew this was a special wine in the making, and it still delivers on that promise. Indeed despite my modest involvement that year I still feel a real connection to those 2014 wines, & without a doubt learnt more about wine in that week than I had in the many years prior. 

That was nearly a decade ago & most years since I have managed to maneuver my work scheldule so that I can go back for the best part of a week & play a small part in the vintage. 2018 was memorable given the quality of fruit & subsequent wines but looking back I think the 2021 vintage was perhaps the most enjoyable of all. Without doubt it was because of the mix of people there last year. Notably a sizeable crew of ‘semi-retired’ volunteers had staked their turf, with impressive set ups & caravans overlooking the dam. They’d be up bright and early to help pick & manage to keep a smile on their faces the whole morning. After lunch they’d disappear to their “glamp city”, only to emerge with fresh faces in the late afternoon and well and truly ready for some laughs and a concomitant glass of Picardy Sem Sav. There was also the adventurous young backpacker who had spent his last few months living a bit like Leonardo Di-Caprio in The Beach. Him and his crew had found a remote spot somewhere near the Fitzgerald River & once a fortnight or so would send someone to journey into town for supplies.

Generally in the mornings I’m on the tractor bringing in fruit to the winery but on one day I spent the morning picking, only to luck out with my picking partner. It was the best ‘podcast’ I have listened to: a fascinating life story about his time in Russia, designing his own bottling line & becoming the second commercial operator in Western Australia. Given the breadth of his friends and contacts in the industry he could have been helping out at any vineyard across the state, including Margaret River much closer to where he lived. That he was there at Picardy spoke volumes (to me at least), of the place and the people. 

The Romance of Wine 

One of my strongest memories of my time at Picardy is one morning after the pick was finished I was absolutely soaked from head to toe as a result of washing buckets (not my favourite job!). The legendary & still very much hands-on Bill Pannell looked me up and down, laughed to himself and drily remarked ‘and people talk about the romance of wine’. In that moment, it was hard to argue. 

Like my temporary state of wetness, romance is by its very nature, fleeting. Accompanying the start of any relationship are romantic feelings, gestures and the like: a flutter of the heart or a beautiful moment in time to draw back on. The longevity that accompanies a successful relationship however, is not built on romance alone but instead, on substance. And when I think about Picardy, it is the substance of the place that makes it so special. The entirety of the property was built around a single-minded goal to create great Pinot Noir, stemming from a deep passion for that grape. Every year, every vintage, a new chapter is added to that story. The vineyard is of course picturesque and the buildings all have a majestic character to them, more than capable of making the heart flutter in a special moment. But there is not a fleeting moment here to be found: there is a substance of hard work & patience & knowledge behind it (and generosity to share this) coupled with a complete lack of pretention.

It resonates deeply with me and draws me back each year.  

With the only motivation a cool day on the forecast & my sister in Tasmania telling me to ‘socialise while you can’ (given the impending arrival of covid – yay) we managed to mobilize a decent crew of people and bottles for a long lunch.  

The takeaway was again about drinking windows. Building a cellar sounds like a great idea but before you over commit to anything in particular you want to work out what age you like to drink the wines. Days like this are really helpful for working that out & my (very dull – apologies) notes here are along those lines. 

After an Arras (always decent – never amazing) we moved on to a Leeuwin Estate Art Series Chardonnay from 2000 & a Jim Barry ‘The Florita’ Riesling 2020. The LEAS was a suspicious yellow, had a crumbly cork but presented as good as could be expected. It was drinkable but not pleasurable (interestingly the back label said ‘already drinking well at time of release, this vintage really needs little cellaring’). For mine it was at least ten years older than optimal drinking whilst the Riesling was clearly very good but perhaps five years away from becoming properly interesting. We followed that with a Peccavi Chardonnay that was drinking well: most top end MR Chardonnay I think is great on release to seven years after vintage. I don’t necessarily prefer them at any different point on this spectrum – s’all good.

The Pinots were served blind to the group. A 2013 Farrside very dark in colour, up against a Moss Wood 2019 which very light indeed. The group was split on preference but I thought the Farrside was rather special & wonderfully complex: these are great on release but if you are going to cellar them perhaps 7-10 years after vintage is a good idea to get that next lot of flavours. We’ve generally found (including most top end Vic Pinot here) that they can be a bit awkward in between. I’ve often found the Moss Wood pinot a bit dull with a bit of age on it – personally I prefer these in the flush of youth where (like this bottle) they can be fragrant and expressive. 

Big Papa Ferrito served us a Picardy 2017 Merlimont (merlot blend) on the blind. My first guess was a cool climate Shiraz which probably sums up how it tasted: silkily textured and splendidly perfumed. Strangely, I’ve not tasted older bottles of this label so whilst I can’t make an informed comment on a recommended cellaring time this was a delight at less than five years after vintage. 

A 1997 Cullen Cabernet Merlot (pre Diana Madeline I think) smelt very funky to me & a few others (though interestingly, not everyone), but was still holding it together on the palate. Pleasant enough but for me at least I think this would have been a better wine at fifteen years old rather than twenty-five. It was presented next to a rather splendid 2012 Haut Bailly that mellowed out a lot in the decanter. All reports suggest that 2012’s is an early drinking vintage & along those lines whilst this might be a better wine in five years I suspect it is too light to go for decades.   

My major takeaway from the day was how well a 2012 Langi Mast Shiraz was drinking. My last of four, the first two were drunk young and I absolutely adored them, while the third was a few years later and I remember the wine being very closed down & disappointing. How reassuring to see my last bottle drink this well (given how much Grampians Shiraz I have stashed away) & I think it could have managed almost another decade without any problems. 

As much as I love a good Sauternes it was even better finishing on a 30 year old Tawny from Talijancich. Fairly recently I bought a case of fortifieds from a Rutherglen icon and on reflection these Tali fortified have them well covered.  

Apologies for these rather dull write ups (I’m kind of assuming no one is reading). Good times.

Generally our little wine groups tasting days are about finding value. A usual favourite is pitting the icons up against wines half the price and hoping to make a discovery. Generally the icons win out, a lot more than you’d think, but every now and then you discover something and load up. One of the most enjoyable & satisfying parts of learning about wine is about finding value: anyone can go and get a great bottle armed with a couple of pineapples but if you know what you’re doing you can drink better for less. It’s all part of the fun.

Some days though, it’s just about pure indulgence & when a friend had a bottle of 2008 Grange gifted to him that he offered to share, unsurprisingly he had plenty of takers. Collectively we managed to make a day of it to send off 2021. Wine organisation was a bit haphazard but came together, 20 minutes in the fridge for most bottles worked wonders. The food was sensational – a credit to our hosts and their helpers. The centerpiece of the afternoon, Grange, is a wine plenty of people have opinions on, whether they’ve tasted it or not. “Overpriced / overrated” is the myopic and oh so predictable one you’re likely to hear. It’s not a wine I lust over but its reputation did not come out of thin air. My take on it is this: why wouldn’t you just enjoy it for what it is?  

(Whites) 

Giaconda Chardonnay (I brought this). Impressively rich, this is massive wine, perfectly pitched & packed choc-a-bloc with flavour. Giaconda is, (like Grange perhaps), a wine to tick off the bucket list as it is at the extreme end of the scale. Good in this kind of situation, but I was left pondering if I could manage a whole bottle between 2 or 3 people. I think others might have liked it a tiny bit more than me. This is serious stuff.

Tarrawarra Reserve Chardonnay 2017. This was hard to get a read on as the Chardonnays came out in the wrong order (my fault). More scaled back and restrained, this may have been a really good wine, it was certainly sound, but was just dwarfed by the dimensions of the Giaconda. Nice to drink some Vic Chardy given how much WA gear we put away.

LAS Vino ‘Chenin Blanc Dynamic Blend’ 2020. Not the kind of wine I’d usually seek out so it was good to taste something a bit different. The wine had nice aromatics, tasted like a varietal Chenin & improved with time in the glass. I initially thought the acidity was a bit low, but it was suggested to me that it was indeed there & skillfully integrated rather than sharp and overpowering. A good wine that may have showed its full wares if matched to a specific dish. 

(Reds with lunch) 

Penfolds Grange 2008. We gave this some time in the fridge to get it to a suitable serving temperature & then decanted for half an hour or so. For what its worth, I tasted this not long after release & loved it – I was so impressed by it’s size and length. A decade or so on from that it has developed into a beautiful wine, certainly nothing over the top. The length is still there, the fruit an essay in harmonious South Australian Shiraz. It’s easy to say ‘better in another decade or so’ but I loved the place it was in now. Good to see it deliver, this is an ‘asterisk in for the vowels’ type wine (f**k yeah) and clearly wine of the day. 

Henschke ‘Cyril Henschke’ Cabernet Sauvignon 1993. A successful attempt at getting out a very old cork and presenting the wine without sediment. This was an interesting counterpoint to the Grange and I was able to enjoy the two side by side. An ‘old money’ wine, soft and delicate to taste, but it also had a bit of richness to the nose. Flavours not yet leaning towards soy so I deduced it’s not yet falling over, though perhaps still a bit old for my tastes. This was nevertheless as good a showing as one could expect & consensus was, I think, that we enjoyed this wine a lot and found it very interesting. 

Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier 2019. I also brought this (bias declared) and thought it mixed it comfortably with todays big guns. Open for business, tending towards medium bodied with a good mix of red fruits and seductive cool climate flavours. More than anything, it just tastes like Clonakilla. Happy to have a few of these left.

(Reds post lunch) 

Pierro Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve 2013. An interesting combination of one of my least favourite red wine producers in MR, and also one of my least favourite vintages of recent times. I’d be interested in others opinions on this (the wine talk had well and truly subsided), but this was for me the disappointment of the day. Under-ripe capsicum / pyrazine type flavours to me suggested another step in the wrong direction from the herbal / eucalpyt you can sometimes see in MR when picked just a fraction early. I tried to go in with an open mind but genuinely struggled with this. 

Felton Road ‘Calvert’ Pinot Noir 2020. Much like the Grange, this tasted exactly as I expected it to. A massive, exaggerated Pinot tending towards Shiraz-like, with a bit of ‘sore thumb’ oak sticking out at the end. This is not a producer or style I lust after, though I did expect others to love it. On the day I think it was liked rather than loved. 5 – 10 years off drinking well, and that perhaps is worth keeping in mind.

Devils Lair Cabernet Sauvignon 2018. A wine we as a group have collectively loaded up on, this is a 750ml bottle of grape juice that we can track the development of as a team. While it presented pretty well it’s not at it’s most enjoyable just yet, certainly not without a lot more air than we gave it. The tannins, though a bit obtrusive on the day, will see this through to a long drinking window.  

(Reds when we should have been drinking water) 

Lenton Brae ‘Wilyabrup’ Cabernet Sauvignon 2019. I preferred this to the Devils Lair, which at more than double the price you should I guess. Nevertheless, even with a bit of palate fatigue I thought this was very attractive & wouldn’t hesitate to crack one at the moment and bask in that lovely cabernet fruit. The top end 19’s might be better than I am expecting.  

Penfolds St Henri shiraz 2016. I can’t remember too much about this except that it was really good & had a bit more body than I expected from a St Henri. I actually really enjoyed the South Australian/Penfolds stuff today because it’s just not something I drink that often.  

Predictably i stayed too late, but also had a really enjoyable wander home. Happy NY.

Yallingup is the kind of place I shouldn’t like. The wealth on display from the (generally empty) hillside homes is strangely discomforting, reminiscent of the wasteful opulence of Perths beachside suburbs if you drive Northbound from City Beach. Down the hill, the kids in the playground have long hair and names like ‘River’ or ‘Zephyr’ or ‘Avalon’. The zen on their parents faces as they come in from the surf evokes in me a petty jealously – what a lifestyle! Yet is a place I don’t fit in, don’t particularly want to fit in & perhaps that’s exactly why I like it. As an outsider it is all so far out of my comfort zone that I can enjoy it with simplicity of thought, blissfully detached from this other world and simply enjoying vicariously those who are in basking their natural environment. The beauty of the place is similarly confronting: mesmeric waves gleefully challenged daily by the skill and bravery of the surfers chasing fleeting moments, or simply swimming in the ocean seemingly in the shadow of the dramatic cliffs to the North. The whole experience of the place is overwhelming until you thankfully realise it is so foreign & utopian that it’s probably not real.

Somewhat ironic then, perhaps, that after an early finish to harvest we made a brief pilgrimage to the ‘down south’ paradise that is Yallingup only to encounter many of the things that make life relatively challenging back home. Flies, spiders, a snake & howling winds all made unwelcome cameos, followed by some horrible fires that began burning the day we were leaving. A reminder that come summer time, there is no complete escaping of ‘Australia’ from within it & only differing degrees of our harshest elements are on offer. In that context, Yallingup beach is still as good as it gets. 

Proximity to the vineyards is an added bonus. Since we’ve had children my lust for cellar door tastings has waned considerably, not least because drinking through a disappointing range of wines and then politely buying a bottle really can be disheartening & expensive. So on this brief sojourn we only tasted before our lunches & in places of known quality.  

If Margaret River were going to anoint a single icon winery, Vasse Felix makes the best case to assume that mantle. Recent vineyard acquisitions make it amongst the largest, it was the first to plant vines in the region, it has the finest restaurant & is situated in a superb and iconic location.

We managed to taste a few wines before lunch (which was 8/10 – sometimes it’s 10/10). The quality of the Chardonnay is metronomic: pick any level or any year and you’ll get a very reliable wine that treads the absolute middle ground stylistically. I’ve never been ‘wowed’, nor tasted a wine I wouldn’t be more than happy to own – make of that what you will. The Filius range in the reds follows this lead: you will get a reliable amount of fruit, decent value & typicity within what you’d expect from a Margaret River wine. 

The Shiraz remains one of the more interesting projects in Margaret River: not for what is in the bottle, but rather the journey they have been on to make a serious wine befitting the old vines & aspirational price tag. In my early days of tasting here the goal seemed to be power. The 2007, for example could have easily been mistaken for a clumsy Barossan wine. Since around 2010, it has been a palatable, scaled back medium bodied wine with restrained character that tastes more of Margaret River than of Shiraz. The journey has since taken another interesting turn, with the Shiraz now masquerading as a ‘cool climate’ wine. Forgive me, but it is always slightly amusing to hear this pitch from producers in Margaret River, describing their Shiraz as ‘Northern Rhone like’ when they seldom display anything resembling this region nor from a cooler climate. It’s hard to take issue with the effort though at Vasse, with some parcels apparently undergoing carbonic maceration & the word ‘Syrah’ now gracing the label. The wine, by the way, is good (possibly quite good), and it will be interesting to see how it continues to evolve from here.

The 2018 Vasse Felix Estate Cabernet was predictably drinkable, there seems to be just a bit of tobacco & black olive flavours sneaking in to this wine which I really enjoyed. The acidity tastes a fraction manufactured to me: I’d be interested to have a closer look at the details of the winemaking. This is a wine, blended from many different vineyards and micro-climates, that needs to be reliable, and in that pursuit the recipe succeeds. It’ll last a while too. The 2017 Tom Cullity didn’t seem much of a step up to be honest – restricted by the vintage perhaps? ‘Elegance over power’ works as a concept when a wine is particularly beautiful, lengthy & with perfect dimensions but I did not quite find this here. Rather, this is a good, medium bodied wine that on the day didn’t do enough to convince me this label deserves its self-appointed ‘top tier’ status just yet. I hear on good authority that the 2018 is really something else & I think I’ll buy a bottle or two to put away so I can assess with some bottle age in a decade or so.  All in all, a good selection of wines as you’d expect.

The previous day we made it to Flutes at Brookland Valley, which remains one my favourite ‘off the radar’ restaurants in the region. Here the Wilyabrup brook passes through, expanding on the back of a basic dam wall to leave a sizable & beautiful lake. Bliss. The food is always very good & like the service, is refreshingly unpretentious. On top of that the prices are more than reasonable: what more do you want? Also, fortuitously, the cellar door has merged with Houghton (both owned by Accolade) & this is now a good spot to taste some of the best wines WA can produce. I was able to taste the top end reds & rather rudely, took some brief notes (no scores) in my phone under the tasting bench.

Brookland Valley 2017 Estate Cabernet Merlot. 

What a funny vintage 2017 is in Wilyabrup. The heavy hitters (think Moss Wood, Woodlands) are really scaled back in the power – lean and easy going, but elsewhere is hard to generalise and quality seems to be a wine to wine prospect. This effort had plenty of plush fruit & was drinking well on the day. Not particularly serious, nor challenging the stars of the region but great for what it is & I bought a couple to drink over the short term.

Brookland Valley 2017 Reserve 

A vineyard selection from the same plot (located where the restaurant is). This is a bit more structured and proper, the flavours are there with plenty of Wilyabrup typicity. A bit heavy on the blackcurrant perhaps, but this will no doubt age very well & have plenty to offer for those who invest. I like the style of the Brookland Valley reds, they seem off the radar for many perhaps because of the Accolade factor & I’m going to keep an eye out for the 18 of this label.

Houghton CW Ferguson 2017 

This tasted like it had been open a while. Decent aromatic profile. Tannic but attractive. It didn’t manage to seduce me though a decade-plus in the cellar might change that.

Houghton Jack Mann 2019 

One of my favourite wines, this is surely the pinnacle of WA cabernet outside Margaret River (the fruit comes from the Justin vineyard in Frankland River). The 19 was hard to get a read on for me. Not a lot of aromatics but precise and predictably tight. Certainly not singing today: kudos to anyone who can get a read on these types of wines so young without plenty of air. I think you could trust the label here though if this is one you generally ‘put away for a bit’ – the price is just a little bit restrictive for me.

Peaking perhaps in the mid 90’s on the Right Bank a movement took place termed the ‘garagistes’. The proprietors fashioned extreme styled cuvees based on new oak and ripe fruit, in small volumes aimed at high prices and backed by favourable reviews (generally from a certain American critic). Most eventually went by the wayside into oblivion, or back to more reasonable prices though a few notable exceptions including Le Pin and arguably Valandraud held onto their cult status. A decade later the trend hit the Barossa Valley, with the backing of the same critic & based on very old vines and a similar extremity of style. Some of these continue to attract big prices though most now sit in the market at a price relative to the inherent quality of the wine.

The Cloudburst Effect

Twenty years on from its Right Bank peak, the Garagiste movement finally reached Western Australia. We didn’t have Robert Parker but we did have another American man, one by the name of Will Berliner. He moved to the area and planted a small vineyard on land possibly (by his admission) better suited to avocados. The detail and attention in the vineyard was second to none, and the resulting wine, a 2010 cabernet was (all things considered) nothing short of spectacular. Almost as spectacular was the price, launched at $150 US dollars, whilst nowadays a current release will set you back around $350. Before long, those who had first looked on with curiosity were now looking on with jealousy, both at the exquisite juice he had created and also the jaw-dropping prices he could sell it for. It was, incredibly, all created by a man with no experience in the industry & from infant vines. And just like that, the first Margaret River micro-cuvee had been born.

The first dominoes began to fall and they fell rather quickly indeed. Vineyards that had been planted in the same year, on the same soil suddenly found a miraculous ‘special site’ within them, or if not there, they found that their special element was located in the winery instead and a few barrels just had(!) to be bottled separately. Emerging from the shadows of the reserve wines came the ‘reserve reserves’. Before you could say ‘Willyabrup with two L’s’, our producers had taken note of Cloudburts aspirational prices, but more doubtful perhaps was how closely they were looking at his hard work in the vineyard and what methods they could slowly adapt given that from a quality perspective, many of them had been convincingly leapfrogged. [EDIT] In my mind, and I can’t overstate this enough, what Will did was absolutely brilliant & showed the way for the incredible potential of the region. His vision, hard work and networking should have been admired then as it should be now, but I nevertheless doubt that some looking on took the right message from it – not something I pin on Will at all.

All that said, some of the wines were of course, completely justifiable. The flag bearer for this new wave was perhaps the Vasse Felix ‘Tom Cullity’, first released in 2013 at more than double the price of their previous reserve wine the ‘Heytesbury’: a more than reasonable development given the historical importance and quality of the old vines on the property. The treasure that is Cullen went a year earlier with ‘the Vanya’ (these days at $400+), and variations have been spawned that align to the biodynamic calendar. It’s a curiosity only and I make no point from it, but throw in the Diana Madeline and Kevin John and from what I can deduce, they now have more different wines at over $120 than the entirety of the St Julien appellation. Further inland and things arguably made less sense. Heading a long list, the likes of Thompson, Ashbrook, Cape Grace, Fraser Gallop & recently even Rosily have jumped on board to craft a wine in smaller volumes at roughly double (and sometimes much more) the price of their previous top Cabernet. In an appellation (forgive me, GI) that stretches for 100 km North to South, encompassing over 400, 000 hectares, of which a large deal of it is very suitable for the vine, it seemed every producer became suddenly and thoroughly convinced that they were in possession of the Southern Hemispheres equivalent of the last six rows of Malconsorts. And just like that, the regions greatest strength: it’s ability to create great wines on a reasonable scale had all of a sudden became a self inflicted weakness.

This one is for the fans

Sometimes the best thing you can do in business is put yourself in the shoes of the person you’re trying to sell to which is of course the end consumer. As a general rule, this person is looking for value, reliability and quality: if you steadily increase a wines price over a long period you can gauge how the market is receiving it & there is some order to it all. Yet the prices for these new wines seemed opportunistic and random. By pricing them at double or triple the price of the previous top cabernet, the customer had no idea if what they were buying represented value or not. For the most part the trade gleefully jumped on board of course, eager to rise to the challenge & convince us these wines were worth it. Sure, a price rise was due: as consumers we’d had it pretty good for a long time but for every vineyard that took a steady and sensible approach there were five who jumped into a questionable shortcut. The result of course was not many were able to drink to their price point even if they were inherently good wines. Subsequently it became a dangerous game for consumers to play, and I guarantee you disenchantment & disappointment has often been the result. Consider those who have bought these small production wines, out of loyalty or perhaps as a ‘late in the day’ cellar door purchase only to find it at half the price six months later dumped in anonymity somewhere on the web (where so many have ended up – trust me). What a way to do business(!), reward your enthusiastic customer who has come in to visit you by charging them full tote odds, whilst the anonymous person on the other end of an email gets a bargain just because he or she happens to be on the right mailing list. Are those consumers, the loyal ones who were dealt with face to face entitled to feel a little cheated, or is that just how the industry works sometimes?

Even when these wines have lived up to their price, I believe the consumer can and has become sick & tired of the hype train of yet another premium bottling. A 98/100 from a certain critic who tends to be generous & a price to go with it might (reasonably of course) induce feelings of pride for the vineyard responsible who have worked tirelessly for decades to produce such a wine, but to the consumer it means little: it’s just another exclusive wine in a crowded ocean of them. Indeed for every person that thinks ‘I must have this’, there are many, many more who are worried that they will no longer be able to afford their favourite wines, or indeed the best wines from their favourite producers. These are people who have been a vineyard’s loyal customer & they should matter because when times are tough they will stick by you. Lets take Juniper for example, a fantastic little vineyard on Tom Cullity drive. The Estate cabernet is a reliably good wine & has (not unreasonably) steadily doubled in price over the last five to ten years. Like I say, a price was no doubt due. But those who have been loyally buying for years now, happy to absorb that price increase are now faced with a cellar full of wines that once were the vineyards top bottling yet now sit on the third tier of the Juniper hierarchy. The reality is that you cannot add without taking, even if it’s just perception. And of course what is in the bottles already purchased hasn’t changed, but it’s worth understanding that wine buyers are a shallow bunch & can be fickle with buying habits over silly things like this. Loyalty is hard to build yet oh-so-easy to lose. 

Speaking of loyalty, I wonder if most people who buy Moss Wood do so because the new vintage is supposedly the best ever (possibly for the fifth time this decade according to our much respected local critic – but who’s counting…). People may have short attention spans but they also have long memories. Is it time to give the audience some credit, if not some respite? The vines go deeper into the sub soil each year, the vignerons knowledge of their terroir & skills in the winery theoretically improve each year. And inevitably of course the prices go up almost every year: so forgive me here but …. shouldn’t the damn wines be improving? Seriously. The press from Moss Wood themselves is always sensible, informative and reserved, but the circus that surrounds it is nauseating. I understand it’s an industry wide thing and nothing to do with Margaret River specifically but as naive as this sounds, as West Australians can’t we be better than that? Without question the reason Moss Wood has little trouble selling its wine because every time you pull an old bottle from the cellar it is sublime, reinforcing a reputation that has been built over such a long time period that even those who haven’t experienced older vintages know they are buying a great wine that they can cellar with confidence. Yet this consistency of branding is, sadly, completely undervalued & it is getting interrupted far too often in the post-Cloudburst era. Personally I am extremely disenchanted with how infrequently these small production wines have been called out by the Australian wine media, either for being opportunistic or simply just poor value and sometimes I wonder if writers who should be on the consumers team are actually more comfortable playing on the other side of the fence? I make this point gently, at no-one specifically & with respect but still, it is a point that needed to be made.

Perhaps instead of all the hype can we please have more reliability and more information about wines already in our cellars? Or are we just pawns lining up to be hoodwinked into buying as much of the next vintage as humanly possible? The wines are getting very expensive now and as much as we expect them to perform in the cellar to our own drinking window preferences, we would occasionally like some guidance every now and then. Where is that person, that vineyard, that source of information to tell us (for example) that 07’s are maturing quicker than expected, or that the 11’s are shut down at present. This information is so readily available on Bordeaux wines, and whilst I understand that it’s a massive machine over there I still don’t think it’s too much to ask. To the trade: we get that you’re excited about the new vintage or the fancy new wine but you hold so much knowledge that you can share to keep us coming back and strengthen our rapport.

Recognition, recognition.

If the rapid emergence of the micro-cuvee in the post-Cloudburst era had been nothing more than a slight nuisance for the local consumer, then you could argue the greater damage has been its slowing of the onwards march into international markets. Personal bias perhaps, but I honestly doubt theres a single region / varietal match up in the world as underrated as Margaret River cabernet. These wines should be slotting seamlessly into the cellars of every claret lover around the globe. I don’t know why as it’s absolutely nothing to do with me, but it upsets me: I’d just love to see the kind of people who would love these wines drinking them. I want to fly over and literally put these bottles in peoples hands, in their glasses and say ‘drink this wonderful liquid work of art – you’ll love it’.

Yet it’s 2021 now, the region has had a sensational decade quality wise (my minor nitpicking aside), yet still the wines aren’t penetrating. It’s anecdotal, and granted a small sample size but if you follow hundreds of Bordeaux and Napa lovers like I do on Instagram and cellar tracker you’ll discover that they seldom drink Margaret River wines. And when they do occasionally drink an Australian wine, it’s a South Australian Shiraz. Search ‘Margaret River’ in the numerous wine forums for Bordeaux and cabernet lovers and you’ll find there are more mentions for an obscure, misfiring fifth growth than of anything happening over here. Again it only forms a small part of the picture, but my favourite wine writer is a Londoner called Joss Fowler. He has the most eloquent way of describing wine, is insightful on the industry and writes (less frequently nowadays unfortunately) with beautifully phrased philosophical passages woven in. I’d love to hear his thoughts on some of my favourite local wines, yet type ‘Margaret River’ into the search bar and you’ll receive no results. Not one.

For the most part the local market snaps them up keenly I hear you say. Perhaps for now, and Covid has helped no doubt, but I believe a crisis or at least a squeeze is coming. The demand for premium and ultra-premium wine in Australia has a limit on it & given the quality coming out of the region at all levels its hard to see how we can absorb it all at the prices these wines deserve or aspire to. If prices do continue to rise at what point does the local market simply say ‘sorry old chap, we’ve maxed out our collective credit card’? Naturally a stronger focus could then shift overseas, with many of these potential new customers likely to want the best wines, only to find that many of them now are (self inflicted of course) made in such tiny quantities and potentially representing questionable value: setting quite a task for the whole operation. I could be wrong, but I suspect that the type of person who buys a case of Lynch Bages each year (rathen than Echo) will take a lot of convincing that they should also put a case of third tier Juniper (and I’m not picking on them – I love them) along side it, even if the reality is that they should.

I’ve heard it said (and I vehemently disagree now more than ever) that our wines must be expensive to be taken seriously. This is the information era and the opposite is surely true. The wines must compete toe to toe with their peers, they simply have(!) to be good value and not a victim of this random ‘pick a price roughly double or triple what we sell the other cabernet for and see how it sells’ attitude. The toxic arrogance I hear from producers and people in the industry who are dismissive of Bordeaux is so misguided. Whatever you may think of the wines, the Bordelaise aren’t stupid and have been adjusting to the global market conditions for centuries. To take any further market share off them will be a challenge in itself. It will be up to the palates of international wines lovers if they are perceived to be value: in the information age it’s still hard to be found, but there’s also nowhere to hide.

One weapon in this that is chronically under utilised is the message about how well our wines age. I stopped buying decanter magazine not long after an issue four or five years ago, where a big Margaret River tasting took place, with most of the wines given a bizarrely short cellaring life of 3-5 years: about a full decade before I’d be opening the best of them.[Edit] Since publishing this article an individual sent me a story of their recent experience with a bottle of 1977 Margaret River Cabernet, one they themselves had made. Recently he served it blind to friends who guessed it to be from the mid 2000’s and thought it to be particularly wonderful indeed. Back to decanter, and the following issue featured not one single letter from an angry Australian pointing out this stupidity. I’m not even in the industry yet it made my blood boil: what did our producers think I wonder, or were they simply out for a surf?

It seems to me that efforts to spread this message & get these wines into peoples cellars overseas seem scant on the ground. I’m not important, nor wealthy enough to attend the Cape Mentelle tasting but like a few no doubt I follow intently and with fascination. I’m sure someone can explain it but as an outsider it baffles me that the event doesn’t find a way to showcase more older wines. Jancis Robinson coming out and mistaking Cape Mentelle itself for Mouton was on the surface remarkable & exciting for our wines until you consider the frequency that this kind of thing happens under blind conditions. I read extensively and would point out that even wines from less propitiously situated appellations such as Roc de Cambes, Sociando Mallet and even Clos Manou(!) occasionally outscore or are mistaken for First Growths or their right bank equivalents in blind tastings. It happens with young wines: the real test comes later. What would have been more exciting would be to read from her how incredible multiple fifteen or twenty year old wines were in comparison to their Bordeaux or otherwise equivalents. Except that half the wines would probably called be something else now. And where on Earth(!) seriously (!?) is our own equivalent of the Southwold ten years on tasting: Australian wine media please tell me why aren’t we reading more about these wines as they blossom wonderfully with age? If they really do ‘compete effortlessly with Bordeaux’ and we want claret lovers world wide to put these wines in their cellar it seems to be there needs to be some kind of strategy, a message of confidence & reassurance that these wines develop soundly from people who know what they’re talking about.

The other thing I think would help, and again the micro-cuvees are in my opinion a hindrance to this, is to simplify the needlessly complicated cabernet hierarchies that exist in even our smallest vineyards. Too many small producers make an incredibly vast array of wines, often competently, but rarely do they reach great heights: the whole focus of the operation is spread too thin. I understand the logic in that cellar door focussed vineyards need to offer different types of wines at varying price points, but sometimes you have to consider taking one step back to take two forward. One vineyard that makes incredible wines across the board is Woodlands. It’s a big call/throwaway line but personally I consider the Woodlands top cabernet to be of roughly Second Growth quality. But my suspicion is that their whole set up is just far too complicated to ever penetrate international markets when competing against the simplicity and history of (just for example) a Leoville-Poyferre. And what a silly thing it is to hold you back. Yet by the time you’ve explained to a friend, or an enthusiast online, or a customer in your wine shop in London that the ‘Margaret’ is not specifically named because of Margaret River, that the Clementine and Clementine-Eloise are two different wines but both cabernet based, that the Clementine-Eloise and the Chloe Anne though are believe-it-or-not the same wine, but from different years and the Chloe-Anne and the Chloe are different again and one is actually a Chardonnay which also grows well in Margaret River (it’s ok to take a breath now), everyone has well and truly given up and that person has already paid for and most likely drunk their Poyferre (and maybe even blogged about it).

Simplicity is just so underrated. Can someone please bring it back to Margaret River before it implodes into (yet another) 10 000 pieces?

Nat: there might be something – I’m not sure if it’s in the water or in the air in Yorkrakine but its certainty had a wonderful effect on a bloke called Ambrose Nock. He is a fantastic artist and he calls himself Target archery I was lucky to catch up him earlier and I began by asking him, as our unearthed artist this week, a little bit about his musical journey and where he got started.

Ambrose: So Target Archery is a recording project that basically happens in my garage in Yorkrakine & I’ve finished the second album there. Before that I was in a band in Perth called Apricot Rail that kind of fizzled out as things do. So (Target Archery) is kind of a continuation of that in terms of songwriting and stuff but without the live shows.

N: So tell us about your musical career, when did you start getting into music?

A: Fairly young I guess – I got forced to learn piano which was good & all I wanted to do when I got to high school was start a band so we managed to do that. And then I played around Perth in a few different strange original bands, which was fantastic.

N: Can you tell me about the types of music you’ve enjoyed & enjoyed playing over the years?

A: Your listeners might not know a lot about Post Rock but it was [forgive me here] kind of a sub genre that emerged out of Chicago in the 90’s and it was about dismantling [the structure of] rock songs, expanding into very long songs and focusing more on the music than the singing. So that was kind of the background there. And then my kind of take on that is that I do enjoy the instrumental side of things but also enjoy fairly obscure pop music with lots of dense treble: bands like Stereolab and ninetynine. Things like that.

N: And you’ve spent some time in Yorkrakine farming, and also in Perth – have any of those locations had an influence on your music at all and have you found it easier or difficult to play music in either location?

A: Well Apricot Rail started basically at the farm. I wrote some songs and some friends living in Perth really liked them. So we turned that into a band and put out a couple of albums. I’m sure a few of your listeners would understand that being on a farm is a great place to write music. There are no noise complaints, there is lots of space to set up your instruments & there are a lot of bleak landscapes, especially this time of year which plays into the inspiration a lot. And when you’re a musician you just find a way of playing wherever you are & whoever you’re around. And personally I enjoy the process of songwriting more than the performing aspect of it. So it works out well for me to have my own studio and I can just write and record over a long period of time.

N: Clock of the Long Now was the album you released in 2017. This album that you’ve released just last month – the Nomenclature of Kites – can you tell me about and give me a bit of understanding about your first album and how different or similar it is to your most recent release.

A: So COTLN was a bit more instrumental and with very spacious arrangements and I was learning to play a few instruments during the process of recording it. So I did all the woodwind and things like that myself, and opened up the arrangements for those songs [meant to say parts] where as with the new album what I trying to do is pack as much treble – not shrill treble – but just in terms of density of parts into the songs. Because that’s something I really like but don’t hear that often in music.

N: The name of the album is the Nomenclature of Kites. It’s his second release and came out just last month. The song we will be hearing is ‘we’re not in Kansas Now Dorothy’ – its definitely a memorable song title & I’m getting flashbacks to Dorothy and the wizard of Oz. What can you tell me about this track?

A: Amongst the first half of the album a lot of inspiration is from middle America for instance there’s a song about the Flat Earther who built his own rocket ship and unfortunately met his demise. So we’ve got a mate down the road who’s a storm chaser by the name of Mr Simon York. And I loved the fact that he’d travel on his holidays to the tornado belt to track these incredibly powerful weather systems and I loved the image of that & love of that power and found some inspiration there. So that’s where the inspiration for that song came from. Living out here as well you kind of romanticize a bit about what Middle America might be like because its wheat fields as well but obviously quite different culturally. Also being a 35-year-old white male there’s not much for me to write my songs about but you do look for things like that just to hone in on a particular theme. And sometimes the music itself sounds like something as well. So here the key part that is looped sounds to me a bit like a gentle twister building momentum if that makes sense.

N: Lets have a listen to it now.

Heres an interview I did in October on the breakfast with RTR. I’ve changed the odd word and got rid of all the bloody ‘ummms’ so it reads a bit better.

T: The last time you were hear was with Caitlin talking about the debut – and I imagine since then you’ve been riding tractors and hanging out with your family.

A: Yep farming, starting a family and still finding a bit of time to make records.

T: Tell us a bout how that happens, with Caitlin you said that there is a home studio set up out there in the Wheatbelt where you live. So is that same sort of vibe for this one?

A: Absolutely. Exactly the same space, in the garage in the Wheatbelt: you can imagine I’m sweeping out the dust fairly regularly. And Yep.

T: Is it something you get to sit down and visit and do often? Or are you busy doing Wheatbelty things?

A: As you can imagine things fluctuate a bit in terms of farm work. And quite often like I’ll have a writing stint and then have a lot of ideas and listen to them on the tractor and songs might change from there.

T: Just to relisten to what you’ve done on the tractor?

A: So I tend to write in sections and there are generally 3 or four different segments in each song so when I listen to the first I might be driving along and get an idea for the next section so  it might chop and change from there – its all fairly integrated.

T: That’s a super interesting place to pluck inspiration – I don’t think I’ve spoken to anyone who – that’s where it comes to them on the tractor which is cool.

A: A few of my friends drive tractor and play music so..

T: Tell us a bit about how long this record has been kicking around for how long have you been working on it?

A: Before the first one came out track 8 [from this record] we played live when we were doing a bit live with so that’s pretty old, and a few of the other songs like the Flat Earther is pretty old – I actually wrote that before the guy died and nearly pulled it from the record because I felt bad. And I love Mad Mikey Hughes.

T: I wanted to ask you about that and I’m glad you brought it up. Can you tell me about this person or this character is in the record – Mad Mike Hughes

A: So my father in law has a bit of a bit of an obsession with the Flat earth society and finds them a curiosity. And this guy (Mad Mike) had a bit of courage and was convinced the world was flat. So to check he actually built his own rocket his own rocket ship and he did a launch in 2018 which didn’t go that well but he’s a smart dude – or was – to the point where he was genuinely a rocket scientist but didn’t understand the concept of spheres – which, you know amused me. Umm yeah unfortunately earlier this year he had a second go at it but it didn’t got so well and he demised. (T: OH MY GOSH) so I feel pretty bad because it was supposed to be an amusing topic but isn’t so amusing now.

T: I wonder if someone who is a devoted follower of his will find this and someone in the flat earth society might come for you.

A: Ooh might get some hate mail.

T: Good thing you’re out in the middle of nowhere!

A: Better not talk about it.

T: So it’s one of the things that was really curious to me and as I read through the tracks titles names I had to wonder if they’re all connected or if they are all just unusual named songs?

A: Funnily enough on the first album there isn’t a lot of singing, but on this one there is singing on every song – so every song *is* about something. So there is a bit of a Middle America theme there. Indeed we’ve got a friend who is a storm chaser and he used to go over the tornado belt and just be overwhelmed by the power and complexity of these twisters. So I thought that deserved a song. But a lot of it is just about being in Perth and whatnot.

T: Some things are Super specific to WA as well – The Hanging Gardens of East Victoria Park for instance.

A: Yep, so I actually tuned in when you and Will were talking about that one so I don’t know if you know the B almoral hotel? (T:  yes very well) – I think it used to be a more hanging gardeny in the beer garden but there still a bit of it there so that was the inspiration there (T: makes it sound much nicer than it actually is). Agreed – especially at 11 oclock on a Saturday night.

T: Were talking to ambrose Nock talking about last weeks local feature Target Archery. You have some folks who you usually make music with, who did you collaborate with on this record?

A: One of my best mates Matt Harley helped with the vocals and stuff. Mayuka who didn’t play on the first one but helped out doing it live helped out here with most of the woodwind and a few other things which was handy cause I’m not good at that kind of things. And then Justin who was also in Apricot Rail and is living over Melbourne and he is amazing with mixing and doesn’t get too annoyed that there is 37 guitar parts to work his way through. So he spent the last six months mixing it with plenty of back and forth. And obviously he’s been hit by the Covid over there so it gave him something to do and he mentioned that it was good for him.

T: It comes out highly well produced because he’s had all of the time to work on it!

A: Ha, yep. Maybe overproduced for a little bit, so we scaled it back a fraction.

T: He doesn’t have time to walk away be cause where’s  he going to go? Something else I want to mention is I was looking through the Target Archery Instagram which is fantastic if you’re not already following go and have a look. It features little clips which I assume you’ve made to put together as little snippets of previews of the songs.

A: Some of the footage is borrowed and some of it from me at home.

T: Filming a tv screen – is that what that is?

A: Yeah the laptop – fairly low budget

T: Diy

A: And there’s a few clips. Chad Peacock who made a few clips for Apricot Rail made some proper clips so you can look at them.

T: I’m really enjoying listening to this record And I think folks last week were super into it as well. Something I want to touch on before I let you go. The record is out on Hidden Shoal & last year we also featured a record they released, it was a bunch of remixes one of which was Target Archerys track Opium Den. Tell us what you think when Boy in Nature did a one over on the track.

A: I really liked his take on it – very punchy and he picked the best melodic bits and turn it into a whole different song. I saw that one went down pretty well.

T: He didn’t have 37 guitar parts to pull apart(!)

A: No he plucked the better ones which is probably what I should do when I’m writing.

T: So what’s the go now. You said this one had been written sort of a bit before the debut came out. Have you got more stuff in the back pocket?

A: I was actually listening last night and comparing Clock of the Long Now and this one. And I couldn’t’ believe how much gentler and how much more space there was. So when I do get around to writing the third one – and I will cause I’m always writing and looking for something creative to do to keep the mental health in check. So I’m thinking I’ll go back to lighter instrumental stuff – especially with Mayuka back on board and it might be a bit more like the first Apricot Rail album maybe.

T: I’m looking forward to more clarinet – its one of my highlights – I think it resonates because I played the clarinet maybe – don’t ask me to every play for it for you though please

A: It’s a lot of hard work – you’ve got to blow and stuff compared to guitar

T: Exactly you just plug it in. So I’m going to play the Hanging Gardens of East Victoria Park which will always make me think of the Balmoral hotel. Ambrose thanks so much for coming and congrats on the new record.

A: Thanks for having me – and for playing it.

Single Bottle club – Wine Lunch

The theme for this lunch was WA wines up against their National and International counterparts. People were put in pairs and asked to bring a wine that from WA and one that wasn’t (with a matching dish). Wines were served blind, then we voted, & subsequently the wines were revealed. The main thing we were looking for was a fair fight & it was remarkable for the most part just how well the wines matched with their direct competition.

Sparklings

Windance Chenin that had been put in the sodastream

Vs

Kreglinger 2015 (Tassie)

Billecart Salmon NV

Vs

Plantagenet Blanc de Blanc 2017

A lot of Sparkling to kick off the day, and a tough one for the West Aussies as we’re not overly renowned for our bubbles. The Sodastreamed Chenin was surprisingly good with decent bubbles and wasn’t overtly sweet. Crazy. One to try at home as in all honestly it was pretty good. The Tassie wine though was very good & I thought it could have easily been decent NV Champagne from a good producer. In round two the Billecart did its business: it was a cut above & the obvious pick of these four. The last time we had this in a line up it seemed a fraction sweet but comparison is King and up against more modest competition today it looked mighty fine indeed. The Plantagenet was quite good out of the gates but faded a bit, became a bit angular (or something?) and a few thought it was a bit strange. Without too much trouble we all picked it as the WA wine & also as a Blanc de Blanc, which wasn’t a bad effort. It might not quite be drinking to its price point ($45) but I thought it was better than reasonable. Votes are for the second flight, as it didn’t seem quite fair to count the votes on the first.

Group vote: Non WA

My Vote: Non WA

Riesling

Seppelt Drumbourg 2019

Vs

Frankland Estate Isolation Ridge 2019

These were two highly rated wines that collectively we got nowhere near picking: giving wildly inaccurate guesses on region, year & also somehow missing the quality that stood before us. I thought the more expressive wine might have had a few years on it and guessed the other one was young. Fair dinkum. They were both young and in the lower-acid/lower Co2 kind of style: just not quite in my comfort zone, which is generally for more zippy wines but with 5-7 years on them. The Seppelt initially seemed a bit flat to me & it was hard to see 98 JH points here. Looking back at the wine once it was revealed it was clear I’d missed something: it was nice and pure, slightly floral but restrained. No rough edges and I still think it lacked a bit of energy but I’d be going JH’s opinion not mine. Around the table we all generally thought the Frankland was the better wine, it had generous flavours and glided across the palate. I remember when we visited recently Hunter (the winemaker) saying they’d really put a lot of effort into making these wines more approachable young & he was also confident that their newer styled Rieslings would last a long, long time in the cellar. This is a winery that unequivocally knows what they are doing so I’m looking forward to looking at my 17’s in five or ten years. There is so much variance in style in Australian Riesling when you consider region, age, acidity & sweetness levels & I think it worth tasting a lot to find out what you like. Two good wines & perhaps if one was a shocker the other would have really stood out as brilliant. That said, the votes here were very solidly with the WA in one of the more one sided votes.

Group Vote: WA

My Vote: WA

Chardonnay.

Kendall Jackson ‘Vintners Reserve’ Chardonnay (Napa) 2017

Vs

Cullen Kevin John 2017

Things got pretty interesting here with some vocal, out there opinions (which is kind of the point of these days). In terms of origin the Kendall Jackson was hard to pick: we knew it must have been non-WA but it didn’t scream Victoria or NZ. It definitely wasn’t Burgundy. It was seductively ripe, opulent and chock-full of oak but slightly clumsy with a metallic kind of vibe and I liked it less the longer I spent with it.The other wine was obviously Wilyabrup, and although no one guessed Cullen we threw out some names from some vineyards a stones throw or two away.

As for the wine, initially it seemed a fraction reticent, but as it slowly opened up in the glass and found itself nearer to room temperature it revealed itself as genuinely beautiful, tending towards that creamy style with no obvious primary fruit descriptors. I thought there was a massive gap here in quality: to me the Cullen made the Napa look quite rough around the edges and not one you’d want a second glass off but surprisingly enough the votes went the other way reflecting a stylistic preference. An interesting reveal if I’ve ever seen one! Perhaps the Cullen would have benefited from coming out closer to room temperature & I also suspect it will drink better in 3-5 years. This was a really interesting flight.

Group Vote: Non WA

My Vote: WA

Pinot Noir

Picardy Tete du Cuvee 2014

Vs

Bitouzet Prieur Volnay 2015

I brought these and sweated over it, second-guessing my choice right up to five minutes before leaving. In the end I brought a Burgundy over a Vic Pinot to match with the 2014 Picardy Tete du Cuvee. I was at Picardy for a week or so in 2014 & plunged this wine quite a few times. You knew there was something special there & there was genuine buzz around the winery about its quality. Obviously I’m biased but every bottle I’d had so far has drunk really well and I think it’s still got a bit more blossoming to go. The Volnay isn’t a flash one (as far as Burgundy goes at least) but is a bit of a go-to & they drink pretty well after minimal cellaring. Both wines presented quite well & were surprisingly similar in style: elegant & all about mid palate depth/fleshy and savoury. There wasn’t much issue guessing the Picardy (what else was I going to bring?) but when people guessed on the Volnay surprisingly no-one really thought Burgundy: out of peoples comfort zones perhaps? Perhaps these wines weren’t exactly what people were expecting, they certainly didn’t give a massive amount away on the nose but personally I thought it was nice to drink some proper Pinot Noir. And by that I mean a million miles away from the sweetened up fruit juice/NZ/kid with too much self esteem kind of style that impresses initially but gets tiring very quickly. In the end the Picardy got the chocolates but there wasn’t much in it.

Group Vote: WA

My Vote: WA

Blind Wine

Tom pulled out a wine from his cellar (I’d actually brought it) as a bluff. It was the Herve Syrah 2018: a natural wine from the Rhone that split opinions a bit in our little wine chat group. Georgie struggled to drink it at our place & I suffered through it with no desire to do so again. I’ve got nothing to add to my previous note but did note reassuringly that not too many people enjoyed this. I can see where people are coming from that do: it has quite a nice purity & a decent aromatic profile but just isn’t for me. Someone suggested a link between a sour beer which wasn’t a bad pick up.

Cabernet Sauvignon

St Hugo ‘The unspoken promise’ Barossa 2014

Vs

Deep Woods Reserve 2015

The two legends that brought these hadn’t previously tried either of the wines, rather they were recommended these as a bit of ‘fair fight’ pairing and credit where it’s due, it was definitely a fair fight. They’ve both got palates I really respect & boast cellars chock full of Woodlands, Moss Wood, Balnaves & Majella so what I say here is just about these two wines and definitely nothing else. Initially here, I really liked the wines but that enthusiasm waned fairly quickly as they both seemed to be in that blockbuster style with everything turned up to eleven and neither displayed a lot of varietal charm or responded to the air they had received. Because of that, and their similarity they were quite hard to pick as neither screamed WA. In the end I thought I saw a bit of ‘Coonawarra/Roseworthy acid’ in the St Hugo and that was enough to convince me that the Deep Woods was the WA wine. To be frank, there is something very, very bizarre about Deep Woods rise to prominence and the high scores they get from some critics because the wine is consistently ordinary & completely unremarkable even at the Reserve level. I can’t imagine the wines appealing to anyone with a decently refined palate & every time I have one, blind or not blind they just baffle me with how underwhelming they are. Ripe, blocky, ‘made in the winery’, charmless, characterless dross is overstating it but seriously: what-am-I-missing? Any decent 14% WA cabernet should have absolutely creamed this flight but this one couldn’t get the job done against a pretty uninspiring Barossa cabernet. It was good to see the group have a similar opinion: it makes me all the more skeptical about what some critics think & how they arrive at their scores. Of course it’s more likely it’s me and just I’m missing something with Deep Woods but on the flipside that’s the beauty of wine isn’t it. If we all loved and found beauty in the exact same thing we’d never be able to afford it. The savior was the Osso Bucco: that, & in particular the risotto was sublime and a credit to our host.

Group Vote: Non WA

My Vote: Non WA

Shiraz

Forest Hill Block 9 Shiraz 2007

Vs

Kalleske Greenock 2014

Geez I’ve missed some wines before but these went over my head like I was hiding under a bridge while a freight train passed over. To be fair, I was a long way out of my Shiraz comfort zone: I genuinely just don’t drink or seek out these types of wines. The handsome bloke next to me suggested the Forest Hill was cooler climate & a few of us foolishly laughed. Some context: 2014 was quite cool in the Barossa whilst in 07 the Great Southern made some of their most legendary, potentially long lived wines on account of a warm growing season that suited the late ripening varieties. I had the Forest Hill down as a ripe, young SA Shiraz & the Kalleske as a decent Great Southern drop with a bit of age on it. Ahhhh…not quite champ, maybe have another go(!) In hindsight the Forest Hill might have been close to wine of the day but I really didn’t enjoy it that much: with Shiraz/Syrah I’m looking for seductive perfumes & elegance, neither of which were forthcoming. In terms of size and build though, it was a remarkable wine. It’ll still be singing in 20 years & I’d love to revisit one then. It’s worth mentioning that George, Cam and a few of the other better palates picked it as WA so not everyone was as clueless as me. The Kalleske had taken on a few tertiary notes & had enough American oak to giveaway its origins to most. It was a good wine, delicious now but I don’t think this particular vintage will live forever. It usually releases at around that $35 mark which isn’t bad when you think what you can pay for these types of Barossan wines. Quite often once a wine is revealed you stick your nose in the glass and realize instantly what you’ve missed: it was obvious with the Kalleske but interestingly this didn’t happen with the Forest Hill and my blind spot remains. All in all, these were two (objectively) very good wines that were adored by the group. Voting was a bit sketchy, but from memory it was very close & marginally with the Kalleske.

Group Vote: Non-WA

My Vote: Non-WA

Sweet wines

Carmes de Rieussec 2015

Vs

Fraser Gallop ‘Ice pressed chardonnay’ 2014

One of the first times I attended a day like this the dessert wines came out at the end & I was genuinely gobsmacked at just how good one of them was. I’d never paid much attention to the style before but there it was staring me down, enchanting me like a mellifluous siren. It was near on the most complex & wonderful thing I’d ever put in my mouth. Glorious waves of flavour, apricots, honeyed marmalade, spring flowers dancing on the palate & endless length to boot. That was in one glass. The other wine was a Noble One that was (and always is) fairly simple, plenty sweet enough and just ok. When the group voted with the Noble One that day I nearly fell off my chair. The wine I’d fallen in love with was a 2006 Suduiraut who have vineyards propitiously sited next to the holy grail that is Y’quem. That day no one else wanted talk about how good it was, so I assumed that they probably drank similar wines all the time, I made a mental note to myself, and that was that.

Today the wine we had in front of us was the second wine of Riuessec and whilst it wasn’t Suduiraut, Gee-whiz-Queen-Liz it was good. I’ve not had a soft drink for near on 18 months & am not much of a sweet tooth in general (though the chocolate gets a better work out these days than it should). But I love the complexity from these wines: they can actually be quite ethereal and gorgeous if you look past the sweetness & explore the actual flavours. To me, the Fraser might have well have been toilet water with sugar dissolved in it. It was very, very (very, very) sweet with had no complexity that I could see. Perhaps its linear nature appealed? It got the votes by a margin of about 2 to 1, and once more I nearly fell off my chair (which is easy enough to do at this stage in the day anyway). Seriously, what-the-actual fuck?

Group Vote: WA

My Vote: Non  WA

Final Tally

Group. Non WA 4, WA 3.

My Vote. Non WA 4, WA 3.   Though different to the group on two flights.

Some thoughts.

As always, the single bottle club was an interesting & enjoyable day with the company predictably overshadowing the wine. As for the best wine of the day, overall was a hard one to pin point. A few beers after it’d wrapped up someone suggested the Billecart and that seemed fair enough. A few people loved the Shiraz flight & mentioned the Kalleske. I was throwing a blanket over the Billecart, the Sauternes & both the Pinots. If anything though it just reminded me to go and get some Suduiraut.

One thing we definitely saw was that in blind conditions our own tastes reign supreme. The people who liked full-bodied Shiraz loved these wines & those who enjoy big Chardonnays went gaga over the Napa which was good to see. It’s a good reminder (to myself) that your own preferences are simply that. So often on these types of days I’ll bring all the wines and force my love for specific styles on people, in particular looking past the warmer/richer/heavier wines. Today definitely showed that it might not be a fair approach to help people find wines that they will love. And my view on the flights that I’ve given here is just a viewpoint & a long way from gospel.

That said, I’d have absolutely love to re-do the Cabernet flight: the food deserved better. There is so much quality out there these days & I reckon if you threw two dozen half decent Margaret River cabernets down a hole once a year for the rest of your life and started nailing them at ten years after vintage you’d probably drink better than most of the deep pocketed connoisseurs around the world. I’m not sure the age of the wines helped either and if you really wanted to give benefit of the doubt, maybe those two wines were just at an awkward point of their development, which happens so often when they’re around that 5 years of age. But honestly that Deep Woods Reserve always seems to present so poorly & so I’ve got another (moronic) theory. I wonder if maybe this wine stands out so much in these wine shows & to the critics: the ripeness, the size would make it so different to what else is on the table & easy to score up because of that. Robert Parker made a career of championing wines like this. But context is everything and put up against a similar wine which is also (forgive me) full throttle South Australian in style and it’s found wanting. Who knows?

The other thing that was evident was that nothing tasted quite as good as it should have. It was just a funny kind of day & I’d (genuinely) like to know what it was on the biodynamic calendar. Every time a label was revealed you’d think wow this should be singing but nothing blew the roof open. The Cullen I think was temperature: it really was gorgeous & there were a few wines you could look at and say ‘ok that’s really nice’ but it didn’t hit you in the gut or in an emotional way which can (and should) happen. I’m wondering if partly it’s the blind tasting format? Sometimes I think the part of the brain that gets pre-occupied with going through its memory bank trying to identify what’s in the glass takes control at the expense of enjoying the character of the wine. For that reason I hate drinking expensive wines blind, though obviously I can see how it’s important for objectivity and great for discovering value wines without prejudice.

And lastly, I think – and I bang on about this a bit – here in WA we just seem make a lot of wines that maybe we shouldn’t. We can do a lot of things well here but when someone walks into your cellar door wanting a Sparkling, or a Shiraz, or a dessert wine it must make too much business sense or be too hard to resist pandering to it. But it still seems stupid to me and definitely counter intuitive. I know I’m not alone in struggling to take a winery seriously if they’re making a lot of different styles badly & it can overshadow their strengths. But you know what, that’s the wonderful thing about the freedom of the New World: you’re free to do what you like and let the market decide. So many wonderful vineyards would not exist if they weren’t free to plant what they thought might thrive, sometimes on naught more than a hunch.

But honestly, from a consumers perspective I think the naïve can get themselves into trouble in assuming that WA wines are always great value. Often they’re just clearly not. For a half bottle of either there is about a five-dollar difference in the Riussec we drank and the ice pressed. One was brilliant, one undrinkable. But what the fuck do I know? The wine I thought was brilliant didn’t even win the vote!

Until next time.

Ambrose.

For this tasting Cam and myself put together four flights of various themes. We asked guests to number the wines according to preference and any further notes if they wished (most just gave a favourite rather than the ranking). We also asked them for a wine of the day and participants generally obliged here. Numbers for this tasting blew out from a desired 12 to cool 17, but in the end it was very workable. In italics are my pre-tasting notes, followed by some comments after each flight and lastly some general comments.

Flight One: Gembrook Hill Pinot Noir. A vertical ($55)

One of the Yarras more established & consistent family run vineyards. 5.5 h of vines (2.2h of Pinot Noir) planted in 1983 in the Upper Yarra. Sensible pricing policy has seen only modest increases over the last decade or so despite the high quality of the wines. From 2012 – 2018 all wines received 95 or more from HH, with the exception of 16, which is not yet rated. This is one of Australia’s finest examples of Pinot Noir from a producer that quietly goes about their business.

Left. Gembrook Hill Pinot Noir 2015. Diam. 13.5% alc. CT 92.1/100, HH 97/100 JH 94/100. One of the Yarra Valleys better vintages of the last decade.

Middle. Gembrook Hill Pinot Noir 2016. Diam. CT 90/100 HH NR JH 95/100. Warm & early vintage but relatively trouble free.

Right .Gembrook Hill Pinot Noir 2017. Diam. CT NR HH 95/100 JH 95/100. Late but high quality vintage. ‘Best Yarra vintage since 1992’ – JH.

Post Tasting Notes

Most evident from this was the consistency of these wines & there was only a slither of difference between the three in terms of style and quality. That said – and this is complete nit-picking – I found the 2016 showed its vintage & had a fraction less finesse/class: instead it’s appeal was it was a bit more generous and opulent but still far from a fruit forward style. My personal preference by the narrowest of margins over the 17 was the 2015 – it was superfine. I have no idea what these wines will do over time but my (speculative) guess is that they might peak in perhaps three years time & live happily for another five. So perhaps this flight would have also been interesting with a larger gap between the vintages to see how these wines evolve over a longer period. Next time perhaps. Nevertheless I love this style of Victorian Pinot Noir and it was reassuring to see others enjoy these wines & revel in Gembrook Hills consistency. These are lovely wines & they all drank well on the day with age seemingly not a factor.  Six people voted the 15 wine of the flight, five people the 16 & four votes the 17. The 15 & 17 both received one vote for wine of the day.

Flight Two: Balnaves of Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon. A vertical ($40)

A large, family run vineyard in South Australias Coonawarra region that focuses almost exclusively on the Cabernet grape. Seventeen consecutive vintages awarded Hallidays highest possible five star ranking, including ‘Winery of the Year’ in 2008. 74 hectares of vines in Southern Coonawarra propitiously situated on the prized ‘Terra Rossa’ soil. The estate cabernet is the second tier of Balnaves cabernet wines underneath the Tally (Langtons classification Outstanding) & is currently priced at $40. Congruent with popular opinion, I consider the Coonawarra Cabernet based wines to now be behind Margaret River in overall quality however they are generally more sensibly priced, can be very good value and the better examples can age graciously for a good two decades. I hope these wines (given the impeccable provenance) will give people an opportunity to gauge at what approximate age they enjoy a good Australian cabernet sauvignon.

L. Balnaves of Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2004. Cork. 14.6% Alc. 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. CT 90.3/100 HH 83/100. Cooler, more ‘classic’ vintage in Coonawarra which was rated 7/10 from JH due to the lateness of the season.

M. Balnaves of Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2006. Cork. 15% alc. 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. CT 88.7/100, HH 91/100. Warm, trouble free vintage with lower yields than average due to small berry sizes.

R. Balnaves of Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2014. Screwcap. 14.5% alc. 97.5% Cabernet Sauvignon, 2.5 % Petit Verdot. CT 88/100, HH 93/100. Cool, low yielding yet high quality vintage with a very long growing season.

Post tasting Notes

This was quite an interesting flight as the wines differed quite a bit from each other compared to the ultra consistent Gembrooks. I’ve long had a soft spot for Balnaves: alongside Woodlands, Picardy & Clonakilla these are ‘house’ wines at our place. I’ll admit though, that there was some trepidation in presenting these wines to people battle hardened on top end Margaret River. One experienced taster pointed out a few flaws in the 04 and wrote in their notes ‘flabby, lack of structure, stewed, hot, good length mind you – really not for me’. He was spot on, and as soon as he pointed it out at our end of the table we dived back into the wine for a closer inspection and concurred. I was a bit more forgiving & still quite enjoyed where this wine was on its journey: despite its shortcomings it was still deliciously mellow & I’d take it over a younger wine most days of the week. The 06 was a decent step up & was generally agreed to be the better wine: it will be longer lived & was only just sneaking into the drinking window (for mine). A real bonus for these two wines was the impeccable provenance, being straight from the wineries cool cellars so we could actually discuss the wines without any question mark on if the wine we were drinking was as the winemaker intended it. The 2014 was delicious and tasted positively young and fruity in comparison. It was never going to win the flight but will no doubt be a good wine down the track.  Three people voted the 04, ten the 06 (and 3 votes for wine of the day) and there were two votes for the 2014.

A few questions remain unanswered. Firstly,  did these wines win over any real Margaret River tragics? I’m not convinced, though three votes for ‘wine of the day’ was a reassuring outcome. That said, the Flowstone (which appeared later) was, I think, a better wine than even the 06, but at double the price it should have been. The other question concerns the age that we drink our Cabernets. This tasting also confirmed (from a very small sample) that decent Australian cabernet ages very well & a lot slower than you might think. Only two people preferred the youngest wine. So the issue for the consumer is this: how can one have the foresight & means to be able to drink large-ish volumes of good cabernet at its peak, if that requires 10 – 20 years cellaring/storage?

Flight Three. Grampians shiraz 2017: a horizontal.

Info: The best Grampians vintage for at least a decade according to JH & comparable to 2012 in terms of overall quality of shiraz. Where the Grampians region sits in terms of ranking for best Australian region for shiraz is of course subjective but my personal ranking is #1 and a number of commentators including Jeremy Oliver and Huon Hooke consistently express similarly leaning opinions. At their best the wines display the perfumed, seductive fragrance and pepper notes you will see in the best Northern Rhone and cool climate examples, coupled with an admirable structure that you might find in age-worthy examples from the warmer regions. In this flight we will compare the ATR Dakis with the Mt Langi Ghiran ‘Talus & the Seppelt ‘St Peters’. I love these wines & would suggest that whilst they will undoubtedly age, they also drink very well young when the fruit is in full bloom.

L. ATR ‘Dakis’ Shiraz 2017. ($30). Screwcap. 14.5% alc. 100% Shiraz. Rather incredibly, made from vines planted in only 2007(!) this has so far been the pick of the ATR growers series pack, made from five adjacent vineyards to the ATR Hard Hill Road vineyard. HH 96/100, Georgie Nock: ‘buy more of this’.

M. Mt Langi Ghiran ‘Talus’ Shiraz 2017 ($60). Screwcap. 13.5% Alc. 100% Shiraz. New wine from Mt Langi Ghiran sitting below the ‘Langi’ ($200) and ‘Mast’ ($80). Made from a range of vineyard sources of varying ages on the Langi property aiming for a lighter style. HH 95/100. 

R .Seppelt ‘St Peters’ Shiraz 2017. ($80). Screwcap. 13.5% alc. 100% Shiraz. Langtons classification: Excellent. One of the benchmark wines of the region, made from a variety of fruit sources including vines planted in the 1950’s. Aged in a variety of oak sizes from 225L barriques up to a 3000L vat. HH 97/100

Post tasting notes

These were dead-set delicious (in the fair dinkum department) & I thought this was easily flight of the day. In hindsight I feel that just how good these wines were may have been lost on a few people, perhaps due the lack of a weak link to make the belters stand out. The Dakis had an incredible, vivacious spring flowers type fragrance & was the most open of the three. Far. King. Delicious. The Talus was very good, but (I thought) had neither the opulence & enchanting bouquet of the Dakis nor the overall class/length of the Seppelt. Lovely wine mind you, & it impressed enough to nab a good amount of votes for wine of the flight. Interestingly, quite a few people ordered these wines on the sheet and every one of them had the Dakis in second, perhaps in recognition of the value? The Seppelt ‘St Peters’ was spellbinding and snuck my vote for wine of the day. It was gloriously long and enchantingly beautiful. Cam brought this one to complete the flight and I’ve since bought some. Prior to this tasting I’d been recommending the ATR wines to a few people & on this performance will continue to do so. I lament the price tag on Langis top Shiraz but finding that similar types of wines are out there at more affordable prices softens the blow significantly. The Dakis had two votes as wine of the flight & two for wine of the day. The Talus four votes for wine of the flight, whilst the Seppelt had nine & two votes for wine of the day.

Mystery Wine

As is customary at these types of events I decanted a red and asked people to guess what it was. A few people thought Shiraz but the majority leaned towards perhaps a three or four year old Margaret River cabernet, possibly from a cooler area within the region. It was a Flowstone ‘Queen of the Earth’ Cabernet from 2012 and attracted two votes for wine of the day. If you are yet to try a wine from Flowstone, they come highly recommended. I’ve previously written about these wines if you have the energy to scroll down a few posts.

Flight Four: The Great 2010 vintage in Europe: a Horizontal.

Info: 2010 was a benchmark vintage for most of Europe including the great regions of Bordeaux, Burgundy, Northern Rhone, Piedmonte and Tuscany. We are able to cover the first two regions often enough, and potentially as standalone tastings so I’ve selected three wines from the last three regions. For those not familiar, Hermitage is one of the worlds most sought after wines, made from Shiraz and grown on a hill alongside a favourable bend in the Rhone river. The Guigal offering is not a benchmark, unlike his Cote Roties but at roughly a seventh of the price, may offer a glimpse. Mauro Veglio is a traditional producer in Barolo that makes a style of wine that demands bottle age. This was classy, but tight and reserved on release & I am hoping that the a few years bottle age has transformed it into an approachable Barolo. The Tuscan is from the prestigious Brunello Di Montalcino region, considered the worlds best region for Sangiovese. This is a wine made by Antinori (the Penfolds of Tuscany if you will…) and again, is not an absolute benchmark of the style but should likewise offer a glimpse. And if anyone ever feels like dropping a grand or so on a Case Basse ‘Soldero’ / Biondi Santi feel free to invite me over. All wines were purchased at around the $100 mark.

L: Guigal ‘Hermitage’ 2010 (Shiraz). CT 91/100, WS 94/100, RP 92/100

M: Mauro Veglio ‘Castelletto’ Barolo 2010 (Nebbiolo). CT 90.3/100, KOK 94/100, 93/100 RPWA

R :Antinori ‘Pian Delle Vigne’ Brunello Di Montalcino 2010 (Sangiovese). CT 91.3/100, 96/100 AG

Post tasting notes.

What should have been the highlight of the tasting was unequivocally the most underwhelming. It wouldn’t be fair to lump the Barolo in with the other two here as it achieved what it set out to and was a nice ‘tar and roses’ affair with impressive tannins and length. It was too young of course, but was clearly wine of the flight and some thought a contender for wine of the day. Like Matthew Pavlich for most of his career, it deserved far better company.

Interestingly enough, earlier in the week in our group we’d been lamenting the monoculture in our cellars, which are very heavily weighted toward Margaret River Cabernet, Australian Shiraz & a few new world Pinots. Should we be heavier on different varietals, Italian wines, a wider array of regions and the like? On this showing the answer is a reassuringly emphatic ‘no’. The other two wines in this flight were not faulty. There was no TCA or brett issues, and neither were over the hill and heading towards an obvious decline. They were just flat. Great wines generally have vibrancy/energy and that was the thing that stood out most to me.

The Guigal was ok & you could potentially argue it had some nice restraint and elegance about it. But it felt a bit lifeless and had no interesting tertiary notes that I could pick up (some had a better go at it). I think you could easily argue that the Dakis was a third the price and three times as good. I’ve got one left and will re-visit in five years.

The more I drink, the less idea I seem to have about Sangiovese in general, and couldn’t extract much pleasure out of the Pian Delle Vigne. To this date, I haven’t had a Brunello that’s impressed me & offer this quote from Joss Fowler as some kind of explanation.

 “Properly good Brunello is hard to find.  I reckon that about 20% of winekmakers in Montalcino actually know what they are doing, and there is no shortage of over-done tosh. Sangiovese is a delicate grape variety, one that doesn’t stand up to heavy-handed winemaking”.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m missing something. Never mind Brunello, even good Australian Sangiovese & Chianti tends to goes over my head & seems at its best like solid, decent mid-week type wines when you’re craving a break from the Cab/Shiraz rotation. But perhaps the grape just isn’t capable of delivering at these top end price points (or maybe I just don’t ‘get it’).

One taster questioned the value of these wines & thought them to be quite a waste of money. As much as I’m for broadening the palette, it was hard to argue with his sentiment. In the end the Guigal had two votes for wine of the flight, the Barolo ten (and three for wine of the day) & the Brunello two.

General conclusions

In terms of numbers, the 17 or so worked fine (food/chairs challenges to one side) and we had enough left over of each bottle for a few to have a second taste of their favourite wines. I think a 750ml bottle could be adequately split between 18-20 for that to be enough to gauge quality and have enough of a taste to evaluate the wine.

I didn’t get any feedback on it but personally I enjoyed the open nature of the tasting (rather than blind). Sometimes you can get so caught up trying to pick what a wine is instead of properly assessing the quality in the glass. It was lovely to see the ATR Dakis deliver & as commented by a few, was clearly the best value wine of the day. Yet it had an unenviable task of trying to steal votes from the sublime Seppelt and the delightful Langi, proving that all things are relative in tastings like these. It was also quite surprising how widespread the ‘wine of the day’ votes were as quite often there is one or two standouts.

On a day like this, as much as a bit of focus is intended to be on the wines we were all pretty excited to see each other and catch up after some Covid restrictions had been lifted. That was understandable (this was my first time in Perth since February due to the travel restrictions) so I thank those who just wanted to chat for occasionally shifting their focus back on the wines and providing some feedback.

One thing I love about these types of days is seeing people discover what they like with the benefit of a wider context than just the one bottle they are drinking at the time. When finding out what types of wine you like comparison is king. An old friend but not a massive wine lover & first timer to these days wrote some good notes and from that it was identifiable that the wines he liked tended towards the integrated, more mellowed/less fruit driven styles. Over the years he’d often ask me what he should be buying or drinking & I feel I’m in far better a position to give an answer now.

Lastly, the more I think about the dud European wines the more they remind me of wines we’ve taken back from trips overseas. You drink the wines there and they are brilliant, and then you get them home and they are just ok. Something has happened in the travel and they don’t go completely off but they just seem a bit flat. They’re fragile things & it can be frustrating as I’d love to be able to share some of the great high points that these types of wines can occasionally deliver. But I’m not clever enough to say what happened to these wines. They were from a source that is generally reliable but anything could have happened before they ended up in my possession. Maybe they were just duds. It leads one to ponder the make up of their own cellars. I won’t stop buying Northern Rhone occasionally (nor am I planning on scaling back the Bordeaux/Burgundy) & I wish I had a few more decent Nebs in the cellar. But on the whole I think we get things pretty right in terms of heavily leaning towards local favourites that we understand & have sifted out and narrowed ourselves down to over years of critical tasting. Drink what you like, taste as much as you can. 

Until next time.

Ambrose/The Wine Accomplice.