Oz on Oz: falling in love, being jilted & feeling the love again
In February this year 40 members of the wine trade & press from across the UK & Europe spent 2 weeks touring Australian vineyards. Led by Hazel Murphy (pictured), Wine Flight 2010 reprised her very first ‘Wine Flight of a lifetime’ tour in 1992. Vintage wine flighters included wine writers Robert Joseph & Oz Clarke (pictured).
In a frank (video) interview with Yvonne May of Lindsay May, Oz reflects on his turbulent love life with Australia’s wine industry. How he fell in love with wines of great personality and character, fell out of love with an industry beset by “corporate pointlessness” but, now “personality and quality are back in the game,” is feeling the love again. Seems his fellow wine flighters agreed – apparently Wine Flight 2010 has resulted in 85+ new listings. Click here to the view the video and do post a comment here if you fancy sharing your thoughts on Australian wines. Or how about a caption – what’s Oz just said to Hazel?!?
For my part, it’s certainly true that Australia has struggled to maintain a positive image in the wake of deep discounting. As sure as night follows day, loss of margin led to a dip in quality. I well remember my first Decanter panel tasting, which focused on South Australian Shiraz under a tenner. The generic South Eastern Australian wines were pretty dismal: thin on fruit, sugared up and/or tricked up with acid. However, Australia has always had consistent pockets of personality and character – regionally defined wines, especially McLaren Vale, the Barossa and Clare Valley Shiraz, generally stood head and shoulders above the rest. And, as with any country, producer counted for just as much as region.
But leaving quality aside, there’s another factor at work – consumer trends and changing taste. For my generation, Australian wines represented our first date with proper wine (not student plonk). So perhaps it’s unsurprising that we’ve since played the field – it’s one of the great joys of wine. And if our palates are more demanding, that’s no bad thing for the wine industry, Australian or otherwise.
You can’t beat a good Aussie (well, apart from at cricket sometimes).
Love their wines, and at £7-£40 they’re some of the most fantastic in the world.
Rock bottom price = pants wine; wherever it comes from… and that was the point that Oz made very passionately in this interview. He clearly believes in the excellence of Australian wine and that it’s come full circle with so many of these wines now oozing character, along with great structure and balance, or as he kept saying when reminiscing about the tastings there ‘Bloody hell, they’re nice.’
Full circle indeed, in, out of and back in love!
Australians wines are indeed great value at the moment, and OZs passion for them and their country clearly showed through in his interview. I tasted a Yarra valley pinot recently and it was fantastic, it was up there with some of the best France and new Zealand are producing at the moment.
Absolutely, Oz’s use of the word “jilted” really shows the depth of his passion for Australia and his desire for it to put its best foot forward after the a period in which he describes deep discounting as a “disease” – it’s rare to see that emotion expressed which is what I valued about the interview. As a huge fan of Australian wines, I get really frustated when all Aussie wines are tarred with the brush of the cheaper, deep discounted fodder – it’s not where I look for great value or what I write about on my Australia Regional Report page – agree with Yvonne at £7/8 up, there’s great value to be had and with you on the Yarra, also Mornington Peninsula – some great Pinot Noirs, especially the nuanced single vineyard wines versus the bigger barrel selection reserves. Will be writing up some great egs to follow on from my post Australia Trade Tasting from Mac Forbes among others.
As always, Sarah’s articles are both interesting and insightful. Thank goodness for a real passion like this. Yours through a haze of cheap Californian red!!!!!
Part of me likes to enjoy the discounted wines, but I guess you get a lot more for your buck once you do head north of £7.00.
Hi Deborah, absolutely – especially if you take into account that irrespective of price point, excise duty is levied at the same rate – the average industry price for a bottle of wine in the UK off-trade was £4.32 in December 2009 [source A C Nielsen]. UK tax represented 52% of the average purchase price of a bottle of wine in the UK market!
By the way, I’m a sucker for a bargain too but I’m careful to make sure I’m bagging a genuine discount on an authentic wine, not a “fantasy brand” pitched at an artificially high price so it can be “discounted.” I’d recommend watching out for blanket discounts of which I try and keep readers posted on my blog with recommended purchases for my areas of focus. Take the recent 25% off deals at Waitrose and Tesco – that way you can then pick up wines that you know are really good at a great price.
I think you’re being a little too romantic in your analysis. A clue is in your reply to Deborah. Maybe the average UK consumer is stubbornly in love with £3.99 wine and doesn’t really care where it comes from. The Aussies introduced the UK consumer to good quality wine as a leisure drink but appear to me to have rather galloped ahead with their pricing for their good stuff. Recently, through supermarkets, they have offered ‘big discounts’ on rather boring (pants?) wine and, in my opinion, damaged their reputation which has allowed Chile to occupy the £5 per bottle territory with gorgeous, generously flavoured wines. That is until next year when this price category will no doubt be taken over by South Africa.
As an independent retailer I can sell Aussie wines at around a tenner but at that price I won’t sell the volumes the Australians producers are expecting. Unless of course TV’s Oz and James go down-under and really do champion the obviously excellent but over £10 wines…
Not sure which part of my comment was too romantic!!! For some years now, I think the Australian industry has recognised that it’s not sustainable to pursue wines at a fiver let alone £3.99. I agree that many consumers buy on price, especially at supermarkets where that and convenience are the draw, so that makes life difficult for Australia among other countries. Indeed, for any wines over a tenner I think it’s a question of hand selling and/or creating a vibe around the category to redress the perception that Australia is all about volume and blands/brands, whether that’s Aussie producers treading the shoe leather or passionate advocates of Aussie wines – broadcasters, writers, retailers, sommeliers – getting the message out there and, most importantly, wines in people’s glasses.
Only the heading Sarah. I know Australian fine wine is brilliant and I am very impressed with the Aussie winemakers’ skills in all aspects of producing great wine. I try to get the message across to my customers but it is a tough competing with supermarkets.
And I too look forward to wine advocates saying more loudly how wonderful £10 plus Australian wine can be and what amazing personalities are making it. While in Australia recently I was particularly impressed with the exciting Barossa and flawless Clare Valley wines. Their understanding of the benefits of screwcapped wine really is second to none.
Keep up the vibe!
Ah – OK! Bit red top I thought :)
Good to hear & yes, the Barossa has some really exciting artisan wines – looking forward to my next trip to SA though I reckon the Landmark Tutorial will come up trumps on that front too – watch this space!
Off to spread the vibe staff training at Harvey Nichols tomorrow with some very nice wines…
As a wine enthusiast of some 25 years, I feel I ‘grew up’ on Oz Clarke and have shared his enthusiasm for Australian wines; wines like Penfolds Koonunga Hill were my ‘house wine’ in the mid 80s. The challenge for me as a reasonably serious wine drnker is identifying the wines that gain interest with age. Price alone doesn’t seem to be a guide, a recent 1990 Penfolds Bin 707 is a good example, it was very flavoursome and drinkable but little more than a mellowed out version of the young wine. More interesting for me are the likes of St Hallet’s Old Block, Petaluma’s Cabernet and Chardonnay, Chateau Reynella and Cape Mentelle Cabernet Merlot. I’ll continue to buy and drink Australian wine but what I really want from Australia is more wines that age with interest and more help from the wine press to identify which wines these are.
Thanks for your comments Chris – that’s a very clear request and noted! I’m just writing up tasting notes of a Coonawarra Masterclass at the moment which will be of interest and it came to mind also because Neal Martin of The Wine Adovocate and Wine Journal made your point about looking for more interest/return with age and not always finding it with Australian wines. You’ll find quite a few tasting notes of verticals on my Australia regional report page – latest on McWilliams Lovedale and Tyrrells Vat 1 Semillons, Pewsey & Jim Barry Rieslings and, for reds, Howard Park Cab and Brown Brothers Shiraz Mondeuse Cabernet. Aussie Semillons and Rieslings are a great example of wines that deliver lots more bang for buck with age. Others that have impressed over time and which you’ll find reported are Clonakilla Shiraz and Cullen (all the flagship wines, white and red) and Wynns Black Label Cabernet among others. For Penfolds Bin 389. I’ll be attending this year’s Landmark Tutorial in Australia in September which promises plenty of exposure to older wines so watch this space!
BTW, if you have any more Penfolds wines stashed away they’ve recently offered their book “The Rewards of Patience” as a free download – see http://www.rewardsofpatience.com/ – published every few years (this is the 6th ed) it gives tasting notes on virtually every wine Penfolds produced from a select international panel of tasters.
Does Oz still sing? It would be good to have him belt out a number en route with James May in his next travels (Australia?).
What a top tip about “Rewards of Patience”!
I enjoyed an excellent bottle of Penfolds Grange 1993 recently, that has been in my cellar for almost 15 years and I agree with this Widget’s particular tasting note.
Widget tasting notes – whatever next!! Anyway, 93 Grange sounds good!
Hi Sarah
Having just listened to Oz Clarke’s video, I was delighted to hear him mention “The Story”. We stock their Westgate Shiraz ’08.
I’m with Oz – aren’t lots of great wines up at 14% alcohol these days? What’s the problem if they have the right complexity and balance? I’m just checking through my wine rack and there isn’t much under 13.5% from anywhere.
Hi Christine, couldn’t agree with you more. I showed several South Australian Shiraz and Shiraz blends at a staff training session last week from the Barossa Valley, Eden Valley and McLaren Vale, including a 15 percenter and the wines had a freshness and balance – defined not dead fruit – great viticulture, winemaking and a sense of place!
Sarah has asked me to respond to the query about Oz’s singing career:
I’m not sure that Oz sings anywhere these days (perhaps in the shower?), but he certainly can belt out a number. As a boy he was head chorister at the Canterbury Cathedral Choir School. Post his degree at Oxford, Oz took to the stage and held various lead roles including that of Peron in Evita, of which he speaks in this interview. One of his oldest friends is the wine writer Charles Metcalfe who, Oz says, taught him all about wine at Oxford. Charles is legendary for combining his wine writing and presentation skills with the occasional aria – which can be a lot of fun.
As one of the participants on Wine Flight 2010, it was great to re-visit Australia after 10 years – we saw so many fantastic wines from many regions. Such a shame that the current offer in the UK is so limited with many of the retailers stocking the same brands – this really doesn’t reflect the array of producers and quality wines being produced! We also had the privileged opportunity to taste some really old vintages of top wines (including Henschke’s Hill of Grace 1962 with intense but soft and elegant palate, long spicy complex flavour and a freshness which was incredible )– longevity being one of the criteria that defines world class quality wines then the Aussies certainly have some outstanding examples!
Couldn’t agree with you more. I’m currently sourcing lots of really great artisan wines for Wine Behind the Label which we don’t see over here and just posted my notes of the LIWF Coonawarra masterclass on my Australia regional report page with some older gems. But Henschkes’s Hill of Grace 62 takes the biscuit – what a fabulous opportunity and know what you mean about world class wines being defined by longevity. Australia can most certainly do it but what I love about Australia is that it can do that and some of its world class wines can be broachable young too – an advantage I think they could play up more – after all, who how many wine consumers these days keep wines even if they had the facility to do so. Win win.