I hate waste as we retailers make money by collecting drips in a bucket. So, overspending on wine upsets me. I still approach shoppers in any wine store, ‘Pardon me but consider this over here as its better and half the price’.
The reason I preach the virtues of the world class Adelaidean Mount Lofty Range, 350 kilometres in its glorious length, is because the chances of drinking well at a modest price are high. Lettie Teague, in the Wall St Journal, 25th July listed her seven-best-buys which averaged U.S.$23. Over in New Zealand the New World Wine Awards are judging the Top 50 under N.Z.$25. Both are top of the range prices at Glug.
You are blessed with wines like Bengalee Barossa Valley Shiraz 2018 and Crayford Barossa Valley Shiraz Durif 2021.
I made up this back label copy, to help explain why you spend more than you should the moment you try to master the detail. Such a waste.
‘100% certified organic, from two rows of 80 old vines being the Henry Best clone from 1866, west facing to maximise sunshine, 55% pre-soaked, 45% full bunch fermentation, aged for 18 months in tight grained French oak barrels from the famed forests of Voges, so expensive that Beckwith the winery Collie dog, guards them day and night’.
Geoffrey Penfold Hyland in the 1930s and 1940s worried about waste as 40% of the wine stocks had a mysterious maladie. The wine chemist Ray Beckwith was treasured because he fixed these problems with his pH meter and science. He stood behind Max Schubert the man who taught us how to make great wines in a warm climate that would last for decades.
Still, now we have a different crisis as we grow 400,000 tonnes that cannot be sold. You can read my thoughts at glugwines.com.au/wine-australia-crisis/ as published in Wine Business Monthly. Its such a waste and something must be done. Yet how do you revive the perception of the wines of the Murray Basin and for that matter premium Australia?
Then out of the blue Paul Schaafsma, last seen two weeks ago in the Elephant Room, of Annabel’s the Mayfair club launching the Kylie Minogue pink Prosecco, tells us the way. ‘It’s important to maintain freshness, and consumers are looking for bright, not stewed fruit….the key to the Riverland’s problems is the way growers are paid which was set up based on tonnage. This means that the vineyards are being managed to produce the maximum amount of grapes, rather than the best quality possible’.
While you adjust your perception to drinking Murray Basin premium wines may I remind you that all wine can be is sunshine, green leaves and water.
For today think how blessed we all are that the Adelaidean Mount Lofty Range makes world class wines that are also in over supply. Try wines like Andrina Langhorne Creek Shiraz 2022, Albion Hills Langhorne Creek Shiraz 2021, and let those that created the mess fret about the waste created by denigrating the blockies of the Murray basin by calling the wines industrial.
So, Drink Widely Drink Well
David Farmer
