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Old grape vines from Australia's Eden Valley. Photo
by Mark Davidson
Sales of Australian reds in the U.S. have fallen by nearly 10 percent in the last year. In the last two years the value of red wine exports has dropped nearly 20 percent -- suggesting an increasingly bleak market for premium bottlings. But statistics aren't necessary to tell you this: In wine shops across the U.S., Australian shiraz is now discounted or closed out.
Ten years ago, Aussie reds could not have been hotter. Critics were rhapsodic over their richness and power, reflecting a heritage of old vine fruit of which that few countries in the world could boast. Indeed, Australia possessed some of the oldest syrah vines in the world; century-old vines weren't uncommon. One wine is made from what is believed to be oldest syrah/shiraz plot in the world, planted 166 years ago: the extraordinary Freedom 1843 bottling from Langmeil, in the Barossa Valley. All of this represented thrilling promise for Australia's global viticultural standing and for a variety gaining tremendous momentum.
Among Australia's venerable vineyards
is this one, planted in 1889. Photo by
Mark Davidson
And yet in its heyday a decade ago, Australian shiraz became inextricably associated with the powerful, fiercely rich wines of the Barossa Valley and environs in South Australia. These wines possessed levels of concentration that few wines elsewhere in the world could match. Even with imposing alcoholic strength (and in South Australia's more torrid growing regions, it could hardly be otherwise) many of these wines, particularly the old vine bottlings, felt grounded and precise.
These were the wines that eventually caught the attention of Robert A. Parker, who posted stratospheric scores in his influential journal, The Wine Advocate. For an entire country, it changed the game. There is a telling story about the transition by Campbell Mattinson in his chronicle of the Australian wine industry, "Why the French Hate Us," published in 2007.
Mattinson describes how then-unknown Barossa shiraz producer Chris Ringland was awakened by the fax machine in his home office in the wee hours one morning in 1998. Bleary-eyed, he went to the fax and pulled off a document -- it was a request for his shiraz, from an American consumer. As Ringland read it, he thought some poor inebriated sot had drunk-faxed him with a meaningless order. Then the machine beeped to life again, and a second order was transmitted, then a third and a fourth. By first light, the orders were coming in by the dozens. Weeks before, unbeknown to Ringland, someone had put a bottle of his wine under the nose of Parker, who wrote this combustible review: "Viscous, full-bodied, extremely thick and heavy (no finesse to be found in this monster)," he wrote, "this wine represents the maximum, or some would say the extreme expression of its terroir and varietal composition."
In what seems like a peculiar incongruity, Parker compared Ringland's wine to Cheval Blanc -- not just any Cheval Blanc, but with the iconic 1947 bottling, which itself was described bizarrely as unctuous, thick and portlike. The score? Ninety-nine out of 100 points. In just a few sentences, the standards for Australian shiraz, which had been appropriately diverse, were locked into a new paradigm, one for which "extreme expression" was to be strived. Parker's rave set Australia's industry down the path of extreme styles, and Barossa led the way.
For the rest of the country's shiraz producers, two problems emerged. First, all the other styles of Australian shiraz were devalued in deference to the style Parker preferred. Alternate expressions were summarily dismissed or ignored. In subsequent vintages, those left behind strived to emulate the Barossa style no matter where they came from, often hanging fruit long past the point of maturation, long after it could express typicity any more than a box of raisins could.
Shriveling grapes. Photo by Tony Proffitt
The second consequence was that emulators of extreme shiraz started to dumb down the product, creating mass-produced brands made from mechanically harvested, egregiously overcropped vines. The sweet simple juice had all off-flavors corrected, simplified, smoothed over with flavor additives, oak dust, color fixatives and sugar. The result was as mass-produced as a plastic Chinese toy, and tasted like it, and it cheapened the category to such an alarming degree that the reputation of an entire country's shiraz got dragged down with it.
The most ubiquitous of these commodity brands was Yellow Tail, which hit the U.S. market with millions of cases of ordinary, lifeless juice, of which the American consumer quickly tired, and soon thereafter lost interest in Australian shiraz altogether.
All is not lost, however. The Australian Wine Board has made concerted efforts to remind consumers and especially sommeliers that the country's wines have started to emerge from the era of monochromatism, and the wines are again showing typicity. Producers are returning to more modest growing practices, reining in ripeness levels and producing wines that are more balanced, more distinctive and more faithful to place than at any time in the last decade.
At a recent tasting in Los Angeles, the full range appeared in force: the exotic sandalwood and cinnamon scents in Brokenwood's 2007 Hunter Valley Shiraz; the meaty, savory flavors of "Georgia's Paddock"; the biodynamically produced Heathcote bottling from Jasper Hill; and the plummy richness of John Duval's 2007 Barossa bottling "Entity."
A select few wineries never went extreme in the first place. The tasting concluded with three of Australia's most iconic bottlings, from some of its more cherished old shiraz plots: the vinous, profound 2004 Langmeil "Freedom 1943" Shiraz; the burnished, power-driven 2004 Penfold's Grange; and the seamless majesty of Henschke's 2005 Hill of Grace. They serve to remind that Australia's great shiraz heritage will ultimately steer its future path. As California's syrah vines mature, perhaps they'll play the similar guiding role.
Patrick Comiskey is chief critic for non-California domestic wines for Wine & Spirits Magazine. He is writing a book chronicling the American Rhone wine movement.
Other articles on Syrah by Patrick Comiskey:
The Cool Edge of Syrah: In California, climate determines its style. The wine's future here may also be climate controlled.
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