Yukky blamph and dead fruit

by Tim James

With the help of Jancis Robinson and some Australian gurus we try to answer a reader's questions about the horrors of over-ripeness in wine

'Yukky blamph' is clearly not a phrase to which Jancis Robinson is committed - despite having invented it. When we asked this leading winewriter to explain the concept, she had forgotten using these words. In the last issue of Grape, however, we quoted a wine review from www.jancisrobinson.com in which she wrote of this 'unappetisingly overripe odour' - ie 'yukky blamph' - and mentioned that it was the commonest fault she had come up against in her recent wine-judging experiences in South Africa. She offered 'putrid' as a more respectable expression for the flavour.

One of our readers, Andrew Adrian, wanted to know more, and asked us to 'translate "yukky blamph" into ordinary English'. He continued: 'Please supply me with, or publish, a list of these wines so that we can be enlightened! If you don't have such knowledge - perhaps you should challenge Jancis to provide same. The only wine I have ever tasted with a putrid smell was a badly stored pinot noir that actually tasted rotten - hardly a common event.'

The specific wine to which Jancis Robinson had applied the phrase was not actually a South African one, but the 2001 vintage of a Chilean red she had previously admired: El Principal. She wrote:
'I could handle its 14.6 per cent alcohol quite happily provided the wine offered real refreshment value but the sample I tasted was yet another of those wines made from grapes - "dead grapes" some Australians call them - that had been allowed to pass the point of optimum ripeness. There was also an unattractive furriness of texture on the finish - again suggesting over-ripeness.'

When we approached her with our reader's query, she amplified the concept, as describing 'a very common phenomenon in reds all over the world today - and by no means confined to South Africa, by the way. This results when grapes are picked on phenolic ripeness but the grapes have already developed some unappetising, overripe, sometimes raisined flavours. Rather than titillating the palate the wines assault it. they have lost the one requisite of any drink, that it refreshes.'

The Australia connection

Whatever one calls it, this character is one that many people are now noticing in more and more South African reds, as levels of ripeness go beyond what even the enthusiastic proponents of ripeness have been demanding in their declarations that too many of the local wines were 'green'. The flavour and lack of freshness described by Jancis Robinson are certainly not inevitable in the increasing number of Cape wines that approach or surpass the 15% alcohol level - but the risk is all the greater.

The use of the concept of 'dead grapes', to which Robinson refers, seems to be most widespread in Australia - unsurprisingly perhaps, as this is the country which has led the world's headlong plunge into ultra-ripeness of grapes over the past fifteen years or so. The following, for example, is from a tasting note by leading Australian winewriter and judge, Huon Hooke, made at the 2003 Sydney International Wine Competition:
'A big, fat, hot area, chocolate mocha vanilla type of aroma. Fruitcake like. Really quite a big ripe style. Lots of oak. A little bit broad and shapeless on the palate. The tannin dries out the finish and it has a slightly dead fruit character. It's just lacking a bit of vibrancy. It is certainly big, rich and soft and has heaps of flavour.'

The wine was the prestigious and expensive Peter Lehmann Stonewell 1997 - and drinkers of South African shiraz will recognise many elements of Hooke's description as readily applicable to some Cape examples.

One of Australia's most renowned winemakers and commentators, Brian Croser, is currently conducting some-thing of a campaign against over-ripeness in wines. He was asked by Jancis Robin-son to take further some of his recent criticisms of Australian wine, and he connected over-ripeness with the suggestion that winning shows was not the best means of gauging wine quality:

'My point is that winning wine competitions is not the correct measure because of the idiosyncracies of extensive comparative tastings. The real finesse and terroir-driven qualities of the world's finest cannot be judged in that arena. Dead-fruit Shiraz lavished with sweet oak does well in the extensive line ups but it is a monotonous, terroir-submerging, reproduceable style and good luck to it.' (Croser's comments are available in full on the subscription-only section of www.jancisrobinson.com.)

While the phrase 'yukky blamph' is more expressively heartfelt (and palate-felt) than easy to use precisely, and is unlikely to become a standard description, it is unfortunately the case that we more and more need something of the kind. Any suggestions for a more elegant shorthand term?