Is bigger really best?

Does Cape wine really need ‘icon’ or ‘cult’ wines of the kind that get rave reviews in America? Jeremy Oliver, one of Australia’s foremost wine commentators, has serious doubts about the good that ‘Parkerisation’ has done to that country’s wines. He talks here to Tim James about the development of Australian wines over the last decade or so, and some of the lessons for South Africa.

How difficult is it these days to find Australian wines which do not fall into the accepted stereotype (probably based on modern Barossa shiraz): highly alcoholic, heavily extracted, ultra-ripe, fruity, a trifle sweet, and heavily wooded?

Not at all difficult in Australia. While there is a market for ultra-ripe and rather alcoholic red wine in Australia, there is still a strong local demand for wines of shape, elegance and finesse. The US is the main market for the extreme examples of ultra-ripe Australian reds, and there are dozens of wineries that specifically customise their wines for American wine critics and buyers, whose wines are not sold in Australia on the grounds that they would not be taken seriously here.

Briefly, why do you seem to regret at least some of what has happened to Australian wine in the last decade or two?

Most mature wine producing countries are being encouraged by the global wine market to create wines that best reflect their region of origin and, at the sharp end of the market, their terroir. The trend around the world to make wine from ultra-ripe grapes robs the wines of their bright, fruit-driven sweetness and flavour, the very things that best reflect site and terroir. Flavours of plums, berries, cherries and flowers become flavours of prunes, currants, raisins, tar and leather, as they reflect dehydrated fruit, not fruit harvested from balanced vineyards at true physiological ripeness.

Australia has more than its fair share of such wines, with the result that, according to many international opinion leaders, that’s all we should even bother trying to make. I can show you shirazes made in this way from a collection of regions including Margaret River, McLaren Vale, the Barossa Valley, central Victoria and inland New South Wales that all taste virtually the same. Regional, vineyard and terroir differences fly out the window, in favour of fruit and alcohol bombs that all taste the same and tend to fall apart quickly in the bottle. Again, I have the wines that prove this.

The danger is that, while the wine industries of other countries (South Africa certainly included) are taken more seriously as makers of wines of recognisable international quality hallmarks, Australian wine is being tarred with a very different brush. In itself that is sending a variety of dangerous messages to our winemakers: that they are not being taken as seriously as other international wineries, that there is no point in them trying to express regionality or terroir, that they needn’t bother making wines with genuine cellaring potential, and that, despite their best efforts to the contrary, all they’re good for is to produce impressively concentrated, short-term wines whose statuesque exterior gives them no chance whatsoever to compete on the same playing-ground as great wines from other parts of the world.

That’s selling Australia short – by many a mile, and it makes me very, very frustrated. Australia has many world-class vineyards that instead are only making American-class wines.

You have, in fact, suggested that the all-powerful American critic Robert Parker is to be blamed for ensuring the dominance of the exaggerated style in Australia.

Not for a moment do I think that Robert Parker has any devious agenda towards his reporting on Australian wine. Indeed he is very consistent in identifying wines that have clearly been clinically and cynically made with the specific purpose of appealing to his palate. But there is no doubt that, through the nature of his preferences, which have come to progressively favour ever-more-alcoholic Australian reds over the last five years or so, and through the power of his opinion in the US and other markets, he is the single most important influence behind the creation of these wines. He has recorded in print that he does not believe Australian reds have been altered to suit his palate, but my view is diametrically opposed to that, and I have many reasons to believe so.

Surely the major role played by wine shows in Australia must also have been significant in rewarding and encouraging such wines? And what about the role of the winewriters and wine-buyers in Britain – where Australian wine made its crucial international breakthrough?

The seriously over-exaggerated wines I am most concerned about are not sold in Australia, and nor are they entered into Australian wine shows. Frankly, because most wine show judges in Australia have large winery backgrounds, it would be unlikely for these styles to be very successful in Australian wine shows. The larger Australian wine companies have not really moved into these styles in a major way, and in my view the Parkerised wines still jar with the palates of most Australian wine judges. Having said that, wine shows typically pick the best show wines, and it would be wrong to suggest that fine, elegant red wines stand much of a chance of doing very well in Australian wine shows.

By and large British winewriters have turned on Australian wines. The virtually unqualified support of three or so years ago has given way to cries of ‘industrial’, ‘over-ripe’, ‘sweet’, ‘soulless’, ‘bland’, etc, etc. Given the proportion of wine in the UK sold through supermarkets and the sheer cut-throat approach taken by the supermarket buyers, plus their legendary lack of loyalty to their suppliers, the heat is on for winemakers around the world to deliver as much quality as possible at the price demanded. Australian makers have chosen to engage with the supermarkets, and as a consequence are not delivering as much quality as they could if price were less of an issue. So, to a large degree in the UK, Australia is synonymous with cheap, reliable, consistent and flavoursome wines that are almost empirically lacking in individuality or character. Yet the sales of these wines suggest that their buyers are not reading the wine press – or else they choose to ignore it.

Australian needs to get a better reputation in the UK – that much is patently obvious – and to do so it has to create a strong presence for its better wines. They certainly exist, but by and large they’re having difficulty in building a secure beachhead in this market.

Now that Australia is doing so spectacularly well in the American market, is this going to reinforce the ‘Parkerising’ tendency?

Quite possibly. I do however, have faith that there are enough inquisitive Americans with internationally educated palates that will welcome to an increasing degree the other school of Australian wines, and the ones that we rate well over here. Personally, I am looking forward to the challenge of taking what Australians consider to be our best wines over to the US for people there to be able to make up their own minds about them. Frankly, too many American buyers are involved in this debate without really opening up enough Australian wine to be able to do it justice. They’re comparing the words of one writer against others’ without really having the palate experience to have a clue what they’re talking about.

In the last decade, as South African producers on both a large and small scale have tried to compete on the international market, we have seen, as some would put it, an increased ‘Australianisation’ of Cape wines. Demands for greater ripeness have possibly led in some cases to improved quality, and certainly to a widespread inexorable rise in alcohol levels. When Cape wines are awarded high points by Parker, or by the American magazine Wine Spectator, this tends to be reported with glee locally. Apart from the unattractive cultural cringe involved (or is it just naivety or simple financial greed?), is this appropriate, do you think, or should we be fearful of trying to win such praise?

In my view, since South African winegrowers have had access to better planting material and better viticultural knowledge, your wines have indeed become riper and more alcoholic as well. I believe this to have been an inevitable process irrespective of what has been happening in Australia. Whether or not your wines will ultimately dwell at current levels of alcohol and ripeness will depend on such factors as when grape growers believe their fruit hits full physiological ripeness. If physiological ripeness occurs at too high a sugar level, it might become a test of will to see if they are prepared to do the work in the vineyard to ensure it happens at a lower level. We are facing precisely that challenge in Australia at the moment.

In Australia, too, high Parker scores or Wine Spectator scores create headlines. Like them or hate them, both sources have given thousands of Americans permission to pay very high amounts for Australian wines by telling them that the best from Australia is as good as the best from the rest of the world. Clearly, there’s good in that. But the writers should accept the wines for what they are, and not attempt to initiate large-scale change to suit the power of their own palates.

Personally, I don’t think Parker has much of a clue as to what makes the Australian wine industry tick. He has been here only once, and briefly. His perspective of Australian wine is not shared by any indigenous Australian wine critic. I believe it is very dangerous for Australian winemakers to make wine specifically for him – or indeed any other particular critic – since there is no guarantee of either his longevity (ie like any of us, tomorrow he could be hit by a bus) or of his ongoing preference in style. Without Parker’s strong and ongoing support, many of these wines would lose their key and indeed their only media champion.

Harvey Steiman of the Wine Spectator is a very different operator. I know Harvey well (while I have never met Parker) and he is a regular visitor to Australia. In my opinion, Harvey appreciates a broader spectrum of different wines and is infinitely more likely to give coverage to wines of elegance, finesse and tightness.

At the end of the day, South Africa is always going to make the best South African wines in the world. And in my view, the best South African wines are those that – while they might reflect some internationally recognisable elements of structure and style – will become tightly and obviously associated with your country’s best sites and terroirs. Different grape varieties will be chosen based on their ability to do this to the highest level.

Of course this is already happening, and I am a strong and fortunate supporter of many of South Africa’s best winemakers, several of whom are already producing great wines of international class. One of them, André van Rensburg, told me recently that he doesn’t want Robert Parker to taste his wines. He doesn’t need him to. The main point, however, is for your best growers and makers to have a clear understanding of what makes a great wine in the global sense, and to do their best to do that in their own environment. Irrespective of what anyone else says.

What Australia has done better than anyone else in recent years relates to the making of uncomplicated, accessible and drinkable wines that make people happy, if you’ll excuse such a blatantly simplistic comment. Till now at least, Australia has also created the strongest and most marketable brands, acquired the best distribution and relationships with retailers and trade. That’s been this country’s real ace in the hole.

Is one of the lessons that Cape producers should learn that shows and competitions are, at least, ambiguous: while they might help to ‘improve the breed’ (as the cliché has it), do they also tend to encourage immediately impressive wines, but wines which are often difficult to actually drink with pleasure?

As I suggested earlier, shows are very good at picking show wines. The best wines are usually overlooked in favour of those that stand out, for whatever reason applies on the day. Some show pony styles are also very good wines, but they are a clear minority. South Africa makes many excellent wines. In my view, the best way to promote these wines is to put them in front of highly rated international and local journalists who, if all other things are equal, should have the opportunity and the ability to see them for what they are and communicate accordingly about them. Shows will help get rid of the flaws, but offer little with respect to innovation or evolution of wine style. The Australian wine show system, which is many times the size of that in South Africa, provides absolutely no indication whatsoever of who is making the best wine in this country.

* Jeremy Oliver was in the Cape to judge for the Diners Club Awards. His website, www.onwine.com.au is a fully independent source of material on Australian wine