Popular, affordable bottle shop brands vs boutique cellar door wines.
I have a confession to make. When I walk into my local supermarket bottle shop, I wouldn’t have a clue what half the wines are. Sure I recognise the mainstay established brands such as Penfolds, Wynns and Jacob’s Creek. But scan the shelves and there seem to be so many labels.
How on earth can the customer begin to know what their provenance is, and what winemaking philosophy lies behind the label? While there’s no doubt there must be some bargains of character and quality among them, how does one tell the good from the mediocre or, if your luck’s out, the bad?
Living close to wineries in one of Australia’s most celebrated wine regions has allowed me to develop a knowledge of the people behind the wines, of their passion for the product and an appreciation of the styles they create. I’m willing to bet that the bulk of those supermarket wines are middle-of-the-road ‘safe’ options that lack the character and definition, in terms of fragrance and flavour profile, that I’ve come to love in North East Victoria’s boutique wines.
To test my theory I recently popped into the local supermarket chain bottle shop and asked the manager to nominate some popular red wines from his shelves, wines he and his customers felt were impressively fragrant. He recommended three wines: Pepperjack Shiraz from the Barossa, Ninth Mile Pinot Noir from Tasmania and Olé Tempranillo from Spain.
He was confident that if I took those three to a dinner party I’d look like I knew my stuff.
So I bought the three – to bench test against wines of similar price point from King Valley and Rutherglen, a selection I rated highly for both quality and fragrance. And there, yes, the local drops had a clear advantage: your friendly cellar door will usually allow you to sample the goods before you choose. There’s rarely an opportunity to do so at a liquor chain store, and certainly none when I went shopping.
Here are some of my findings.
Pepperjack 2013 Barossa Shiraz (from Saltram)
Purchased from: Supermarket bottle shop
Price: $29.99 but widely discounted to between $19 and $22.
One-word description: Safe
Food match: Spag bol, lamb chops with hot English mustard and peas
A spicy nose of cloves and black pepper features. It’s easy to drink: medium weight to light, with soft tannins and some gentle oak integration, but it lacked the magic I craved. As promised, it is a fragrant wine, with nice scents of ripe cherries, candy apple toffee; layers of plum and blackberries lift from the glass.
Where it seems to fail is in the palate: it’s a touch too lightweight for me to consider a serious shiraz. It felt lean and finished tight, without any great length. Others have scored this wine with high marks, but noted it needs a little time before it reaches its best. But I couldn’t help thinking it lacked the edgy idiosyncracies that suggest a single vineyard or regional fruit character is asserting its merit.
Perhaps I was asking too much of a blended mass-market product? While it does display fine oak integration and flavours suggesting quality ripe fruit, it simply did not entertain me. I felt it was, on balance, slightly dull. Old world but without the charm.
King River Estate Saperavi 2011
Purchased from: Cellar door
Price: $35
One-word description: Bold
Food match: Slow-cooked beef cheek
King Valley winemaker Trevor Knagg’s Saperavi is deeply fragrant and impressive. Prunes, licorice, black pepper, sweet herbaceous layers and light floral violet touches burst from the glass. It’s an inky deep crimson, and tastes as rich and full flavoured as it looks.
Saperavi, a thick-skinned, big, bold and brash varietal originally from Georgia (formerly part of Soviet Russia), certainly delivers some firm Eastern European grunt, making it perhaps a food-only wine. It’s great in cold weather as it fills the mouth with fat and velvety, yet very drying tannins. Layers of plums, blackberries, cooked prunes and more savoury notes follow. I’d happily pair this with a beef stroganoff or even a Russian borscht with meat: perhaps beef cheek.One note of caution: it’s a wonderfully fragrant red gem but it needs time to open up. Trevor suggests you give it a minimum of 24 hours to breathe, plus decanting, to coax the best fruit from this wine.
The Saperavi made for an interesting side-by-side comparison with the Pepperjack. But I found the boutique product wildly more impressive. If you’re stuck in a varietal rut, get out of your comfort zone and discover this challenging new wine.
Olé! Tempranillo Vino Tinto 2011 Espania (Import)
Price: $15.99
Purchased from: Supermarket bottle shop
One-word description: Bland
Food match: Nachos with a very attractive date!
This wine has a nice price and a clever wine label to boot, but it lacks the character I’ve found in the grape in Spain, even in modest wines. The colour was dull for a four-year-old wine, almost lifeless, and there was next to nothing of the enticing fruit fragrance I would expect from a decent glass of this varietal. The Pepperjack Shiraz smashes it to pieces, though at the $30 price point you’d certainly hope so.
On the palate, the Olé was stalky at first, hinting perhaps at a quality compromise, the use of prematurely picked fruit. After time it does begin to open up, just a little… There were faint echoes of plum and cherries, but even that seemed somehow muddled. The palate however, was soft with no untoward harshness. Unfortunately, it remained dark and lifeless, flat in character, even bland.
Spain does produce incredible wine, this just is not one of them. I recommend you leave this one on the shelf.
Lana 2012 Il Nostro Gallo – ‘Our Rooster’
Purchased from: Restaurant/cellar door
Price: under $30.
One-word description: Marvellous
Food match: Slow braised rabbit, chestnut and mushroom ravioli
Lana wines, produced in the King Valley, is is a project indictive of passion and care from winemaker Joel Pizzini. The label’s home is the Mountain View Hotel, Whitfield, where sommelier Mario Mori is particularly excited to discuss and pour this wine.
The nose is delicately lifted with sweet fragrances of cinnamon, plums and delicate spices. This coupled with a slight candy-apple-toffee nuance to flag a unique and fragrant sangiovese of star quality. With this wine Joel has shown creative flair in blending, adding small percentages of two Italian varietals, canaiolo and colorino, which are used in making Chianti. The combination produces an excellent layered character resulting in a blend with finesse.
The fleshy, savoury palate displays juicy plums, spiced cherries and white pepper. It took some time for those cherries to come to the fore so leave this wine to breathe for an hour at room temperature. This will allow it to open up and showcase the nuances built into its delicate medium body. It’s a current favourite, one that – in my book – tops other Pizzini-branded wines.
I rate Joel a mastermind.
Jones 2012 Malbec
Purchased from: Cellar door
Price: $32
One-word description: Unique
Food match: Pickled or grilled octopus, green olives, grilled pork
To my mind this wine features a nose that is ‘glossy’ or polished on top. By this I mean that it displays a selection of very deep bramble fruit with a unique layer of lightly-spiced toasted fennel seeds atop. It’s almost like a marriage of the perfect light and shade: deep, dark earthy tones complemented with vibrant, expressive bright spice. It’s the bold and the beautiful if you catch my drift.
Like many complex red wines, with time it will release more unique fragrances. A good swirl around the glass releases some fantastic toffee apple candy with an accompanying spicy fennel-seed spark. This wine screams out for some fabulous food, and I can’t help but think to pair it with marinated char-grilled octopus or simply garlic- and herb-cured green mammoth olives. An orange and fennel salad with any grilled meats would also work. Think spiced Mediterranean meat dishes.
The Jones Malbec, a product of quality winemaking, smells unique and divine. It does require some oxygenation – so perhaps open it an hour or so before pouring into a large burgundy glass.
Rutherglen Estates 2013 Tempranillo
Purchased from: Cellar door
Price: $22
One-word description: Seductive
Food match: Simple Spanish fare, squid and chorizo, spicy meatballs
Now this tempranillo does bear comparison with some of the best Spanish examples I tasted last year at Barcelona’s Michelin-starred Roca Moo restaurant. It’s an absolute cracker that shows what the varietal can produce.
This Rutherglen Estates wine lifts the bar with a sweet, succulent and rich bouquet. It’s everything a ripe Spanish tempranillo should be, combining wonderful expressions of those moreish toffee-apple candy scents with ripe cherries.
Some parcels of the wine are matured in American oak then blended back with parcels from softer French oak, creating a strong but well-integrated textural appeal. A vanillin fragrance from the American oak colours this wine further. The best of both worlds approach really works well for this varietal. And it is very clear that this early ripening varietal is extremely happy in the warm Mediterranean climate of Rutherglen, producing fruit generous in flavour.
A food match for this drop is not critical, as the wine stands so damn tall on its own. But if pressed I’d keep it simple: a light tomato pasta, a spicy meat ball or some squid and chorizo. The Rutherglen Estates 2013 Tempranillo also represents great value as a sweet and fragrant red wine that lingers on the palate, a simple joy to drink at a modest price.
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