THIS WEEK'S BLOG- ODDS & SODS

ODDS & SODS: Over the festive break, there have been all sorts of things happening in the wine world, here are a few of them:

CORKS vs SCREWCAPS: Pre-Christmas, I called for samples of Petit Verdot, for a tasting regarding an article I am writing for WBM (Wine Business Magazine), especially asking for back vintages so as to be able to talk about how this great variety improves with age. Whilst it was sad to see that some of the biggest and longest standing names in the variety only saw fit to send their current release, some of the little guys were magnanimous enough to send what back vintages they could.

In what could only be described as a “perfect” advertisement for screwcaps these two bottles arrived in the same parcel in the post, having being in transit during the pre-Christmas heatwave.

The bottle on the left was one of the winery’s last 5 cleanskin bottles of its 2005 Petit Verdot out of its museum stash, whereas the one on the right is its current release. The two wines travelled from NSW to Adelaide during the hot spell, in the same carton. What more can I say viva la screwcap!!

While there are some dyed-in-the-wool cork supporters still left, given that almost all of our export markets are in the northern hemisphere, i.e. the wine has to cross the equator whilst in transit, the above image clearly demonstrates why we should be steering/prodding our customers towards screwcap sealed wines. In the back half of last decade, one of our clients had a container of wine delayed (due to a technicality) on the dock by China Customs for 35 days in the middle of their summer. Despite the thermal blanket, when the container was opened almost all of the bottles therein had raised corks, with a few having actually popped out of the bottles. All of the wine was unsaleable and had to be destroyed. This would not have happened had it been under screwcap.

Little by little the “Aussie” message (screwcaps) is getting through to the wine world. On my trip to Austria last year I noticed that some of their 2013 wines and most of their 2014 wines were under screwcap.

Likewise, at the Hong Kong International Wine Fair last year (which I was covering for Winestate Magazine), there were also considerably more wines under screwcap than previously and less under cork.

Just like the motor car did not take over from the horse and cart overnight, screwcaps are gradually taking over from cork as people come to realise that the benefits of untainted wine far, far, outweigh the loss of the “magical” pop as they pull the cork from the bottle (if it hasn’t crumbled in the process).

GLASSES: I recently read a posting by my friend Subhash Aurora on the Indian Wine Academy website https://www.indianwineacademy.com/blog_167_679.aspx that suggests that sparkling wine flutes are falling out of fashion. Stopping and thinking about it, often as not in recent times, I have been served sparkling wines in white wine glasses rather than in “champagne” flutes.

The current flute only took over from its predecessor (the breast-shaped, open wine sparkling glass) in the late 1960s or early 1970s. This occurred because the “new” style flutes did not dissipate the gas in the wine anywhere near as quickly as the open faced glasses did, so it took much longer before the wine went flat.

As an aside, it is interesting to see how many recently made movies/shows about the first half of the 20th century, they wrongly used the current flutes rather than the open faced sparkling wine glasses.

This switch to using wine white glasses seems to be driven by two factors:

1. Laziness – the need to have less glasses on hand for a dinner or tasting.

2. The fact that many people found the small diameter of sparkling flutes a bit awkward and restricting, as well as being less stable and therefore easier to tip over – nothing to do with the quantity of bubbles that had already been consumed!!

So what’s your opinion? To flute or not to flute? Please drop us a line with your thoughts.

PEOPLE: Last year at the Canberra International Riesling Challenge I had the great pleasure of meeting a bloke called Jim Trezise – Riesling champion and President of the New York Wine & Grape Foundation (NYWGF) – a hell of a nice guy.

Recently I received an email advising that Jim was retiring from this post after 30 years of service to the New York State wine industry – in the one role!! (for the whole 30 years that the NYWGF has been in existence). Under Jim’s leadership the growth of the industry has been spectacular, with 59 of the 62 counties in the state now having wineries, there now being 20 “wine trails” in the state and a magazine publication that is truly sensational. The industry has risen from an almost non-existent input into New York State’s economy 30 years ago, to today, where it contributes $4.8 billion to the state’s economy, employs a lot of people and is visible to wine consumers not only in the USA, but also in many parts of the world.

So my question is – Where is our Australian Jim? Our industry is full of suits and indi-bloody-viduals but at present we do not have any characters like Jim or Len Evans, who can drag the industry kicking and screaming to the next level. It is a sad, sad thing.