At the April meeting of the Wine Club Derek Whitmell presented a talk on the Wines of Australia and compared the present situation with that of three years ago. He had researched the current prices of some of the wines he selected for the 2008 meeting and had found that they were now between 13% and 35% dearer. It appears that most of the Australian wine, sold in the U.K., is produced by three very large companies, using a variety of labels and is shipped in bulk and bottled here for the supermarkets, which have 70% of the market. This wine is often referred to as “industrial wine”. Derek expressed his preference for wines made and bottled on site by small producers and had obtained these both from The Wine Society and also from Waitrose.
The first of the whites was a Semillon from Peter Lehmann in the Barossa Valley. This was only 10.5% alcohol and had a good clean taste. At £9.95 a bottle it was not cheap but would make an excellent aperitif especially if served in the garden on a sunny summer’s day. This was followed by a “blind tasting” of two chardonnays, the first was an oaked Australian wine and the second an unoaked one from the Macon-Vergisson area of France. It would have been easy to believe that these were from two totally different grape varieties such was the influence of the oak and it was enlightening to taste the one against the other. The final white was an excellent Pinot Grigio made by Brown Brothers and bought from Waitrose at £7.99.
The red wines started with another “blind tasting” between a Grenache/Syrah blend from Vacqueras in the Southern Rhone and a very similar one from Australia’s McLaren Vale. These were followed by a Shiraz/Cabernet from the Margaret River area of Western Australia – a powerful wine that needed to be drunk with food. Lastly we had a 2008 Icarus Shiraz from McLaren Vale purchased from The Wine Society at only £5.50 – an excellent wine which sold out within the first few weeks of being listed.
We are indebted to Derek for all his hard work and for providing us with such an enjoyable evening.
Mike Collins