September, 2002

I am really happy that Ifinally got a chance to go down under, and am excited now for Rachel, as she sets out on her similar journey touring the Grateful Palate properties. I am also extremely thankful to Dan Philips, not only for providing us with an extraordinary portfolio of wines to sell but also for personally escorting Lori and me on every visit — helping make it an even better learning experience!

(An important side benefit to this was not having to get directions to anyplace — all I had to do was follow Dan! — and of course remember to drive on the left!!!)

As I’m sure you all know, understanding a wine region fully is virtually impossible unless you have been there. I didn’t really understand France, Italy or Spain until I visited the vineyards, felt the soil, talked to the winemakers, and ate the local food with the wine etc... And the same is true of Australia.

Incidentally, these Australian growers on the whole, are the NICEST people! We were so warmly received and they are so unpretentious.

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Wine production "down under" has a long history — the origins coming just after the country was settled in the mid 1800’s. The country really WAS settled by convicts by the way — thousands of "undesirables" (mostly petty thieves etc) from English society were sent to the end of the earth to live out their sentences — mainly as indentured servants creating the building blocks of the cities that would become Sydney and Melbourne for example.

(Of course along with the settlement of a new land in the name of the Queen came the well documented atrocities and massacres of the indigenous aboriginal people — IMHO much worse than what we did to our own Native Americans...)

Anyway, it wasn’t long before the English realized that much of the climate in Oz was extremely well suited to the growing of grapes (much more so than their home country that’s for sure!) So, it didn’t take long for them to look at this vast continent as a possible "wine basket" and to easily supply wine for the home country — and in the process become less reliable on foreign sources like France for example...

And plant, grow and ferment they did.

Over the years, they have mainly produced cheap plonk for the everyday British citizen to drink. And the success of Australian wine over the years has been as a result of this ability to produce vast quantities of cheap wine, whether it be generic "Burgundy"or fortified "Ports" (something they used to be quite renowned for), to more recent developments like Chardonnay from any of the mega-wine companies like Penfolds or Lindeman’s.

And HUGE these companies are. One of the things you realize quickly when touring the small growers that we buy from Dan Philips, is what an incredible EXCEPTION this is to the RULE. The rule is BIG. The well known brands like those mentioned above are HUGE conglomerates (giant negociants) who have traditionally purchased grapes from growers - but never the twain shall meet. To this day, most Australian wine is produced via the negociant system and there are almost NO growers who bottle their own wines! Even world famous GRANGE is not produced from Penfolds’ own vineyards — it has always been made from a BLEND of different growers every year from all over Australia who "make the cut". (so much for terroir!!!)

Of course, many of the Grateful Palate producers are estate bottled, but this is a rather new development. In general, Dan’s portfolio has focused on the few PRIME RED WINE growing regions of Barossa, McLaren Vale, Eden Valley, Langhorne Creek, Clare Valley, Padthaway, and Coonawarra. These are the regions we visited and where a lot of OLD VINE Shiraz still exists. Barossa is the grand cru region, the area where the most old vine Shiraz still exists, and where the revolution of growers and winemakers working more closely together has really taken hold.

There is nothing in the portfolio from the Hunter Valley, which is where all the big guys get all those "Bin 12345" Chardonnay grapes for example, nor from the west of the country — where there is definitely some good wine being made (we tasted some really good Margaret River Pinots and Rieslings for example) but as Dan explained, having to fly all this way several times a year is hard enough without having to then fly cross country and back while you’re there. Besides, I think he certainly has enough top wine from the top regions to sell! It’s sort of like us focusing on Napa and Sonoma in California — which is pretty much the right way to go — we could have Mendocino and Lake Counties represented if we wanted but why bother?

Unlike any other wine region I have ever seen, irrigation plays a bigger role in the production of Aussie wine than almost anywhere else. Most of the country is incredibly ARID with very little rainfall, of course, one thinks of the vast outback, but even in the wine country, in most places, it doesn’t rain ENOUGH to produce good grapes. In fact, in the pre-irrigation days, the vineyards would actually be planted in the FLOOD PLAINS by the edge of a river (usually the mighty Murray), and the farmers would jump for joy when two or three times each winter, the river would crest and flood their entire vineyards! Why? Because this would provide enough water for the vine to survive the entire rest of the dry hot growing season.

The ideal soils for growing grapes here are also completely different than anything you’ve learned from Europe or California. Down under, the best soils have plenty of CLAY in them — you see, here the idea is to RETAIN water, not drain it like almost everywhere else! That’s another reason you don’t see a lot of hillside vineyards, the valley floor does the best job of water retention...There are exceptions to the rule of course, one glorious one being the 115 year old hillside "Block 6" Shiraz vineyard at Kay’s Amery Vineyards.

The other surprising thing about wine growing here is the vast reliance on mechanization. With the extreme lack of human labor here (the whole time we drove around this huge country, Lori kept saying "where are all the people???") and the lack of a subculture of pickers and pruners like CA has from Mexico, the Australians years ago embraced technology to solve these problems and today, it is still the norm for most vineyard work to be done by machine (including harvesting and even pruning (especially nasty!) And of course, it is easy for less than quality oriented producers to jack up the yields to incredible levels (even to the tune of 25 tons to the acre!!!) by over-watering the vineyards, which is still fairly common. Some of these techniques are changing slowly and the Grateful Palate producers are leading the way.

Even though they have been making wine since 1830 or so, it is only a recent phenomenon that growers have been incentivized for quality (with our man Dan having a major impact!) Up until the early 1980’s, there was almost NO market for dry wine at all (!) not even for the old vine Shiraz, which were being made almost exclusively into fortified wine! Of course, grape prices were meager and growers couldn’t make ends meet. The reaction by the government to this veritable "depression" in the wine industry (as recently as 1984!) was the "Vine Pull" program, whereby the government actually paid growers to rip up vineyards! This was devastating, not the least reason because most growers chose to trash their OLDEST vines (because they were lower producers!) and in one fell swoop, the majority of all the super old vine Shiraz was yanked from the ground!

Of course, over the past 10-15 years or so, there has been a renaissance (particularly with the GP portfolio) with Aussie Shiraz really gaining market acceptance and growers being rewarded for quality both in the marketplace (and on the pages of the Wine Advocate). This has emboldened them to continue to improve, reducing yields, fine tuning their barrel regimens, producing better and better wines.

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OK some general comments about recent vintages in South Australia (Barossa, McLaren Vale etc) :

• 1996 and 1998 were universally GREAT VINTAGES.
• 1997 and 1999 less so.
• The really good news is what great material we have coming down the pike.
• 2000 is clearly a big improvement over 99. 2001 MUCH better (mostly on a par with 98). And 2002 is clearly going to be OUTSTANDING (probably better than 96 or 98!).

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Highlights of our visits:

Burge Family — the introspective Rick Burge is a warmly serious man and he makes warmly serious wines. The Olive Hill Chateauneuf- like blend is terrific and the Draycott Shiraz both powerful and elegant. His wines are always superbly balanced and NOT over the top. He also makes an EXCELLENT Semillon (yes they really exist!) We tasted a VERTICAL of 99, 00 and 01 and the 99 was extraordinary! Then, he gave us a bottle of 1991(!) which we had in Fiji with some grilled lobster and it was fabulous (really!).

Noon — What a great visit! Drew Noon is such a cool dude and clearly a great winemaker — he almost didn’t take over his father’s old vine Grenache vineyard in the early 80s — he was graduating college and thought that there was no future in grape growing. Glad he decided to keep the vineyard in the family! His 01 and 02 Reserve Shiraz (actually sourced from the same vineyard each year in Langhorne Creek are sublime and so is his blended wine, Eclipse. All his wines are clean, elegant, rich and balanced. Just delicious. One of the stars in the book IMHO!

Dutschke — Partnership between winemaker Wayne Dutschke, who many of you have met and who is VERY talented, and the QUINTESSENTIAL old-time grower and character Ken Semmler (son of Oscar who the reserve wine is named for). When we met Ken Semmler, I realized we really WERE in Australia — he is a character right out of Crocodile Dundee! But he is also a great farmer and has farmed the land there in the Barossa since 1975 when he personally planted the Oscar Semmler vineyard. We tasted some awesome 02 barrel samples. Everything is great here.

Greenock Creek — Though not personally my favorite style of wine (can you say HUGE?), this is probably the MOST FAMOUS cult winery of the entire GP portfolio. This very genial husband and wife team (name: Waugh) produce about 3000 cs/yr entirely from their own vineyards which they purchased in the mid-70s. Greenock Creek is a VERY HOT AND DRY subzone of Barossa and because they don’t irrigate at all, the yields on these vineyards are a ridiculously low (for the area) 1-1.5 tons/acre. The result are HUGE wines — very high in alcohol (the Turleys of Australia?) All French oak used for the Cabernet and American for Shiraz (the norm) but only 10% is new. Exception is the Roenfeldt Road bottlings which are 100% new oak. In addition to Apricot Block, 7 Acre and Roenfeldt, a new vineyard is coming on line with the 00 vintage called "Alice’s Vineyard" and it is quite good (and hopefully less expensive than the big guns)

Three Rivers — Probably the SMALLEST winery I will ever see, the certifiable superstar Chris Ringland’s home property is ONE ACRE of incredible 100 YEAR-OLD vine Shiraz that produces between 2 and 3 barrels (hogsheads) per year of AWESOME wine that reminds one of Guigal La-La wines. Chris is definitely the REAL DEAL. The wine has become SUPER expensive since Parker gave it 100 pts? But it is incredibly good and rare. The 97 is about to be released — it is not as good as the 96 or the otherworldly 98 that we tasted out of barrel — wow!

• Interesting winemaking note: Chris Ringland does NOT believe in topping up barrels! He closes the barrels with silicon bungs and only opens the barrels every 6 months to taste...he never tops and claims this concentrates the wines due to evaporation and as long as you don’t constantly open the barrels, oxygen stays out. The proof is in the wines I guess!

Just because Three Rivers doesn’t "exist" really doesn’t mean you can’t sell wines made by this VERY talented man — he is also the full time winemaker at ROCKFORD (and has been since 1989) and consults on the Italian wines from Puglia that we sell (Poggio Il Pino)

Rockford — A historical winery in that they were the leaders in the qualitative revolution of fine red wines starting in 1985. Up until recently, the wines have only been sold through the cellar door. Everything is HAND-PICKED and winemaking is VERY TRADITIONAL — they use a 100 year old basket press!!

The Riesling here is VERY good and the reds, particularly the Basket Press Shiraz are excellent.

Kay’s Amery Vineyards — Also historical as this McLaren Vale winery has been around for over ONE HUNDRED years!!! Established in 1890 and producing wine from 100 estate-grown fruit (!). We tasted a VERTICAL 1996-2001 of "Hillside Shiraz" and the famous 112 year old "Block 6 Shiraz" vineyard and these are truly excellent wines.

Clarendon — David Hickenbotham of Paringa "fame"’s own vineyard that is very famous in its own right as it has supplied the fruit for Clarendon Hills for many years, not to mention Grange for at least the 97 vintage. David is now starting to reclaim some of his own fruit from contracts and released the 98 vintage Cabernet last year under the Clarendon label. It was a big success and the 99 is just as good if not better!

David is an amazingly nice, generous and gentle man. He has been a very successful GROWER for a long time — he has an AMAZING home that is built into the side of a mountain. Architecturally amazing and beautifully decorated...

After touring these amazing vineyards, David took us by PRIVATE PLANE up to Paringa, which is located up near the (mighty) Murray River, in an area called the Riverland. This region is where OCEANS of cheap wine is normally produced (negociants like Penfolds pay by the ton so most growers irrigate the hell out of the vast vineyard land here) David’s idea (which is obviously working) is to LOWER THE YIELD (what a concept) and produce REALLY GOOD WINE that happens to be cheap. The results are truly amazing as you have tasted. The Paringa wines are among the best values in our entire book. The REALLY GOOD NEWS is that the possibility for David to really RAMP UP production exists and we may have LOTS more Paringa to sell in the future.

Henry’s Drive and Parson’s Flat — A great visit with Sparky Marquis who makes these wines for the growers of these vineyards in Padthaway, a cooler region than Barossa and located on the way to Coonawarra (which is even cooler). Sparky has a great gig here and produces stunning quality at reasonable prices. Of course, you all know what great values the MARQUIS PHILIPS wines are (which is a blend from throughout South Australia) and have been selling a TON of them. However, Sparky is the REAL DEAL and it behooves all of us to sell and support everything he is involved in. You should really get to know Henry’s Drive and Parson’s Flat — and I can tell you that the 2001’s about to be released this fall, are the best so far from these two properties.

Trevor Jones: What a cool dude! He has transformed his family’s winery (they have made another brand for years called Kellermeister (with the world’s ugliest packaging!) and he is a REALLY good winemaker, making TONS of Virgin Chardonnay now (Dan has been super-successful selling this around the entire country!) as well as the terrific dry-grown Shiraz and Wild Witch Shiraz...

Other highlights (my fingers are getting tired!) included: Nuriootpa High School — Amazing! It really IS a winery in a high school! Right smack in the middle of the Barossa Valley! The teacher is amazing — the students farm the grapes and make the wine under his supervision (though they are not allowed to TASTE!) When we were there, there was a news crew from ABC that filmed and interviewed Dan and me...the school also has a fish hatchery, all kinds of crops, sheep, cows etc. Amazing — I can’t imagine what fun it must be for these kids to go to school here!

Rusden — We had a wonderful barbeque here (featuring grilled Kangaroo) and barrel tasted some nice wines. Highlights are the Zinfandel (really!) and the Chenin Blanc is much better than it used to be.

Brothers in Arms — REALLY OLD VINES. Didn’t meet the winemaker but they have a brand new winery and looks like good things are coming down the pike.

Majella — Dan’s only winery in Coonawarra and the best I’m told. Everything is estate-bottled and we barrel tasted with the winemaker and grower. This is a region best known for Cabernet and the Cab is really good here (though of course the Shiraz is excellent, too.)

All in all, a great trip.

I hope many of you will someday get the chance to do this tour like I did. Maybe one summer we’ll all go!!!!

Harmon