The Wine Rules #1 – Vintage
by Dudley Brown
Imagine that you love freshly picked Pink Lady apples and that you’ve just bought a bag of 20 “New Season” Pink Lady apples from an upmarket green grocer. You get home and discover three of the apples are not Pink Ladies but Red Delicious. You take the bag back and tell the blue haired employee you want a refund. You insist that what you bought isn’t what was advertised and starting behaving like a indignant pork chop about this. The employee shrugs his shoulders and tells you “Sorry, those are the rules” but then, in a sympathetic and conspiratorial way, he tells you “You want to know what’s even worse? Three of the other apples are from last season.” You then go to the manager (and the owner) and are informed that both of these deceptions are permitted under the rules of apple marketing. You decide that it isn’t worth arguing the point any further and depart swearing never to buy over-priced food from that green grocer again. As you drive home, the penny drops and you realize that if this reputable green grocer finds this practice acceptable, that your low-cost local grocery does the exact same thing. You’re trapped.
True story? No. But, if it were a bottle of 2010 Shiraz made in Australia instead of apples, it could be.
Under the rules of wine making and wine marketing in Australia, a wine labelled 2010 Shiraz (or any other variety or vintage for that matter), may contain up to 15% of any other variety or varieties of fermented grapes without informing you. Compounding this, it may also contain up to 15% of the labelled variety (Shiraz in this case) from a different vintage or vintages also without informing you. The result is that the wine you purchase may only be 70% of the variety and vintage advertised on the label. Moreover, these rules apply equally to a cheap bottle of plonk as well as to a bottle costing hundreds of dollars. Is this a standard you would accept in any other upmarket product that you would physically consume? For instance, would you continue to buy organic vegetables if you knew that they might only be 70% organically grown while the other 30% had been sprayed with inorganic chemicals? Would you continue to pay a trust premium for this if you knew this to be the standard?
Why is this the case in wine then?
If you ask a wine maker, they might tell you that the rules enable them to make more consistent wine from year to year and that the rules are of benefit to the consumer because the consumer gets a more consistent or reliable product. Or, that the consumer is benefited by knowing exactly what it is they are getting (is 70% of the truth better than 40% or 0% ? hmmmm….). Or, like the blue haired teenager, they may just shrug their shoulders and say “sorry, those are the rules.” Now, as the the only person in the hedonic sweepstakes of wine who matters, does this standard meet your standards and expectations?
Given that grape growing and wine production are highly variable in quality and quantity from year to year, these rules may make practical sense in enabling wine makers to even out variations in these variables from year to year and thus be understood as “reasonable”. But, as with the lowest common denominator effect(s) of any rule making, they have more sinister applications.
Say a small-ish wine maker makes a 2000 cases of a wine labelled as a straight varietal in a given year. The wine subsequently gets a big score from an influential wine critic. The orders pile in from Australia and overseas. The 2000 cases sell out instantly and the winemaker has orders for 6000 more cases that they can not fill from the wine they produced for that bottling. What to do?
Under the rules, the winemaker can go out and buy bulk wine from the same region that approximates the vintage and varietal attributes of the sold out wine. He can then fill the orders for 6000 more cases with a different wine than the one that received the big score and use the same label. Is this a deception or, just “playing by the rules?” If you were to buy wine from the both batches and not find the second batch not of the high quality you experienced with the first, would you think you had been done over as with the Pink Lady apples and ask for a refund? Better, would you would even be entitled to one? Would you patronize that winemaker or retailer again if they did not tell you in advance of your purchase that the wines were different? Or, would the penny drop and you just accept that these are “the rules?”
The truth is that for very large scale wine production, this is exactly how wine is made in many cases. The winemaker makes a wine, sells it and then sees how it is received by critics and the marketplace. If it goes well, they buy bulk wine and make more until such time that it is time for the next vintage to be released. Have you ever wondered why a good bargain drop tastes different the second or third time you buy it and thought that it must just be you or the day that are different? Have you ever seen a large scale wine brand with a “sold out until next year” sign on your grocery shelf?
To me, the written rules do not meet the standard of integrity, authenticity and transparency that consumers expect from wine. Wine, fine wine in particular, is a fundamentally different product from most other physically consumable products. It is an experiential product that is wildly subjective in character to the person drinking it – you. Most of us understand that vintages and qualities vary. It is the industry that wishes to build “brands” that are inherently consistent and reliable “markers” for trust in order to build a long term trusting relationship with us. Hence, the rules.
Instead of educating us about these variations, the industry seeks the comfort of reliability and consistency (of wine, sales, revenues, labeling, etc) at the expense of trusting us to make up our own minds year after year. This regression to the mean of the wine experience is exactly what the consumer of fine wine does not want. Wine drinking, and taste, are a journey for us not a branding exercise. Our palates change, seasons change, we change. Wines that don’t change will get discarded on our journey and the producer will never know why or what changed unless they have a trusted relationship with us. From my point of view, it is the producer’s responsibility to create a product worthy of our trust and to create the possibility of long lasting and loyal relationship with us.
At Inkwell, we produce a Shiraz from our Inkwell Blocks 1 and 2 each year. To my mind, our current release, the 2010, (contains 4% 2010 Primitivo!), is superior to our last release, the 2008. With the 2008, we had a restaurant customer in Sydney that bought a couple of cases per week while stocks lasted. They told me that it was one of their favorite wines ever and one of the best sellers they had ever had and that they would definitely stock Inkwell when the 2010 was released. A few weeks ago, I sent them a sample of the 2010. They didn’t like it! But, I had a great conversation with the sommelier and learned what it was he liked about the 2008 compared to the 2010. Will we make our wine differently next year to please this customer? Probably not. But, did we further a long-term relationship by learning more about his tastes and his journey with wine? Yes. In fact, he is moving to a new restaurant with an Italian menu and wants to stock our 2010 Primitivo (sold out, sorry) that he didn’t wish to stock at his old restaurant. Absent the relationship, we would have lost this customer, perhaps for life, over one wine that didn’t meet his personal expectations. Accepting that wine is a journey for all of us and that our journeys don’t always converge is difficult when you need to sell wine for a living. But, it’s a life that accepts what is thrown at us, adapts, and continues. This is life – it’s how we learn and grow as winemakers and consumers.
Under the Label Integrity Program (“L.I.P.”) also known as “the rules,” every winemaker is required to know exactly what is in every wine wine bottle, barrel or tank, where it came from and when it was produced. That such a thorough and important program should be used to create the opposite of integrity is, on a good day, Orwellian.
To me, our new Wine Rules should insist that winemakers disclose the exact percentages of varieties and vintages in every bottle of wine – preferably on the bottle – but at least in legible type on a “find-able” branded website.
What do you think? And, what wines do you love that meet this new standard?
Firstly a great theme for a Blog. You have my attention. What disturbs me more is when some cellar door staff do not disclose a varietal or vintage you know is in the bottle from perhaps a website or other source when you specifically ask about it. As you say that trust is broken, and just makes the whole set of rules ‘appear’ dodgy, thereby tarring everyone with the same brush. I think it would be a fair expectation to have to disclose varietal or vintage, but for me, simply, as you put it, for my own wine journey. Thanks for an interesting read. Looking forward to the next one!
Thanks Zoltan. More information isn’t for everyone but not providing it is the worst thing to do to your core customers. More knowledge on both sides would go a long way to improving the quality and image of fine wine in Australia.
Dudley,
Really looking forward to seeing this progress. Great start so far.
for the record, yes I would like to be able to find the exact composition of a wine (variety and vintage(s)).
Cheers
Stu
Thanks Stu. The rules won’t / don’t change til people bang on enough about them publicly. It was nice to see the export approval tasting panel dumped when it all started to get a bit too public. Despite having good friends on the panel it would have been a great one to write about!
Yes, for me, the more detail a vintner provides to the consumer, the better. I’m for total tranparency! A suggestion for topics: closure types? I thought our email correspondence about the benefits/drawbacks of Selvin closures versus cork, etc. was interesting. And people here might too.
Thanks Kevin. Closures are a topic I’ll get to eventually. Just exploring the written vs unwritten rules of the wine game road now…
Really enjoying your Blog, Dudley. Absolutely advocate for transparency in labeling and knowing exactly what my wine contains. It’s all about the story.
Kevin’s suggestion for a piece on closure types sounds very interesting to me!
Thanks Michelle. Closures are on the topics list but a ways down I’m afraid!
I told you about the third-party blended wine offered by a certain merchant that supposedly had less than 15% of a different vintage of the same wine in it. No problems with that, except they claimed all the points and medals from BOTH the individually released components.
There are no shortages of shenanigans Brian. We get what we pay for in life – calling out overtly bad behavior is our price to keep them to a minimum as you’ve been doing for yonks at The Red Bigot (www.redbigot.info). For Australian wine lovers, this is a must read forum.
Great read. There should be more of this kind of thing from the wine industry, but then again perhaps all we’d get is hype from those corporates who think wine is all about marketing the label and not what’s inside the bottle.
FWIW, I think the 2010 is better than the 2008 Inkwell Shiraz, but since I have a decent amount of both the argument is moot for me
Hi Dudley
Great idea for a blog … congrats!
You know, it’s not just wine, they do a similar thing with Chinese herbs. The herbs are blended across regions and vintages, although they do contain what the label says. However the ‘blending’ is so that a consistent quality is maintained. Odd in a way because each human beings system is different and responds differently to the herbs – certainly a very qualitative kind of experience. Put another way, it may be that a cure could be effected for a specific person by the use of specific herbs from a specific region for a specific vintage but, for this person, that may not occur because they are given a blend of regions and vintages which produces different results. How can this be in the interest of that specific individual? It does allow a certain consistency of quality and control of that consistency within the industry and therefore perhaps arguably some notion of predictability for practitioners, but this is only achieved by a one size fits all kind of approach and we all take slightly different sizes.
Within the arena of wine, if I buy from producers who blend vintages/varieties/quantities etc and they don’t inform me then I will never have the experience of aligning discernment with actual knowledge and how can I make my best purchase decisions under these circumstances? I don’t mind producers blending so that they can have a saleable product in bad vintages but I certainly do expect to be informed.
I live in Brisbane and I support some local (Granite Belt) vineyards. The climate there is extremely variable and it’s often a challenge to make good wine. I pay the same amount to these winemakers for wine from good vintages Vs bad vintages, I don’t mind because they are honest with me and I value the relationships and across a range of vintages I’d say it all evens out. But fundamentally, if the honest information isn’t there then I am deprived of valuable decision making information and the relationship reduces to something akin to manipulation.
I could writes lots about this … but need an earlier night, however do strongly support the notion of all the contents being revealed to consumers. Great job that you raise this issue!
Thanks Peter. We have zeitgeist alignment!
I have no objection to any blend whatsoever – vintages, varieties, regions, etc, I just want to know what the blend is for all the reasons you mention.
The point of the blog is to encourage winemakers to free their minds from the rules and to disclose liberally. Those that do will win customers for life.
Here’s a GREAT example of great disclosure by Ridge for their Geyserville Zin:
64% Zinfandel, 20% Carignane, 12% Petite Sirah, 2% Alicante Bouschet, 2% Mataro (Mourvedre), 14.3% alcohol by volume,
Harvest Dates: 18 September – 14 October,
Grapes: Average brix 25.1 degrees,
Fermentation: Natural primary and secondary; limited use of submerged cap, limited pump-overs; pressed at eight days.
Barrels: 100% air-dried american oak barrels (10% new, 12% one and two years old, 78% three and four years old.)
Aging: Thirteen months in barrel. All estate-grown grapes, hand harvested.
Destemmed and crushed. Fermented on the native yeasts, followed by full malolactic on the naturally-occurring bacteria. 0.26g/liter (17,067 grams total) calcium carbonate to thirteen small fermentors to moderate unusually firm acidity; 2.4 percent rehydration (added to five particularly ripe young vine parcels); minimum effective sulfur (35 ppm at crush; 75 ppm over the course of aging), and seven fresh egg white fining added per barrel to moderate tannins. Pad filtered at bottling. In keeping with our philosophy of minimal intervention, this is the sum of our actions.
The best part is that there is even more information than I’ve copied here from their web page: http://www.ridgewine.com/Wines/Zinfandel/Geyserville for those that wish to see more.
Is it any wonder that I’ve bought their wine for 20+ years and when I brought some wine back from a US trip, that this one was in the box?
Great article. Keep up the good work, Dudley. This has really opened my eyes to an industry practice that I (and I think a lot of other people) didn’t know about. As a wine drinker, how can I find out which wineries are telling me the whole story. Apart from a rebdbigot or winefront subscription, which don’t really touch on the above, where is the best source to get this information. You have just mentioned a winery the US, what about Australian wineries?
Thanks Nando. You have identified the problem perfectly – we just don’t know because of the rules. I’m sure some are exact or close and some are not is as precise as I can be.
I would love to have wineries that stay within a tight band of say, .2% -.3% to post to The Wine Rules- i would happily let folks know.
Unfortunately, it does happen a lot Scott … don’t know about this specific one, but we all remember the recent episode involving a certain Barossa winery and the Decanter magazine top 100.
On another note, I was looking at d’Arenberg’s site recently ’cause I wanted to get a magnum as part of a wedding gift. Noticed that the Dead Arm contains Viognier – look here http://buy.darenberg.com.au/collections/all/products/2007-the-dead-arm-shiraz-1-5l-magnum
(sorry, didn’t post the html code for a clickable link, I believe Dudley has that filtered out in this blog?)
It says, “Viognier lifts the rich, ripe Shiraz fruits and gives them resonance”. So I went to the cellar and pulled one out (750 ml not magnum), not a mention of it on the label. It would be nice to know, especially as I am aware that I don’t enjoy S/V wines, but do tend to like shiraz that has approx 1% Viognier. So now I’m going to email d’Arenberg and ask how much V is in the 07 and is it in other vintages as well and if so how much.
I’ll post the response here.
BTW Pikes are the same with the EWP, a wine I usually enjoy a lot. I only discovered by accident that it contains a small quantity of viognier. This is information that is very useful to me as I do note a slight lifting of the fruit and ever so slight increase in viscosity on the palate in some shiraz with approx 1% V., and definitely no apricot/stone fruits. Currently my theory is that the effect is more noticeable in cool climate wines, but I need to test this further. So V content – useful information for me the consumer, but it seems no-one provides it for me. Of course there could be another agenda here being that in some cases the V is only added to more difficult/austere vintages – still I deserve to know.
Thanks Peter. Can’t agree more. As the consumer who pays for the product (usually!), I want to know whats in it full stop. Not too big an ask is it? Integrity, authenticity and transparency – thats it. That’s all i want….:) Btw, your link seems fine. If there’s a filter for that, I haven’t found it yet. Do you have any particularly good examples of labels to share for the rest of the readers?
Just an incorrect assumption about the filter – I had added some html to an earlier post and the brackets and everything inside them disappeared, but looks like a standard url works fine.
Regarding this:
“Do you have any particularly good examples of labels to share for the rest of the readers?”
Is that a rhetorical question? I can’t find a ‘good’ example anywhere. I don’t expect it to be on the label though because of the variability and costs of label runs, but it would be nice if it was on the web (or somewhere?). Looked at the Gemtree Uncut label – thought I might have a chance there … nope, just something about minimal sulphur dioxide, it does say shiraz, but then I start to wonder … is all that shiraz the current vintage, is there something else besides shiraz, what other chemicals/substances are in here … etc.
Same result for Rogers wine – his label says Preservative 220 added.
Same result for your 2010 Shiraz – although you do include much more info about viticultural etc aspects.
Once again though I don’t think there’s any practical utility in trying to add all this stuff to the label – so then I looked at the Gemtree web site and no statement there either. Next I looked on your web site – nothing there either, nothing about the Zin that’s in the shiraz.
So result so far = zip.
Looks like no-one is interested enough to follow through with real action. so I don’t like the chances of this happening. It would be good if there was at least a minimal statement on the web site that says something like, “The full contents of this wine are not listed on the label, please contact us here “…” and we will be happy to inform you of everything that’s contained in the bottle”.
So, all in all, it gets back to your relationship with the winemaker/vineyard. If you feel that you can trust the winemaker and ask any question and get a truthful answer, then, provided the wine’s good, that’s where you will keep returning.
Ouch! You are entirely correct Peter! I was certain we included Primitivo info on label but did not – it is on the website though. I am just turning my mind to next years labels and your comments are etched in the frontal lobe.
OK, now I do see it on your web site … so that’s OK by me. Nice of you to want to include such details on labels, but may mean new labels every year and added costs for all of us, just on the web site could be the go and mention that on the label. BTW just gained some knowledge, I had thought Zinfandel and Primitivo were the same variety but they aren’t, well not exactly, both are clones of a Croatian grape called Crljenak (pronunciation?).
Thanks Peter. They are all genetically identical from recent research. My understanding is that Crjnenak was at the Hapsburg Garden from where it got taken to California and Italy in the mid 19th century. Mataro, Mouvedre, Monastrel….same deal!
BTW – we do new labels every year. And, it is expensive for a small producer and, ultimately, the consumer.
Preservative 220 is sulphur – which is the minimum to keep wine alive for any length of time.
Email reply from d’Arenberg about viognier in their 2007 Dead Arm Shiraz:
“”Mistake on the web site, was meant to refer to the Laughing Magpie – now fixed”. So no V in the dead arm.
I was surprised by that one but people have been burying viognier in some pretty strange places!
Great outcome Scott. Most folks do the right thing. It would just be nice to know what that is….:)