I am just finishing off a bottle of one of the very best Cabernet Sauvignon wines I have ever had. I was very fortunate to have bought 21 bottles of this wine and have about 18 left. It was one of those deals where I tasted the wine, knew it was a winner, and the wine maker was willing to deal as he was ready to be stocking and selling more current vintages. I paid $45 per bottle for it and it was a steal! It compares with imported Cabernet Sauvignon and Bordeaux blends which cost several hundred dollars per bottle.
It is truly an amazing wine. I shared a bottle last year with one of my friends who is a wine judge and critic and likes his Cabernet Sauvignon wine. He called it ‘ethereal.’ The wine I am referring to is the 2005 Saddler’s Creek Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.
This wine has large tannins for a Cabernet Sauvignon and coats the inside of your cheeks providing a very long finish. It possesses strong blackberry and boysenberry flavors. While more robust than elegant Grand Cru Bordeaux’s, it is still refined, beautifully balanced and ripe with giant, live fruit flavors.
I had this wine with a Waygu cheeseburger a few nights ago and it would go great with almost any cut of firm and slightly marbled steak. This wine is also drinkable on its own as it is so ripe in fruit – it is almost a meal in itself!
I will be careful to allocate this wine over a long period of time as it has at least another ten years of optimum drinking pleasure. It is a pure delight to drink. I have had the bottle open for three days now and it is as fresh as when I opened it.
The grapes for this wine are from Langhorne Creek which is well known for some great Cabernet Sauvignon wines. I drink more Shiraz than Cabernet Sauvignon, but this is a full-bodied red wine and truly enjoyable. There are not many Cabernet Sauvignon wines or blends you can chew on, but this is one of them.
I have searched high and low and have not found this wine for sale anywhere and expect that most stock has been consumed. There may be some in a private cellar or two similar to mine, but it will be a difficult wine to source, so I am almost reluctant to promote its praises. But I wanted to in case you ever do come across a bottle, you will know to scoop it up without question.
Or if you want to try a bottle, then convince me to have a dinner with you, bring a great bottle yourself and I will bring a bottle of the 2005 Saddler’s Creek Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon to share!
But in reading my blog, one of the very prominent Hunter Valley wine makers felt I had overstated and misrepresented a number of key points, and I take notice of that and accept his input as another key source of information. He was prepared for and believes he got a great vintage this year. I also called several other prominent and smaller size wine makers to get more information. I had limited data points yesterday and wanted to ensure I had more facts on which to base my statements. The additional data points from my conversations today can be summarized as follows:
First and foremost, there will be some great wines from the 2013 Hunter vintage – I did not mean to give the impression the entire vintage was a total write-off!
The impact of the rain varied by vineyard and it is important to remember that vineyards in Broke, for example, are 30 km from vineyards in Pokolbin, and 45 – 50 km from vineyards in North Rothbury and Dalwood. Therefore each vineyard will be impacted quite differently throughout the season
Another prominent vineyard was down about 30% in tonnage of grapes picked this year because of the weather, given credibility to a decent sampling of vineyards that were picking less due to the rain
Several vineyards reported much more botrytis this year, and not the good kind to make Semillon dessert wines!
Grapes like Chardonnay and Semillon that ripened and were picked earlier have had excellent results
Some prominent vineyards had a ‘mixed bag’ of quality based on when they picked and ‘getting caught out’ by having to pick at the wrong time. Therefore, they are separating the batches and reserving the very best grapes for their select wines and considering what to do with the other grapes
The above point means that while there will still be some great wines from the 2013 vintage, the overall quality will be lower than the outstanding year it could have been had the heavens treated the wine makers more favorably
The best (and this usually means the biggest and and most experienced) wine makers suffered little as they (1) anticipated the rain patterns and dealt with them better than others, and (2) know what to do to put the grapes to best use once harvested
Some of the less mature and inexperienced vineyards and wine makers got caught out and suffered accordingly
I therefore probably did overstate (even though I mentioned I came to a figure intuitively) the financial loss from this years vintage due to rain. It appears to be much smaller than I was ‘guess-imating’ in yesterday’s post. However, I still am of the opinion that the late rains have had an impact on the quantity and quality of Hunter Valley wines from the 2013 vintage, but my prominent wine maker friend is right in that I over-stated and put more fear into the buying public than I should have for the 2013 Hunter Valley vintage.
There will still be a number of great and great valued wines from this vintage, so as always, I hope you support the great wine makers from the Hunter Valley and buy what you can! I certainly plan to!
I had recently published a post where I stated the 2013 Hunter Valley vintage would be among the best of all time. The content for that post was written in early January, 2013. However, just before harvesting the bulk of grapes for the 2013 vintage, Mother Nature has deluged the Hunter Valley vineyards persistently and forcibly over the last six weeks. This has turned the 2013 Hunter vintage from superior to below average on the whims of Mother Nature, God, or some force of bad karma.
The tonnage will be far less than expected and the quality of the grapes far less also. Many grapes were picked too early, too late, or worst of all – not at all.
I spent a lot of time in the Hunter Valley this vintage and saw the growth of the vines and grapes through almost perfect weather conditions. My excitement and anticipation of both a large and high quality haul of grapes was unprecedented. After buying a lot of the 2007 Shiraz vintage and some of the 2009 Shiraz vintage, I was excited that 2013 would be a better vintage than either the 2007 or 2009.
But damn if Mother Nature did not wreak its havoc! Six straight weeks of tumultuous rain had crippled, if not destroyed the harvest. The cooperative vineyard where we have a place just released their vintage notes with less than satisfactory results. I have been following the harvesting schedules of many of the Hunter wineries and they have had to pick early, late or not pick at all.
There will of course be selected pockets of success and the big growers such as Tyrrell’s will have picked as optimally as anyone possibly could have. But overall, the rain in such a short period of time has turned a once in a decade vintage to an inferior one. I really feel for the growers and the wine makers. They may be making 25% – 40% (purely a speculated guess on my behalf!) what they could have had the rain held off. Why, oh why, is Mother Nature so cruel to wine makers? And why tempt us all with the promise of such a great vintage to have it mostly destroyed through rain and more rain?
I am heart broken for the Hunter wineries, yet some of them will still do all right. Bruce Tyrrell will of course still claim it is the vintage of the century as he does most years! (And having followed in detail the harvesting by Tyrrell’s, they seemed to have done as well as they could!) But many of the smaller wineries would be suffering and wondering why they are in the game at all. It is one thing to have dry conditions and add a little in irrigation when necessary. But when you have torrential rains, there is nothing you can do, especially so late in the season.
But so is the cycle of life. And next year is another year. And many will fail and many will prosper in 2014. But I was looking to 2013 as the year that many of the coffers of the Hunter Valley wineries would be lined to provide a buffer for future years and that will not happen now due to the cruelty of Mother Nature.
I hope to hear good news from some of the vineyards as to their success in picking grapes at the right time, but am not hopeful that the Hunter Valley overall will have a great vintage when only two months ago, it look like it would be one of the best of all time.
A roll of the dice against the Gods and once more the Gods made their lesson known. So is the unpredictability and excitement of being a wine grower or wine maker. Not for the faint of heart!
In my last blog post, I talk about the mark-ups that restaurants place on wine. I do not begrudge a restaurant making a profit on wine or other alcohol as it is often the difference between a restaurant succeeding or being forced to close their doors. But the restaurant needs to fair and competitive. Most restauranteurs tell me a typical wine list price should be about 220% – 250% the price of what you can buy the bottle for retail. And I am comfortable with this. But as I mentioned, I will not frequent restaurants that charge over 350% of the typical retail price per bottle.
Wine Math
Here are a few other tips on wine financials and what to pay for wine and how to use wine with the right financial outcomes.
Buying very expensive wine
In general don’t! During my life, I expect that I have purchased over 5,000 bottles of wine. I have never paid more than $1,000 per bottle. In fact, only twice have I paid between $500 – $1,000 per bottle and that was for (1) a 1971 Penfolds Grange, and (2) a full bottle of a 1971 Chateau D’Yquem – both birth year wines for my wife’s 40th birthday party.
I have spent over $200 per bottle about 40 times, including the two bottles mentioned above, another 8 or so Grange, a dozen 2005 Bordeaux’s, some excellent Montrachets, and a few special bottles of Napa Valley wines. And every other bottle of wine I have purchased has been less than $100. Therefore, I have spent more than $100 per bottle for less than 1% of the wine I have purchased.
There are excellent bottles of wine well under $50 per bottle. I have had some truly outstanding wines for $10 – $20 per bottle. And most people cannot tell the difference or in fact, actually like more the cheaper wines because they are more open and ready to drink, and the taste is something they are more used to. Be hesitant to spend over $30 – $40 per bottle unless you really know your wines.
Doing BYO (Bring Your Own)
I love BYO and you save a fortune! I have often brought great wine for a special occasion in a restaurant and saved thousands of dollars. Plus I can pick out exactly what wines I want from my cellar. For some of my birthday functions I have brought between $500 – $800 worth of wine and buying the equivalent wine in the restaurant would have cost me $2,500 – $3,500. That is a great savings!
Expect to pay up to $25 per bottle or $25 per head for corkage. While this may add $150 to the cost of the meal, it is still far cheaper than spending $3,000 for the wine! The corkage fee is very reasonable and includes them decanting the wine, pouring it for you, replacing and using their best glassware, and clearing and cleaning the glassware. I usually also bring a nice bottle along to gift the sommelier or owner also to let them know I appreciate being able to BYO.
Many restaurants, including Tetsuya’s allow you to do this. Or just ask and many restaurants will be glad to provide this service for you even if it is not listed as a service. BYO means a bill for a great night out that would be half of what it otherwise would be and most restaurants are glad to just have your food business.
Buy aged wine instead of current vintages
There is a glut of wine on the market – more people are selling than buying. Therefore, aged (and ready to drink) wines can be had for about the same cost as current vintages. Why spend $500 for a bottle of current vintage Grange when you can get the 1981 or the 1985 for the same price or just a little more. You would need to cellar the 2007 Grange for at least 20 years, while you could drink the 1981 or 1985 immediately!
Cellaring a bottle of wine usually cost between $2 – $3 annually. Therefore, if you need to cellar a bottle for ten years, it will cost you $20 – $30 per bottle in addition to what you paid for it! There is so much aged wine available that it does not make sense to buy a current vintage when you can get an aged and ready to drink bottle for the same amount or even cheaper than the current vintage. Someone else has paid for the storage and care and you do not have to! Nor do you have to wait a decade or more to drink it!
If you can get a great bottle of vintage wine for less than 25% more than the current vintage, you are getting a steal.
Cooking with wine
My wife makes a great beef stroganoff. She also makes great risotto and a few other dishes that require 100 ml of white wine. With the beef stroganoff, we often have an aged Chadonnay like a Montrachet. A year ago, we had the bottle open and were enjoying a glass of $150 Montrachet while cooking, and indiscriminately used 100 ml of the Montrachet as part of our beef stroganoff recipe. It was decadent and delicious, but certainly did not materially make the beef stroganoff any better. It also meant I had one less small glass of a great wine to drink! It also added $20 to the cost of our tray of beef stroganoff!
When we made beef stroganoff last weekend, we drank the same bottle of wine, but I opened a bottle of 2005 Kelman Semillon to be used for cooking. This is a nice wine which I got for free as a land-owner in their cooperative vineyard. The bottle is worth $18 at the cellar door, and therefore only added about $2.40 to the cost of the beef stroganoff.
An open bottle of wine will only last a few days for drinking purposes, but will last several weeks if you are using it for cooking. Therefore, we try to make several meals over a few weeks which require wine as part of the recipe and open a cheaper bottle of wine for the cooking. And the 2005 Kelman Semillon is a very good wine for the money and I am now enjoying a glass while writing this blog! Using an $18 bottle of wine for several meals and several glasses in between is a far better approach than using 100 ml of $150 bottle of wine for cooking!
We also keep about a dozen bottles of both white and red wine we know is no longer good for drinking but can still be used as a marinate or for cooking as need be. The last few batches of Coq au vin we made used a 1989 Lindemans St George Cabernet Sauvignon for marinating! While past due for drinking, it was still great as a marinate.
Hopefully this ‘wine math’ made sense and was useful and helps you get far better drinking mileage out of your wine buying and consumption. Enjoy!
I have only referred to a few restaurants in SAZ in the Cellar. While I am willing and even excited to try new places, I feel most comfortable going to where I know I will get great food, great wine and great service. In that regard, I go to Fish on the Rocks (29 Kent Street, Millers Point) quite a bit because they have great food and I can ensure I am having great wine because they are a BYO (Bring Your Own wine). They are also licensed for wine and beer, but there is nothing more satisfying and fool-proof than taking wine from your own cellar!
And The Cut Bar and Grill (16 Argyle Street in The Rocks) is my favorite steakhouse and meets all the criteria. They have a great and good-valued wine list along with great food and service and while they are not a BYO, if I asked ahead (and because I bring a lot of food business to them), they will let me do a BYO for special occasions. I don’t take advantage of this, but really appreciate that they provide me the option when I want to do a truly special dinner with special wines.
I hate and avoid restaurants which have over a 300% (and sometimes far north of 500%!) mark-up on wine over what I can buy it for retail or from the cellar door. As nice as the food and view is from Cafe Sydney on top of Customs House and overlooking Circular Quay, I only go there at the insistence of foreign friends who marvel at the view. A number of their wines cost two to three times what the same wine at Lord Nelson Restaurant in Millers Point does. And I was at The Malaya at Kings Wharf a few weeks ago and they were charging $50 for a bottle of wine I paid $8 for retail!
I simply will not go to restaurants that screw you on the wine and those restaurants have lost all of my business over the last decade. I don’t care if it is for business or personally, I want good value and refuse to do business with businesses that do not provide good ongoing value. Restaurants I will frequent include Fish on the Rocks, The Cut Bar and Grill, Hux’s Dining, and Lord Nelson for four of my favorite outings around Sydney.
A typical guideline is that a restauranter should charge about 220% of what they paid for the wine to cover the cost, labor of serving and cleaning glasses, breakage, the ‘insurance’ risk of have a corked bottle, etc. And I am comfortable with that. I am glad to pay up to 250% of the price I could have bought the wine for at retail. But I simply will not frequent or pay for wine that is over a 300% mark-up.
One of my very favorite restaurants is deVine at 30 Market Street (corner of Market Street and Clarence Street) in Sydney. This is a magnificent restaurant, with the lowest mark-up I have ever found on wine. I rarely pay 50% more for a bottle at deVine than I do retail. And the service is magnificent, being both friendly and attentive. There is always one, if not both owners, Terence and Andre, on the premises to take care of you.
Their wine knowledge is superb. (I also value sommeliers like Terence and Andre at deVine and Gustavo at The Cut Bar and Grill who know far more about wine than I do. Surprisingly, the ‘wine person at most restaurants does not.) And they have a wide range of domestic and foreign wines to choose from. In addition to a great and often changing wine list, the owners at deVine have a collection of private wines from their own cellar and for the right occasion, they may recommend trying one of those. I have never been disappointed (in fact – quite the opposite – I have been greatly pleased) with each and every time this has occurred, and I don’t remember ever paying more than $100 for a rare and truly great find! Again, I am not sure they would do this for anyone, but once they quickly understood my interest and appreciation of good wine, it just became part of their superb service proposition!
The location, ambiance, service, quality, value and just about everything else is divine at deVine. Make sure to try them out if you have not already.
When choosing a restaurant, I look for the following things:
great food
diverse wine list
average wine mark-up no larger than 250%
great service
ability (if I prove to be a good customer) to do BYO and pay corkage (usually about $10 – $25 per bottle is reasonable at a good restaurant and for a very good bottle of wine this is a steal!)
occasional food or wine choice ‘not on the menu’
ownership or senior operational management is on the premises
location helps if it is spur of the moment or I am pressed for time
The restaurants I have featured here meet those criteria. Make sure to frequent them, and avoid the ones that are more interested in their profit than your experience and pleasure, regardless of how iconic they may be!
Australia is justifiably proud of its wine producing industry and has gained attention and success on a global scale. I love Australian wines. They are built to last, and there are regions for growing grapes that rival European terrain, and the hills of Napa Valley. Five years ago, I drank 95% Australian wine, with the other 5% being a smattering from Europe and the Americas. I also used to drink 90% red, but now drink about 70% red and 30% white. In a recent post on Rieslings, I mention how the Riesling grape helped me transition to more whites.
I have also noticed another change over the last decade, that being that I used to enjoy red wines when they were the biggest, most robust and alcoholic. I now prefer – more often than not – a more refined, elegant red wine. I am starting to appreciate red wine blends using more secondary grapes, and more red and white wines from Europe.
In general, it is probably fair to say that my wine tastes are maturing and becoming more diverse. Part of this has been through the minor study of how grapes are grown, wine is made and wine reviews in general. But most my education has come from drinking and comparing a wider variety of wine. I have become much more discerning of the grape used and the impact of soil and vineyard management techniques on various grapes (most prominent influence is on Riesling and Pinot Noir, but all grapes are influenced by the soil and climate they are grown in). The influence of soil and climate makes up a big part of what is called terroir. But terroir also has less noticeable and scientifically proven influences through the culture of the area, its accumulated history, and the small influences collectively made over the vines and wine making techniques for thousands of years. And this is where I am starting to question if Australia is one of the best wine producing regions or not. While some vines are 150 years old and represent the place where the grapes are grown, Australia is more known for the tastes of the grapes themselves and the wine making techniques used.
I am reading Roger Scruton’s book entitled I Drink Therefore I am: A Philosopher’s Guide to Wine. It is available in both electronic and printed form. I am greatly enjoying the book, finding it not just a good and enjoyable read, but also quite educational on both wine and philosophy. Scruton is a marvelously entertaining and articulate writer. He is also very sure of his opinions and without a doubt, believes that French wines are without peer, followed by some wines from Napa Valley. He is also a fan of Italian wines and supportive of Spanish and some South American wines.
But when he starts discussing Australian and New Zealand wines, he quickly downplays the impact of Australian wines and spends most of his time in the region praising New Zealand wines and wine making. One of his major criticisms is that Australian wines do not reflect a place, they reflect the taste of the grape and the wine making techniques. He is also critical of how quickly the wine growing and wine making industries have grown and the mass popularity of the wine having repudiated the individual variety that is necessary to make great wines.
Scruton believes that a sense of place is critical in making good wines and I think he is onto something. You can mechanically churn out excellent wines if you use great grapes and great wine making techniques. But think how much better wines are if the grapes come from vines that have been in the same location for thousands of years (vines never get that old, but the relationship being the soil and the vine types have existed for that long in many European locations). The soil, the vine and the grape know how to embrace each other. And think of the collective history and culture of the place where the grapes are grown. Even if you have not visited those places, you have a sense of what they are about, and drinking wine from a place evokes memories and a sense of a deeper culture and appreciation of the wine. And even if you are completely ignorant to a place, you still can taste the nuances of how the culture has defined the grapes and the wine making.
I have tasted some truly unique and excellent second growths or non-categorized wines from these European regions that have evoked great pleasure. You do not need to buy Grand Cru wines from these regions to experience great wine.
I have tasted some excellent Australia wines and will continue to enjoy them for the rest of my wine drinking days. They are great wines. But the very best wines I have had come from France, Italy or Napa Valley. Australia can be proud of its wine making industry and its wine heritage, but as a New World country that mass produces wines and has large vineyards of similar tasting grapes, you are unlikely to produce wines of the stratospheric quality that you would from a very small single vineyard parcel in Montrachet, Nuit St George, Mosel, Piedmont or Alsace.
In particular, I understand the nuances of some of the best vineyards in The Hunter Valley and can select some truly outstanding wines of unique character from that Australian wine region. I am anxious to spend much more time in the other major regions to be able to do similar. By being selective and narrowing my focus to a few wine makers with excellent small parcel vineyards and leveraging the cumulative history and culture of the region and the family of wine makers, I am hoping to be able to continue to buy Australian and get the very best wine it has on offer.
But is Australia in the Top 3 best wine making countries in the world – certainly not. Is it in the Top 5? Maybe and if not, it is getting closer. The joy in all this is that I will continue on the journey of sampling many more Australian and foreign wines and also now have an excuse to sample both side-by-side, which is something I have not done much of before!
Therefore, I was still thinking about Rieslings earlier in the week. I almost brought along a bottle of the 2008 Grosset Springvale Riesling to compare with their Polish Hill style from the same vintage when I was on Food in Focus last week, but as it was, we already had four bottles to try!
So I opened the bottle of 2008 Grosset Springvale Riesling to drink while blogging earlier in the week and to go with a salmon and cream cheese bagel for dinner. It was magnificent. It was lighter and with less mineral taste than the Grosset Polish Hill and very drinkable today (even though it will cellar a long, long time). It still had acid and strong minerals, but not like the Polish Hill which is over the top! It tasted of lime, grapefruit and lychee.
I love how versatile Riesling is. This one went well with salmon and cream cheese the first night and then we had the rest with Thai food the second evening and it matched up just as well.
I have been on a bit of a Riesling kick recently as it provides great variety in style and taste. Clare Valley makes premium Rieslings and it is difficult to go wrong with any Riesling from the area. Canberra is also known for their Rieslings. Try a few different ones and see what you like best. I love them all!
