ANOTHER VOICE
Time to teach the French a lesson they will not forget
AUBERON WAUGH
0 n Wednesday of last week, a small ceremony was held in the Park Suite of the Inter-Continental Hotel, Hamilton Place, when Mr Hugh Johnson presented Decan- ter magazine's Man of the Year award to Mr Max Schubert, for many years chief winemaker of Penfold's, and sole begetter of what is pretty well universally agreed to be the flagship of Australia's wine indus- try, at any rate so far as the reds are concerned. Penfold's Grange Hermitage is soon, in fact, to change its name to Penfold's Grange throughout all territories covered by the Treaty of Rome, as the result of representations from wine grow- ers of the northern Rh6ne. They insist that the name of Hermitage should attach only to their own beverages, currently involved in the ruinous price sprial which threatens to turn France into a terra nullius for the English wine-drinker.
I do not know which is the greater tribute to Mr Schubert's achievement: his award from Decanter (in the footsteps of the great Serge Hochar, of Lebanon's incomparable Chateau Musar, which will be familiar to all who have followed the Spectator Wine Club's frenzied, world wide search for wines which are both better and cheaper than the French) or the fact that the French have been driven to this spiteful and panicky action against him.
Other readers may be equally puzzled to know why I am writing about wine in the front of the magazine, when I already have a page at the back to extol the virtues of the latest selection from Messrs Redpath and Thackray in Cambridge (see Spectator Wine Club, page 45). Some, who are not interested in wine, may feel resentful. I can only apologise to them. Mr Schubert's award was in many ways the culmination of my three-week visit to Australia where I was a guest judge at the Sydney Wine Show, just as it was the culmination of 1987's endeavours as the Year of Strine Wine. I feel I have some important things to say on the subject. Those who, like my dear wife, are bored stiff by the whole subject of wine, and Australian wine in particular, should turn to another page. I promise not to do it again for at least six months.
The French action should be seen as spiteful because although the name of Hermitage attaches to a particular wine region in France, in Australia it has always attached to a particular grape, also known as shiraz or syrah. Grange Hermitage has been made for 36 years, and has been selling in this country under that title ever since we signed the Treaty of Rome. The French action should be seen as panicky for quite another reason.
Grange Hermitage is one of the very few Australian red wines which is released only after it has spent a minimum of six or seven years in bottle. For that reason, it is the only one which gives the ordinary buyer, who has not trained his palate to disting- uish the potential among all the disgusting tastes of young wine, any idea of what these Australian reds are capable. The simple truth is that the Australian wines beat their French equivalents into a cocked hat on any comparison of the price-quality ratio (the same is true of whites, but there the comparison is immediate, and English wine buyers have pretty well discovered the fact for themselves).
Those who invested in last year's wine offer of the Penfold's range (including the excellent Bin 707 and the incomparable middle-range Bin 389) will know what I am talking about. Practically nobody else will. No wonder the French are panicking. Many of the premiers crus of Bordeaux no longer submit their wines for comparative blind tastings with wines from Australia and California, for the good reason that the colonial and American wines are win- ning them with ever-increasing frequency. And, in these blind tastings, price is not even taken into account.
The only thing which prevents Australia (already much cheaper than California, even before the collapse of the Australian dollar) from conquering the world with its red wines is that so few punters ever get the chance to taste them when they are ma- ture. In Australia, they drink them young anyway, just as they do in France. I was appalled when, after tasting an excellent bottle of John Riddock's 1982 Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon and pronouncing that it would be a beautiful wine in five years' time, I was told that 85 per cent of it would be drunk by then. The situation is not helped by the Australian government's insane practice of taxing wine at point of production, rather than point of sale, nor by interest rates of around 14 per cent. Nor will it be helped much by the fact that this year there are practically no grapes in South Australia and rot in the Hunter Valley. But I believe the process to be inexorable, unless phylloxera intervenes. No doubt the French are shipping it out as fast as they can.
My purpose at the Sydney Wine Show was to choose the best twelve wines cur- rently exported to Britain, out of some 56 submitted. It would be vain to pretend we are receiving all the best Australian wines, and in any case I limited myself to those costing under £10. Here is my final list (not in order of preference): Whites: 1. Orlando 1987 Gewurtztraminer, Eden Valley, £4.95. 2. Mitchelton 1986 Chardonnay, Victoria, £5.10. 3. Wynn's 1986 Coonawarra Estate Chardonnay, S.A., £5.50. 4. Orlando 1985 St Hilary Chardonnay, S.A., £5.95. 5. McWilliams 1981 Mount Pleasant Semillon, Hunter Valley, NSW, £6.95. 6. Delatite 1987 Dry Rhine Riesling, Victoria, £8.50. 7. Rouge Homme 1987 Coonawarra Chardonnay £8.95. 8. Bailey's Founders Liqueur Mus- cat, Victoria, £9.95.
Reds: 9. Wynn's 1985 Coonawarra Estate Shiraz, S.A., £3.49. 10. Orlando 1982 RF Shiraz, S.A., £3.99. 11. Orlando 1985 St Hugo Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon, S.A., £5.95. 12. Lindeman's 1984 Coona- warra St George Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, £9.95. Of the reds, I would remark only that the Lindeman's 1984 needs at least five years; best buy is the 1982 RF Shiraz from Orlando". Among the whites Bailey's Liqueur Muscat(8) was the only example of this style submitted, but Australia's liqueur (i.e. fortified) muscats are in a class of their own, completely unknown in Britain. If the Rutherglen producers could get together and promote the idea of them, they would take the country by storm. All the judges mistook the Rouge Homme Chardonnay° for a sauvignon, but it is a delicious example of something. The Delatite Riesling(6) may seem expensive at £8.50, but anyone prepared to spend this sum on an Australian riesling will learn how good they can be. Best value of all, I thought, was the Mitchelton Chardonnay(2), full of the wonderful honeyed, dry, botrytised taste of which only Australia seems cap- able — let alone at £5.10 the bottle. I do not know where these wines can be bought, only that they are available some- where. We are witnessing a revolution.
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