Monthly Report - May 2014

Cult status very quickly! Prices for this excellent Cabernet $250-270 per bottle

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[As an aside, we do not go down this pathway as I feel we are making world class wines within our current approach which is basically organic in the vineyard, and minimal handling in the winery – we do not promote this as much as others as we want the wines to do the talking and not the listening.]

To get an idea on how popular natural wines have become you need only go on a wine bar crawl around Sydney and Melbourne to note the influence of these wines on the “high expendable income” crowd of both cities.  One in two wine bars would promote a list that is rich in natural wines and this makes for a real change in cultural perception on what you are drinking.  To know the grape varieties is not as valuable now as knowing the ferment vessel and the biodynamic status of the grapes.  I must admit it does irk me a little bit, as having tried 100’s of “natural” wines from France and here, and many just taste similar with little positive flavor or complexity – with the whites perhaps being the most boring with the ever present smell of cider (either pear or apple) dominating every wine from every region.  They are not great wines to show “terroir” as they just have such similar profiles – but they have the romanticism of “terroir” and in a way that is much more powerful than a technical poo pooing of them.

And with my yawn about natural white wines, there is however an interesting sub-section of these wines which have extended skin contact.  During their fermentation the extended skin contact extracts some colour and due to this they are referred to as “orange” or “amber” wines.  This is no modern method but rather has been done for thousands of years in Europe – so it is not new, it is just a simple way of making wine without the initial pressing of the skins and pips off.  The extended time on skins gives the wine a more complex flavor, drags out some phenols (the things that make your mouth pucker like tannins on a red wine), colours it up, and makes it “textural”, for a word.

So finally I get to the point.

Wine Australia, our august and esteemed industry peak body, passed out an edict saying that the use of the term “orange wine” (as in the style of the wine), in Australia is to cease.  As we have in Australia a wine growing region called “Orange”, and as such this will cause confusion and undermine the Orange GI that is fighting hard for its market place share.  To use the term will bring on “serious consequences” – hence the mocking on Twitter and other social media sites.  Well you can only imagine the outcry from the owners and sommeliers of half of the wine bars throughout Australia, as they have lists and lists of “orange” wines and they feel they are quite unique and easily identified away from “Orange” wines.

Now you would have as a guess that nothing in Wine Australia would be done if it was not for someone else doing it, and I would believe that the Wine Association from Orange had lobbied Wine Australia to put out this edict.  They have made noises in the past that it was unfair and undermines their little place in the world, and unfortunately they were mocked a bit by a number of commentators.  Hence their aggrieved position they would have sold Wine Australia, as well as the possible example of a wine or two labels which could have led to confusion.  But the clanger here really was that Wine Australia with its faux leadership team, failed to address the other side of the coin and seek opinion from the natural wine world.  So much so that even their “serious consequences” edict had to be modified within a day or two of release due to their lack of understanding of what an “orange” wine actually was.

Now the obvious solution was immediately mooted.  Capital O Orange equals wine from Orange, and little o orange equals white wines made with extended skin contact.  But come on, let us be honest, that is crap, as little b bordeaux really is taking the mickey out of capital B Bordeaux.  The average punter out there would not know the difference, and if Orange were to start promoting their region in Sydney and Melbourne etc, it may in fact be detrimental to them.  So the simple solution is really to name Australian “orange” style wines, “amber” wines if they wish to use this form of definition.  And having a quick look through the literature they are used pretty much equally around the traps (“amber” wines have more common usage in eastern Europe, “orange” in western Europe), but they represent the same thing.  The Australian “natural” wine makers would I think accept this if it was put to them nicely and examples highlighted of the common use of the term, and they may yet come to this conclusion themselves in the months ahead.