What is it with wineries making beer?

What is it with wineries making beer?

Recently, as is my want, I ventured down to my local bottleshop to pick up a six pack of beer. Now I must confess I am normally a wine drinker, but some situations truly do demand a nice frosty one (like mowing the lawn).

Perusing the misty glass doors of the fridge, I was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar name adorning one of the cardboard carry packs; Knappstein. Funny, I thought to myself, that’s the same surname as Tim Knappstein, the famous Clare Valley wine maker. Having my curiosity tweaked, I grabbed one of the delicate stubbies for a closer look. There is was – a beer from a winery – Cats & Dogs living together !!! How can this be?

As I later discover, this fine brew is not alone.  Pepperjack Ale  from Saltram Wine Estate,  Red Angus from De Bortoli to name a few.

Now, I was always brought up with the fact that sheep and cattle don’t mix. Curiously I was nowhere near any livestock – but to go on – these beers are very good, chock full of flavour and subtlety and as Knappstein puts it

“As only a beer made as a winemaker could, the Knappstein Reserve Lager has a distinctive wine-like balance with an elegance and unparalleled  substance and style”

So as a winemaker, you are putting your obvious skill in fermentation to good use in producing a different style of beverage – but in the tradition of fine wine.

What a load of bollocks!

Knappstein is owned by a brewer, Lion Nathan. Pepperjack is also owned by a brewer, Foster’s. De Bortolli is the odd one out, they have their own brewery called William Bull. These beers, as good as they are just a clever cross marketing ploy by big boy beverage businesses. They want you, the wine drinker to think – I like the wine – so this beer must be good.

What’s next?

Are we to see Chateau Corona gracing the shelves of our bottle shops?

“Pull the cork out of the VB Sav Blanc love, I’m off to check the barbie”

As a standalone product, these beers are great – nice flavour, well made for the price (not cheap), good craft beers. But are they trying to entice wine drinkers to try (more) beer, or are they trying to “posh up” beer in the hope of attracting the new breed of beer wankers in a case of “we can do it as well as wine snobs”?

By all means – try them, match them with food, but please be aware – that a wine brand isn’t always a transferrable thing.

From little things, big things grow

“From little things, big things grow” – thus it is with the tiny acorn into which the mighty oak tree grows. 

Wine and oak – If every there was a more perfect example of symbiotic unison please tell me.  Oak imparts to wine a character that no other wood can even come close to. Wine matures in oak, transforms in its embrace and up until recently, was even sealed with it. The cork is the bark from yet another species of oak. Never has one tree, given so much to wine, and by extension – man (and woman).

Wine is ostensibly the fermented juice from the fruit of the Vitis vinifera or grape-vine.

Sounds easy to make. Take some plump juicy grapes, crush them (preferrable under the feet of delicate virgins), add a touch of yeast, wait for bit until the bubbling stops, whack it in a barrel for a bit and drink away. For all of this simplicity (and I have obviously vastly over simplified here – as James May discovered with his “Chateau de Boot d’Jaguar”) – it is the kiss of oak that adds a little touch of magic.

The use of oak in winemaking can affect the colour, flavour, level of tannin and texture of the wine.   Oak barrels first came into widespread use during the Roman Empire (what have the Romans ever done for us?).  Ancient Wine merchants discovered that beyond better storage, wine kept in oak barrels improved the wine by making it softer and even better-tasting.

The porous nature of an oak barrel allows some levels of evaporation and oxygenation to occur in wine (and whisky and sherry and beer and…). This evaporation allows the wine to concentrate its flavour and aroma compounds. The small amounts of oxygen that passes through the barrel acts as a softening agent upon the tannins of the wine. The chemical properties of oak have a effect on the wine. Phenols within the wood interact with the wine to produce vanilla type flavours, spiciness and/or sweetness. The degree of “toast” (charring the inside of the barrel over an open flame) also imparts different flavour properties.

American oak (like Americans in general) have a coarser grain than their French cousins and tend to impart a more sweet and vanilla overtones due to the American oak having two to four times as many aromatic compounds. French oak barrels are seen as more subtle and elegant (and are therefore more expensive). Winemakers prefer American oak for bold, powerful reds or warm climate chardonnays but often use a mixture of both and blend the result. Sort of like a Mustang with a Renault engine in it (or the other way around). Whatever – it works.

French oak only comes from a few forests: Allier, Limousin, Nevers, Troncais and Vosges. Philip II of Spain is said to have sacrificed the (oak) forests of Spain to build the Armada. Italian winemakers have used Slovenian oak as an alternative to French. Russian oak from the Black Sea is being explored by French winemakers as a cheaper alternative to their limited supply of French oak. The mighty oak forests of Belarus – seen as the largest accessible supply in the world has yet to make its mark in the world of cooperage as lots of the mature trees have WW2 shrapnel embedded in them that makes milling difficult.

So next time you comment on a good woody chardy, or revel in the marvelous tannins in your favourite Cab Sav – spare of thought for the tree that made it possible.

The Wine Bogans

Sure – there are wine snobs, wine wankers, wine bores and even winos. But the wine bogans are a breed I have only recently been introduced to.  Not having been on the working side of the table at a wine show before, I had no idea that these otherwise genteel affairs could degenerate into the vinous equivalent of a busted pinyata. Lots of grabbing hands, trying to get as much of the good stuff as you can before the grown ups call time.

Let me introduce you to some of the above mentioned people.

Firstly – the most notorious individual I have met is the “Bearded Priest”. This chap is a regular at Brisbane wine tasting shows. He collects every piece of paraphernalia he can, likes to engage you in long and repetitive conversations; sometimes even about the wine, and taste like this.

a) take a big gulp

b) spit it back into the glass

c) take another big gulp

Yep – he’s the wine equivalent of a double dipper.

Then there’s the wine Grannies. These notorious ladies travel in pairs and state “oh dear, I only like the sweet ones” as the circle the hall and come back for the 5th or 6th time for “just a wee taste” (no pun intended).

There are the groups of lads/ladettes who are “going to do a whites lap and then come back for the reds”. You see them on the way around stopping at every stall – knowing full well that at a show with over 100 distributors they have about as much chance of making it back as Scott of the Antarctic – or if they do they’ll be in a very similar state.  

My personal favourites are the “Ladies who taste”. The purpose of a wine show is not to give out as much free wine as possible – it is to sell. The hardworking people who make the wine need you to buy it so they can stay in business. Now I like a free bar as much as the next guy, but giving away the product born of your blood, sweat and tears doesn’t make for good economics (see the economy of Zimbabwe for the general idea). The “Ladies who taste” are beautifully dressed in expensive clothes, have enough jewelery to make lifting their hands and wrists a workout in its own right and display an impressive knowledge of all thing wine. But they don’t buy. They taste, swirl, delicately expectorate (never spit), converse, compare, promise to buy… but don’t. They never come through with the purchase. It’s either a cruel sport to them, or an extension of high school where just to be in their presence should be enough. Like the only boy not to be picked at the school dance, it’s a sad and lonely feeling when the sales orders are put through and those expected cartons are left unsold.

These and other punters do make up a small number of the people who you meet regularly at wine shows and tastings. But for all their faults, they do show up, try new things, show their passion, their red and white sides. And for that reason, it makes the day fun.  Embrace the wine bogan – and try to get them to buy.

How many types of wine does Australia make?

How many types of wine does Australia make? Quite a few you would, at first, guess.

While this statement is true, I would like you to consider this answer. Two. Australia makes two types of wine.

The first type is the one we all buy from BWS or Dan Murphy’s or First Choice or any of the Coles and Woolworths shops. It is the very drinkable, consistent, un-vintaged wines in all styles that the other big two players in the wine industry in Australia produce. Constellation and Fosters.

The second is the family or small company owned, regional, varying and definitely vintaged types of wine that we all enjoy drinking when we get to know them.

Over the course of the last 20 years, the export boom in Australian wine has meant that the vast majority of Australian wine has been made to an exacting, consistent but ultimately bland “product”. People overseas know what they are getting when they buy our wine. This has helped our industry immensely as people got value for money with lots of fruit, flavour and a guarantee of quality.

 “Wine has become Australia’s fourth-largest agricultural export by value, at some $1.2 billion a year. Australia has captured 7 percent of the global market and 5 percent of the United States market.” (New York Times 2003)

 The other blade on this two edged sword of success, is that the wineries themselves become targets for “beverage” companies. Penfold’s became Southcorp, which became Foster’s Wines; part of the Foster’s Group. BRL Hardy’s became Constellation Wines Australia, part of the enormous global Constellation Brands conglomerate.

Probably a lot of the brands you are drinking are controlled by these two companies. Names such as Hardy’s, Nobilo, Banrock Station, Goundrey, Houghton, Omni and Stanley are part of the Constellation stable. Foster’s brands include Penfold’s, Lindemans, Rosemount, Saltram, Wynns, Metala to name a few.

This consolidation of the production of Australian wine has produced benefits for the industry and consumers alike, but as our wine industry has matured into a world class player, we may have lost a little something. As the collective national palette has matured along with our taste in wine drinking – there is a feeling that the true nature and complexity of our various wine making brands has been sacrificed to the god of consistency.

The Australian newspaper recently published a story on “Australia’s First Families of Wine”, a collection of 12 well known winemaking dynasties who are seeking to re-introduce a sense of regional distinction into our wine. On a recent trip to the Barossa, I had the good fortune to taste and discuss this very idea with a couple of young (well, youngish) small, family owned wine companies.

Marco Cirillo (Cirillo Wines) and Simon Cowham (Sons of Eden) live and breathe wine. It’s in their blood – Marco is a 9^th generation winemaker and Simon has the boots to prove he is man of the land. Their shared passion for regionality or even subregions within the well known areas of Australian winemaking is not about a French style system of control, but mare about regaining the subtle distinctions that can truly define the taste of a wine.

People in Australia are now making the distraction between Barossa, McLaren Vale and Heathcote Shiraz; Coonawarra versus Margaret River Cabernets. As an industry, this idea of regional differences needs to be nurtured if we are to overcome the image of “industrialised” wines and truly embrace the passion once again. And it is the “Families” who will once again be the pioneers.

Top 10 wine companies1. Foster’s Group – 21.2 per cent market share

2. Constellation Wines – 13.5 per cent

3. Small manufacturers – 10 per cent

4. Pernod Ricard Aust. – 10.2 per cent

5. Supermarkets private label – 5.6 per cent

6. Yalumba – 4.6 per cent

7. De Bortoli – 4.6 per cent

8. McWilliams – 3.8 per cent

9. Brown Brothers – 3.4 per cent

10. Fine Wine Partners (Lion Nathan) – 2.9 per cent

Total market share for Beverage Companies = 53.4%

Source: AC Nielsen

Inspiration comes from many places

I have been inspired by some of my collegues, people far more talented in writing than myself, to start my own wine tasting blog. The title of this wine blog site comes from a brilliant restauranter who made this comment when I first tried to sell him some wine… “now you are in the wine business, you can never have just one glass of wine. You always need two glasses – so you can compare”.

So there it is – the reason for the site yet another wine inspired site – but one that I hope will be worth reading.