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Cellaring Guide winecompanion.com.au
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WELCOME Whether you’re new to cellaring or have been collecting wine for decades, ageing wine is a complex beast, and it can be easy to make mistakes or forget the essentials. Even James Halliday admits he’s been guilty of certain cellaring sins (see page 14). That’s why we’ve created this guide – whenever you’re in doubt, poring over these pages will provide plenty of useful advice. From Campbell Mattinson’s answers to your most frequently asked questions on cellaring, to an A to Z guide covering everything from buying wine at auctions to organising your cellar and the varieties to lay away, you’ll find it all and more here. We hope this guide has you cellaring well for years to come. THE HALLIDAY WINE COMPANION TEAM
YOUR CELLARING QUESTIONS, ANSWERED page 4
A TO Z OF CELLARING page 6
INSIDE JAMES HALLIDAY’S CELLAR page 12
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YOUR MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED CELLARING QUESTIONS There are naturally a lot of questions on how to correctly cellar wine. Here, Halliday Wine Companion reviewer Campbell Mattison answers two of the biggest: What makes a wine suitable for the cellar? And when should you drink it?
IT’S A CRYING SHAME. Every other
week I receive an unsolicited email about a wine that’s been “cellared” for many a long decade. The wine, on enquiry, is almost always one I’ve never heard of – often a fake news brand made exclusively for a wine club. It’s hard to know what to say; the wine was made to be consumed soon and it’s now much later. It’s rubbish. It was kept for nothing. Most wine is not designed to age and won’t do so. It will get worse, and rapidly. Most wine at five years of age, let alone 10, tastes horrid, regardless of how delicious it was to start with – all its various components either drop off or fall out of tune. Most wines are not marriage material. They let themselves go. There are all kinds of fancy things said and felt about wine, but when it comes to cellaring, only three are fundamental: preservatives, harmony and your own personal taste. Preservatives are the easy bit.
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IF YOU’RE ONTO A GOOD THING, PRESERVE IT Alcohol itself is a preservative. Put anything in a jar of pure alcohol and it will be preserved; at much lower levels, alcohol performs the same function in wine. Moscato, for instance, is often incredibly low in alcohol. It works when it’s young and fresh, but then falls on its backside if you keep it for any length of time – much like those who drink it. Vintage port – high in alcohol – is the opposite. It’s sturdier than a brick outhouse – much like those who drink it – and can be kept for just about ever. Take a bow, alcohol. Acid – such an ugly word, such a beautiful detail – is another key preservative of wine. One reason why all those citrussy rieslings come into their own after a long stint in a cool, dark place is that they’re sizzling with acidity. Tannin, same. Sulphur, likewise. All these things are required, or at least help, to preserve a wine, and so assessing them in the young wine helps you know whether a wine is a good candidate for the cellar or not. That aforementioned moscato? It’s low in alcohol, sulphur, acid and tannin. In cellar terms, it doesn’t stand a chance.
BALANCE IS THE CHAMPION OF WINE Time is the great magnifier. Any small fault or feature in a young person gets blown out of proportion in both terrible and tremendous ways as the decades slip by. Wine is the same. That’s why balance is everything in a cellarworthy wine. If a young wine is slightly unbalanced when it’s young, chances are it will be massively
unbalanced after a long stint in the cellar. The minor becomes mighty at the hand of time (for more on this, turn to page 7). By unbalanced, we simply mean the wine leans too heavily on tannin, or alcohol, or acid, or sulphur, or indeed that it’s guilty by omission; there isn’t enough of these things, or the wine simply doesn’t have the fruit to carry them. With wine, you don’t want things to poke out. Cellarworthy wine can be wild with personality, it can be bulging with muscle, it can be loud with flavour or soft, it can be more about potential than fulfilment; but it needs to sing in harmony.
NEVER FORGET This brings us to an essential point. A wine can have all the best preservatives in the world, all measured and balanced with precision, and still be unsuitable for the cellar. The essential thing is there must be something worth preserving in the first place. To be cellarworthy, a wine must have good stuffing. It doesn’t need to be big or thick or hearty, but the wine must at the very least suggest a power; an intensity. It must make a clear statement that it has something worth preserving; something worth investing time in. All tannin, acid, alcohol and sulphur do is take the power and glory of grapes and shuffle them straight to the pool room for safe (or long) keeping. A well-cellared, beautifully mature wine is one of the wonders of life, but it isn’t necessarily the holy grail. It’s a different and remarkable expression of wine. Can it possibly taste better? Does it need time to soften? Does its harmony impress you? These are the questions you need to ask yourself. l
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ORGANISE YOUR COLLECTION WITH THE HALLIDAY VIRTUAL CELLAR You’re following the tips in this guide, acquiring some great wines and your collection is stacking up. How do you keep it in order?
WWW.WINECOMPANION.COM.AU You’ll gain access to the Halliday Virtual Cellar, where you can keep track of the wines you own or would like to buy. You can record a wine that’s been tasted by James Halliday and the team and features on the Wine Companion website, as well as any other Australian or international bottle you have bought or would like to try. The Halliday Virtual Cellar stores how much you paid, how many bottles are in your collection, where you’ve stored it, its Halliday rating, if available, the wine’s drinking window and more – all in the one place. You can even set custom alerts for when to open certain bottles and add your own comments and tasting notes on any wine in your collection.
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AtoZ
OF CELLARING KEEP THIS GUIDE HANDY, AND YOU’LL HAVE AN ENVIABLE WINE COLLECTION IN NO TIME.
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AUCTIONS Wine auctions offer excellent buying opportunities – when you’ve done your research. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s great, so know what you’re buying. As with property auctions, stick to your budget, also remembering to factor in additional commission fees (up to around 15 per cent). If you’re buying older wines, examine their images online. Look for good fill levels, or ullage, where the wine should still reach the bottle neck, and seek peak-condition labels also free of wine stains; these all reflect a solid cellaring history. And don’t overlook the ‘lesser’ vintages from reputable brands because they can offer stellar wines at great prices.
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BALANCE How do you know a wine will age well? It’s all about balance. When choosing a wine for the cellar, check that its elements are in harmony; no one trait should be more obvious than another (we’re looking at you, alcohol and tannins). Time will only accentuate these imbalances, not improve them. A cellarworthy wine should also have certain qualities that indicate a long life ahead. Does it have a lingering finish? Is there an underlying intensity to it? Does it make you go back for another sip? Add these to your collection.
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If you want to know if cork beats screwcap, the answer depends on who you ask. Many in the industry have been scarred by the damage of past cork failures, having lost scores of wines as a result – not to mention coveted, corked European bottles from their cellar. Meanwhile, other producers have stuck with the traditional closure, greatly impressed with improvements. Cork still seals some of our most ageworthy wines, increasingly without issue, but wines also evolve beautifully under screwcap. They remain vibrant and fresh, retaining their aromatics and flavours while developing nuanced, aged complexity. Some believe a wine’s secondary characters take longer to show under screwcap, but so many winemakers will never again risk putting their wine under cork. There are so many variables when it comes to cellaring and cork has historically been a big one.
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DIVERSITY You may love just one wine style now, but in 10 years when it makes up your entire collection, you may not feel the same way. Solution? Sample widely and lay down different styles. Follow your favourite wine reviewers and their recommendations for other wines, even if you don’t drink them now; look for tasting notes with descriptors you currently enjoy. And if you truly love just the one varietal, buy examples from various regions and producers, and even other countries, to ensure you stockpile diverse styles.
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EARLY How do you know when to drink a wine? That’s the universal question. The best answer is that it’s always better to open a bottle too early rather than too late. A wine that’s still approaching its peak will always trump one that’s past it. ‘Drink-to’ dates provide a guide as to when a wine will be at its best, but be aware these will differ between critics because, ultimately, this is sophisticated guesswork. As James Halliday says, “Modern winemaking is such that, even if a wine has 10 or 20 years’ future during which it will gain greater complexity, it can be enjoyed any time over the intervening months and years.”
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FAULTS All wine is vulnerable to faults, even when stored in optimum conditions. Cork taint and oxidisation are among the most common – the former often presenting with aromas and flavours akin to wet cardboard or mouldy characters, the latter becoming discoloured and tasting dry or dull. However, with the advent of screwcaps and improved cork quality, the rate of these faults is falling. There are others, though, that result from poor cellaring. Heat damage is a big one, leaving a wine tasting tired or flat, a little more advanced than it should be or sometimes even jammy. For more, turn to ‘T’ for Temperature and ‘J’ for Jiggling.
Still confused? Turn to ‘M’ for Multiples. winecompanion.com.au
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THE GREATS
There’s a reason why so many wine collections comprise similar brands: the great producers have track records for producing exceptional wines that age beautifully. Think Mount Mary, Henschke, Penfolds, Cullen, Torbreck, Brokenwood, Tyrrell’s Wines and more. They are in no way the only wines that warrant space in the cellar, but they have become almost household names by garnering success and respect over a long period of time. Look to consistent Halliday Wine Companion top-raters and five-star wineries, as well as Langton’s Fine Wines classifications and other endorsements for validation on top producers.
H HACKS
If you don’t have a cellar or wine fridge or cabinet, and your collection is yet to demand off-site storage, seek out the coolest, darkest spot in your house with the most consistent climate (see ‘T’ for Temperature), and set up your wines there. Keep them in their original boxes or, better still, source the
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wooden boxes used for highend European wines – they offer excellent insulation. Polystyrene can also provide a good interim solution, but be aware these alternatives are not perfect. If all else fails, you can always skip the whole cellaring process and buy perfectly cellared, older vintages ready to drink direct from various retailers or wineries.
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INVESTMENT If you’re serious about cellaring wine as an investment, there are several golden rules to remember, says Andrew Caillard MW. “Basically, if you’re going to invest, go mainstream. You can’t go down the side streets,” says the founder of Langton’s Fine Wines. In short, back the favourite, not the longshot. Andrew suggests pursuing wineries with “some sort of 19th century legacy and a very strong story of provenance”. This pinpoints the longestablished regions, such as the Barossa Valley and Hunter Valley, and Victoria’s Great Western in particular, according to Andrew. He believes this region is undervalued, with Best’s Great Western, and their prized old vine stock, front and centre. While the coveted wines
come with price tags to match, Andrew believes value can still be found. “Think of Henschke’s Mount Edelstone, which lags behind Hill of Grace,” he says. It may still be $225, but as an investment wine, Andrew says “it’s pretty bloody good”. So too, he says, with other wines in the Penfolds Collection, such as St Henri ($125) and the Bin 707 Cabernet Sauvignon ($500). Andrew names Tahbilk, Pewsey Vale and By Farr among the solid investments that fly under the radar. “You’re not buying these wines for $100 or $200, but they have longevity and should hold their value.” Strong regional provenance is critical (see ‘R’ for Regionality for more), targeting the good vintages in short supply helps, and a diverse collection will be
easier to sell, but Andrew notes that strong returns often have everything to do with timing. “If you were buying Grange for cheap in the early 1980s, then you’re in luck. But in reality, it’s not so easy.” As an auctioneer, Andrew says he has seen it all when it comes to budding wine investors. “A lot of people have lost large amounts of money, so I believe the only ones who should get involved in wine investment are those who truly know and love wine. If you don’t, you shouldn’t even think about it,” he says. Importantly, Andrew also notes that wine is there to drink. “The problem with fine wine is that we have built up all these stories that almost divorce it from being a really delicious drink,” he says. “It’s there to consume and enjoy.”
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JIGGLING Vibration is never good for wine that’s intended for longterm cellaring. This rules out that spot atop the fridge or under those well-trod stairs – anywhere vulnerable to frequent movement. According to Vinified cellar consultant Luke Campbell, vibrations will accelerate certain chemical reactions in the wine. “Tartaric acid is the main acid in grapes and it reacts with other acid and molecules to form esters, which are the aromatic fruity compounds formed during fermentation and ageing that entice you with a smell,” Luke says. “A decrease in tartaric acid and esters will cause the wine to taste more like flat fruit juice.” Luke adds that constant movement will also prevent sediment from settling, altering the look and taste of the wine. In extreme cases, these wines will appear murky, with no distinctive fruit sweetness, acidity or tannins.
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KNOWLEDGE
You can never know enough when it comes to wine, especially if you want to buy well. Attend as many different tastings as you can, read reviews from a range of critics as well as fellow wine lovers, and follow your favourite wineries on social media for insights on vintages, yields and new releases. This will all lead you to more wines that suit your tastes and introduce you to the producers you should be seeking out. It will also keep you ahead of the pack when wineries release those must-buy wines and online auctions go live.
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L LIGHT
Never store bottles in direct light, with UV light particularly damaging. Keep this top of mind whenever you’re tempted by a special wine displayed in a shop window or showcased in a cabinet under hot and bright lights.
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MULTIPLES
Buying more than one bottle at a time is critical to finding that elusive ‘peak drinking’ window. This way, you can open them at various points to assess how they’re developing. This doesn’t always mean buying a dozen at a time – unless you have the funds and storage space to do so. Three or four bottles can work well, allowing you to open one upon purchase and the others at regular intervals before the drink-to date. The length of these intervals will depend as much on the suggested drinking windows and what you discover with each tasting as your level of restraint.
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NEW RELEASES Aged wine is not to everyone’s taste. While many wine lovers adore the evolution that young, fruitforward characters undergo to become more savoury and complex, others will prefer a wine as a new release. Increasingly, winemakers are consciously making wines to be ready to enjoy when young as well as suited to ageing. Sample a variety of
older wine styles – you can buy back-vintages in mint condition from retailers and wineries direct – and even better, taste them alongside their newrelease counterparts. It’s a great exercise to help you decipher all those complex secondary characters, as well as decide whether cellaring is for you.
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ORGANISATION A good wine collection relies on its organisation. Ideally, a cellar should store wines ready to enjoy within easy reach, with the long-term dwellers tucked away. This is also wise for any special-occasion, sentimental or superexpensive bottles, particularly if you’re prone to ask others to grab a wine from your collection – or throw caution to the wind after a couple of drinks. Stickers or neck tags on stored bottles can provide all the details you need at a glance, or dedicated sections of your cellar may keep the various timeframes together. See also ‘S’ for System.
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PLEASURE It can be tempting to wait for that elusive ‘right moment’ to open certain bottles, but wine was designed for pure drinking pleasure. Unless you’ve earmarked certain bottles for milestone birthdays, gifts or anniversaries, or you’re planning to resell your collection when the time is right, don’t miss a chance to enjoy wine in its prime. Choose the right people to share it with and make that the celebration.
Q QUALITY
While only good wine should be cellared, it doesn’t have to be expensive. Quality wine can be found at all price points, and some of the best cellaring rewards come from the surprises, like that forgotten $15 bottle that turns out incredible. Consider the vast under-$30 bracket of shiraz and its many blends, or under-valued Australian riesling or semillon, for starters. Chat to your local retailers about the styles you love for their insights on those offering value. 10
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REGIONALITY Many of Australia’s wine regions are synonymous with certain grape varieties, and these combinations can be a safe bet when choosing wines for the cellar. That’s not to discount the newer regions or emerging wine styles, especially as growers and makers understand more about their regions and specific sites, from microclimates to soil types, vineyard practices and best-suited grapes. However, for wines with plenty of runs on the board, consider the likes of Barossa shiraz, Margaret River and Coonawarra cabernet, and Hunter Valley semillon, just for starters. If you’re yet to explore wines from particular wine regions – Australia has more than 60 – start with their hero varieties and discover why these styles are so popular. For more, see ‘V’ for Varieties.
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SYSTEM Whether it’s through the use of an app, the Halliday Virtual Cellar at winecompanion. com.au (turn to page 5 to find out more), or a simple spreadsheet, your collection demands a system that helps you track your wines. As a bare minimum, log what you buy, including the vintage, region, price and drink-to date, and also incorporate the critic’s tasting note as well as space for your own observations and date each time you try a wine.
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TEMPERATURE Many disagree about ideal cellar temperatures, but the magic window lies somewhere between 12 and 16 degrees – for red wines as well as whites. Conditions also need good humidity (think 50 to 60 per cent) to ensure corks don’t dry out. Perhaps more important, however, is preventing any temperature fluctuations – even for short stints (that includes in the car over summer, so pack a cooler for those cellar door visits on hot days). It’s therefore critical to ensure your storage provides the most stable climatic conditions possible. A consistent temperature that lies outside the ideal degrees can often prove better than one within it that’s prone to fluctuation.
U UPRIGHT
Screwtop-sealed wines can be stored upright, or any way, so long as the cellaring conditions are right. Cork-sealed bottles, however, should be stored to ensure the wine is in contact with the cork – commonly horizontally or on an angle. If the cork dries out, oxygen can seep in and slowly erode the quality of the wine over time.
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VARIETIES Some grape varieties are better suited to ageing than others, pending the wine quality. Below are just some key collectibles, with rough timings and regions, but note that these outlines are subjective and depend on personal preference.
SHIRAZ
Up to 20-plus years, but showing good maturity from five years on. The Canberra District, McLaren Vale, Barossa, Hunter Valley and Heathcote are among our beloved shiraz regions.
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CABERNET SAUVIGNON Up to 20-plus years, but with lovely development around eight to 12 years. Coonawarra and Margaret River are its best-known homes, but the Yarra Valley and McLaren Vale are star producers too.
CHARDONNAY Four to eight years, with a sweet spot around five, but up to 10-plus for top examples. Margaret River, Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula and Hunter Valley are just some of the nation’s shining regions.
RIESLING Ten to 15 years for full maturity, but from one to three years, appealing rounded characters will start to show. Clare and Eden Valleys, Great Southern and Tasmania lead the way.
SEMILLON Around 12 to 15 years, but will hit its first stage of maturity at around five years. It’s grown elsewhere, but the Hunter Valley has made this variety its own.
PINOT NOIR Up to 15 years for the best, but typically around five to eight. Tasmania, Geelong, Mornington Peninsula, Yarra Valley and Macedon Ranges produce stellar examples.
W WHITES
It’s not all about reds – whites can be among the most exciting aged wines in your collection. Vibrant, citrus-driven young semillon evolves into a richer, fuller wine for contemplation; flinty, racy examples of chardonnay can become rounded and layered with complexity; and riesling’s bright lemons and limes can mellow to a honeyed, toasty palate. Other textural white wines newer to Australia are proving excellent for ageing, such as gruner veltliner and chenin blanc. The added bonus is that these wines tend to be reasonably priced.
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X-FACTOR
Whether you love your wines full of rich, dark fruits, fine tannins or buttery notes, your cellar should hold the wines you love. Learning to spot that X-factor in a wine is about finding what you personally enjoy in the glass. If a wine’s elements are all in check and you love how it tastes and feels in your mouth, these are the ones to cherish. See also ‘B’ for Balance.
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Knowing the good vintages from the great can be essential for buying – and drinking – well. This can come from following wine critics and wineries on social media, and reading widely to understand the regions and varieties that shine in certain years. James Halliday’s vintage chart at winecompanion. com.au is one good source for insights at a glance, with vintages rated from one to 10, dating back to 1987. Just be aware of the generalisations that can come from vintage talk: between all the hype and underrating that goes on, there are exceptions to every rule.
Wines that get described as “zippy” tend to have good levels of acidity, which can be essential for longevity. While acidity is present in almost all wines and should always be in harmony with the other elements, riesling is often praised for its acidity. Starting fresh, vibrant and lively on the palate, over time, and with the right cellaring conditions, the good examples can become complex, luscious and long-living wines.
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INSIDE JAMES HALLIDAY’S CELLAR 12
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Halliday magazine editor Amelia Ball spoke to James Halliday for our podcast on cellaring before his 80th birthday. Here, we feature parts of that chat, plus some reflections on his career following the celebration of the milestone.
How did your love for wine develop?
What can you tell us about your cellar?
Where do you stand on cork these days?
We created it when we bought our Coldstream house in 1985. The area, which is also where my office is now, was open to the four winds, so we ran a double skin of bricks with insulation between them against the hillside.
My teeth are bared each time someone tries to persuade me that cork is a good closure. It is absolutely critical and unanswerable for white wine, but for reds it’s not as dramatic. However, I don’t buy wine under cork unless I’ve got no other option, and I don’t buy any Australian wine under cork.
You moved from Sydney to settle in the Yarra Valley. How did you bring your wine collection down? It was quite a task! My wife Suzanne and I overloaded a trailer attached to our Rover 3000 and thought it would easily do the trip, but it took us a lot longer than we expected. I think we had about 30 tonnes of wine. In the end it was packed by removalists and brought down by my law firm Clayton Utz, as I was moving for the company. The terrible thing was that when we pulled out the first bottle, that was fine, but then the next bottle came out of the box, which should have been the same or similar, and it was radically different. Instead of the wines getting packed vertically from my racks, from top to bottom, they went sideways, so there was no rhyme or reason to the 12,000 bottles. It was a major task getting them back in order and I’ve said many times that not in my lifetime will it be moved again! How many bottles did you have when your collection was at its largest? About 15,000. Your father was a wine collector. Did his love for wine influence you? It obviously had some impact. He had a walk-in cellar and I was the butler in the sense that he would tell me what wine he wanted that night. I was about eight or nine years old when I held this position. Years later, I gave him a bottle of the 1953 Grange for Christmas, but he didn’t like it one bit.
I went to St Paul’s College at Sydney Uni for an Arts/Law degree and we had a wine club and cellar there, so we were allowed to have wine in the Great Hall. Then, in 1962, I went overseas for a year with a great mate and we drove from one side of Europe to the other, from Spain to Norway, with a van and a two-man tent. We bought our food at the camping grounds, which was fairly basic, but we’d always have wine in the evening. In that year we didn’t go to a single restaurant or register whether we were in a well-known wine region or not. After that trip was when it all started to come together, and then I met Len Evans in 1968, which is when my eyes opened wide. I thought I knew all I needed to know about Australian wine, but then European wines came along and I was on a voyage of discovery. What do you love about aged wine? I also love young wine – you don’t have to have one at the exclusion of the other – but I’ve always loved history, and often when I drink old wine it’s in a historical context. Old wine can be awe-inspiring, more than any sort of contemporary wine. The greatest enjoyment you can get from wine is to drink a very beautiful but very old wine. If it is over 50 years old, it’s rare for it to be perfect, given its age. When it is, it’s the nectar of gods.
What can you tell us about your wine-buying habits? Now that we’ve got screwcaps, I’m still buying wine, but then I think why am I doing this? I’ve got 10,000 bottles of wine in the cellar, why am I buying more wine? There’s really no convincing answer except that it’s nice to have my favourite wines when they’re young and when they’re old, and when they’re transiting from young to old they’re always changing, so there’s always a place for them. It’s the biggest cue I have for my ageing. I never used to think about it, but when I’m doing tasting notes, I find myself writing ‘This will be a wonderful wine to drink to 2034’ and then I realise I’m not going to be around to see it. Have you always found it easy to open great bottles? I’ve always held the view that it’s better that I drink the wine than someone else when I’m no longer capable of it. Over the past 20 or 30 years, I’ve deliberately let down my cellar from the height it was for that reason. I’ve never ever hesitated to share great bottles. I always say it costs me nothing to take a bottle out of the cellar. What is the temperature in your cellar? In winter, it’s about 14 degrees, which is good, but by midsummer, it’ll be 22. The daily temperature range is in fact very small though, so it takes a very long time to cool down and warm up due to the number of bottles in there and also the physical layout of it, the concrete above, the double brick and the steel door. winecompanion.com.au
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What would you do differently to your cellar if you were starting again now in terms of set-up? I would think seriously about spending more money insulating the area and putting in a condenser chiller so as not to dry out the air, with a view to keeping the cellar to 13 or 14 degrees. That would extend the life of the wines. What’s one of the oldest wines you’ve tried? I enjoyed a 1642 Tokaji, which came in a little, pale blue glass flagon – I still have it. It could only have ever been laid down in a cellar and had the tide marks that supported that idea. It had dried out, which is what happens with sweet wines, unless they’re incredibly sweet – so it was no longer dramatically sweet, but you could tell it was a very complex white wine. It really was in good condition. Do you have many sentimental bottles left? I’ve still got a couple of bottles left of a dozen I purchased at Christie’s in the 1970s, which had been bottled in the late 1700s as a flor sherry. Every time I’ve produced it and shared it, it’s been remarkable. What cellar maintenance do you wish kept up or done better over the years? I wish I’d kept a close watch on the fill levels in each of the bottles and returned to the cellar with a plan so that every six months, I’d check the levels again. If it was okay and there were multiple bottles, I’d check one more to be sure. How many bottles do you believe we should buy of the same wine intended for the cellar? Six. For many people that will seem an awful lot, but I say it’s not. If you want to track that wine and are interested in its development, you don’t want to get into a position where you’ve drunk your six bottles and the last one is the best, and you’ve gobbled it up too quickly. If you only put one or two in the cellar, they’re trophies – and in that case, drink them when you want! Six is minimal and 12 is more likely, in which case if you’ve tasted them and not really enjoyed them you can put some back into auction, and quite frequently get your money back. How much has your palate changed over the years? I have very definitely moved away from Bordeaux, so that would be the one really significant shift. But apart from that I’m basically still omnivorous in wine terms. Have you had any great surprises from anything in your cellar over the years? If anything I think the reverse has been the case. There was a time when you’d taste a red wine and it was full of tannin and dark in colour, and you’d think, ‘boy that’s good, I must put that away’, and look forward to 10 years down the track when you think it will knock the socks off you. But if I didn’t stop to think about the wine and wonder if it was balanced, it’s going to be as bad, if not worse, than the wine you tasted 10 years earlier.
of and then some. You get senses of undergrowth with morels and mushrooms also coming in. All of these things synthesise themselves into a continuous flow of information and pleasure, but it’s got cadences and there’s no one single message at any single moment of tasting and drinking a great old wine. You can’t get over how much these wines change in the glass. Has turning 80 made you more reflective on what you’ve achieved in your time in the wine industry? If you include the 12 months leading up my 80th birthday, yes, I have become more reflective. This has often been triggered by a wine I come across or an event such as the Single Bottle Club, or, again, my years at Brokenwood, followed by my years here at Coldstream Hills.
“I’ve never ever hesitated to share great bottles. I always say it costs me nothing to take a bottle out of the cellar.” What are you particularly proud of at this point in your career? First up, I suppose, is actually reaching 80 years of age! When I was 20 or 30, it never crossed my mind that I would still be moving around when I turned 80. On a more serious note, I suppose the Maurice O’Shea Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Australian Wine Industry in 1995 and being made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2010 are the most tangible third-party recognitions. Writing more than 70 books, and weekly contributions to newspapers [The National Times, then The Australian], plus numerous contributions to magazines here and abroad, require no particular explanation. What do you look back on most fondly from your time in the wine business? People ask me how long can I keep going, having commented on numerous occasions along the way that they don’t understand how I have been able to create so much material. The reason I have been able to do this is in no small measure attributable to the fellowship among Australians in the wine industry. We enjoy each other’s company and the intellectual challenges, and we can stand back in awe of what Australia has achieved as we move into the decades to come. I am hoping that my involvement in China will help the protection and growth of our market in China, and the improvement in wine quality that will automatically follow if our sales to China continue to increase, or, for that matter, simply maintain their current level. The political world is an uncertain one, but that has always been the case. l
You have a particular affection for red Burgundies. How do you describe what you experience in those great aged examples? You get a whole raft of floral tones, like violets, rose petals, red flowers generally, and you get all the spices you’ve ever heard
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