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The Big Red Wine Book 2010/11 - Campbell Mattinson and Gary Walsh

All the bargains and the best, from A$3 to $600

Robyn Lewis

The Big Red Wine Book by Campbell Mattinson and Gary Walsh [©Hardie Grant Books]

The third edition of The Big Red Wine Book 2010/11 hits the shelves for the start of the southern winter and this year it’s a ripper.

Written by wine critic and author Campbell Mattinson and aided by publisher, wine taster and editor Gary Walsh, the two have obviously reached a great synergy in their tasting and writing style, like a good wine and food match. Two heads are obviously better than one in this case, and certainly two palates are – there are so many wines on the Australian market that one person simply cannot review more than a fraction, even if they tasted 24/7 for months.

To cut down the field, they restrict themselves to reds – mainly Australian reds (there’s a small sprinkling of imports). This is part personal preference, part because they clearly think that reds are more worthy or interesting wines than whites, and part because at 392 pages, if it had any more in it, the book would be like an overblown tempranillo – too big to consume on its own, or to take out anywhere.

In their words, Mattinson and Walsh are ‘two blokes who live and breathe wine, and love the stuff. It’s our pleasure to sift through, sort out, sledge and swoon over the best and worst reds available in Australia this year… we just love seeing folks nab themselves a great deal.’

And 2010 is the year of the wine deal. Never have there been more labels, such high standard red wines to enjoy, such consumer-friendly prices, such discounting by the big retailers, wines being offloaded, plus the odd dud to weed out or off vintage you should be aware of.

As the authors say, ‘all the wines reviewed… are here for a reason – because of their quality or value, because of public interest in them, or because you just need to know about them.

Included are about 950 new-release reviews, plus some back vintages…. If there seems to be a lot of high-scoring wines … it’s because they’ve been carefully selected.’

As much as possible Mattinson and Walsh try to taste the wines in more natural surrounds than the serried lineups of a wine show – with dinner, in front of the TV, with their partners – in other words, where most of us will be drinking them, too. Their 350 pages of reviews are part comment on quality (the most important bit), part description, which although personal gives a bit more guidance in deciding whether you think it’s a wine you might enjoy, or not.

Each wine has a ‘drinking window’ – an indication (or ‘calculated guesstimate’, in their words) of the best years to drink the wine, a ‘value rating’, a score out of 100, and an ‘auction rating’, which assigns up to 3 stars to wines which they think may hold or increase their value well at auction (note, most wines included do not have an auction rating).

In the words of fellow wine writer Winsor Dobbin, The Big Red Wine Book is ‘an excellent effort, with plenty of intelligent wine analysis and notes’. Anthony d’Anna of Boccaccio Cellars says ‘they have youth on their side and have been able to become the leading lights in uncovering ‘gems’ of the wine world’. So, what are the authors’ choices, and the awards?

First comes Winery of the Year: ‘it’s the award we deliberate over the most… we want a winery that delivers it all’. Congratulations to McWilliams, whose labels include Mount Pleasant, Barwang, Lillydale Estate, Hanwood Estate, Catching Thieves and Evans & Tate. In particular the 2007 Mount Pleasant reds were rated as outstanding, especially the Maurice O’Shea Shiraz (97 points, A$65).

Winemaker of the Year goes to Margaret River star, Janice McDonald, maker of Stella Bella, Skuttlebutt and Suckfizzle, ‘for the sheer quality (and) diversity of her wines’. Well done and highly deserved.

Wine of the Year is Yalumba The Cigar 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon, from the Coonawarra, which ‘cornered the holy trinity of quality, value and availability’, and is extremely well priced at A$25. ‘It’s enough to make you fall in love with Coonawarra all over again’ – what more can I say but put some away now, and look out for more 2008 Coonawarra cab savs to come.

Then we have the best of pinot noir (De Bortoli Estate 2008), cabernet sauvignon (Howard Park Abercrombie 2008) and best bargain cab sav (Tahbilk 2008) which they describe as fabulous. Tahbilk lovers (and I’m one) get in now.

Of course shiraz-lovers are well looked after (I can't tell you everything, you have to buy the book!), and this year for the first time there’s a merlot of the year. Congratulations to Jim Chatto an ex-Tasmanian pinot noir maker now of the Hunter, for his Pepper Tree 14 Shores Reserve 2008, made from grapes from South Australia’s Wrattonbully region (just north of Coonawarra).

Best pinot noir is once again from De Bortoli for their Estate Grown Pinot Noir 2008, which retails for around A$38, only marginally more than the cutoff point of A$35 for the best bargain pinot noir, which this year is won by a Tasmanian pinot noir from the state’s north, Stoney Rise 2008 Pinot Noir, a bargain at A$29. Stoney Rise was formerly Rotherhythe Vineyard, before being purchased in 2000 and raised to further heights by Joe and Lou Holyman.

It’s a pity that this year Tasmanian pinots seem underrepresented in The Big Red Wine Book, as the 2008 was an excellent vintage across the state,  although whether it’s because their makers didn’t submit them, their styles are not to Mattinson and Walsh’s tastes, or their quantities are too limited to be considered is hard to know.

I won’t be telling our wine dog to sniff out their alternative red of the year: Tuesner The Dog Strangler 2008, made from mataro from the Barossa, also known as mouvèdre, and usually a component of Rhône-style blends. Not that I’ll likely need to, it’s made is very limited quantities and sells for only A$26, putting it right up there in the points per dollar scale and on the hard-to-get list.

Other alternative varieties to do well (both over and under A$25) include grenache, tempranillo, durif, nebbiolo, gamay, barbera and sangiovese, to name but a few.

Also new in the 2010/11 edition is a section on biodynamic and organic red wines, as more producers move to this cleaner, greener method of production. The jury is still out on whether these wines taste any different (wine writer Max Allen for one thinks so). But many of them can’t consistently charge a premium for all the extra work, although some manage to produce at a profit – the sad irony is that it’s unsustainable if they can't.

The winner is Castagna Genesis Syrah 2006, which sells at a RRP of A$75, slightly pipping its stablemante Castagna un Segreto 2006, also on 96 points at the same price, a sangiovese and syrah blend, both from Beechworth in Victoria’s North East. However there are wines at under A$15 in this category too, including one from Chile with the ‘cringeworthy’ name of Cono Sur, which is a blend of cabernet sauvignon and carmenere, Chile’s now signature grape (once found in the Medoc). As the authors say, at price and quality like this, ‘watch out Australia’.

For yes, there is some bad news in The Big Red Wine Book 2010/2011. Following James Halliday’s lead in his 2010 Australian Wine Companion, Mattinson and Walsh add their bit about the current wine oversupply situation in their Welcome. I’m really not sure that the book’s opening line ‘The Australian wine industry is in turmoil’ is indeed a great welcome - and it gets worse. 

The point is of course that there are large amounts of good quality wines from excellent vintages on the market at competitive prices, but as this book is presumably aimed at overseas markets as well as local, the wine industry’s dirty laundry is sure up there and in your face on page one. They authors claim ‘the Australian wine industry will be overhauled in the next three years, and the over-supply will be leveled’. Well let’s see. It certainly took longer than that for wool.

However the situation can’t be ignored any longer, and what it means for wine drinkers is this: stock up with reds in 2010 and over the next couple of years. Not only are they great value right now, but some of them you may not see again (although perhaps not those in this book). And for wine makers, especially those at the higher cost end, the importance of encouraging visitation, building brand reputation, and connecting and establishing direct relationships with your customers is vital.

The stars of this year’s Big Red Wine Book are from Western Australia; the 2007 and 2008 vintages there were both ‘outstanding’. 2007 in both Beechworth and Coonawarra was ‘trying’ for reds due to heat, ditto 2008 in the Hunter Valley due to rain (compared with the good 2007). But nature moves in cycles across our wide brown land, and they advise that the 2008 looks fabulous for Coonawarra, Margaret River, the Mornignton Peninsula, Yarra Valley, the Grampians and elsewhere, although as we all know 2009 in the Yarra Valley will be a year to forget, for all the wrong reasons (although no doubt there will be exceptions).

The book has 20 pages of ‘the best of’ by variety, where each of the wines above is followed in descending points order by its peers, every one of which would be a worthy wine to drink or cellar. It ends with their Top 100 $20 or less reds, with this year’s prize going to Kirrihill Tullymore Vineyard Shiraz 2008 from the Clare Valley, which for just under A$20 scored an impressive 94 points.

So, settle back into your favourite armchair with a glass of red and a copy of The Big Red Wine Book 2010/11 and prepare to be amazed at the sheer quality and diversity of Australia’s fabulous red wines. Take it everywhere that you might find wine. And congratulations to every single wine grower and maker featured in it – it’s a long road of blood, sweat and sometimes tears, and we wine drinkers thank you for it.


The Big Red Wine Book 2010/11 by Campbell Mattinson and Gary Walsh (published by Hardie Grant Books, Melbourne, sc, 392 pp) retails for A$24.95. Subscribers and Members of VisitVineyards.com and Winepros Archive can purchase The Big Red Wine Book from our book partners Seekbooks at 12.5% discount  here (postage extra).


 

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