Winemaker Mike Grgich who died recently was significant for Glug as David Farmer explained is his weekly email.
So here we are, well into the digital-tech revolution, with instant access to all you need to know. Yet tell me who is looking after your interests in the search for decent bottles at a good price. When the giant chain Dan Murphy, which pre-digital boasted, ‘No body beats Dans’, now buys wineries e.g. Cape Mentelle, consumers must surely realise nothing has changed for them.
Over the year I have been explaining that increasing your chances of drinking well is not about what you buy but where you buy.
Those in the wine trade have many different backgrounds and this shapes how they explain things. So it was that the legal mind of James Halliday became a grader of wineries and the wines into a hierarchical listing. Listings like this, now so common make me suspicious about the benefits for consumers.
Good retailers are not told what to do. They break free from conventional thinking and one-way to do this is searching for bargains outside the mainstream. Hence my saying, it is not what you buy but where you buy since the best retailers have the goods.
When I think of Michael Broadbent (1927-2020), the Christies wine auctioneer I see how this focus on bottle age and great vintages clouded his teaching. Thus a narrow range of varieties are worth cellaring and become the elite to drink since they were the varieties capable of aging.
Once I was attracted to this view but now tell customers that younger wines are better and so long as the wine is well made all varieties will give you enjoyment.
So much modern wine writing makes no sense to me because this classification of wines quickly evolves into a pricing scale and none of this is in your buying interest.
These letters often refer to the Judgment of Paris tasting 24th May, 1976, when to the horror of the nine French judges they nominated the Chateau Montelena Napa Valley Chardonnay 1973 as the top wine over the greatest White Burgundies.
The judges’ table at the Judgement of Paris, which took place in Paris on 24th May 1976
Well, this wine was made by Mike Grgich and about this time he was setting up his own business Grgich Hills. Now new businesses take time to get going so Farmer Bros in the late 1970s was able to buy those early vintages favourably. What we offered from that tiny store of 80 square metres still amazes me. Nothing was too good for our customers and we scoured the globe for drinking bargains. Mike Grgich died in mid-December, 100 years old.
I just know that somewhere up in the Eden Valley hills or the Clare Valley is the next Mike Grgich waiting to be discovered and Glug will be at their door in 2024 before the winery is classified and the price rises.
No recomendations today though we still have two barrels of that amazing Clare Cabernet 2021 for next year.
So, Drink Widely Drink Well,
