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Global Tastings |
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| July 15th 2008 |
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| Grant Burge and Marqués de Cáceres |
Some are classics from the 0ld World, some full blown alternative from the New World. In each issue, we take a closer look at two international brands, what lies behind them and why they work. This month we examine Grant Burge's Holy Trinity from Australia and the Rioja Crianza from Marqués de Cáceres.
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The Elegant Blockbuster
While everybody else is chasing Parker points, Grant Burge’s wine has the ultimate seal of approval – a letter of praise from the Archbishop of Adelaide, which helped to get the wine through US customs, and a recommendation from the Archbishop of Canterbury. With the church on its side, what could possibly go wrong.
If today the ‘Barossa Valley’ and ‘Shiraz’ are practically synonymous, it’s because of a small group of winemakers who decided back in the 1980s that Shiraz had something to offer. In those days, the only grape in town was Cabernet Sauvignon and commentators were happy to say that the Valley itself was only fit for growing cabbages, or grazing horses.
One of the winemakers who wanted to turn that around was Grant Burge. He, along with colleagues like Robert O’Callaghan from Rockford, consciously decided to put the Barossa on the wine map by creating wines based on old vine Shiraz.
Today, the Barossa Valley and its dense, inky Shiraz are doing so well, that other Australian winemakers lament they can’t get the world to understand that not all Australian wine is of blockbuster proportions. Grant Burge Wines has also done well, being Australia’s seventeenth biggest exporter and eighteenth biggest wine company, employing around 100 people and producing 250,000 cases of wine. Which is why it’s something of a surprise to discover that Burge’s most successful wine in the US is not an old vine Shiraz at all, but a blend of Rhône Valley varieties, Grenache, Shiraz and Mourvedre.
It’s not like Burge doesn’t have good Shiraz to offer. In his own, self-named Icon Wines category, at the top of his range, there is the one of Australia’s most highly regarded Shirazes, the Meschach. In the second tier, the Wines of Distinction, is the Filsell Shiraz, also greatly admired within Australia. But, somehow, these wines have failed to ignite in the all-important US market, where Robert Parker’s love affair with old vine Shiraz has seen wines from Burge’s neighbours achieve cult status and correspondingly high prices. (“We don’t seek Parker points” Burge’s staff will tell you sternly). The one that has is the Holy Trinity Grenache Shiraz Mourvedre, first created after Burge visited the Rhône Valley in the mid 1990s. That trip inspired him to create a blend that could eventually become as associated with the Barossa as Shiraz itself. And, like the region’s most famous wines, it too is built on old vine material.
“The fruit for Holy Trinity comes from five vineyards,” says Burge. “The youngest is 50 years old and the oldest, which represents about 40% of the wine, was planted in the 1890s.”
Burge says the Grenache gives a “beautiful, vibrant, rose petal bouquet”, the Mourvedre is “clove like”, while |
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Global Tastings |
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the Shiraz adds structure. As to why he began making it in the first place, he says he was specifically looking to create a wine style that would be a Barossa icon within the next 50 years and he chose those three grapes because they were the original red varieties of the Barossa. “We went to the Rhône a couple of times to study how to make those wines,” he says. “I just wanted to understand their perception, not copy them, but also to see what their thinking was and whether it would work in Australia.”
The name, incidentally, comes from the Anglican church that’s a short distance from where the Burge family settled in the 1850s, and which was partially built by them.
The wine is a smoothly integrated, more Old World style of wine, which has become Burge’s best seller in the US. The reason it’s so successful, suggests one of Burge’s staff, is because “it’s a discovery product and people are looking for new hooks, because they’re getting sick of very big wines. It’s a very consumable wine that you can drink a whole bottle of”.
Grant Burge himself says it may be because of the Old World style and elegant packaging, and also because the Australian category is flooded with Shiraz and Cabernet Shiraz blends. “And interestingly we have been told that the fact that the wine was blessed by the Archbishop of Canterbury is also a selling point!” he adds. “Seems that alcohol is perhaps not a sin if the product has been approved by the higher order.”
And those much maligned Parker points? The Holy Trinity got them anyway – a 91. With both God and Parker on side, it’s no wonder the wine sells.
Spanish blood
When Enrique Forner founded Marques de Caceres in the late 1960s, it was the first new bodega in Rioja in over 50 years. Today the palatial estate in Cenicero sells wine to the four corners of the world.
When produced in a traditional way, Rioja is easily recognised by its aroma, flavour and taste. Some purists, however, believe that this hallowed style of Rioja is in danger of being eclipsed, as an international, but less personal Rioja emerges, favoured by a public nurtured on New World wines. That said, while the modernists receive the editorial coverage, the majority of the Rioja made today is still vinified and aged in the same old fashioned way.
Interestingly, some of the innovators of yesteryear are today counted as traditionalists. One of those is Marques de Caceres. Founded in the late 1960s, Enrique Forner had the advantage of being assisted by the renowned oenologist Emile Peynaud, who knew his family as the owners of Châteaux Camensac and Larose Trintaudon in Bordeaux.
In fact, much of what the two did was new for the time, including not only the introduction of new oak, but also French barrels in a region that before thrived on American wood. Today, there |
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Global Tastings |
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are 40,000 barrels in the cellar, which givesthe winery a New World dimension not uncommon in Rioja, where many of the producers ship millions of bottles each year.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Marques de Caceres was on the cutting edge of the much needed modernisation that transfigured Rioja. Today, that spirit of innovation has matured to a new level tradition. What has remained is an extremely professional operation with a recognisable style and clear marketing strategy.
‘Crianza’ is for many abroad a word with little intrinsic meaning. Based on the Latin meaning ‘to raise’, as one would a child, it describes a comparatively young wine that has spent only a year in barrel and about the same time in bottle before it is released, which means that a cellar like Caceres always has ten million bottles in stock maturing to meet future demand.
Ideally, traditional Rioja comes from old, bush-pruned, vineyards at reduced yields. In contrast to the more modern styles, the alcohol level is relatively moderate because the grapes are not picked at inflated levels of ripeness. Further, these are seldom single varietal wines, but blends that add to the elegance of the predominant Tempranillo by teasing the warmth out of Garnacha, the nerve out of Graciano and, but not in this case, the acidity out of Mazuelo.
Often slightly brick-red in colour, these wines have aromas that are never fruit driven, but rather a mature bouquet of leather, spices and forest floors. Often the trained palate notes a hint of acidity on the nose that evolves on the palate in a fresh and elegant fashion. Well-balanced rather than overblown, it is the acidity more than the tannins that provide these wines with depth and length.
“Our competitors vary from one market to another,” says Luis Burgueño, export sales manager for Marques de Caceres, “but I would say that Montecillo, El Coto and Campo Viejo are the main ones.” That is certainly the case, for few of the other acclaimed wineries produce anywhere near the same volume – and that is the essence of a brand.
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