Wine bars in Sydney

While it’s often an overused comparison to describe the city of Melbourne, it really is Australia’s version of a European city. If you’ve ever lived in a European city (not necessarily in the UK) you’ll know why the comparison is made – ordered streets and stately buildings are emblematic of a neo-classical style you’ll often find in cities like Milan or Vienna.

Sydney, compared to Melbourne, is much more higgledy-piggledy in its makeup. I’m currently reading a non-fiction book by Peter Carey called “30 days in Sydney: a wildly distorted account”, in which, on a visit to Sydney, Carey examines the history of the city and how it has shaped what it is today. The author is originally from Melbourne, but lived in Sydney for many years and has evidently fallen in love with any suburb that is near to, or has, harbour views. This aside, he makes a convincing case for how much the colonial (or criminal) past has formed the current, and stunning, example of a metropolitan centre.

What has all this got to do with a wine blog, you might be asking. Well, it’s interesting in that according to The Sydney Morning Herald, the wine bar scene in Australia is returning to Sydney.

It must be first noted that by “wine bar scene” it is meant bars that previously were successful in Melbourne only, and that have a large range of various wines, served by the glass. Such sophistication was previously the exclusive domain of Australia’s European city. Red light districts and hard clubbing were reserved for Melbourne’s colonial cousin, Sydney.

I find the article interesting because it shows a struggle in Sydney’s hospitality sector that has often missed the mark on combining laid back, but refined, service. A friend of mine who recently hosted some international visitors in Sydney, said their only comment on Sydney’s bars and pubs was that it was a very pretentious city. Intriguing, when Sydneysiders are often ready to accuse Melburnians of being the snooty ones.

I also find the article interesting because an acquaintance of mine in my sommeliers course is somewhat of an entrepreneur, managing a restaurant and brewery in Milan, and a seaside resort in Brasil. On meeting me, an Australian in the course, he kind of floated the idea of what it would be like to open another business venture, this time on Australian shores, along the lines of a new wine bar.

While I couldn’t give him any advice as to a foreigner opening a business in Australia, my first advice to him was to open a wine bar in Melbourne, and forget the Sydney scene. I think only time will determine whether Sydney’s wine bars will be successful.

Image | Flickr

Sommelier qualifications: a touch of class

One thing I have been particularly impressed with in our sommeliers’ course is the calibre of the teachers, or lecturers. Most of them have been introduced to wine through sheer passion for the subject and many are not necessarily sommeliers by profession.

While this might indicate a lack of qualification, it actually means that firstly, we get lecturers who understand our position as novices, and secondly the lecturers often have an incredible array of general knowledge and culture.

So far, during our lessons, Dante has been quoted, events in papal history have been touched on and journalists have shared their film watching habits with the group (and it was James Bond, not Sideways, that was quoted). I have been particularly impressed with Matteo Longhi and Guido Invernizzi who are both medical doctors with an incredibly profound expertise in, and passion for, wine.

This proves to me that while it is always good to read anything that’s available on the wine sector, it is also essential to continually cultivate a broad understanding of diverse topics that may enrich our experience of wine. It is a beverage that has fascinated mankind for centuries, and I am certainly undertaking an entire educational experience, particularly in Italian history and culture, and am not just undergoing a wine tasting course.

This is true of my work in our trading company too, as issues that we deal with daily range from the effects of the economic crisis on the wine industry (naturally!), issues in the agricultural sector, including new legislation and vintage quality, import and export law and EU regulations, along with general marketing opportunities and trends in wine consumption (for example which champagne is currently in vogue).

This is only a general overview and doesn’t have much to do with high brow culture, though it’s all linked – I believe especially for anyone whose profession is sommelier. There is something extra that should be required of a specialised wine waiter that has much to with an air of general intelligence and the ability to serve any customer, with confidence that you’ve got a grip on the entire tradition behind the product you’re proprosing.

An interesting footnote to this is the European Sommeliers Association award for best sommelier communicator. This award was inaugurated in 2007 (won by Juan Munoz Ramos) and goes to a charismatic leader in the wine industry dedicated to training, education and communication initiatives.

In Australia in 2008, the Wine Communicator of the Year Award went to Huon Hooke (an appropriate choice) for his work in journalism and wine judging. He has been writing about wine for 25 years, showing that sharing wine experiences is what we’re all about.

Chianti tastings: what's wrong with me?

I expect it’s probably heresy to say that you don’t like Chianti, or sangiovese or Tuscan wine in general. So I’ll start this post with a couple of caveats: I haven’t tried much of this style and haven’t attended many Chianti tastings. In addition, sangiovese is not really a choice of wine I normally go for, and I haven’t had many good examples.

But! at our lesson on Monday on Tuscany, I’m afraid the examples we tasted didn’t do much for my Chianti loving experience. This is also probably because the wine was too young, and if you know anything about sangiovese, you’ll know its tannins need time to settle down. Also, good examples of Tuscan wine are expensive and let’s face it, a sommelier’s course costs enough already without having the pretence to serve the best wines.

These wines, for me, need food. While the nebbiolo we have tasted so far was pushing into what the Italians call a “meditation” wine, the sangiovese needed some nice Tuscan meat (possibly chianina?) to go with it. So my Chianti drinking and Tuscan wine experience needs some nurturing, unless I get hold of a Bolgheri after which I imagine I will be converted to Tuscan wine (at the right price).

I mentioned in a recent post that Italy's nebbiolo grape variety is...well, pure bliss. I love nebbiolo, and I'm not afraid to say it. If it's nebbiolo aged in barrique, better again. I like to chew my wines and unfortunately at my sommelier course, our nebbiolo tasting is likely over as we have already looked at both Piedmont and Lombardy, which covers the two Italian regions that produce nebbiolo.

The first nebbiolo we tasted was a grand Barolo from Pio Cesare, from the 2003 vintage. This was a hot vintage in Italy, and produces wines that are perhaps less classic in style, though I appreciated this Barolo for its complexity. There was an ocean of perfumes, with plenty of varied spice dominating the nose.

The second nebbiolo was from the Valtellina, which can be considered the poor cousin of Barolo, though I like to think of it as great nebbiolo at more affordable prices. The Valtellina is home away from home for me, and it its, and my, hear, is nebbiolo. We tasted a sforzato, which is about as prestigious as you can get around these parts.

It was a Triacca, San Domenico sforzato, vintage 2003, and again it displayed an array of spices, though less vanilla than the Barolo. There were complex balsamic notes, leather and underbrush aspects, and the tannins were perfect to balance the 14.5% alcohol. Sforzato is made through a process of drying grapes, called appassimento, which is the same as the wine making of Amarone, to produce high alchol wines.

So, all in all I am satisfied with our tasting so far! I am having a visit home to Australia at Christmas and though it's not necessarily a wine for a hot summer's evening, I'll be keen to try some Australian nebbiolo when home.

Last week's wine of the week from Wine Pages, was a Trentham Estate La famiglia nebbiolo, from NSW. I'll leave aside what I think is becoming a stubborn insistence on screw cap in Australian wines (and I'd hesitate to describe nebbiolo as light-bodied), and say that the wine is intriguing all the same. It's matured for 18 months in French oak, so I'd expect some lovely soft oak characteristics. At this stage, I'd buy the wine for its beautiful label.

In addition, Franco Ziliani's WineWebNews from the Italian Association of Sommeliers celebrates this Australian wine industry experimentation with a post on Coriole's nebbiolo rose. That an Australian nebbiolo rose can make it to Italy with some positive news is a big step - the convincing is in the drinking. This is in addition to more well-known and successful efforts in Italian grape varieties from Pizzini.

So, could my love of nebbiolo be met on Australian shores too? Only time and plenty of tasting will tell...

Photo | Flickr

Perfumes in wine: how to learn a wine's bouquet, descriptions and a sommelier spice nose

The advice from our first lecturer in our sommeliers course is numerous and varied but one thing she said was that you can never identify a perfume if you can’t recognise it. She gave the example of an aromatic traminer and a group of teenagers that she once had to do a lesson with on wine tasting.

She had chosen traminer for the very fact that its aroma is unmistakable – it’s not called an aromatic grape for nothing. The students probably smelled wine and that’s about it, but one guy said “it smells just like lychees”. To say the audience was floored is to say little. But it was around Christmas time, lychees in Italy are in great supply and it happened to be his favourite fruit. Moral of the story? Know your perfumes.

What does this mean for an Australian in Italy learning wine tasting techniques? First of all, I need to gain some European knowledge, especially about plants. There are certain rules about wine tasting, one of which goes thus: white wine – white flowers and white fruit, red wine – red flowers and red fruit. Which is fine if you know your flowers.

My parents had a modest cottage garden in Australia when I was a child, but it soon evolved into something more native, and certainly didn’t include violets or peonies – just two of the flowers we’ve supposedly smelled in wines this week. My first step will be to learn the flowers in Italian. While some are similar, others are very different – hawthorn, for example, is called biancospino. My second step will be to start recognising the smell of these flowers, as I certainly don’t know what hawthorn should smell like, let alone recognise it in a glass of white wine.

I sometimes wonder if I said something smells like eucalyptus, whether that would be an acceptable and legitimate response. My resolution is to now discover the various wine perfume groups and their components. This will involve smelling and memorising various pices, herbal, vegetal, fruit, flowers, animal and ethereal components.

My first attempt has been unsuccessful as I entered a “drogheria” which is an old-style drug store in Italy, which sells spices, sweets, herbs, oils, salts and the like. I asked if they had a mixed confection of spices and they answered in the negative, saying they only sell various spices by weight. My plan was to sample and smell and memorise. After all I don’t smoke, and don’t really know what pure tobacco smells like. While I was tempted to buy something for home anyway – far more romantic than the jars of Ducros herbs and spices you get in the supermarket – I was somewhat disheartened and far too embarrassed to say I was on a research mission for my sommeliers course.

The flowers beckon, but I think I’m in for a tough challenge.

Photo | Flickr

Italian wine and grape varieties: the indigenous Nero d'Avola

Our sommeliers course is coming along like a house on fire after only two lessons, but then given the second level is all about Italian wine and Italian wine making regions, the material is so rich it’s hard to get beyond just touching on each region.

The first lesson this week was a review of how to taste wine – the descriptions you can give, serious measurements of wine quality etc. The Italian Sommeliers Association has a list of parameters and measurements that include intensity, complexity, harmony, after-taste persistency etc etc. But more on that later.

This week we tasted a Nero d’Avola, and after my father asked me about this wine and its variety, I thought I’d give it some greater analysis myself. Nero d’Avola is a native Italian wine, and an indigenous grape variety of Sicily. It is a red wine and it happens to be one of my favourites (though nothing for me from the shores of Italy will ever beat nebbiolo).

We tasted Deliella’s version, which finished with 88 points for the nero d’avola. It’s a wine that costs about 40 euros at a wine shop and so on my buying a second sample this week (purely to consolidate our lessons, you understand) I unfortunately had to acquire a less expensive wine.

My second nero d’avola shares many of the characteristics of the first, with a little less complexity. I’m drinking it too young, but then it’s difficult to find an enoteca (Italian wine shop) that will have any vintage beyond recent ones.

Deliella’s wine was filled with a bouquet of spice mix – everything from cocoa to tobacco and some under brush in between. Our lecturer that evening said that nero d’avola has a perfume all of its own and is very distinctive when you learn to recognise it – the perfume she was referring to was a brackish, sea-salt air smell. To push your imaginations a little, she’s right. Even my cheaper variety had this aspect, so we’re at least a step towards recognising the variety in a blind tasting. I think it also has a green wood smell – like raw pine.

I have seen this Italian wine in Australia, which so far has gone under-appreciated in Italy itself. I think it could have an export future as it's closer to an Australian palate than some northern Italian wines I've tasted. For being snubbed a little in Italy, I’m not sure if it’s a perception that there is a lack of wine growing tradition in Sicily, or if it just suffers from being a southern wine, but this Italian variety is definitely worth looking out for. Just don’t drink it too young.

Wine courses in Italy: becoming a sommelier and wine tasting Italy's regions

Autumn is going to be a very busy season for me, full of wine tasting events, not to mention the second level of my sommelier course.

I completed the first level of the Italian Sommeliers’ Association course in 2007, which requires more effort than most wine tasting courses in Italy you’re likely to come across. The first is about wine tasting techniques – examining the look, smell and taste of wine and how to analyse it while also learning the language parameters to describe wine.

The introductory level also presents lessons on wine production, oenology, spirits and liqueurs, the role of the sommelier and Italian wine legislation, among other topics. It’s a broad introduction, but effective enough for those who then want to develop their knowledge and tasting technique.

Things are heating up in the second course which obviously presumes a far more evolved student in terms of their theory and wine tasting experience. It must be said this is still a course for amateurs, and probably not recommended for whoever wants to become a fully-fledged professional sommelier.

The second level presents Italy’s wine growing regions and its DOCG, DOC and IGT classifications in depth. In terms of wine tasting, it also introduces a points system to judge the overall quality of a wine, rather than limiting the taster to observations and wine description. This will likely have me brushing up on the vocabulary and theory from the first course before assigning any points anywhere, and could see me doing plenty of swirling and smelling at home.

The first lesson had reassured me about how much I haven’t forgotten (but thought I had) from the first course, but then I was gripped by panic about how much more I have to learn and my startling level of ignorance. But I got the coffee perfume right with the Nero d’Avola...let the challenge begin!

Wine industry innovation: international exchanges in the wine sector

In Decanter’s September issue, Margaret Rand takes a look at the kind of exchanges that take place between the new world and old world of the wine industry.

I had a discussion with someone today, the nature of which made me question whether this constant dichotomy between new and old is helpful, but as it still exists and the wine industry is likely to continue down this split line, I’ll probably continue looking at things in this way, too.

The Decanter article was good because I think it highlights the point that I made in my last post – that Australia has a reputation for innovation in the wine industry. This is excellent for the Australian wine industry which, as I have said before, too often limits itself to a definition of quality for money (rather than just quality full stop).

The innovation goes beyond the use of screw caps and eye catching marketable labels. An interesting example came from Spain’s port-marking region and David Guimaraens, who went from Fonseca Port to Roseworthy Agricultural College to gain the empirical knowledge required to modernise the port making practices in his family business.

Another example, so pertinent in times where climate change is on everyone’s lips, was that of Philippe Guigal from the Rhone region in France, who was streaks ahead of his other wine maker counterparts during an extremely hot vintage. Harvest and racking and fermentation techniques to reduce the impact of a hot vintage were learned during his time in Australia and California.

But what about Australians travelling ‘back’ to the old world for an insight into how things are done in Europe..? The examples given here is exactly what is needed in these parts to show Europeans that Australian wine can compete with the best of them. The examples are what I needed in recent debates with a colleague over the use of chemicals and the lack of a ‘cru’ system in Australia (I will examine this topic at a later date because it was a particularly fascinating discussion we had).

Yalumba has perhaps pioneered the use and diffusion of the Viognier grape among Australian wine, and it learned this through a trip that Louisa Rose undertook to the Rhone. While she says that things weren’t that different in the Rhone, at least she was reassured that Yalumba was moving in the right direction.

The example I loved most was that of Vanya Cullen from Cullen Wines in the Margaret River, who is now employing bio-dynamic production in her vineyards. I am really impressed with the direction bio-dynamic wine making is taking, and the coverage it’s getting. Apparently it is one of the best ways to express terroir and I think Australia needs to get back in touch with its roots – that is to say that anything that increases the terroir expression of Australian wines, is a positive thing. The one thing that Cullen points out, that should be noted by anyone from Europe who thinks the new world lacks heritage and terroir, is that Australian soil is older than that in Europe. Bio-dynamics for Cullen, is all about risk taking for future sustainability. Climate change is again a key factor here.

While Decanter did the leg work on the article and provided some nice profiles, it didn’t really have a conclusive argument to make about the benefits to be had from these kinds of exchanges. I would hazard that they could prove to change the wine industry, both old and new, unfathomably.

Wine industry innovation: how does Australia fare?

One of the best publications I’ve seen in a while is Fast Thinking, which appears to have emerged recently in the wake of the Rudd Government’s innovation review this year.

I read the Autumn 2008 issue which covers a wide variety of topics from environmental practices and water conservation, to what makes a good CEO.

The most interesting article in this issue for me was “Dumbest Country in the Southern Hemisphere?”, which examined Australia’s history and notoriety as a creative country and whether innovation is really a priority in the current era.

The article, by Lia Timson, points out that Australians are very good at naming some of our national inventions (the wine cask being one), but that our smallness of mentality and tendency to comparison hold us back.

I would like to think that Australia is “nimble, and can implement innovation faster”, as Tim Pethinck from WhatIf! says. But he also says we have a limited knowledge of the local consumer and tend to follow overseas trends. Not long after the article was written, he experienced the closure of the Australian office of WhatIf!, saying that innovation goes unappreciated, and under-invested, in Australia.

In a report from marketing consultancy The Leading Edge, it was revealed that Australian companies were good at following new trends, and launching new products, but that a change in consumer behaviour was not forthcoming. In addition the article reveals that Australians are confident innovators, but not in Australia (this from Richard Webb, founder of Blue Freeway).

I have personally seen, mostly in workplace situations, Australia’s lack of interest or confidence in creativity and risk taking. I have also seen a lack of confidence in local talent. I doubt whether this is a peculiar Australian trait, but when you can be exactly the opposite, why not?

While all this may not have much to do with the wine industry, I think Australia needs another reputation than great wine at cheap prices. And seeing as I’m definitely not an expert, it probably needs to be made clear what innovation is, how to encourage it, and then how to use it. There’s no point sitting around “innovating” (next biggest excuse for procrastination?) if there fruits of this can’t be utilised in some way.

I think Australia’s wine industry does have a reputation for innovation – or at least a freshness of approach. Which is more than I can say for where I work now – we run an entire wine investment fund off an excel document; the users are faulty, not the program itself, but with some software we could find (or develop!) the level of innovation, and therefore resources saved, would be highly beneficial.