Irvine

News - Merlot Musings

01 July 2005

Success at the International Wine Challenge

It is no wonder that we are totally confused with the results we receive from exhibiting our wines. In the recent International Wine Challenge in the United Kingdom we entered four wines:
  • Irvine Grand Merlot 1999 (our current Grand Merlot)
  • Eden Crest Merlot 2002
  • The Baroness II
  • Irvine Zinfandel Reserve 2002
Four wines and, would you believe, four medals!

The Grand Merlot 1999 and the Zinfandel Reserve 2002 both receiving gold medals; the Baroness a bronze medal and the Eden Crest Merlot 2002 a silver medal.

Three of these wines were exhibited in the Cairns Wine Show, and could not gain more than a bronze award.

Truly amazing - gold medal one week, bronze award the next! We can only put it down to the different approaches and systems that each wine show uses, for indeed it certainly couldn't be the judges' fault, could it?

In Europe the wines are judged on a positive attribute basis, whereas in Australia it is a negative approach, and of course the understanding of the wine styles is vastly different. In Australia the wine is uncorked and poured, with no reference to any decant time whatsoever, and we feel that in most instances this is totally detrimental to anything but the giant "front-end loader" wines that seem to be so commonly made at the moment. No recognition of style, character or trueness of variety, nor any understanding of elegance is attended to in these judgings, just sheer power.'

So consequently we tend to exhibit quite strongly overseas, where of course these last mentioned things are well understood.

Merlot in this country has a long way to go, but as some might already know it has now reached the stage where it is the third most planted red in this country, and from a tonnage point of view it is around 150,000 tonnes. Cabernet on the other hand is approximately 250,000 tonnes and Shiraz some 400,000 or so tonnes. Within the next 5 to 8 years I would expect Merlot to have higher production than Cabernet, and within 20 years equal or passed that of Shiraz.

In the same time of course I would expect a greater understanding of Merlot in all its styles and prices, but most particularly the understanding of what constitutes a good to great Merlot will come to the winemakers, who currently do some awful things to it, and maybe we will even see another film which instead of being called "Sideways" will be called "Upstanding", and in it Merlot will be praised to the highest!

I might mention as far as the competions are concerned that amongst the Merlot entrants are quite often blended Merlots, wherein they contain Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, so we feel quite exhilerated when we see our "pure", 100% Merlot offering complexities at the gold medal standard to compete directly with these blended wines. Please remember this when next you are enjoying a so-called Merlot from other countries.

In summary then, it was even more of a thrill for our daughter Joanne to receive the gold medal for her Zinfandel Reserve, a wine which truly deserves such an award - magnificent style from the magnificent vintage, and again we were delighted to see our "every day" Merlot, the Eden Crest Merlot 2002, receive a silver award.

Wishing you all the best in your Merlot search.

Current News