Tasted in Art & Science of Fine Wine class in Menlo Park (see Class Descriptions). Wine sells for around US$100, but would be hard to find in an American retail store. I use this wine to illustrate a lecture point on pruning and trellising decisions. The wine is very unusual, and not everybody likes it, but personally I always find it enormously impressive.

Background Wine Education

     1998 Wynn’s ‘John Riddoch’ Cabernet Sauvignon is from Coonawarra in the state of South Australia. Many people consider Coonawarra to be Australia’s finest Cabernet district. It is about a day’s drive south of Adelaide, and perhaps two day’s drive west of Melbourne. In short, it is way-the-hell-and-gone away from civilization. The first time I visited, in 1980, the only pub in town was still divided into separate men’s and women’s sections ~ smoke in either. Of course that was nearly two generations ago. The point is Australia has a very meager viticultural labor force under any circumstance, and Coonawarra’s isolation exacerbates the situation there.
     Things have changed somewhat in more recent vintages, but in 1998 anything a machine could do to replace manual labor was something the vintners of Coonawarra employed machines to do. That would be the polar opposite of (say) Chile, where men do so much of the work machines do in Australia. Up through at least the 1998 vintage, in Coonawarra the vines were frequently hedged rather than pruned. ‘Hedged’ implies something akin to a military haircut. Instead of one bud left on each of (say) five evenly spaced, 1” spurs vertically positioned along the cordon arms of each vine, hedging allows perhaps eighty 6” spurs protruding in all directions from the cordon arms. There may be several buds on each spur. The result is a canopy that looks like a thickly tangled cylinder, with the cordon arms running down the center. Leaves on the inside of the cylinder are in the shade all summer long. Those leaves consume nutrients, but they do not contribute to ripening.
     Coonawarra is naturally a fairly cool growing district. It’s only 37 miles from the coast, and there is persistent cloud cover. ‘Degree-days’ is a technique for measuring the highest daily temperature throughout the growing season. [Don’t try comparing these Australian numbers to those you might see from California. The Australian figures are in ºC, while those from the U.S. are usually in ºF.] Coonawarra only gets about 1,365 degree-days, while Barossa Valley, north of Adelaide gets 1,832, upper Hunter Valley, north of Sydney gets 1,743, and balmy Margaret River, hard on the Indian Ocean gets 1,629. Ultra-ripe is not a description applied to Coonawarra Cabernets in general, and back when they were grown on hedge-pruned vines, they were reliably expressive of Cabernet’s historic ‘leafy’ character.

Wine Taste Description

     Vintners in Napa Valley have discovered over the last fifteen years, as they replanted vineyards threatened by phylloxera, that Cabernet vines with all their leaves in sun will ripen faster than those on sprawling trellises with a lot of shaded leaves. Faster, more complete ripening removes any trace of the pyrazine flavor, a characteristic Cabernet Sauvignon shares with its biological parent, Sauvignon Blanc. That pyrazine flavor is similar to green peppers. Riper Cabernet grapes move toward a cassis character, and away from that green olive or haricot vert character.
     The Wynn’s ‘John Riddoch’ Cab from 1998 is a throwback. Old school. From the very start it was loaded with pyrazines. Not sprinkled; fully inundated! It was complex, wonderfully structured, and long in the finish with supple tannins. But many tasters were never able to get past the intense herbaceous smell. Which is one reason why there aren’t many (if any at all) Cabernets made in this manner anymore. Call it “Epitaph for a Cabernet” (my apologies to David Masumoto). Personally I’m a fan of the green olive style. In fact, I’d call it the aromatic signature of red wines from Pessac-Leognan in Bordeaux. I like it because I think it clearly distinguishes Cabernet Sauvignon from other red grapes. If I want a red wine smelling of sour cherries, I’ll buy a Syrah.
     I further believe the big payback from this older style of Cabernet comes when the wine gets seven or eight years of bottle-age under its belt. To me the pyrazine smells of youth are precursors for the unlit pipe tobacco smells I enjoy so much as bouquet. The Wynn’s 1998 Riddoch goes several steps beyond pipe tobacco. We’re talking big tobacco leaves, the ones meant for cigar wrappers, drying in a not too well ventilated barn. The 1998 Riddoch Cab is, today, extraordinarily intense in the nose with a wonderfully full, round, textured smell. It is still nicely balanced in the mouth, and long, but you barely notice the flavors or structure because the bouquet is performing such a thorough waterboard interrogation on your face.

Wine – Food Pairing

     I think the perfect way to pair this wine is to go all gaucho on it. Simple too. Get yourself a flank steak. Mash up a bunch of parsley, and a couple anchovies, in butter (you can use anchovy paste). Slather the mixture fairly thickly on one side of the flank steak. Roll the steak up tightly, with the paste on the inside. Once rolled, wrap the outside in Saran-wrap to secure the roll. Place it under the back of your saddle as you spend the day punchin’doggies on the Pampas ~ or leave it 8 hours in your refrigerator if somebody else is employing your horse for the day. Then grill it over hot coals that night. Serve with a baked potato and chives. Es muy macho!

Bottle-aged Syrah

can be quite special. Old vines from the Barossa Valley make good candidates (Shiraz), and the right food pairing always seals the deal.

Class Tasting

1998 St. Hallett (Old Block) Shiraz from the Barossa Valley in Australia. Tasted in the monthly Friday night Varietal Series class in Nevada City (California’s Sierra Foothills) – an excellent way to begin a weekend getaway in the mountains. See www.brucecasswinelab.com for the Fall – Winter – Spring schedule.
This wine probably costs a little over $100 in a retail store, but it would be very hard to find. It is from a warm, and highly regarded vintage in Australia. St. Hallett produces three Shiraz wines each year. The one called Faith, and the one called Blackwell, are pleasant enough when young, and should probably be drunk for maximum pleasure then. Old Block is the one built for aging. It comes from 60- to 100-year-old vines. It has an excellent track record, and definitely deserves a spot in the Aussie Top Five for consistently rewarding ten years of bottle age. St. Hallett has existed since 1944, but only upgraded their production facility for fine wines in 1988. Since then the Old Block Shiraz has been the winery’s flagship. It is aged 20 months in French oak barrels. All the St. Hallett grapes are sourced in the Barossa appellation, which is something even Penfolds’ Grange can’t say.
In class we compared the Old Block side-by-side with a 1995 Jaboulet (Les Jumelles) Côte-Rôtie. Both were wonderful, but they could not have been more different. The Jaboulet was all bouquet – roasting pork fat and frying onions. Which works great on my scorecard. The St. Hallett was bigger, darker, rounder. It had plenty of bouquet development – more in the roasting coffee beans and sun-scorched leather department, but most notably the St. Hallett had this gigantic core of mulberry and pomegranate fruit. Not fresh fruit; stone fruit… hammer fruit. The Jaboulet had more acid, but it didn’t have more length. The Jaboulet was friendlier; the Old Block more memorable.

Wine & Food Pairing

I’m tempted to recommend the St. Hallett with wild game, say elk. In fact elk steaks are commonly sold in the supermarket near where this class tasting was held. But I realize access to elk steaks may not be that common. Of course neither is access to a ten-year-old bottle of St. Hallett’s Old Block. So there you have it. Marinate the meat for several hours in soy, plain yogurt, rosemary, garlic, and papaya pulp. Doesn’t hurt to smack the steaks a few times with a 2-ft-long stick before marinating. Sear the steaks quickly over intense heat. Then move them to a low heat section of the grill for slow, indirect, smoky cooking. Serve to a small group. I’d say four people per bottle max.