Jeremy Oliver in California – More Impressions and Diary Notes

Just finished judging the first day of the Pacific Rim International Wine Show, staged in rather an industrial area in San Bernandino, a sprawling town inland of Los Angeles. This show is open to wines from all over the US, plus Australia, Chile and New Zealand. I haven’t much of a clue concerning the precise origins of the wines I tasted today, but most were apparently from California.

I drew a small but interesting class of semillon that revealed a couple of clean and vibrant wines, but most of my time was spent tasting shiraz from 2001-2005. The wines were poured in classes determined by vintage and price point. Frankly, it was a tough day at the office, for aside from a very small number of wines that ably balanced their fruit, oak and tannin levels – not to mention the often searing acidity not uncommon in American shiraz – most wines failed to provide much in the pleasure department.

It seems to me that most of the problems began in the vineyard. Many of the wines were made with a clear but incorrect conviction that the more concentrated and impenetrable the shiraz, the better it was. Raw oak and tannin were often seen supporting some pretty clunky and exaggerated fruit, but there was no denying their impact. As I write, I am still awaiting my first beer! That, dear subscriber, is dedication!

Another of the issues commonly seen amongst the shirazes today was a powerful greenish, meaty character derived from under-ripe fruit being left out to hang and hang and hang in the ultimately futile pursuit of physiological ripeness. Many winemakers over here talk more openly than they do in Australia about leaving fruit out to achieve correct dry tannins and hard brown seeds in grapes, but I constantly wonder at what cost to the fruit. After all, we don’t drink seeds.

Too many vineyards clearly are not suited to shiraz, or are else being over-cropped to blazes. Once you’re in trouble, then everything you do after that is remedial, which is hardly the key to making delicious wine.

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Australian children are frequently brought up on a diet of Vegemite. American children, especially on the East Coast, are frequently brought up on a diet of Concord Jelly. The difference is that Australian adults do not then make and enjoy alcoholic beverages out of Vegemite.

I made a new memory today, while trying to sniff a glass of Concord wine. It took me straight back to my days in 1984 at Roseworthy College, having to taste the fruit from this species of vine and wonder at how some human palates could ever find their flavour attractive. This they undeniably do, and the sample of wine in question today was promptly and unanimously awarded a Gold Medal by the local experts here present. Gutlessly, perhaps, I absconded from the vote. After all, over here it’s not compulsory!

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I’ve been lucky recently to be at the right place at the right time to experience what the locals cheerily describe as ‘killer’ California cabernets, especially some with considerable age. Renowned wine scribe and judge Dan Berger ripped open a 1974 Sterling Vineyards Cabernet 19.0/96 from Calistoga in the Napa Valley whose old-fashioned expression of harmony and balance were first-class. A heady and leathery bouquet of dark olives, chocolate and bitumen preceded a supremely refined palate still expressing a powerful measure and length of dark fruit qualities tightly supported by pliant, but firm tannins.

Michael Rubin showed me a remarkably elegant and Bordeaux-like wine from the Napa. Freemark Abbey’s 1970 Cabernet Bosch Please login to post comment