Is the Watson worth it?

Despite its many critics and their armoury of valid criticisms, Australia would certainly be a poorer place without its wine show system. Our heritage of agricultural-style wine shows, which the rest of the wine world has taken to with glee, is one of the reasons why Australian wine is presently enjoying an unrivalled wave of popularity overseas.

But that doesn’t mean we should rest on our laurels. Living in Melbourne I am constantly reminded of one of the greatest anomalies in Australian wine – the status of the Jimmy Watson Trophy. This trophy, whose importance has been transported far beyond its original intent, has now come to symbolise the worst illogicalities of Australian wine shows and the blinkered pig-headedness of those who are happy to let comfortable status quo’s remain as they are.

Before I expand on those remarks, it’s worth taking a glance at how the trophy evolved into its present Godzilla-like status. In 1935 Jimmy Watson founded JC Watson’s Wine Bar in Carlton, a business which is today operated by his son, Allan, a former Melbourne Lord Mayor.

Jimmy Watson would serve young wines bought directly from the traditional wine regions of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia together with honest, down-to-earth food. He died in February 1962. At his funeral a number of his friends had gathered to figure out what to do to ensure that his name and contribution to wine in Victoria were remembered. The word went out that donations were being collected at the wine bar, for which the monies raised would establish a trust. Its interest earned would be exclusively used to buy the trophy for the Royal Melbourne Wine Show named in Jimmy Watson’s honour.

In keeping with the style of wine served at Watson’s establishment, the group appropriately decided that the trophy would be given to the best one year-old red wine at the show, the very sort of wine Watson himself would be expected to buy and serve.

The inaugural Jimmy Watson Trophy was awarded in September 1962 by the 1961 Stonyfell Metala Claret. But, according to according to Len Evans, until Wolf Blass won it three consecutive times from 1974 to 1976 the Watson remained just another trophy. Evans is unquestionably Australia’s most vocal and authoritative protagonist of the wine show system, being Chairman of the Royal Sydney Show since 1978 and former Chairman of Judges of the Royal Adelaide and the National Canberra Wine Shows. ‘The trophy was nothing until Blass made it famous and now its public image is very well fostered by those who run the Melbourne show’, he says.

Indeed most people assume that through its sheer weight of publicity, the Watson is the most important award made at this show. It shouldn’t be. And most winemakers agree.

The wines from which the Watson is chosen are unfinished and unblended, taken straight from oak casks. It is almost unreasonable to expect the wine being judged at the Melbourne Show to bear excessive resemblance to the wine that finishes up in the bottle, with the Watson trophy tag around its neck. The 1989 winner of the trophy was the first straight shiraz for some years, a delightful young wine from Mildara Coonawara. Some time later this company released its 1988 Jamieson’s Run shiraz-cabernet blend which claimed on its label to have won the Jimmy Watson.

Why all the fuss? Such is the hype generated by the Watson today that the press releases from the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria which oversees the Melbourne show claim its worth to be around one million dollars in publicity to the winner. Frankly, I doubt that’s true today, although it could well have been so throughout the 1980s. No wonder the trophy is so keenly contested.

According to Len Evans, the Jimmy Watson’s importance has reached the ridiculous stage to which it’s totally abused by winemakers who make adulterated wines to suit the judges for the purpose of winning the trophy, rather than wines to keep for the future. ‘The best red should be a great wine that can be kept in the bottle and tastings of Jimmy Watson winners show that very few cellar well’, he says.

In echoing those comments I would suggest that it is not just Watson winners that have the capacity to look brilliant when judged in shows, but when released to the market entirely lack the depth of fruit and length on palate to improve in the bottle. One of the greatest problems created by wine shows is the ‘show wine’ phenomenon – wines that promise everything while they’re on the show circuit but then later fail to deliver by the greatest of margins. Tastings of previous Watson winners reveal a sadly high percentage of such wines.

Most Watson winners over the last decade rely excessively on lashings of aromatic new American oak to wow the judges and cover up what will later emerge as a serous palate deficiency.

Supporters of the Watson’s format argue that this is only to be expected, that the Watson winners are made to be drunk young. Why then, is the trophy still promoted as the most important trophy of the Melbourne show, with the strong implication to the public that the Watson winner is that show’s best wine?

Several capital city wine shows now refuse to give medals and trophies to unfinished wines. Some present certificates of commendation instead. These shows have recognised the intellectual unsustainability of the very concept of the Watson’s stature in Australian wine as we move towards the next century.

Len Evans says the Canberra show system is best, where only finished and bottled wines are able to be shown at all. Test samples of wine are bought from the retail shelves to compare to the show samples entered. Once at Canberra a major company which did very well there was caught flat-footed and found out, then being forced to withdraw all its entries. ‘If the industry knows this happens, they will not try and create special ‘show’ samples’, he says.

‘I don’t want to denigrate it’, says Len Evans, ‘but I’d have to say the Watson is like Madonna. Not everyone approves, but we all know it’s there.’ Many people, myself included, have put it to Wine Show Committee of the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria that the Wine Society Trophy for the Best Open Red Wine is far more relevant and significant and should become the Melbourne show’s premier award. They have simply responded by maintaining the Watson hype. Please login to post comment