Drink
Out of hock
by Keith Stewart
BRAISED HOCKS ARE VERY TRENDY, served in all the fashionable suburban bistros and inner-city cafés, and the name evokes images of deep winter evenings and heartwarming substance washed down with volumes of rich red wine. But hang on, 30 years ago hocks were waste at most butchers shops, ending up in dogfood parcels – and if you found a hock in a restaurant it was aromatic all right, but also dry, white and most likely very cool.
Hock-in-the-bottle, not hock-on-the-haunch, was vernacular for a German wine hailing from one of the winegrowing regions on the Rhine, taking its name from the town Hochheim, whose wines – known in literal German tradition as Hochheimers – were favourites of Queen Victoria. This name being a bit of a tongue twister for the petite bourgeoisie who were immediately attracted to it, the truncated version, hock, became the name for every wine from the Rhine.
As well, hock soon became the name for imitations of these popular lines being produced in places such as Australia and New Zealand. Gradually, hock shifted meaning, becoming a generic name for medium-dry whites, as opposed to medium-sweet whites that were called moselles, after that other famous German wine river, the Mosel.
These names were replaced by those of the varieties by New World producers who wanted to tell the world their wine was serious, made from serious grapes. Hock became riesling-sylvaner and then müller-thurgau, and across the country chablis was being replaced by chardonnay, and claret by cabernet sauvignon.
Gradually, this process of science-based deconstruction of wine culture in the New World has stripped all meaning from the names we give our wines. Chardonnay could be from anywhere, as could riesling or cabernet sauvignon, unless you have a sharp understanding of the global geography of winegrowing.
Only the Aussies have managed to retain anything of their own character in varietal names, with their use of shiraz. Apart from a few US examples, if the label says shiraz, the wine comes from Australia, whereas we and the rest of the world use syrah.
Once, the Aussies called some of their shiraz "Hermitage", as in Grange Hermitage. That was because the first syrah vine cuttings planted in Australia were collected from the hill of Hermitage in the Northern Rhône Valley of France – by none other than James Busby, author of the Treaty of Waitangi.
Now that the French say such references to Australia’s wine history are inappro-priate on a wine label, shiraz it is. To avoid the issue, maybe we should call ours "busby", with every bottle finished with a wee possum-fur busby hat instead of a capsule. At least the world would know where it came from.
TRY THIS: MATUA VALLEY 2002 MATHESON SYRAH
Simply delicious, from its first, juicy, fruit-sweet aromas to the last lingering hint of spiced plums, this is the sort of wine you go back for time after time. Not that it’s all floor show. There is substance here, too, nice balance and depth of flavour behind the façade, as well as a nicely engineered bit of structure on which all those lush flavours can dance for you. Some might say syrah is the thinking drinker’s pinot noir, but this would have you believing that there is plenty for the hedonist as well.
PRICE: $19.95
AVAILABLE: here and there.
