Drink
Touch of class
by Keith Stewart
One of the surest ways to evaluate a wine producer is by tasting their worst wine to see how they feel about their customers. Real fine-wine makers care for all their customers enough to sell them good wine at whatever level, while the rest show their disrespect by flicking on any old rubbish that will turn them a profit.
A perfect example of this in New Zealand are Babich, who have always valued their customers, whether they prefer drinking flagon port or top-class chardonnay. Across the Tasman, Jacob’s Creek fits the same profile, with every bottle a bargain at its price, whether reserve or the mass-market standard that should make a good many winemakers, be they small or enormous, blush with embarrassment.
Companies such as Cloudy Bay, Te Mata Estate and Petaluma also manage high quality across their range, but, as they hardly ever get down to the daily drinker level of the supermarket floor, their common touch is not widely appreciated. So it was with some surprise that a tasting of the wines of the prestige Burgundian house Joseph Drouhin revealed not only a selection of very high-class burgundies, red and white, but also a couple of bottom-of-the-class gold standard wines.
Under the brand name Laforet, these two artisan wines, a bourgogne rouge and bourgogne blanc, are of such class and sophistication as to give many boutique winemakers a fright – at less than $20 a bottle. Here are wines that epitomise Burgundy, and all the reasons it is the template for so much that is going on in New World countries such as New Zealand.
Not fruit-jube wines that taste like a sample of their variety, but real wines that express a winemaking culture whose primary characteristics are a suave nature, complexity and softness moderated by fine acidity. And for a price equivalent to local jungle juice, which makes them doubly inviting.
Why these wines are not available on every wine list in the country is beyond me. In fact, every supermarket serious about its biggest item, which is now wine, should be leading with these, just to show their respect for wine customers. Unfortunately, in supermarkets, as in wine companies that are obliged to deal with them, the philosophy is “stack ’em high, sell ’em cheap”.
As New Zealand’s second pinot noir conference looms (in Wellington next January), this should be a wake-up call for wine producers who have vineyards full of pinot noir and believe they can get away with scrawny plonk at $16.95 a bottle simply because Ata Rangi Pinot Noir is fetching $50. On the basis of Drouhin’s line-up, the Ata Rangi is cheap at $50, but there is an awful lot of under $20 local pinot noir that is, well, awful.
TRY THIS: JOSEPH DROUHIN 2001 LAFORET BOURGOGNE ROUGE
Damn, this is good. Not fanatically fruity or laced with cherry juice, but with enough fruit flavour to give its vinous nature a fresh manner along with complex, mellow tones in both bouquet and taste. Heavens, it actually has a bouquet rather than an aroma. This is smart wine, harmonious, suave and the hottest value around if you are attracted to what it is that makes pinot noir great.
PRICE: $19.95
AVAILABLE: Wine Direct (www.winedirect.co.nz).
