Australia's Most Expensive Wine

[Jay60A]

Grange defined a style, and Penfolds makes 10,000+ cases a year of a style that ages for 50+ years in great vintages with enormous pedigree. All icons, of which Australian only really has two, can be discussed in terms of value but they all have an amazing track record. Latour, DRC, Chave, Grange, Vega Sicilia etc ... they sit at the same table with 20 years of age. In no way, no matter what the quality, will a 100 case wine of another supersized-Barossa Shiraz "challenge" Grange.
What's new, how does this wine advance Australian wine one iota?

I'm with Smithy on this, he's off doing his own thing, making decent volumes, and in his own inimitable style, and at good prices. He is perhaps the next Max Schubert of Durif, who knows? Australia needs a couple of hundred of Smithy's pushing the envelope because that way, ten or twenty are going to do something really interesting. Torbreck The Laird is to me conceptually tedious no matter how good the wine, unless it is redefining or pushing boundaries other than price.

To celebrate this wine is to to stick your head in the sand (toilet?) and worship at the altar of where Australian wine marketing at a macro level has lost it - not enough new concepts, just reworking the same overpriced, over-extracted, over-ripe wines. Mollydookerdom (is that a word?) beckons, and in the eyes of the rest of the wine-savvy world NZ is what's really pushing the new-world boundaries these days. I speak from afar ...

Listen, I may be wrong: if this wine exists in 20 years with a make of 10,000 cases and selling for more than Grange, I was wrong and you can all log into Auswine 2030 forum's 3D reality chat room and mock me in my dotage. .

[Peter NZ]

For what it's worth, I see it's one of the 2 wines to get 100 points from Lisa Perrotti-Brown in the most recent Wine Advocate ... (the other's the 1910 Para).

[TiggerK]

So I wonder if she tasted it blind??

Scientific studies show conclusively that people rate a wine with a $90 label on it higher than the exact same wine with a $10 label on it, and this goes for written comments as well as brain scan indications of enjoyment....

I'm sure she has a good palate, but is knowing the price a big bias factor between a 97 pointer and a 100 pointer? I suspect so.

Cheers
TiggerK

[fatdoi]

but what about Chris Ringland's shiraz? his bottles can fetch $500+ easy in auction so how does his wine stack up against grange?

[Hindmarsh]

Personally it appears the Laird is aiming squarly at the US/Robert Parker Market, and any prestige from this will then translate to the Asian markets, and generally maintain the cult wine halo on Torbreck's head. I cannot fault the ambition and guts of Powell in producing the wine, and as people have noted, the market will decide its true price.
Having tasted a tablespoons worth at a tasting last year, I would argue it is a very nice wine 'in its style', though at that price, I would be giving it a wide berth. UNlike a Grange (or a French equivalent), you are no guarantee of the wine being able to age, or for it to maintain its prestige (for those who get off on the 'unveiling' of a bling bottle of wine at a dinner party), so shelling out $600 for it is a risk.

I note Penfolds has upped the ante with its $400-odd Reserve Coonawarra/Barossa Cab Shiraz as well. So long as the $20-50 wines they make are still nice, bring it on.

[tpang]

From my conversations with Dave, his sights are on China right now instead of the US or 'RP market'. And to support that, I do believe a significant proportion of the Laird has been purchased by the mainland chinese.
I stand to be corrected if someone out there has the inside figures.

w.r.t. price, Dave will no doubt point to the high price he paid for the fruit, and he is notorious for paying high$$ for his fruit. Personally, $700? I'd rather buy Grand Echezeaux, but if there are willing buyers, then no reason to hold back.

[Hindmarsh]

That is interesting tpang - With the prices being paid for wine in the Hong Kong/Chinese market, it is understandable it would be targetted. Maybe the title of 'Australia's most expensive wine' might generate enough sales in China alone.
What I like about the Laird is that Torbreck haven't just tweaked one of their other wines / selected the best 100 cases of another wine and repackaged it - Powell has secured a vineyard with a story and given the wine some slightly different treatment, and overall, the wine - though overpriced in my view - still has a story behind it to go with the lofty price.

I like to see wineries with the courage to up the ante - there is an important qualitative difference between aiming high and ripping customers off.

[Bick]

w.r.t. price, Dave will no doubt point to the high price he paid for the fruit, and he is notorious for paying high$$ for his fruit.

Its not even his own fruit?? That makes it even more likely to be a total rip off then I'd have thought.

[tpang]

I'm pretty sure he's paying approx $50k per ton of fruit from that block, so not just spare change. And the Tardieu Laurent 45mm barrels aren't $2 shop material either..

I think it's one thing to go 'pfft' at wines that cost a lot, esp if marketed as 'single vineyard' releases (I'm often guilty of this), and it's easy to do so because we often only focus on the final product i.e. wine in a bottle. But having visited wineries and talking to makers of more expensive bottlings, and becoming aware of the high costs associated with some of these top-$ wines, I've become more appreciable for the hefty price tag of some wines and have in fact purchased some (not the Laird though). Of course, at the end of the day, the wine better be bloody good!