What Ever Happened to....?

[Chuck]

Thought I'd start a thread to discuss old wines, labels and wineries that are no longer with us.

I remember the old Rycroft winery at McLaren Vale that was bought by Rosemount a while ago. They had a really nice well priced wine - Traditional - that was a cabernet blend. Rustic tiny cellar door was a nice stop at MV back in the day. We consumed much of it in our poor days with young kids. Just a good honest wine that had character. Rosemount continues the wine under its own label and we still have some in the cellar.

Carl

[Rossco]

Sounds weird (I even feel strange typing this) but Houghton Museum Release White Burgundy (now called Museum Release White Classic)
A wine i enjoyed in my youth, as it had a bit of age on it, and was still under $20

[Andrew Jordan]

Leasingham Classic Clare Sparkling Shiraz - IMHO consistently top 3 sparkling shiraz in Oz. Since 2006 not made. ???

[Matt@5453]

Hillstowe Wines, based in Adelaide Hills, but also had vineyards in McLaren Vale. Outstanding wines. I think bought by Southcorp in the early 2000s, and then the label spat out and gone forever.

[Matt@5453]

Leasingham Classic Clare Sparkling Shiraz - IMHO consistently top 3 sparkling shiraz in Oz. Since 2006 not made. ???

No one buys sparkling shiraz, why make it?

[Mahmoud Ali]

Sounds weird (I even feel strange typing this) but Houghton Museum Release White Burgundy (now called Museum Release White Classic)
A wine i enjoyed in my youth, as it had a bit of age on it, and was still under $20

It's only a name change but the wine is still the same. Right?

[Rossco]

Sounds weird (I even feel strange typing this) but Houghton Museum Release White Burgundy (now called Museum Release White Classic)
A wine i enjoyed in my youth, as it had a bit of age on it, and was still under $20

It's only a name change but the wine is still the same. Right?

They changed the name mid 90's I think. I havent seen it (as museum release white Classc) since 05 or 06 vintage.

[mychurch]

Do they still make the Roxburgh Chardonnay ? I used to love the Balmoral Shiraz, which suppose was the red alternative, but the Roxburgh probably saw even more oak. I reckon 1992 or there about a was the last vintage I drank.

One of the top Chardonnay producers used to have a Chinese version - was it Petaluma. Again, a wine I enjoyed way back.

[Andrew Jordan]

No one buys sparkling shiraz, why make it?

Wow!! You are adding real value to this forum with your insight ...

[Mahmoud Ali]

Sounds weird (I even feel strange typing this) but Houghton Museum Release White Burgundy (now called Museum Release White Classic)
A wine i enjoyed in my youth, as it had a bit of age on it, and was still under $20

It's only a name change but the wine is still the same. Right?

They changed the name mid 90's I think. I havent seen it (as museum release white Classc) since 05 or 06 vintage.

Okay, so first the name change, dropping the word Burgundy, which of course they had to do if they wanted to continue exporting to the EU, and then dropping the museum release altogether. That is a real shame because they were stellar wines and reasonably priced.

However there is a way around this, just buy the regular regular release and cellar it yourself. The Museum Release was the same wine, made exactly the same and only released at a later date. My advice to everyone here is to buy a few bottles and cellar them. You will derive suberb pleasure but without the classy looking museum label.

I had a pair of 1991 HWB Museum Release that I bought in Sydney which cost me all of A$20 when it was already ten years old. I brought them back to Canada and opened the last one in 2008, ten years after it was bottled (1998) and 17 years after vintage. At the time I described it aas honeyed, waxy, and silky. Simply devine.

Mahmoud.

[Ian S]

Penfolds Bin2 Shiraz/Mourvedre. True the label lives on, but alongside the shift from Burg to Bdx shaped bottle, overnight the price doubled and the wine quality plummeted. From a no-brainer buy, tgo a no-brainer leave on the shelf, in the space of a single vintage.

Vallana. Another that continued, but where a quite ridiculously good qpr with 50+ year cellaring potential, rapidly went downhill. There is hope the current generation can restore what they had, but whether that became impossible with tightening up of wine regulations (what became the DOC/DOCG) who knows. Plenty of allegations that they souped the wine up with grapes from the South (Aglianico perhaps?), which they always denied, but other local producers reckon was going on. I would definitely be a buyer if they ever made a VdT belnding Piemontese nebbiolo/spanna with quality southern grapes. The potential for a mischievous label appeals as well!

I would love to get hold of the Houghton HWB/White classic again, either in Museum form or self-cellaring. Must be 15 years since I last saw a bottle.

[Mahmoud Ali]

Vallana and Dessilani are two northern Italian producers I have not seen in aeons, my last vintages being from the early 80s which, despite my prediliction to over-cellar, were wines that never showed their age and which I drank all too soon. I did not know that the quality of Vallana had declined. Their labels were classics in an almost over-wrought pastiche style.

SpannaVallana.jpg

Ghemme.jpg

Mahmoud.

[Ian S]

Hi Mahmoud
The 1950s and 1960s were probably the golden age. I recall sharing a birth year bottle with someone born in 1954 (~ 10 years ago) that was stunning. A google search says 1963 was the inception of the DOC era.

I have a more modern bottle in the cellar (2010 Boca with a similar label to the Ghemme above - for me these labels are my favourite in the wine world).

Speaking to a family member at a very good Gattinara producer, it was explained to me that this producer stopped using the term Spanna because there is no legal definition for it, allowing anything to be used. In my head when this was said was Vallana!

That same producer told me about a major frost that devastated production (possibly in the 1960s - my memory isn't that good), not just in the year of the frost, but into the next year (as well as the death of many vines). At the time they were of a similar level of prestige to Barolo / Barbaresco, but smaller and less organised. That frost hammered them just as the Langhe wines started to gain a strong market foothold. Only now are we seeing major interest in the area, not just from wine enthusiasts, but also from outside investors like G. Conterno and the de Marchi's of Tuscany. After decades of stagnation, the region is in danger of becoming hip.

[Ozzie W]

Leasingham Classic Clare Sparkling Shiraz - IMHO consistently top 3 sparkling shiraz in Oz. Since 2006 not made. ???

Yep, 2006 was regrettably the last vintage ever made. The all too common collateral damage when a large corporate buys a winery. Drank my last bottle back in 2015.

[JamieBahrain]

After decades of stagnation, the region is in danger of becoming hip.

Which is positive.

[Ian S]

After decades of stagnation, the region is in danger of becoming hip.

Which is positive.

On the whole - yes. They're certainly experimenting with combinations of barrique and tonneau in the region (both french and slavonian oak) and sometimes hype overtakes quality, or indeed the wines become something they never were before. A producer in Gattinara I spoke to was at pains to say they do not make Barolo lookalikes and this very much unprompted. It will be interesting to see whether Nervi try and challenge that opinion with the Conterno ownership. Likewise will producers seek 100% nebbiolo wines rather than the traditional blends including Vespolina and Croatina/Uva Rara? I hope that they don't dismiss those blending grapes, especially Vespolina.

Climate change isn't as big of a threat here as well, indeed whereas I tended to avoid 2003 vintage in most of europe, here was one region where it seems to have been rather decent.

So overall, I'll join you in applauding the rediscovery of this region, just hoping that the growing pains aren't too tricky.