Winefront's Red Album - SHOCK, HORROR!

[GraemeG]

Oh. My. God. There it lies, quietly at the bottom of page 299. A ticking time-bomb of destruction, just waiting to explode the head of any self-respecting red bigot checking out this reknown Barossa producer’s offerings. A pale, wan excuse of a wine pokes its transparent head in where it’s not welcome. “Peter Lehmann Barossa Semillon 2005. “This made me do a double-take…” read the first words of the review. Me too!

I was thinking; you know, young Mattinson may indeed have picked up a few writing awards for his scribblings over the past few years. Not to my knowledge though, has he been rewarded with any kind of marketing gong. It occurred to me, as I was reading the Red Album on the bus this morning, that he’s managed the not inconsiderable feat of managing to sell me some of his reviews three times! Me – whose scrooge-like demeanour frequently prevents me from paying for anything at all! Between the newsletter, the Collected Reviews and the Red Album, I’m quite overflowing with duplicates. That was quite a trick - even when you know how it's done...

Kidding aside, I guess it does show some kind of movement towards the Holy Grail of Australian wine reference books – Broadbent’s Vintage Wine writ local. Everyone’s dancing around the subject, surely only for fear of it being a financial flop? Five years ago, Halliday had a CD that came closest. Of all the writers, he’s likely got the biggest library to work from. But now his guides give current release tasting notes only. Where’s the 4th edition of Great Australian Wines? Oliver does comprehensive notes on current releases in an excellent Annual, plus winery backgrounds, which are great, but there’s no compendium, and notes on older releases are few between, and on the website only.

But I’m thinking that by the time Campbell gets to Broadbent’s age, we just might have something…!

[Red Bigot]

That's it, I'm sending mine back for a refund!!

One thing missing from the notes is the tasting date, it would be nice to know if a tasting of a past-vintage wine was recent or not.

Hopefully Halliday's full TN history will be online again soon, I'll be a subscriber as long as the price is not exhorbitant. I do distrust those one-page web-sties that say "Coming Soon" though, "Soon" tends to be pretty elastic even these days when the technology is pretty easy (if you get the right web people).

And yes, pretty cunning marketing, if he had all the notes on his site with a decent search function I'd be willing to pay more and ditch the book(s).

[Ian S]

Yep I do think there's a big opening for a book covering older wines - focused more on what people are drinking than buying.

I suspect Santa (not our Santa though ) might be looking at this for me at crimbo.

regards

Ian

[crusty2]

Langton's had a good review going but since the last published book there have been no updates to their website. I know of at least one 10+ vintage vertical tasted for possible inclusion in the Top 101, but no notes/updates to date on the website.
As a 15+ year subscriber this would be great if notes were available to subscribers first, at least, then all later (same as for CM, JO etc)

your thoughts

[Santa]

Received an "Australian Post - you have a package for collection at the Post Office" yellow slip today.

Went down to collect my "The Red Album".......it has been sitting there since 20 August.

I was beginning to believe I had been forgotton. Not the case

Reading material for tonight....

Have a nice weekend everybody.

Cheers,
Maria