Best sub $20 pinot?

[Polymer]

The WET rebate is a rebate, not a deduction. So it is paid back to wineries or wine producers and in the case of New Zealand ones they must declare it as income in New Zealand for tax purposes.

http://www.ird.govt.nz/industry-guideli ... s-wet.html

Rebate is a deduction. They pay WET and can claim some of it back. How is that subsidized by Australians in any way? As I said, you can look at money not collected as subsidized but Australians do not pay NZ wineries..NZ wineries do not NET money from this. Rather than having paid say, 1million in WET, they only pay 500k. This is the same rebate every other Australian winery gets. The fact that NZ is a foreign country is irrelevant because of the trade agreement between the two countries...

I suppose you could say it is better for us wine consumers because we are getting more choice and more competition for our wine dollars. But that isn’t what happens when foreign goods flood the market in this country. What happens instead is that the big retailers use the cheap imports to increase sales or market share (or both) and after a while the local product is squeezed out because they can’t compete or refuse to deal with the big retailers anymore or are just dropped anyway.

You do get more choice and more competition. If local products can not compete, they shouldn't be. Australians get ripped a new one because the industries are overprotected. It stifles competition. That is the big complaint with everything in Australia..the lack of competition keeps prices high. How is it the California or France compete with global competition? Cheaper imports, etc?

From a pure economics point of view, it is a good thing. What would happen is local companies that can not compete because they need too much money for the quality of their product, those would go out of business. Eventually those assets get picked up by other companies and the cost basis for the assets are different. Their products improve (greater source material) and their costs are lower. If they still can compete, there really isn't a point in having that industry is there? Why force your local people to drink wine people don't want at higher prices (which is the only way they don't compete) just for the sake of having that industry? It wouldn't get to that but the point is, competition is good, it will drive the right economic model. It will drive quality. It will drive better prices and CHOICES for the Australian consumer.

I thought you did describe all Australian pinot as shiraz-like. In an earlier post you stated - It is funny that you describe your preferred Pinot that was a "shiraz drinkers" Pinot because that is how I describe Australian Pinot Noir. A Pinot Noir made like a Shiraz...

I know myself that posting stuff on this forum does not always come out the way you meant, so I understand it is simply a generalization and not a statement of fact. It is even ironic that when you said that you were replying to rens, who had described the types of pinots he liked as a shiraz drinkers pinot and then nominated two NZ pinots he liked - Amisfield and the Waipara. So it is easy to see we come here with not only different perspectives, but different preferences anyway and it is all good and hopefully you see it that way too.

Yes, that was my post. In subsequent posts I made just I said "a lot of" so as not to represent all. Apologies if that didn't come out right..I found it ironic as well, maybe that is why you said NZ Pinot used to be Shiraz like..and he said the same thing..that older Amisfields were like that..

Of course we all have different preferences...If people like a much bigger style of Pinot, that is perfectly fine...There are some really good examples of big Pinots in Australia...At the same time, we can clearly say the Australian style of Pinot is a lot bigger, a lot more full bodied. Even the lighter styles are relatively big.

[Mahmoud Ali]

Sean,

I too should make clear that in no way did I mean to suggest that all Australian Pinots were "fruit bombs" or "Shiraz-like". I was just being a bit pointed in declaring my preferences for what I consider Pinot.

It's certainly off topic but I was just going through the latest edition of Langtons "Classification of Australian Wine" (2010) and see that among the 123 wines in the four categories there are a total of 10 Pinot Noirs, one in the "Exceptional" top tier, three in the "Outstanding" second tier, four in the "Excellent" third tier, and two in the "Distinguished" fourth tier.

A couple of wineries have two Pinot wines listed, Bass Philip and Bindi. The other wineries are Bannockburn, Coldstream Hills, Mount Mary, Main Ridge Estate, Paringa Estate, and Freycinet. I've not had any of these wines but am now wondering how they fit in the fruit vs terrior, big vs medium-bodied scheme of things. Any opinions out there?

On a lighter note i notice that half the Pinot wines in the ranking begin with the letter "B".

Cheers...................Mahmoud.

Mahmoud, it is only off-topic because these are expensive wines and the ones I was hoping we would be talking about on this thread are affordable everyday drinking wines. But nailing down what the style of Australian pinot is might be topical and not so straightforward perhaps.

The pinots that you mentioned from the Langton’s Classification could be the very best some people would argue. They have a very good reputation with wine writers like James Halliday and Jeremy Oliver as well as long-time drinkers of them. They have been written about favourably many times in the past and interestingly new and up-and-coming wine writers seem to go through a phase of rediscovering them. So if you do a bit of research on the internet or in old books about Australian wine and maybe try a few of them yourself you will of course learn more about them too.

I am not sure how many of these pinots you see in Canada. Some of them can require a real effort getting hold of here too and you would want the best vintages if you got older ones. In the case of say Bindi or the Bannockburn Serre you are talking about pinots with a very limited production and in the case of Bass Phillip there is also very limited availability. So you would be paying a premium for them because there is simply not a lot of it as well as them having a cult-like following in this country, which just on its own probably sells all the wines.

This is also the reason why they are featured by Langton’s - unless you are on a mailing list or have a long-term relationship with the winery the easiest way to find most of these wines is on the secondary market. That does not necessarily mean they are pinots you would cellar for a very long time, but they have a track record for that (which is why people buy older vintages through auction) even if it can be variable and a frustrating experience. You will read good and bad testaments by people who have drunk older vintages of these pinots.

There has always been a debate about whether some of them like say Bass Phillip or Mount Mary are burgundy-like or Australian pinots. It is safer to say the latter is the case, but those who drink them often enough seem to find an eerie similarity sometimes. The experience I have had is that just as much as the pinot tells you where it comes from it tells you who makes it. Having met the affable, but formidable Phillip Jones, I can tell you it is difficult to drink his pinots without remembering that a lot of intelligence and passion has gone into the wine.

Trying to describe these wines in terms of a style could be fraught with danger or misconception. I think they would claim their pinots reflect their vineyards - both the geography and vintage - and other factors come into this too. I think you will find authenticity in thinking of a Bass Phillip pinot as something you would only get from that bit of land in Gippsland or a Main Ridge pinot could only come from the red soil in Red Hill in Mornington Peninsula. And that is what pinot is all about.

Of the wines themselves I could only give you a potted (and probably unhelpful) history of drinking them. Other people who have bought and drunk these wines over many years would be far better qualified to give advice than me. I often find instead that every so often a great pinot comes from other wineries, not just the ones that you have mentioned. I could come up with a list of wineries like Curly Flat, Giant Steps, Stonier, Ten Minutes By Tractor, Hillcrest (the pinots made by Phillip Jones) or a number of others who have produced a great pinot in my opinion one time or another.

Sean, thank you for your thoughtful and informative reply.

You are correct in that most if not all the Langton wines are made in limited quantities and difficult to procure in Australia let alone Canada. In my home town the best wine store may carry Petrus and Chateau Margaux as well as Torbreck, Rockford and Molly Dooker, but their website shows only one Australian Pinot, d'arenberg's Feral Fox. Over the years, if memory serves me well, I can only recall seeing the regular bottling of Coldstream Hills, Best's Great Western, and Ninth Island Pinot Noir. All three showed Pinot earthiness and needless to say I cellared a bottle of each of them.

There is no doubt that the Langton wines are very individual wines reflecting their vineyard site and the winemakers stylistic endeavours. They have both reputation and pedigree as the Langton classification is based on auction performance over the years. Performance, hence demand, in the secondary market means they must cellar and drink well.

If finances and availability ever permits I will certainly take a flyer on anyone of these wines, regardless of the style.

Mahmoud.