2019 wine travel log #6: Hello Australia! Hello #realaussiewine!

Hello Australia! And hello #realaussiewine!

Just landed in Perth from Hong Kong and I’m waiting with my son Jack and tasting coordinator Paul Sargent for senior editor Nick Stock to arrive from Melbourne. It’s sunny and bright but chilly. It’s autumn here as you probably know. Good, high-pressure weather for tasting in Margaret River today.

We have about 450 wines to rate over three days, will visit a few wineries and hang out with 20 or so producers. It’s the first tasting in our two-week trip, during which we aim to rate more than 2,500 wines in a quest to discover as much #realaussiewine as we can. We won’t have the final number until we check out all of our tasting points in Barossa Valley, Melbourne and Hunter Valley as well as Margaret River.

There’s a huge amount of logistics and organization required to take on a mission like this. Paul and others in my office in Hong Kong have been working for weeks on this trip behind the scenes, arranging all the travel, wine logistics and inputting into the tasting system on iCloud. That’s how we can get through a lot of wines so quickly.

I’m really looking forward to this trip. I have such an appreciation for the Australian wines. The best wines have such a direct nature to them. You could call it ‘purity’, for lack of a better word. Of course, millions of gallons of manipulated commercial plonk is still made in Oz. But that is not #realaussiewine.

I created that hashtag with Master of Wine Ned Goodwin back in 2011 during my first tasting trip to Australia. I will always be in debt to Ned for his enthusiastic guidance to his country and its wine. I like to call Australia “a wine continent.”

What excites me are the likes of fresh and balanced cabs or chardonnays from Margaret River, or the wild and bright pinots of the Adelaide Hills, or characterful yet balanced and crisp shiraz of Barossa, or solid and age-worthy semillons from Hunter Valley.

There are so many fun and exciting #realaussiewines to discover and I can’t wait to taste and rate them with my team.

And I would argue that many people in the world still don’t know about these wonderful wines. Or worse, they have some preconceived notions of Australian wines that are dated and inaccurate.

It’s still surprising how many people think Australia makes only big and jammy wines. Sure some exist, just like in other places, but this is not an accurate portrayal of the current state of premium winemaking in Oz.

Stay tuned for another blog after we taste a few hundred wines.