Lets face facts - most Marlborough savvie is "evil, watery, grassy wine"
EVIL, WATERY, GRASSY...
No truer three words were ever spoken.
I read about this today on Paul Sharp's Wine Consultant blog which linked to the original article and to the coverage it has been getting here.
If we are going to be realistic most Marlborough savvie is thin, underripe, insipid shit. Barely drinkable. Luckily I don't taste a hell of a lot of Marlborough savvie but I taste enough to know this is true - particularly of the lower end labels but especially so of the 08s. I'm glad someone said it because hopefully it will convince the wineries to pull finger and manage their vineyards properly and encourage their growers (financially) to increase quality by lowering yields rather than penalise them for failing to meet maximum yield levels that they don't understand - a grape's a grape right?
As a kiwi who wants the best for our industry I salute Jane MacQuitty. Of course - not all Marlborough Savvie fit this description but the ones that do are made in super huge quantities by massive international conglomerates who dupe the customer into believing that theirs is a quality product when it is really just mass produced pissed. EVIL. WATERY. GRASSY.
"We're a very big winery" - YEAH RIGHT
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6 comments:
The European wine lake was made up of evil, watery grassy SBs. All I can see in NZ is quality being sacrificed for quantity.
Hmm. So would you apply these label to the wines on the medal winning list from the Decanter awards (obviously I'm biased in this respect ha ha!)? I'm also dubious about her use of the anonymous Aussie wine maker. Of course, I'm definitely no expert on any of this (and also not a really massive Sav fan myself).
Well - I don't know who the medal winners are so I will refrain from judgement. There are a lot of crap commercial wines out of Marlborough and this is especially bad in vintages like 08. There are some good wines and good commercial wines too - not many though. The Ned & Astrolabe are two examples.
I would like to add 'mean-spirited' and 'cruel' to the list of adjectives. But actually I tend to reserve these expletives for Riesling which some savies can emulate. At worst they are like that aweful Italien shit soave. More like a wine version of Prunella Scales than an actual drink.
don't get started
Fair comments. As you've mentioned before, Marlborough has become a grape farm.
This season has seen a big(ish) push to decrease volumes and (in theory) increase quality. I'm very interested to see how this pans out, though I'm not convinced it'll make a huge difference.
The reality is, there will always be low end crap wine that brings down the average. There are however, some great Savvies out there, if you are willing to pay for them.
Thin, evil and grassy..hmm..Well it's been said before by insomniacs everywhere, there is no accounting for the taste of the black mass of humanity. If the people of the world want these sorts of wines then by jove and jingo, NZ wine Inc will gladly sell it to them with what ever grade of Stelvin you like..Hurrah! Eight Pounds a bottle! and they still keep buying it..must be something in the water, ( that would be the tanalising agent in the vineyrd posts, shh don't tell).
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