2002 Craggy Range Syrah Gimblett Gravels Vineyard Block 14 - New Zealand, North Island, Hawkes Bay (9/30/2005)
Haggis opened this wine at his home on Saturday. I always enjoy sampling hard to get interesting wines which I have not had before and this fit the bill. Unfortunately, I did not care for this wine. I thought it suffered from an underripeness which I find all too often in NZ reds (particularly Pinot Noir- see this post). I noted flavors of sickly fruit on the palate with some steelyness. 82 points.

VM

Vino Me,

I missed your comment on the Pinot - so thanks for the link back.

I also appreciate the comments as without feed back from customers, nothing will improve.

I'd like to know whether you feel this steeliness was lack of fruit density (or palate weight - more technically, extract), or an excess of acid?

There are two tendancies in New World winemaking that may be contributing factors (particularly with Pinot), and that is to have squeaky clean wines using pH control at the must-crusher as the main method.

I have seen Coonawarra Shiraz come in at 3.9pH - which was then adjusted back to 3.35pH with dl-tartaric - to give microbial stability during ferment. In the bottle this was in the order of 3.45pH but required a pre-bottling adjustment to achieve that.

In much of Europe they don't get fretful about must pH until it exceed 3.6pH and adjust back to that point rather than the theoretically "microbial stability" of sub 3.5pH. My source here is Michel Roland - who is not known for wimpish wines either.

Two other factors militating against the "perfect" wine is the one we have discussed in another thread - the move to industrial wines - which raises the overall standard of the lower end wines and where economies of scale and distribution power lower the cost to the consumer. As discussed, this has its good points but as the true profit is in this product area, so too must companies make wines that return financially to them and their shareholders.

This will inevitably lead to an "averaging" factor - and this in turn will increase the tonnage cropped. In Pinot noir, this is a very sensitve point. Though less so in Shiraz in either Australia or California - and indeed my observations would lead me to believe that an increase in tonnage might benefit many California Merlot/Cabernet wines - slightly less concentration but more balance. However, that is another subject.

The other is that there is only one thing for it really; winemakers have to become much more involved in the vineyard – otherwise production imperatives will always take over – a much more European approach. Many winemakers do get out into the vineyard - but I think you may find these are from smaller operations and that the time allocated in bigger wineries for this aspect is very limited.

At this time I don't have satisfactory answers - to begin to make sense of that I need the sort of feedback that only you and othere posters can give.

And now back to the Craggy Range... I brought two of these back with me from a trip last year (have one more in the cellar) and was quite anxious to try it, for the same reasons as VM.

I, too, must admit to being very disappointed. The steeliness that VM refers to is certainly there (and I know what you mean about it with respect to NZ pinots...with some pleasant and notable exceptions).

On the whole, a not well-integrated wine. That view must have been fairly universal, as there was still a good bit left at the end of the night. By the following evening, however, it had opened up slightly and was actually fairly decent. On night 1, I scored it 84; on night 2, 88. Perhaps I'll hold onto that second bottle for a couple of years and hope for some improvement.

For what it's worth, RP gave this 91pts.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: haggis,

vinserve,

I'm afraid that most of your comments are over my head. I really couldn't tell you what causes the steeliness I noted. I only know that I've noticed it all too often. I'll have to leave the cause up to the experts like you.

VM

They were over my head, too! Maybe metallic is more accurate than steeliness. Regardless, I don't know what microbial stability and pH have to do with a metallic taste.