Cherry picking your wine list
September 11, 2009
By Norrelle Goldring of ShopAbility for Drinks Magazine
Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of commercial, substandard, wishy-washy wines on lists in pubs and restaurants, where it’s obvious the range is based on whichever supplier threw the most money to provide and produce the list.
Equally, I’ve been seeing some really interesting things starting to pop up on well-thought out lists.
This got me thinking about what to do if you’re a small establishment who wants to provide a quality wine offer to your patrons, but you don’t want to carry heaps of inventory.
How do you decide which wines to range?
The easiest way to keep your wine list tight, yet jam packed with quality, is to cherry pick wine varieties from the regions that express them best. Wines with best varietal expression from that region in theory equal best quality for the money.
Which varieties? The obvious, must-cover bases would be:
Whites: sauvignon blanc and pinot grigio for unwooded, chardonnay for wooded (but go easy)
Reds: shiraz, merlot
Easy drinking/’occasion’ wines: sparkling white, rose
The ‘should have’ varieties would include at least a couple of blends – a semillon sauvignon blanc white blend, and a red blend like a shiraz/cabernet, cabernet merlot, or gsm (grenache shiraz mourvedre). You would also range one type of aromatic white (riesling, gewurztraminer), one ‘other white varietal’ such as a semillon or a verdelho, and for the reds a pinot noir and a cabernet sauvignon.
The ‘could haves’, if you wanted to extend to that, would be lesser known varieties – interesting Italian and Spanish things like albarinos, vermentinos and verdejos, or regional specialties like Rutherglen durif or Barossa/McLaren Grenache.
Which Australian and NZ regions are the best/most known expressions of these varieties then? For my money, these are:
WHITES
Sauvignon Blanc: Marlborough, Adelaide Hills
Pinot Grigio: Adelaide Hills, Mornington Peninsula, Gibbston Valley
Chardonnay: Hawkes Bay, Yarra Valley, Eden Valley, Margaret River
Semillon: Hunter Valley, Margaret River
Riesling: Clare Valley, Mt Barker/Great Southern
Verdelho: Margaret River (again!); Swan Valley, Hunter Valley, and Sth East Queensland
Sem Sauv blends: Margaret River (signature blend)
Sparkling whites: Tamar Valley/Tassie all the way … anything cool climate
REDS
Shiraz: Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale
Merlot: Yarra Valley
Pinot Noir: Adelaide Hills, Martinborough/Wairarapa, Central Otago, Mornington Peninsula
Cabernet: Coonawarra, Margaret River
Grenache: Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale
This doesn’t mean your list can’t be interesting. You can range wines from emerging regions on small list, as long as the ‘best region for the variety’ rule applies. That is, you are clear on what some of the emerging or lesser known regions are known for. Eg the King Valley in Vic is known for its interesting Italian origin varieties, things like saperavi, cortese, arneis. Orange is becoming known for its cool climate sauvignon blanc. Cowra is big on chardonnay.
So the message is don’t bastardise a good list with a crappy wine unsuited to the region. What is the point of a Hunter Valley Sauvignon Blanc (all hot air and no acid or herbal characters) when there are regions that do it so much better?
Right variety from the right place wins every time.
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