Australia, I’ve missed you

I just noticed that I haven’t reported on an Australian red wine for almost 20 years. Say what? I can explain this, but still, it’s time to go back.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Australia. I was incredibly lucky to be able to spend time there and in New Zealand in 2000 and 2003 as a judge at the “Top 1OO” Sydney International Wine Competition in the beautiful Blue Mountains. I toured wineries and saw the sights in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and surrounding wine regions. I ate and drank well, met a lot of good people, and I’d go back without a second thought if I had the chance.

I loved the wines, too, and enjoyed discovering them. But as the old saying goes, I didn’t leave Australian wine. It left me. Even in those days, I was surprised to discover how most of the wines I tasted at Australian “cellar doors” (their name for winery tasting rooms) were so different from the Australian wines I bought at home in the U.S.

Surely influenced by market-driven demand, Australian wine makers – not unwisely – found that fashioning high-alcohol, fruit-forward, heavily oaked wines to the taste of leading wine writer Robert M. Parker Jr. and the t…