Oz Clarke: 8 New World wines that mean the most to me
1 GALLO’S HEARTY BURGUNDY
Student wine was filthy stuff, scraped from the dregs of whatever tank was cheapest. And here I was as a student actor, in a vast dorm in Madison, Wisconsin, the air so thick with ‘smoke’ I didn’t know if it was more dangerous to inhale or asphyxiate. And I was downing this mug of juicy, fruity, riotously drinkable red wine. Gallo’s Hearty Burgundy. How could cheap wine be this good? Well, the Gallos wanted to get America drinking table wine. Good grapes were so cheap they even used Rochioli’s Russian River Pinot Noir, Barbera, Petite Sirah and other taste bombs for the Hearty Burgundy. It worked. It seemed to me that if America was the land without class, the land of opportunity, the land of the free, it was only right that the first highly drinkable red wine affordable to all, available to all, should be American.
2 TYRRELL’S VAT 47 CHARDONNAY
It’s not often you can say that a single wine launched your career, but I reckon Vat 47 might have launched mine. Doing my first on-screen, live blind wine tasting for BBC Food & Drink, I was faced with this glowing, golden liquid, coiling lazily around the glass. Exotic, tropical, sensual. Now, this was the 1980s. Wines didn’t look and taste like that. Except one. Tyrrell’s Vat 47 Chardonnay from Australia’s Hunter Valley. Aussie Chardonnay was pretty much unknown then in the UK. The team were certain this would catch me out. But I’d tasted this one. I’d even visited the vineyard! Go with your instincts. ‘Vat 47 Chardonnay,’ I said. And it was.
3 MONTANA SAUVIGNON BLANC
How often in a wine taster’s life do you find a wine that you know is completely different to anything that existed before, and that will change the world of wine forever? Well, I found one on 1 February 1984, on the 17th floor of New Zealand House in London, third wine along from the left. Montana Sauvignon Blanc was introducing itself to the world. A wine so sharp and incisive it should cut your tongue, but it didn’t. A wine so full of gooseberry, lime and apricot fruit it demanded you just drink it for sheer delight. White wine was never like that. Until Montana Sauvignon Blanc came along.
4 PENFOLDS BIN 28 SHIRAZ
The wine that taught a whole nation to love red wine. When I got going in wine, reds were pretty hard work. And then along came Bin 28, piled high in every Oddbins in the land. This was a wine so ripe and spicy it virtually forced the cork out of the bottle by the sheer exuberance of its personality, showering your tongue with blackcurrants, black plums and blackberries, all so ripe the juice was oozing through their skins. And add to that enough vanilla, liquorice, chocolate and spice to virtually choke you with excitement. A nation swooned. Thank you, Bin 28, for teaching us Brits to love red.
5 ERRAZURIZ WILD FERMENT CHARDONNAY
South America’s reputation was never for whites. Certainly not Chile’s. Cabernet and Merlot and Carmenère were the calling cards; ripe and lush, bursting with fruit, ripened by the relentless sun. And then I tasted Wild Ferment Chardonnay. From Casablanca – down near the icy Pacific Ocean. Thought of as too cold for grapes. Clearly not. At the end of the last century, most New World Chardonnays were lush and tropical. This was oatmealy, elegant, with a crème fraîche savoury softness that spoke of Meursault. Chile’s brilliant cool-climate potential was just raising its head and asking to be noticed.
6 NEWTON CABERNET SAUVIGNON
I spent a lot of time in California in the 1980s and ’90s. It was a fantastic time to be there – a rollercoaster era as the Golden West swung to and fro, trying to work out what it could do best. But through all this I needed an anchor, and an English couple, Peter and Su Hua Newton, provided it, consistently proving that mountain-grown Cabernet and Merlot could be world class. Chardonnay, too, and even Sauvignon Gris if they were in a contemplative mood. I still open bottles of 1990 Cabernet and Merlot at blind tastings. St-Julien, the experts say. Or Pauillac.
7 EBEN SADIE’S OLD VINE SERIES
If the New World needs a New Age philosopher, they won’t find a better one, a more persuasive one, than South Africa’s Eben Sadie. The most exciting movement – no, crusade – in the New World now is to find and preserve what is left of their original vineyard cultures. Sadie says: ‘I went to Europe to find old vines, but now I know I have them all here. It’s important to bottle the truth, however imperfect.’ Skurfberg, Pofadder, Mev. Kirsten, Skerpioen, Treinspoor, ’T Voetpad, Kokerboom – any of these will offer you a thrilling insight into where the New World is headed next.
8 NYETIMBER
Nyetimber's English, isn’t it? Since when did England classify as a New World wine country? Well, before Nyetimber arrived, no one in England had ever believed we could excel at making wine, be world-beaters, possibly be the best there was. It took a couple of uncompromising Chicagoans to lift England up by the scruff of the neck and say: where’s your ambition? Where’s your confidence in yourselves? We didn’t come 5,000 miles to be second best... I still remember the shock and the thrill of tasting the 1992 and 1993 Nyetimbers. Thank you, Stuart and Sandy Moss.
‘It’s not often you can say a single wine launched your career, but I reckon Vat 47 might have launched mine’
‘Chile’s brilliant cool-climate potential was just raising its head and asking to be noticed’