That depends on how willing you are to take a gamble.
Cleanskins – wines sold without the usual branded labels – are nothing new; wineries have been offloading extra stock this way for years. Some are cancelled export orders and some are "museum" releases of respectable old bottles nearing the end of their life span. In fact, they can be real finds. Dig around in the sale barrels next time you're at a winery cellar door and you may pick up some aged bargains.
But now, with Australia in the middle of a wine glut and grape prices ridiculously low, retailers are taking the unsold excess off wineries' hands and selling them for next to nothing. The wineries are happy to realise anything at all for the bottles, and consumers are happy to drink on the cheap.
And some cleanskins are really cheap. Like $2 a bottle cheap. Plenty more are on the market for less than $5.
Make no mistake though – these are generally bulk-made wines made from fruit grown well away from premium vineyards. For many wine drinkers, however, that's quite OK. Especially when you're only after something to quaff mid-week.
Most of the big wine retailers have them, from Dan Murphy's and Vintage Cellars to the connoisseurs' choice of Ultimo Wine Centre. There's even a store in Sydney that deals only in cleanskins: The Wine Point at Birkenhead Point. Kemenys in Bondi have created a Hidden Label range with more than 20 cleanskins, all specifying the region of origin. They even sell a few premium options, such as a Marlborough sauvignon blanc, a Coonawarra cabernet and a Heathcote shiraz – proving not all cleanskins come from cheap, bulk Riverina fruit.
To find out what's good and what isn't, I had a taste test of more than a dozen different varieties with some regular cleanskin drinkers, Chardy and Murray Rivers. The prices ranged from $1.89 for a "Get the Roo for under $2" chardonnay to $18 for a Kemenys merlot.
And boy, was I surprised. The cheapie chardonnay (christened early in the tasting as "Two-Buck Chuck") wasn't awful. While it didn't really taste like a chardonnay, it certainly didn't taste like rocket fuel.
Other cleanskin chardonnays weren't so kind on the way down: one tasted so aggressively wooded it practically left splinters in the throat.
A couple of the red wines had problems too: one shiraz tasted green and unripe while a Coonawarra cabernet was so astringent it nearly ripped the tastebuds off the tongue and finished uncomfortably like cough syrup.
A sparkling shiraz picked up from Vintage Cellars for around $10 was OK, although its sugary hit was not unlike Coca-Cola.
Some of the most disappointing drops were those around the $20 range. A $18 New Zealand merlot from Kemenys was austere to the point of having almost no fruit flavour at all.
Are there any bargains out there?
Yes, but you have to French kiss a lot of frogs to find them. Buying cleanskins is a lucky dip, and the cheaper ones we tried offered much better value.
The best of the tasting were both $4.99 bottles picked up from La Nita Liquor in Ramsgate: a sweetish but decent rose and a rather simple merlot. These are wines without faults, and even better if consumed with food so you don't notice how boring they really are.
We also liked the Kemenys chardonnay, which at $14 is steeply priced for a cleanskin, although the retailer claims it "would sell for up to $29 under its own label". (Which begs the question: "Then why isn't it?") It's made from Yarra Valley fruit from, Kemenys claim, a mature vineyard, and tastes of good, creamy oak. It also had a lot less acid than any other of the wines sampled on the day (nearly every wine we tasted stung the cheeks) and actually had length. You could probably even cellar it.
Despite the rave reviews however ("Now that tastes like wine," somebody said with relief) Murray and Chardy wouldn't pay $14 for an unlabelled wine. If spending more than $10, many drinkers would stick to a labelled wine – even one in a cask – because a branded product gives some guarantee as to its quality.
Laying down $14 for an utterly unknown quantity seems like too much of a gamble for a lot of people.
To make cleanskins seem like less of a risk, retailers such as Kemenys and The Wine Point offer a refund if their wines fail to impress. Wine Point customers can even sample the wines in store before they buy. The Kemenys range, pitched at savvy drinkers who know the good regions for wine varieties, make the experience a bit of a game: if you look closely at the right spot on the label you can see the winemaker's name, thereby making those in the know feel they are getting a good deal. Which some of them are – but these are at the top end of the cleanskins market.
On the whole, you won't get a good wine experience from cleanskins. These are "art gallery wines" – acceptable enough to serve to a crowd of people you aren't terribly fond of, but not so good that your guests will be falling over themselves for a second helping. No cleanskin wine will give you a transcendent experience or any measure of delight. There are no cheap thrills to be had here.
You won't fool any wine lovers with cleanskins, and you wouldn't fall in love with wine if these were all you drank, but you might find an acceptable quaffer for a low price. Just please don't serve them to any wine snob friends visiting from overseas!
Over to you: which cleanskins have you enjoyed? Which ones are to be avoided?
This post originally appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald.
No comments:
Post a Comment