On the nose, it’s hard to move beyond a sort of “21st century rich Australian wine made for an American market” kind of smell. There’s a bit of rich jammy road tar, lots of dark indifferent fruit, a certain sweetness, and finally a sort of menthol-eucalyptus smell. It’s all vaguely like those old-timey cherry flavored throat lozenges with the two bearded men on them – almost a 19th century home remedy effect. But I’m half joking here; it’s actually deeply inviting and all very comforting somehow.
In the mouth, the first thing that hits you is the humongousosity of the wine: it feels like you’ve just filled your mouth with the most Brobdingagian thing that’s ever sat around inside of a bottle. Rich and sweet, swallowing really doesn’t get you anything other than a sense of alcohol burning – I do occasionally drink bourbon, and this stuff holds its own, mouth-on-fire-wise, with many bourbons. Coming back to it again, other than a lovely, smooth, silken mouth feel, there just doesn’t seem to be a whole lot going on in terms of actual flavor – although there is just a tang of salty sourness there which adds an interesting note. With time, it starts to mimic a sort of dark raspberry liqueur – it’s so strong and so thick that it’s occasionally hard to believe that this is supposed to be a table wine.
So how do I feel about this sort of thing? Well… against my better instincts (and four months of wine school), I like it just fine. It’s huge, rich, jammy, alcoholic, and trashy in the best possible kind of way. It’s kind of like going to a kegger wearing a toga and then finding out that it’s Duvel on tap (and not Milwaukee’s Best). Sometimes the thing that hits the spot after a hard day at work is booze, plain and simple, and if you’re going to be drinking, you might as well be drinking something that feels good and tastes like it wasn’t cheap to produce. Save your intellectually satisfying Hermitage and your ethereal Côte Rôtie for another time – this wine is all about getting your freak on with a stylish bottle that probably got a bazillion points from The Bob.
Marquis Philips
Price: US $11.89
Closure: Stelvin
Date tasted: November 2007
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I had to cheat and look, and yup, Bob likes this stuff, having given it 92 points. Apparently it’s barrel fermented and then raised in American oak, but I swear I can’t tell: all that alcohol (15.5%) tends to deaden my palate. For you obsessive types, it’s interesting to know that the Marquis in the name is no longer relevant: Sarah and Sparky Marquis, who used to make this wine with US importer Dan Philips of The Grateful Palate, have departed for Mollydooker – the few of their wines I’ve tried seem to follow the same template of huge alcohol, huge fruit, huge Bob scores, and good after work drinking satsifaction.
I’m torn, you know. It’s extremely fashionable in local (Australian) wine drinking circles to rubbish this style of wine. As you say, these wines are often viewed as made for the US market, a perception compounded by the fact that one doesn’t see too many of them in local bottle shops.
And sure, they might be vulgar and over the top and all that; the interesting question for me is, is this an authentic wine style that has some sort of integrity? In other words, does this style of wine have its place amongst table wines generally? Or is it entirely faddish and destined to fade and disappear over time, as our Clarets and Burgundies continue to stand tall in the cellars of wine lovers?
I rather suspect that, once the fashion wears off, they will still exist and find their niche amongst wines, just as Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc has. As you say, sometimes a big alcoholic fruit bomb really does hit the spot.
You know, I’ve been thinking about this for many years at this point, and I think I’ve come to the decision that as this is a natural result of modern viticultural regimes (albeit not of traditional ones), it’s moot whether or not this is an “authentic” wine style or not. It doesn’t matter that no one had heard anything like Varèse before: he built something entirely original out of bog standard orchestral building blocks and it might not have been traditional, it might have seemed weird at the time, but it did have its charms and we can still appreciate it (or not!) fifty years later. So, yes, I truly believe that this style does have a place at our tables; it isn’t something our fathers could have envisioned or made, but we can, and we have, and I think we’re better off for having these sorts of choices available to us. What bothers me, however, is the notion that these wines are somehow automatically worthy of higher point scores because… well, why exactly? I think it’s simply because they’re confusing physiologically ripe with “high quality.” Yes, these wines are tricky to grow and yes, they really do hit the spot sometimes, but are they really interesting in any sort of artistic or philosophical way? Once they’re drunk, and once the buzz has worn off, I don’t think about them again, period; I’d really rather have something that wasn’t so simplistically pleasurable – the best wines out there are the ones that challenge you on some level – think of a wine that carries the same hedonistic oomph and yet dares you to come to terms with its own stunning idiosyncrasies. These wines are Pamela Anderson beautiful, but not Sandra Bernhard beautiful, if that makes any sense: they’re lovely to look at but the second they fade from view they also fade from memory. It’s kind of Bil Keane compared to El Greco.