Wine with Scott Taylor

The best kind of promotion

WOULDN'T it be nice if advertising executives the world over told it like it is instead of trying to dazzle us with gimmicks and slogans?

I think the guys at Fraser Gallop Estate feel the same way. They recently hosted a tasting to compare the great barrel-fermented semillon sauvignon blancs of Australia with the top SSBs from France. The tasting was immaculately conceived and executed in the barrel room of Fraser Gallop's breathtaking estate in Margaret River.

All the big hitters of the Western Australian wine world were there, even James Halliday. The wines ranged up to $1,000-plus per bottle and, all in all, it was an extravagant exercise.

But there was one astonishing omission. Fraser Gallop chose not to put its own wine in the tasting. What? No in-your-face brand positioning? No dare devils parachuting in to the winery bearing Fraser Gallop flags? Just an honest, genuinely interesting look at old world wines versus the new? How very refreshing.

Just as refreshing was the underlying theme of delicacy and nuance in the Australian wines. Gone was the weighty, high alcohol, big oak whites of five to 15 years ago that found so much success in the wine shows. These wines were tight, complex and more than held their own against their French contemporaries.

This light-handed approach to alcohol levels and oak showed a maturity and deeper understanding of balance in the WA wines. These producers are appreciating that very good wine expresses its origins humbly, showing flavour profiles and structure unique to vineyard and region, giving the wines a sense of place. These wines are very different to the loud, corpulent trophy hunters of a few years ago and are much the better for it.

2006 Cape Mentelle 'Walcliffe' - Margaret River ($40). This is a very classy wine, all those comforting tropical flavours, bright and vibrant but with a backbone of limestone minerality and tightly interwoven French oak. The meeting of fresh flavours and earthy complexity speaks volumes for what Margaret River can achieve in this style.

2005 Domaine de Chevalier - Graves, France ($195). An engaging mix of power and elegance with an underlying grittiness; like watching the Bolshoi Ballet practice in the dirt. An almost angelic wine, but at nearly 10 times the price of most of the WA wines, I know which I would be buying.

Two other standouts were the Arlewood 2006 'Sussex Location' semillon sauvignon blanc ($33) and the 2006 Mount Mary Triolet ($85), my wine of the day. I'm brimful of hope that these styles of wines can bring people back to drinking oak-influenced whites as quickly as the chunky, overworked chardonnays of five years ago chased them away.

At day's end, Fraser Gallop winemaker Clive Otto went says they will hold this event every year, and feels they are no more than two vintages away from their SSB being worthy of taking its place among the best of the region and the world.

Now that's probably the most effective bit of brand positioning I've seen in a while, and not an advertising executive in sight.