Wine: Art or Science? The debate ends here

Written by Rebecca Gibb

Thursday, 06 November 2008

Is wine an art or a science? Books have been devoted to the subject and the debate rages on. But in Mildura today eight judges at the Alternative Varieties Show settled the issue once and for all.

Inspired by British artist Andy Goldsworthy, some of today's 300 wines tasted were spat out over a canvas making a masterpiece. It's not quite Tracey Emin but then again I never thought much of her infamous ‘My bed' - and that got shortlisted for a Turner prize.

If you're not familiar with Goldsworthy, he created an exhibition after laying white canvasses on a field for sheep to go about their toilet business and bikers to ride across. We're just going to stick to spitting.

It's been a mixed bag today for both the Obama and Biden panels. The Primitivo/Zinfandel surprised us all. Having been schooled in Zinfandel from Ravenswood's ‘unwimpy' 15 percenters, I was pleasantly surprised. No monsters here and a couple of worthy gold medal winners.

Unfortunately the rosé category was less impressive. Too much residual sugar left James Erskine, Gourmet Traveller's sommelier of the year from Augé restaurant in Adelaide calling for drier styles. "Don't be shy to make a dry rosé - every restaurant is looking for one," he said.

On the whites front, we all wanted to like the Albariños but struggled. Nevertheless Glenn James, group red winemaker, Foster's was bold enough to say: "Albariño and Vermentino will be the varieties for Australia within the next 10 years. Forget Chardonnay; we will be able to make good crisp dry whites from those two varieties." You heard it here first.

Tomorrow we take the medal winners and sort out the major accolades. We've been a bit miserly so far and only awarded 10 golds, so panels Biden and Obama will come together to revisit plenty of silvers - and make beautiful art together.