Wine with Meg + Mel
The fun + frank podcast which helps you navigate the world of wine. Hosted by Australia's first female Master of Wine Meg Brodtmann, and self-titled Master of Sabrage Mel Gilcrist.
Wine with Meg + Mel
Sweet Red Wines... WHY?!
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Sweet red wine keeps flying off shelves, so we taste what people actually buy and try to work out what’s driving the demand. We get blunt about confected flavours, then land on a more useful answer: sweetness, spritz, and lower alcohol can make real sense with spicy food and for beginners.
Buckle Up and if you want to play along... don't.
If you're a sucker for pain, wines below.
- https://www.yellowtailwine.com/en-au/product/shiraz/
- https://brownfamilywines.com.au/products/brown-brothers-dolcetto-and-syrah
- https://brownfamilywines.com.au/products/brown-brothers-cienna
- https://www.danmurphys.com.au/product/DM_6062659?store=3252&gclsrc=aw.ds&e_cid=ps:ds:GOOGLE:PMAX+-+Wine+-+Red+Wine::ds_keywords%3Dds_kw:&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23473283649&gbraid=0AAAAADidTxAL6mw1uqqsYfCYJAoeF6ga1&gclid=CjwKCAjw857RBhAgEiwAI-1yKMC1_PB1eVm01u0ZT7GhHsii4t9QaNhsyZ-JV9wbzgOVsQNRKcNu5hoCuhoQAvD_BwE
For the love of god. Don't do this.
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Welcome And Producer Lore
SPEAKER_02Hi and welcome to Wine with Megan Mell. We're here to help you navigate the world of wine. I'm Meg Field Choice joined by Master of Wine, Meg Brookman. We have Austin, our producer from McCleary. McLaren Production.
SPEAKER_01Like Harry McLaren. Why is it called McLaren? That's Harry McLaren.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, as a child, I was very hairy. Oh, we love McLaren from Donaldson's dairy. Oh, stop, that's so cute. That's country to me. But you'd never walk gumbo. No, I know. And I was very hairy as a child. That's why it's McLaren.
SPEAKER_01That's really weird. But I love it. So this is a fuck you to all those people.
SPEAKER_02You reclaimed it. Yeah, that's me.
SPEAKER_01And it is, and you have you noticed in Harry McLary, you never see the humans' faces. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, guys, we just said this. This is gonna be a quick episode of the case. And now this is deep in Harry McLaren lore. Okay, no, we're going. This is sweet wines. Sweet red wines. And so, Meg, the pretext to this was that apparently they're really
The Big Question About Sweet Reds
SPEAKER_02popular. And your question is, why?
SPEAKER_01Do you want to give any well they exist on the market, and as I said a couple of episodes ago, the reason for this episode was Elliot came home with a bottle of Sienna and said, Oh, this is one of our most popular wines. It's a grandbrother's wine. Sienna is a great variety and it's sweet. And Elliot says, This is the one I always point to when people ask for sweet red wine. And I said, How often do people ask for sweet red wine? And Elliot said, A lot. And my answer to that was, Why? Yeah. So I think that there is a market for people who want to drink red wine and but they don't want it to be offensive. And when you add sugar to red wine, it tampens down the tannin. We've had the Lambrusco a couple of weeks ago from the KFC recipe.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I was gonna say this is timely because someone just tagged us on Facebook. Drinking a Lambrusco.
SPEAKER_01They just tagged us so it wasn't me like I'm a fucking idiot.
SPEAKER_02Meg thought that I was drinking it.
SPEAKER_01No, no, I went. You weren't drinking it. I knew wine something was drinking it. Yeah. But you told me I have to engage more with the people, so I'm trying.
SPEAKER_02You were engaging with me. It wasn't you were not engaging. It doesn't, it's you're not helping when you just talk to the account. But Peter Burke commented on that reshare, saying that oh, I wish I had my phone. It was like a fun fact about Lembrusco. I think it's a female only, you know how vines are like female, male genetic. Is there's something to do with it? Nico did mention something about that. Do you remember? We'd have to go back and I don't know how it how fertilized. How does it fertilize if it's female, female? Yeah, there is something.
SPEAKER_01So maybe obviously they need male because m most vines are hermaphrodite, so they're self-fertilizing. Maybe it's some of the varieties of that make Lambrusco in Italy need some of the other varieties. Remember, there was one starting with S that you had to have. True. We didn't we've covered this.
SPEAKER_02Okay, sweet reads. Peter Burke, I don't know if he still does. He used to write for Qantas and stuff. I'm like, isn't that cute? He's following us, he's messaging us. I just love that for us. Anyway, okay, let's go. I don't know why you're making me do, I know why you're making me do this, but let's just go through it really quick. Make
Yellowtail Shiraz And Hidden Sugar
SPEAKER_02just speed taste and talk.
SPEAKER_01So the first thing I got is yellowtailed Shiraz, because no one thinks if this is a sweet wine, but I actually Googled it, and the average residual sugar on this is between nine and eleven grams per liter, which is sweet. Okay. It's look, it's it's demisec, if we're being official about this. And the reason they add it is to tap you add it to tamp down the tenants. So if we're sending new wines to buyers back in the day, we would add a little bit of sugar and a little bit of glycerol to the wine because we know that buyers, as much as they think they're fantastic at tasting, struggle with new wines, because just made wines because they've got a lot of CO2, they're just through Milo. So I got this as a sort of original sweet wine, but most people wouldn't think it a sweet wine. This is Yellowtail Shiraz. I don't know what the vintage is, but I don't think it really matters. It is the most confected wine. It's coffee, it's vanilla. It's also got almost like a marshmallow flavour to it. Cola.
SPEAKER_02I think you're generous by even putting character like wine characteristic, trying attempting to carry that's just grow. Like the what I think it's gonna get better.
SPEAKER_01Because that doesn't call itself sweet.
SPEAKER_02No, okay. I just never make me put that in the back.
SPEAKER_01There is a market for there is a market for that. It's very chippy. We talk about chips. It's Shiraz, it's kind of what people would expect. And I all these wines I reckon everything was sub-15.
SPEAKER_02It tastes like if you got hot chocolate and put it, you get like a Shiraz and add a scoop of hot chocolate and add a few red Allen's lollies and then like put in the blender or something and then drink it.
SPEAKER_01Like red rippers?
SPEAKER_02Uh no, like uh red frogs, red frogs. Put in Allen's is a very poor spectrum on lollies.
SPEAKER_01True, that's absolutely correct. None of these ones will be taken home on my ship.
SPEAKER_02Shiraz plus red frogs plus drinking chocolate in a blender, pour it. That's what that tastes like.
SPEAKER_01It's very confected, it's made to a market. The next one we have is a Brown Brothers dolcetto syrah.
SPEAKER_00It smells better.
SPEAKER_01So Brown Brothers are really good at plugging market spots because they have so many vineyard holdings. And so they're really good at just, you know, they've got the aluminium bottle now. So they're good at plugging the thing. The first thing I notice about this is there's a little bit of fizz on it, so they've kept the carbon dioxide quite high, which means they I'm almost thinking, do they want this to be chilled? Because that's what we do with a chillable wine.
SPEAKER_02That would be yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00Would the fizz in something like this happen in bottle? Or no, it's not so not like that.
SPEAKER_01They're soda streaming it. So it's not a soda, it's when we go to bottle wines, Austin, so you know, the bottler will ask us two things. What do you want your dissolved oxygen level to be? And we always want that but below 0.5 milligrams per litre. So it's just nice and low, so it's not going to oxidize and age really quickly. And then they'll ask us, what do you want your dissolved carbon dioxide level to be? On red wines, generally, just your Nebbiolos, below 600 milligrams per litre. So it's 0.6 grams per litre. On your white wines, around a thousand, you know. I'm I've got uh I'm bottling a Sauvignon, I want a thousand, I'm bottling a Chardonnay one a little bit lower, and then on a rose, between anything we know we know above 0.7 on the rose, people think it's spritzy. So you want to below 0.7. So we decide, and they decO2 it. They just you just bubble nitrogen through it. So it's a bottling decision, it's a final finishing decision of the winemaker. So clearly, and what it does is the higher the level of carbon dioxide is the more acidic the wine appears, and the more kind of phenolic y, grunty, tannin y. So if you ever get top tip, a wine that a red wine that you think is too acidic, just shake it. You can take the CO2 out of it, and it'll taste as acidic. This dolcetto syrup. I'm sorry, I just again my question is why?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but it's so much nicer than the first one. Like I it at least it yeah, I felt like it had purpose. It was light and bright, and it the spritz helped, let's be honest. That the first one was like a chocolate cake that is so rich that you just can't eat it. Whereas this one was at least like a lolly that's a bit sweet and that, but you're gonna keep having it because it's I mean, I'm gonna we're gonna look like rankers, but there's clearly a market for these wines, and I just
Brown Brothers Spritz And CO2 Lessons
SPEAKER_02it's is it the gateway drug to get people in?
SPEAKER_01Because there's a there's a lot of there's a lot of no's to that, like the spritz, the level of sweetness is like I don't have feelings, but I imagine if you have feelings that is like melting your feelings in your mouth. It is sweet.
SPEAKER_00Does it play into the other side of the market rather than rather than the people entering the wine market? Yes. The older people that are perhaps losing sort of uh that entire I think that's exactly right. They still want a full body, so what we are tasting here is crazy. However, to somebody at either end of the market, it might be fine.
SPEAKER_01So I think based just based on the demographic, that these wines are suited for really spicy foods, and this is just anecdotally from my one child working in a shop. That I think that if we sat down to a really spicy, say an Indian curry, and the thing is about Indian food is it's not just heat, the level of flavor in Indian food, you have sort of that it's like perfume. You have that base level and that medium level and that hot spice. I think these would work really, really well.
SPEAKER_02It does make sense though, because high tannin, high alcohol, like all of that is And then I don't think these have high alcohol.
SPEAKER_01So I think they would work.
SPEAKER_02Exactly.
SPEAKER_01I'm saying it with a certain with that sort of really spice, it does make sense with that kind of cuisine. So one I'm wondering if it's a cultural thing, cultural and age.
SPEAKER_02Surely it's age as well, though, right?
SPEAKER_00We talked about this with Brendan actually, about the changing Australian landscape with food and how I guess our wine market is slowly starting to catch up to that. And perhaps sweet wrends growing is an example of what you've said and what he was saying.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and we know that from the last statistics that the largest growth in our immigrant population is Indian immigrants. So if these have been made for Indian food, we need to go out to an Indian restaurant because I'm now reviewing this in another light and thinking that could be really, really interesting because it's got, we've discussed you want that sweetness, you don't want too high alcohol. The next wine is a sienna, which is the from Brown Brothers as well, which is the wine that Elliot brought home for us as an example of sweet wine, which prompted the whole conversation. You can imagine the conversations in my house. Poor children. Seriously, at least Luca talks about sake. First thing I noticed was it's really spritzy. Sienna is a hybrid. Oh, don't come after me. Is it a hybrid grape variety? I think it is. Developed by it's like Tarango. Mel's just looking at me in despair. Why are we doing this?
SPEAKER_02This is awful.
SPEAKER_01Okay. In the light of what I just said, spicy food, that would be frickin' awesome with anything with ginger in it. Yeah. Because it's got a ginger spice to it. I get we've got to give it a try, which is really hard with these wines because they are too achingly sweet. Take the sweetness out and look at the flavour and aroma compounds in them. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_02No, I'm depressed if you're on my day.
SPEAKER_01This is No, I'm starting to see. Okay, I want us to redo this episode with these same wines, maybe not the yellowtail.
SPEAKER_02No, let's not buy them again. Oh my gosh. But with with food. I shan't.
SPEAKER_01And and and and put them against standard wines that Mel would approve of that she would actually drink.
SPEAKER_02You and Austin can do that episode. I'm not count me out. Count me out. No, okay. But smell this last one. It smells like okay, okay, okay. You know how proofy. I haven't done the last the last one.
SPEAKER_01Okay, let me talk about it. It is the last one. The last one, what's really embarrassing is Austin actually. It's called petissier. Petisserie. It's pistachio and chocolate mousse. Thinking flavoured wine? Oh, it's wine. Welcome to the world of pâtisserie, where delicious and delicate combined to make irresistible, crafted and finessed for a unique and luxurious flavour. I mean, it's wine. 10.5% alcohol. Okay.
SPEAKER_02You know how protein powder. Oh. Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_01Smells like they're like, they're like D M P I M. Do not put in mouth that we write in wine shows.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Protein powder smells like a shit version of the original. Okay, well, anyone out there who does is like you get you buy a chocolate cake flavour protein powder and you taste it, and it is like you think that's that tastes like brownies. That tastes like a protein powder version of chocolate covered, uh confected lolly bananas covered in chocolate. That is, yes, with caramel sauce, but that's the protein that the protein that's like teamu. That's like the teamu version of that. You know what? I'm actually freaking not putting that in my mouth. I'm I'm no, there if there have been a lot of things in my mouth over the years, and and and and and I just that is not gonna be one of them. That is oh god.
SPEAKER_01I gotta taste this.
SPEAKER_02Do you remember that ice magic shit that you used to put on ice cream? Hang on, no way. I'm sorry. We have to point a camera at you if you're gonna taste this.
SPEAKER_01No, seriously. Right. Oh my god. No, that is that is wrong. Oh my god. I think this was like that's horrific.
SPEAKER_02I'm sorry, I refuse. I've I've eaten chicken liver, I've eaten horse tartare. We had chicken liver, duck liver, but we had KFC the other day. We had KFC the other day, but I will not put that in my mouth.
SPEAKER_00That was yeah, it tastes like a caramel sauce, like a zero sugar caramel sauce.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00That you would put on like the people that diet in your life.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes, it tastes like diet food. It tastes like diet food.
SPEAKER_00It just tastes like chemicals.
SPEAKER_02Those people have been on diets for like a year, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And
Sweet Reds With Spicy Food
SPEAKER_01they feel not in a good way. Why are people doing this from a marketing perspective? Uh is this how we attract people to the wine category?
SPEAKER_02No. No, no, no, no, no. I think that the the if if I had to guess, the two previous theories I think are the best ones. One is there are certain type of foods it goes with.
SPEAKER_01No, these the siena and the dolchetto syrup.
SPEAKER_00All of a sudden, they seem like beautiful companies.
SPEAKER_01No, I I would I'm gonna I'll just do this at home. I'll take this at home, I'll get some Indian food this weekend and I'll let you know. I can see a place for that. Yellowtail.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you know what? Um, sparkling I maybe there is because I used to love sparkling Shiraz.
SPEAKER_00I still do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's fine. Yeah, it's fine. No, I used to love it, and I don't and even when we first started this podcast, I I saw I I loved sparkling Triers when we started this podcast. And look how far I've come. But quite distant. Yeah, but no, yeah, no, yeah. So I think it's where you're at the start of the end of your palate, or if you were from a demographic that eats a certain type of super spicy food or something, then yes, like it might go with your cuisine of choice, but it is a lot for my dainty palate. Okay. I'll say that.
SPEAKER_01I actually prefer those two Brown Brothers wines, which are perceptibly sweet with the high carbon dioxide that have been made to that style versus the faux yellowtail pretending to be. Oh god, yeah, good, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretending wine with loads of and that last week. No, I I totally agree.
SPEAKER_02I would drink the Brown Brothers over the yellowtail and 100%. Okay. But I think we need to I know that we need to keep our feet on the ground and we need to be close to the consumer, and that we can't just like drink Chateau Reyes or the. Look at the fancy bottle. But that was just, I just, I didn't enjoy that, and I just think we should never do it again. That's all. That was Pox. You mean the last one. What was it called? Patisserie. That's disgusting.
SPEAKER_00They also sell a white wine that's pineapple flavoured.
SPEAKER_01And sadly, you've actually tasted it. No, no, I haven't. We need to sack you because it's I haven't tasted it. I'm gonna tarot.
SPEAKER_02I just think that when we've given the listeners nothing. And this episode, they're gonna get to the end of this episode and be like, what do I do with this?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I would actually go out and buy these two grand brothers' wines, Dolchetto Sierra and the Siena. And because when you go to Indian, I don't drink wine. I just Indian Indian food, which I'm trying to master at the moment because there's
Flavoured Wine That Crosses A Line
SPEAKER_01one cuisine I haven't quite got my head around, is such a so many layers of flavours, and I only ever drink beer.
SPEAKER_00I don't beer with it, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Kingfisher, thrilling wind chill.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I thought we wouldn't have reds this end. That's what you have in India. And I don't I just think, uh yeah, I think we need to do this. It's it's an it's an entry-level at least it's it's it's red wine. This is the Patitia is just confected, and the yellowtail is really confected. That could just be chocolate and it's got a wine base bringing it through. These two at least have some great variety characters. Yeah. Mel's just demoralized.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01We finished on a good note.
SPEAKER_02Um, hang on, I was gonna finish on something. My mother-in-law brought lambrisco, and she didn't realise that it would probably be sweet. It's from Pizzini. And I said it's the one that we had. Yeah, so I said to her, go make like a homemade pizza and do like prosciutto or like a nice cured meat with some blue cheese, and that should be awesome. Blue cheese goes really well with sweet wine. Notoriously, Moscato, think about it.
SPEAKER_01On pizza.
SPEAKER_02Yes, on pizza.
SPEAKER_01Okay, wow, some of us have. Frankenstein is that. You're happy. You know, there's only three ingredients on a pizza.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Right?
SPEAKER_02Just because something that just because it's done traditionally doesn't mean there's the meat always needs to be done, Meg. Like that wine that you're holding in your hand. Yeah, just I don't know what to say. This wine is not it.
SPEAKER_00I imagine if it's spilt on a table, it would slowly burn through.
SPEAKER_02All right. Well, on that side note, I am thrilled to tell you.
SPEAKER_01Well, my premise was true. Sweet wine, red wine. Why?
SPEAKER_02I know, I don't know if we have an answer to why. There's nothing. This is just depressing. We're all sad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think if you're starting your one journey, I'm I am keen. I will actually take one for the team, and I'm gonna take this home and try it with me.
SPEAKER_00Where would you recommend someone's wine journey to start? Avoid these. You gotta go to one spot, get a bottle of X.
SPEAKER_02Gossips. Yeah. Gossips. Uh I started with Moscado, I started with Passion Pop, and you and then you work your way to Savion Blanc, and then you work your way to Pinot Gree.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I just look at my kids' journey and who have grown up around wine-making parents and have visited all the great winemaking regions of the world. Okay, so not normal people. No, but they don't they didn't like wine. So we started them off on sweet wine, like you said, but Moscato d'Asti, 5% alcohol, low, little bit frizzante. Yeah, no, yeah. It's a lolly water, yum, yum, yum, yum. They loved
Starting A Wine Journey Sweet
SPEAKER_01it. Slowly transition to your more uh dessert wines, so a little bit of complex with botrytis and things. In terms of one of them, they've just sort of flipped to this real dry, shoddy Shannon style. The other one's into sake, so he's looking for different pre profiles which wine can't match. So he's still much, very much of that really ripe Shannon, because you get a lot of pineapple in sake, so but acid levels. So I yeah, I would I would say start sweet, Moscato de Este is just I as you know, I find I I love it. It's five percent alcohol. I can drink a whole bottle and go to a party, and I've had a delicious time, and I can drive home and then slowly wean yourself off the sugar. No, you can. It's like three and a half standard drinks.
SPEAKER_02All right, so you're at this party for like five or six hours, yeah. Just say yes, please. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to get called upon by our back.
SPEAKER_01You don't go to a party for one hour. Like it will take me through the entire it's got three and a half standard drinks in a bottle. We endorse responsible drinking and it's probably best if you're gonna drive and drink it all. I can drink two in the first hour and one every hour after that. Uh, we I have zero alcohol policy. So if I if we go out for dinner and I want to have enjoy your company and I just Uber. But if I'm going to a party and it's in the boondocks of Warrandyte where no Uber's ever gonna turn up, one of us chooses to drive and I take mascot acid. It's five percent alcohol. It's I I calculate it. Like I'm not, I don't want to lose my license. Yeah, or put other drivers at risk.
SPEAKER_02Okay, well, it's just I'm depressed. I wish we never did it, wish it never went in my mouth. I hate this. I'm gonna go home and drink some. Give that to Billy.
SPEAKER_01Oh my god. That's the thing, that's that's what is frightening. This is these drinks are very appealing to minors.
SPEAKER_02Yes, it is frightening. Yeah, yes, that is so especially that last one. That's yes. Yes, yes, the the text could look at the sparkle on the bottle. It's all about the glimmer. The the the text is what could be in one of Billy's picture books. Like it looks like a child. Yeah. And yeah, no, I hate it. I hate everything about this. Bintham. I've got a hair appointment for all of it. Okay, Meg's gotta get her hair done, uh, do an ex glass of wine, I guess. No, sorry. Next week we're doing Langy. Next week, I swear to God, it's gonna be really good. Langy rocks, it's Nebbiolo, it's not expensive, and we're
Final Verdict And Next Week Tease
SPEAKER_02gonna taste all these different price points and just see if different price points make a difference. But like I promise that is a really, really good one to listen to. If you have, if you're still listening, can you DM us or something? Because I just don't believe anyone would have listened this far. This is not worth listening to. Okay, love you back.
SPEAKER_01Because you're miserable about it. Enjoy your next glass of wine and drink well and make sure it's not sweet red.
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