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Malcolm Jolley looks at the wine oenophiles love to hate

Australia's Yellow Tail Shiraz (LCBO# 624544 - $11.45) is an easy target for the wine snob. Mass produced - according to their website there are currently 63,377 bottles of the stuff for sale in 583 LCBO outlets from Cornwall to Rainy River - and tasting powerfully of oak (chips?), this is exactly the sort of wine that Jonathan Nossiter's Mondovino takes aim at.

So it must be the diabolical creation of faceless corporate oenologists and ruthless marketing people determined to lower the standards of wine, just to make a fast buck, right? Well, not exactly. The story is a little more complicated and reflects the quirky nature of the world wine market and the vintners that compete in it.

Yellow Tail is actually made by Casella Vineyards, a small (39.5 acre) family-run operation in Australia's New South Wales territory. For most of its history, it simply produced grapes for other winemakers, until the founders' son, John Casella, took over in 1994 and hired general manager John Soutter - the man who is either lauded or blamed for the popular label.

Soutter spent the first seven years of his tenure at Casella trying to crack the international market (which the U.S. dominates) with boutique type wines, much like any other small and uncelebrated Australian label. His "Carramar Estate" wines retailed at about $US 12 to $15 and were quickly forgotten when they failed to make any sort of impact on the American wine consumer.

As Soutter struggled to adapt his wines to the newly emerging American taste for powerful vanilla noted oaky reds, he saw his costs rise due to intensive barrel-ageing. In fact, he saw that these new costs were pushing up the price point most Australian and New World wines from their traditional $US 7 threshold to beyond $10 by the late 1990s.

Emboldened by the failure of his first wines, Soutter went back to the drawing board and created a wine with less barrel-ageing*, which lowered costs. In 2001 Yellow Tail entered the US market at around $US 7 (depending on where you bought it) and the rest is history. By 2003 Casella was producing 4,000,000 cases of the stuff and Yellow Tail was the best selling imported wine in the U.S.

Of course, there were a few faceless marketing types involved. Yellow Tail's bold branding surely helps its sales. And Soutter motivated his U.S. importers by offering them 50% stakes in his venture. But at its heart, the Yellow Tail story is about one man making a wine.

Does Gremolata recommend Yellow Tail Shiraz?
Sort of. There are inevitably times when an Ontario wine lover will find themselves in an LCBO without a Vintages section of any sort. In this case, you could do worse than the Yellow Tail. (Much worse, actually.) And at $11.45, the very curious ought to be encouraged to try it, just for fun. Although the chances of one of those 63,377 bottles showing up at a party are pretty good, so maybe not.

See Gremolata's previous article on the LCBO's General List, for what to do when you can't make it to a Vintages store, here.

*Some accounts claim Soutter simply held back on new oak barrel-ageing. Given the powerful vanilla-oak punch of his Shiraz, I speculate that there are oak chips involved.

Malcolm Jolley is the Publisher of Gremolata. Contact him at malcolm@gremolata.com

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