Wolf Blass (Makeover) is Impressive

I have been a great fan of brand Wolf Blass for a long time. It does what all great brands are supposed to do. It delivers on expectation. In this case eager punters buy a bottle of Wolf Blass wine fully confident that they will come out the other side with a wine that will please as a drink and bestow status onto its holder. 'Pleasing' for Wolf Blass has been a joy to witness. As a man he is a born, gifted and successful entrepreneur. He brings smiles and energy to everyone he meets and has over the years managed to instill all of this into his namesake brand. Status? Well, this was brought home to me very well last year when I saw more than one Holy Communion party pouring Wolf Blass wines. They were poured with pride and even though they had been bought 'On Promotion' their owners had been happy to pay more than they need to have for many other similar wines on sale at the time. Brand Wolf Blass does this again and again.

Now, I have to put a small spanner into the works. (Sorry Wolfgang but, as with every wine, you can't please everyone all of the time). I have often found that many of the wines in the Wolf Blass stable have been overly fruity for my palate. The entry level reds were all a bit jammy and many of the whites were just a bit over worked in the winery. To my credit I have, however, always recognised that this is an over simplification of the Blass wines as on the odd occasion, at the odd tasting, I'd find myself scoring one of his wines quite highly. You see there has never been anything technically or intrinsically off or wrong with the Wolf Blass wines. It was just my palate hankering for something more, such as an extra degree of subtlety. So, when I kept giving recommendations to the Wolf Blass Gold Label Chardonnay out of the Adelaide Hills I really should have listened to my own advice. When I saw Wolf Blass winning the very best of wine awards around the world and at home in Australia I possibly shouldn't have said that he made wines for awards and other wines for us!

Wolf Blass brings everyday blends to us with Eagle Hawk, a lot of honest fruit with Yellow Label and interest and sophistication with his premium and ultra premium wines. Until recently most of these latter attributes have been hidden from me. Therein lies the rub. Should I judge by the luxury wines or by the commercial releases? Both actually, but the luxury end never seemed to make it anywhere close to me!

Chris Hatcher Senior Winemaker at Wolf Blass in Dublin

This all changed recently. First, a little history

Wolfgang Blass established his winery in Australia's Barossa Valley in 1966. In 1991 he merged with Mildara Wines to become Mildara Blass and in 1996 Mildara Blass was taken over by the Fosters Beer company. Now for the complicated bit! In 1994 the Penfolds Wine Group (owners of loads of wineries) was renamed Southcorp. It continued to buy up wineries. In 2000 Fosters acquired Beringer Wine Estates and formed Beringer Blass. Then Southcorp and Rosemount merged - and continued to buy up wineries! Then in 2005 Fosters took Southcorp over. Beringer Blass was now a global giant.

For the next six years things seem to have gone awry. Fosters kept losing money in its wine division. They finally demerged the whole lot this year into a stand alone listed company called Treasury Wine Estates. TWE currently owns 11,000 hectares of vineyard, produces 33million cases of wine and controls gazillions of brands including  Beringer, Chateau St. Jean, Lindeman’s, Wolf Blass, Penfolds, Rosemount, Wynns Coonawarra Estate, Stags’ Leap Winery, Matua Valley, Etude, Castello di Gabbiano, Australia’s Seppelt, Coldstream Hills, and Devil’s Lair.


So what changed recently? A wine ethos arrived into town with an excellent tasting of the luxury end of Wolf Blass wines. There was no sales push from aggressive marketing people and chief wine maker Chris Hatcher did what he does best. He showed off his skills by allowing us all free and easy access to the very best of what Wolf Blass does. Chris should know. He's been making wine for Wolf Blass for 24 years! During that time he has consistently won the very best wine awards from all around the world. I suspect now that Wolf Blass is back into a wine company, rather than being squeezed into a beer company, we will see lot more emphasis and talk of wine rather than boxes and shipping statistics. Here's hoping.

Wines tasted:
Wolf Blass Grey Label Shiraz Cabernet 2009
Wolf Blass Black Label Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon 2001
Wolf Blass Black Label Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz Malbec 2004 *
Wolf Blass Black Label Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz 2005
Wolf Blass Black Label Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz Malbec 2007 *
Wolf Blass Platinum Label Shiraz 2005
Wolf Blass Platinum Label Shiraz 2008 *
Each of these wine was quite brilliant and told endless stories to their taster as they were tasted. The three I have highlighted were iconic.