We’re all going to Nude School Part II

As you may recall, for the last Nude School article (We’re all going to Nude School Part I), we laid out the premise that cleanskin wines, after years wandering in the quality wilderness, were back representing quality wine at a reasonable price.

To test this theory, in Nude School Part II we selected a broad number of nude wines from two distinctly different retailers, sat down and systematically drank them all. Gotta love this job!

Selection 1

The first selection we picked up came from the cleanskin range of a large-scale national wine retailer. These guys sell an extensive number of cleanskins covering a hell of a lot of grape varieties, styles and regions (approximately 26+ if I recall correctly).

We picked a good mixed dozen of the usual suspects (Clare Riesling, Hunter Semillon, Barossa Shiraz, Coonawarra Cab Sav etc) with an average bottle price of around $6.80 (ranging from a low of $3.99 to a high of $9.50) and gave them a whirl.

I must admit I had reasonably high expectations for this tasting and was looking forward, with some excitement, to cracking these wines - I wasn’t expecting that we would uncover some hidden wine gem at $4.50 a bottle or anything like that, but I did imagine that we would at least discover that the majority of the wines we were tasting were of decent quality and good value at the price.

Oh Boy was I wrong!

I can’t remember the last time I tasted such an insidious, insipid, unpleasant pile of muck. Out of the entire dozen only two could even be described as reaching an acceptable level of drinkability, and then only barely. The rest of the wines were simply rubbish.

As for bang for your buck…in our opinion these wines actually represented extremely poor value for money, even at prices as low as $3.99!!!

I think a random sampling of our scribbled tastings notes says it all:

“Shit Shit Shit” (nice use of simile WC);

“Smells of Turd” (another WC descriptive classic);

“How can I possibly describe the awful taste of this wine” (MB – polite, but no less cutting);

“Fruit…what fruit?” (MB again the gentleman assassin); and

“Fucked up apricot soap-on-a-rope” (this could only be MW).

mmmmmmmmmmm… not a good start for the “Nude Wines Are Great” school of thought then.

Selection 2

Accordingly, it was with more than a little scepticism that we ventured down to Birkenhead Point in Sydney to pick up our second selection of cleanskins – this time from an independent “specialist” cleanskin retailer called “the Wine Point”.

The Wine Point (cleanskin wine merchants) are one of a growing number of boutique businesses that specialise in selling cleanskin wines (in fact that’s all they sell). Some of these businesses source their nudies as unlabeled bottles from various suppliers and stick them on the shelf as is, but others, like the Wine Point, source their wine straight from the barrel and sell it under their own cleanskin labels.

The Wine Point has a broad range of “the Wine Point” brand nudies, and with the generous assistance of the Wine Point owner Brendan Hilferty we selected a mixed half dozen (three reds and three whites) to taste.

Cue music…[with apologies to Leonard Cohen]

I heard there was a secret chord,

that David played and it pleased the Lord,

but you don’t really care for music do ya?

It goes like this, the fourth the fifth,

the minor fall and the major lift,

the baffled king composing Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Halleluuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuu yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…!”

Nude wines are saved!

Now I’m not saying that these wines were the best wines you’ll ever taste, but they were miles and miles above the insipid drivel that the commercial retailer was passing off as wine.

Where the commercial retailer’s wines were universally soapy, characterless, bland “wines” - sadly lacking in fruit, acid and any semblance of quality - the six wines we tasted from the Wine Point (with the exception of the 2005 Geelong Riesling, which really needed a good whack more acid to counter its off-dry style) were all fresh, well balanced and well made .

Of the wines we pinched from the Wine Point, two wines deserved a strong Recommended rating for quality (the 2005 Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir and the 2006 McLaren Vale Chardonnay - a bloody good achievement given we’re pretty picky about which wines we recommend), three as High Average and one as Low Average. And while these wines were more pricey (averaging $12.80) than the nudies from the commercial retailer, they none the less still represented far, far better value for money. All scored at least Recommended for value.

A good example of this was the McLaren Vale “Smugglers Budgie” Shiraz which, although one of the lesser quality wines of the six, is still a decent quaffer and absolutely cracking value at $9.90 (in the dozen).

The moral of the story

So… have cleanskins thrown off the albatross of dross and putridity that’s hung around their necks for years? Are cleanskins, just like Flares, back baby yeah!

Well…yes and no.

If you’re going to head down to your local commercial wine retailer, randomly pick up a cleanskin off the shelf (or more likely prominent promo display) and expect that it will be anything better than dishwater dross then you’re kidding yourself. The only certainty is that you’re going to get ripped off. Really, if you’re going to follow that path you may as well take the bottle back home, leave the cork in and... [censored by WC - we'll leave this to your imagination] – you’ll find it infinitely more pleasurable.

If you want real value for money, if you want quality wine at a reasonable price, if you want what cleanskins were all about when they first arrived, then the only sensible thing to do is to check out your local independent nude wine retailer (like the Wine Point) and head down there to pick up some cherries.

Just remember…if you’re going to go out nude in public, make sure you’ve got the right equipment.

Cheers

MW