As anyone who is into wine knows, there are wines for all occasions. We pick and choose what we want to drink based on either our mood, the food we are going to eat or the event we are about to celebrate. We may find ourselves craving an “old world” style wine with loads of rusticity, or a “new world” wine with more fruit expression. Most times when it is for a meal, the food will dictate the style of wine we buy. Celebratory wines are usually special bottles that may demand a higher price, but we are willing to spend the money since it is a celebration. They say variety is the spice of life, and I myself am thankful that all wines are not the same.
I am amused when I run across a wine drinker that gets stuck in a rut, or has narrowed their preferences down to a very specific style to the point where they will not branch out to anything else. I understand there are folks out there who do not like sweet, fruit forward or high alcohol wines. On the flip-side there are people who will never venture into the rustic wines that show forest floor, leather and mineral components. The reason I am amused by this group is because I think they miss out on many good experiences because they are not willing to experiment, and at least give different wines a try. Their dogmatic approach to wine will sometimes reach a fervent pitch as they rail on about the flaws in a wine based on their belief system. I love to get them going, and then just sit back and enjoy the blathering.
The reason I am bringing any of this up is because of a recent conversation I had with Sarah Marquis. Sarah and Sparky Marquis are both owners of and wine makers at Mollydooker Winery in southern Australia. When you are talking about “New World” high alcohol wines, you need look no further then Australia. Many of the wines produced by Mollydooker come in at over 14% alcohol, some even registering in the 15+ range. Is this a flaw? I think not! As I mentioned at the start, I am glad there is diversity in the wine world. I am also willing to say that even though a wine may register in the upper stratosphere as far as alcohol percentage, it does not mean that you can necessarily pick that up in the wine itself.
This was illustrated quite nicely in a recent tasting I attended of the 2011 Mollydooker wines. The group I was with tasted through the entire line-up of their wines from the “Lefty” series to their highest tier… Velvet Glove.I have to say that I was impressed with the balance and complexity in each of the wines, alcohol was never an issue. After we were done with the wines and lunch, I had an opportunity to sit down and talk with Sarah and ask her some questions about wine making in general and the current state of affairs in the wine world. Here is our conversation…
Stan: I’m sitting here with Sarah Marquis from Mollydooker. Are you the main wine maker at the winery?
Sarah: I do it with my husband Sparky… The two of us. We both do the blending and day to day production.
Stan: I guess I understood that Sparky was more involved in the vineyard side of things.
Sarah: Sparky’s role, is he understands and he’s developed a program in the vineyards that has developed an excellent color and flavor in the wines. So he is more the scientist, and I’m more the female palate that does the final blending of the wine. I also do all the branding, and just the look and feel of the company.
Stan: So you put the blessing on the final blend.
Sarah: Yes, they’ve got to get it past me, and I’m tough.
Stan: (Laughs)… You should be, that’s a good thing. It shows in your wines, that’s for sure. The question that I want to ask you relates to what I’m seeing in my wine department. I’ve noticed a huge decline in Australian wine sales. Have you noticed that, especially in the U.S.
Sarah: In sales? Not for us.
Stan: Has there been talk about this trend in Australia?
Sarah: Yes. They’re finding it harder to sell their wines. I think the most important thing is to be different from the rest. Do everything the same as everybody else, and you will be just like everybody else. We’ve always tried to investigate how to be better in the vineyard, better in all our marketing, everything we do… Attention to detail so that we will be different, so that it sets us apart.
Stan: That’s great. I know it’s true in my wine department, we sell out of your wines. I have a couple of bottles left from last year, but that’s because I bought a bunch of it. The new release date is a little tough. I used to get the wines in June, and now they come in September. Our store is in a tourist destination spot that thrives in the summer. That aside, I still find that your wines sell quite well. Last year I tried to get some of the Verdelho and it sold out to one venue. The current vintage of Verdelho (The Violinist 2011) is great, but the 2010 was phenomenal. How do you feel about that wine last year?
Sarah: The 2010 Violinist? I loved it! That was an awesome vintage.
Stan: This current vintage is really good, actually better then 2009. Digressing back to the lackluster sales of Australian wines in the states, what is your thought on this trend? Have you thought about it?
Sarah: I’m not sure… Has the economy gotten worse here and people were tightening up a bit? That’s what I’ve understood about the sales going down.
Stan: You still have the Yellow Tail, Lindeman’s and Jacobs Creek. Even those wines have dropped in sales.
Sarah: Are there new merging regions that are becoming more popular over here, like South America?
Stan: I don’t know if that’s the reason although it is a good point. My theory on this trend is that Australia marketed real heavily in the “Cheap Shiraz” category, and it hurt them.
Sarah: That’s true, it did some damage. I’ve heard that too. Like Yellow Tail for example. When we would come to the U.S. to ski, we would tell folks we were wine makers from Australia. They would say… “Oh yeah, Yellow Tail. Do you make Yellow Tail?” So it’s true that folks related Australia to cheap wine. Wineries like Yellow Tail made too much of the cheap wine and it damaged Australia’s reputation a bit.
Stan: It’s always dangerous to pigeon-hole yourself into a certain category. Australia sort of put themselves into the cheap wine category, but also focused, in my opinion too much on just shiraz (syrah). I’m afraid that may happen with malbec from Argentina. I know there are many good wines out of Australia besides shiraz. The verdelho you do is excellent. There are also some excellent rieslings out of Australia. Have you ever considered dabbling in reisling?
Sarah: Actually no. Riesling is from the Clare Valley which is quite cooler, and where we get our grapes from is warmer. So we are going to stick to what we are good at, instead of going into ten different varieties. We specialize in cab, shiraz, merlot and verdelho, and just focus on a few things and get good at that. That’s the main thing.
Stan: That’s what I would do.
Sarah: I like shiraz.
Stan: I do too. There are a lot of good examples. Two Hands, Grange among many others.
Sarah: I don’t know if you knew we did the first vintage of Two Hands.
Stan: Did you really! That’s a great, well balanced wine. I was telling Janet (Sarah’s mother-in-law) that this 2011 vintage of your shiraz is one of the best I’ve ever had. I know ’11 was a challenging vintage. Is it true that wine makers actually like challenging vintages?
Sarah: No, I don’t like challenging vintages. I would much rather it be easy.
Stan: I talk to a lot of wine makers who seem to like a vintage when it is a little challenging. It stresses the fruit a little or it presents this or that scenario. You’re saying that you would just rather have all the conditions perfect for the vintage?
Sarah: Yeah, that would be great!
Stan: (Laughs)
Sarah: The one good thing about a challenging vintage is that you learn. When you have to deal with that situation it prepares you for when you’re faced with it again, then you know how to handle it. That’s the only benefit. Otherwise, let’s make it easy and have it perfect.
Stan: (Laughs) So 2011 was a challenging vintage because there was a lot of rain, and you just came out of a drought?
Sarah: Yes. That was challenging, that was scary.
Stan: But the wines came out great!
Sarah: Yes, they did.
Stan: So maybe subliminally you do like challenging vintages. (Sarah shakes her head no)
Sarah: No, that was hard. We were worried. We felt bad for our growers. We have only Mclaren Valle vineyards around the winery. But some of our growers who are good friends, that have been with us and helped us, lost their whole crop. It was terrible. We tried to help them out. We brought some of the fruit in and tried to make wine and sell it, but we just couldn’t. We were able to make some of the bulk juice for them to sell and make some money…. That was good.
Stan: From that standpoint, I understand where you’re coming from. Aside from the monetary damage the growers experience, which is not a good thing of course, it seems as if wine makers step up to the plate and put a little more effort into the wine making process when the fruit is not perfect. For instance, this vintage of Velvet Glove is superb. Last vintage, it was bigger, more fruit forward. This vintage shows tobacco leaf notes and hints of citrus… A beautiful wine.
Sarah: Yes, it is drinking a lot better.
Stan: The wines from this vintage are going to age nicely. Even the Carnival of Love and the Enchanted Path show age worthiness. I shared a bottle of the Carnival of Love shiraz with my mother-in-law a couple of weeks ago and it took her and hour and a half to drink it. That’s a compliment!
Sarah: Awesome! She just sipped and savored it… Lovely.
Stan: Yes, but you almost can’t have that wine with steak because it over-powers it. That’s hard to do with my steak.
Sarah: (Laughs)
Stan: Did I overhear you say that your father encouraged you to be a wine maker?
Sarah: Yes.
Stan: This is before you met Sparky?
Sarah: Yes, that was when I was seventeen. I went and studied wine making. At the end of the year when I was seventeen, over Christmas I was wondering what my destiny was, what I was going to do. My father collected wine and I would sample a few that he wouldn’t know about. (We both laugh) I was clever, because he would buy a dozen of one kind of wine and I would take some of those. But my sister was a bit silly. She would take the one that he had only one bottle of. So then he would say…” Who’s been nipping in my cellar?”… So at around sixteen, I learned that I liked the taste of wine. So my father encouraged me to go and do that, (make wine) that would be fantastic, a dream come true.
Stan: So what school did you attend?
Sarah: Roseworthy Agricultural College. It was the place to study wine making back in the eighties. In the nineties it moved to Adeleide University. It’s the Bachelor of applied science and oenology. It’s like U.C. Davis, but the Australian version.
Stan: That was a two year course?
Sarah: Three years. Unfortunately after I left, it became four years. I didn’t have to do four. I got away with three. You learn everything after college anyway.
Stan: So when you were thieving from your father’s cellar, was there a style of wine that stood out as a “wow” wine for you? Something special?
Sarah: I didn’t really know anything then, it was just for fun.
Stan: O.K. So what was your first “Wow” wine?
Sarah: When I was studying wine making, we went to a wine tech. conference and I remember tasting a really good French wine, I’m not sure what it was. People used to say that french are the best, and this was twenty years ago. I tasted some amazing french wines compared to any Australian wine that I had tasted at that point. Sorry I can’t remember an exact wine. My wine memory is not that good with names.
Stan: It’s nice to meet someone else like that.
Sarah: I realized there are producers in every country that just get it right. I did drink french wine that was very average, but the experience was unbelievable.
Stan: So you lean towards a more European style?
Sarah: No, the french wines actually kind of shocked me. I still love the Australian style. We just have an excellent climate for growing grapes. Lot’s of heat, sun, water.
Stan: Sparky is pretty famous for his watering system in the vineyards, stressing fruit at certain stages and then watering them to sort of fool the grapes as it were. Do you like to work with stressed fruit?
Sarah: We only stress it for a little point in time. We actually stress the vines. By not watering the canopy we allow the vines to self prune. The leaves fall off, exposing the fruit to the sun in a gentle manner… Naturally. When you prune a canopy that is thick and lush from watering, the leaves shoot off laterally, creating more shade so you don’t get color and flavor. We let the canopy grow to a certain size, then we shut the water off and let it prune itself naturally, exposing the fruit to the sun in a gentle manner giving it flavor and color.
When you trim back a canopy that is thick, the grapes are exposed to the sun suddenly. They get sunburn and they become vulnerable to splitting. In 2011 when we had all that rain, in MclarenVale, in a lot of the other vineyards around us their berries were splitting and getting rot. Because we gradually expose our fruit to the sun, we didn’t get berry split in ’11. That’s why we got such good fruit in that vintage. A lot of growers in Mclaren Vale lost their crop, and if they did make any wine, it had a funny taste to it.
Stan: So the vineyards that you contract with, use that canopy system?
Sarah: If they don’t follow it, then we don’t take their fruit. We have vineyard inspectors that make sure the growers are following Sparky’s canopy system. We reward our growers. If they follow our vineyard watering program, we reward them. For the “Lefty” wines, the twenty-five dollar ones we pay them a 25% bonus over the district average price. For the Giggle Pot and Blue-eyed boy wines it’s a 75% bonus. When they get their fruit in the “Love” wines (Enchanted Path & Carnival of Love) it’s a 125% bonus. And anyone who grows grapes worthy of the Velvet Glove, they get a 200% bonus above the district average price. So we pay a lot of money for the fruit but it rewards them. We believe in sharing, we like sharing the profit. It’s a win, win for everyone.
Stan: Good Karma.
Sarah: Yes it is. It’s payed off.
Stan: After meeting you, I’ve tried to picture how you reacted to the dumping of the Velvet Glove on the freight docks last year. Did you come out o.k? (Both Sarah and Janet groan)
Sarah: We weren’t short and that was good. The logistical nightmare was a big thing, but that was really nothing. I remember getting the phone call when Sparky and I were at the house. Sparky asked me what was going on and I told him that the Velvet Glove just got dropped, a third of our production. My immediate reaction was… Why wasn’t it The Boxer? The Boxer, The Boxer. Why was it our top wine? You know. So do you understand what happened?
Instead of shipping all the Velvet Glove at once, we put a third of the production into different shipments. Just in case something happened to it, which was fortunate. The locking system on the container that the wine was in didn’t engage so that when they picked it up it just slipped and crashed down. Apparently red wine was just like blood everywhere. So I immediately thought, why wasn’t it Boxer? I think it was actually better believe it or not that it was Velvet Glove. That only reason was because, the retail value was a million dollars and twenty-five thousand, so that hit the press world-wide. The amount of articles went from the BBC, the UK… If you Google it, you had a full page about the Velvet Glove crashing everywhere. So now, people have heard about MollyDooker. All the market people told us, you could not pay for that publicity. So now people know. It used to be that when I said MollyDooker, they would say “What’s that?”. Now when I say MollyDooker, they say… ” Oh, that’s that wine that got dropped at the wharf!”.
We weren’t trying to get publicity, we were just in shock at that point. We were just trying to rectify the situation, getting the bottles down. We had them all at the winery, and it was like a graveyard. We were getting flooded with calls from our friends who were saying how sorry they were. We didn’t do anything until about a week later when I realized that our neighbor was editor of the local newspaper and I thought that maybe I should tell him. Within an hour after telling him it was on television and in the papers. Normally when you pose for a newspaper article, you smile for the photo. I didn’t know whether to smile or what. It was really awkward.
Stan: (Laughing, Sarah almost had me in stitches with the photo thing) I didn’t even think about the publicity aspect. The story was everywhere. It went viral as they say.
Sarah: Yeah… I had no control over that, I thought I would just tell my neighbor.
Stan: How many bottles total?
Sarah: Around 460 cases. It was hardest on the workers at the winery.
Stan: How many do you employ?
Sarah: Sixty. Then we hire another twenty-five vintage casuals. (Harvest workers)
Stan: Harvest is in March-April?
Sarah: Yeah… Our 2012 vintage growing season is unbelievable.
Stan: It’s going to be hard to beat this 2011 Velvet Glove!
Sarah: Yes, it is a really good wine.
Stan: Digressing just a bit, you found you liked french wines early in your career, and it was kind of your starting point. Have you tried any french wines in recent memory that have stood out.
Sarah: In Australia, we do not get a lot of imported wines, so in the wine shops it’s all Australian wines. So, if we drink it is usually MollyDooker or Jack Daniels.
Stan: (Laughs) I love Jack Daniels.
Sarah: for us, it’s just head down, bottoms up. We just do our own thing, not really getting out and trying a lot of wines. We haven’t really had a chance to get over here and try wines lately. I do like to taste here and there.( I gave them a bottle of wine from Napa that I had to try later).
Stan: A question that I ask some wine makers, and this is a problem for me. Why do some smaller to medium size wineries release bad wines? I can understand a winery with mass production letting something out there of inferior quality, but why someone else?
Sarah: Number one, I think they’re crazy. Because in order to be a successful company, people need to know that every wine you come out with is going to be your best. If you’re going to bottle something one year that is under your normal quality level, people are going to be disappointed so they won’t by your wine. We take real pride in not bottling anything that is not that 65% fruit weight. That way people are guaranteed every year that it is going to be good. That way people taste our wines year after year and it’s the same. You just have to do that if you are going to be competitive. Guaranteed quality! I’ve been to those wineries who do wine by bottle count because they need to. We’ve never done that. Like in 2008 when we had the big heat wave, we only produced our twenty-five dollar wines. All our top wines, Velvet Glove, Carnival of Love, Enchanted Path, Giggle Pot and Blue Eyed Boy, we couldn’t do them because the quality wasn’t there. Now we could have, but then all the consumers who we value that buy these wines, would have opened a bottle and would have thought….What are Sarah and Sparky doing now? You would lose all the reputation that you have worked for… So you can’t do that.
Stan: So you think that they are too worried about the bottom line just for that year.
Sarah: Exactly.
Stan: What is the average price per ton for the grapes you buy?
Sarah: It varies… $3,000 to $6,000 a ton.
At this point I would like to mention that Janet, Sarah’s mother-in-law and general manager for Mollydooker wines was present through the entire interview and had quite a few insightful comments. At this point she gets quite involved in the conversation, and I will add some of her thoughts.
Stan: What is the most expensive property to buy fruit from in Australia?
Sarah: I’m not sure about other regions because we just buy from Adelaide. (Talking to Janet)… You know the grape process more then me don’t you?
Janet: Like I’ve mentioned before, for us, we tend to be “heads down, bottoms up” we try to do the right thing for our own growers.
Stan: In Washington State for instance, Walla Walla fruit is some of the most expensive and then other regions such as Red Mt. demand a little more per ton then other areas. So, you’re saying that grapes have not reached the price of areas like Walla Walla or Napa Valley.
Sarah: No.
Janet: Some of it has to do with how many tons are produced per acre. Our ’05 Carnival of Love was made from five year old vines… 99 points from Robert Parker…. and three and three quarter tons per acre. So you pay more money for that fruit because they are growing less per acre. Some of the growers make less money even with the higher price because they are only producing half the fruit.
Stan: I’m glad you brought up the point thing with Parker, because this has become a huge debate amongst wine writers. Parker made it famous, and I’m sure others that use it have visited your winery such as Stephen Tanzer.
Sarah & Janet: No, he hasn’t. Just Parker and the Wine Spectator… Harvey Steiman.
Stan: I’ve always wanted to meet Harvey, he is a great writer. I think sometimes he is a little too generous in points.
Janet: We find him very ethical, very blunt.
Stan: Who took over Australia for Jay Miller of the Wine Advocate?
Sarah: Lisa Perrotti-Brown, based in Singapore. She’s coming out next week.
Stan: So you guys like the point system, no doubt because most of your wines receive some high scores.
Janet: We like it when they get good scores. We don’t like it when they don’t (Laughs along with all of us.)
Stan: I use scores on my site basically to show my palate preference. I believe that Lisa and Harvey Steiman have a palate preference that influences their score. I don’t care who you are, it’s what you like.
Sarah: Exactly.
Stan: So the score reflects what they like vs. what someone else might like. So I let my readers know that if I give a wine a score of 96, it’s because I really like it… They might not like it at all. This is MY score.
Sarah: Good, I like that.
Stan: Do you score wines yourself? Like your blends?
Sarah: Just in fruit weight.
Stan: That fruit weight idea, are you the only ones who have come up with that?
Sarah: Yes.
Stan: That’s a pretty cool marketing thing…Fruit weight.That’s what you call the feel of the wine in your mouth.
Sarah: Yeah, it is.The intensity of the wine.
Janet: We don’t do anything else at our tasting panel. We’re not big on descriptors, we have two words; yum and yuk. We simply score on fruit weight. If it’s below 65 it gets rejected and sold to somebody else. A bunch of us are involved in the initial grading tasting. But after that, Sarah and Sparky take over because they do the blending and that’s really refined. My palate isn’t good enough to work out all the stuff that they work on. Let’s say the fruit weight is 65, then we will blend that into the “Lefty” wines that are 65. If it’s 70, we won’t blend that into the Lefty wines. Sometimes the fruit weight will go up as they age in barrel.
Stan: So basically, the “Fruit Weight” is your scoring system.
Sarah: Yes it is. And sometimes the wines that are three months away from going to bottle will increase by two to three percent in fruit weight. They are still pretty young and they can develop. If something is 72%, we are not going to put that to Boxer for example which is a fruit weight of 65 to 74. We will keep that, because we try our best to bless our growers. If it develops into the fruit weight for the “Blue Eyed Boy” shiraz, then they deserve to get that bonus. So we’ll hang out, hang out, hang out and it’s hard because we want to pay all those who grow for us. Sometimes it just doesn’t happen… Sorry. They still get a 25% bonus though.
Janet: Our feeling on wine judges is like you say. They should approach wine like, this is not for my palate, but if you like this style of wine then it is a great wine. We make one particular style, but there are other great ones.
Sarah: A good wine judge is one who can appreciate all different styles of wine. Because there are different great wine styles.
Stan: Parker’s gotten a lot of heat for liking big, massive wines. James Suckling smokes cigars, and I don’t know how he can judge wines doing that. I smoked cigars for a very brief period and I found that it really effected my ability to taste wine.
Sarah: When I taste in the mornings, I don’t eat anything. We start at 8:30 and my palate is so sensitive that anything like smoking or putting food in my stomach will effect my palate.
Stan: A lot of us feel that tasting in the morning is the best. When I taste a wine, my approach is based on what I think a customer might think of the wine, since I have to sell it to them. I believe that Parker or other wine critics aren’t selling wine to anyone, so their palate, I believe is more singular. Do you agree?
Sarah: Yes, probably.
Stan: I have to face the customer that I recommended a wine to who might come back and say I hated that wine. That hurts my feelings, so I try not to let that happen. I don’t know about you, but I feel that aroma has a lot to do with a wines score. I know fruit weight is important, but aroma has a lot to do with the overall taste. Has anyone ever come in and scored one of your wines and you get angry with them?
Sarah: We don’t get mad, it’s just their opinion. We had a write-up just yesterday, a local one and it was like… Why did they say that RRRR! It doesn’t matter, it’s just their view. It’s fine people have their own opinions. There’s enough people that love our wines and that makes us happy. We’re not going to please everyone.
Stan: Have you noticed a trend towards preference in lower alcohol wines by consumers?
Sarah: I think there’s a trend, a trend by the wine judges mainly in Australia and in the UK. That’s the wine judges, but I think the consumers like what we’re making. Whenever we went into shows we win the consumer award not the judges. I don’t know why that is except that there is a trend, they’re are all about low alcohol.
Stan: In Australia they are?
Sarah: Big time.
Stan: How is that happening? Isn’t it difficult to get low alcohol wines out of Australia?
Janet: They’re picking the fruit earlier. We’ve got a mate who just picks the grapes before they’re ripe so he can get low alcohol.
Sarah: It’s terrible. They lack flavor, they’re unripe, they’re green.
Stan: I noticed one of your wines had 16% alcohol. But I never got that high alcohol out of the wine when I tasted it. As a wine maker, how do you deal with the high alcohol when you’re making the wine? Because in your wines I don’t get that heavy burn of alcohol when I drinking them.
Sarah: We have so much fruit flavors in the wine with that huge structure which is the alcohol and tannin. But there is so much fruit on top that you don’t notice it. So it’s balanced. If a wine is unbalanced then you are going to get the alcohol. A lot of wines have structure over the top of the fruit, but we make it the other way. We’re not trying to get big alcohol, that’s not like our goal, we don’t try to beef it up. It’s just the process of trying to get the maximum color and flavor by ripening the fruit and leaving it on the vines to get the right sugars and flavor. The flavor curve is later then the sugar curve. You have to put a lot of water on it in the latter stage to make sure the sugars don’t rise. We still get the high sugar level which results in high alcohol.
Stan: Do you and Sparky have a formula where you determine the time to pick based on the acid and sugar levels?
Sarah: It’s all on flavor. They go in the vineyards and bring out the berries, squish them and taste the juice.
Stan: And you do that part with Sparky?
Sarah: No, Sparky and the vineyard boss do that part. I do it occasionally, but I’m too busy doing my stuff. They’ve got like four of them to do it. Janet gets involved with that process sometimes too. We can work out what the fruit weight result is going to be from the vineyard. We can actually taste in the grapes which wine it will probably make it in.
Stan: So you just deal with whatever the alcohol comes in at.
Sarah: Yes. We do have a maximum sugar level. We don’t let it run to 30 brix. 26 is a maximum.
Stan: I have to hand it to you, I don’t taste a lot of wines with that much alcohol that don’t have the overwhelming burning sensation. Your wines have none of that.
Sarah: Thanks.
Stan: Your wines have very good balance. What kind of oak do you like to use?
Sarah: American. We use a little French for our cabernet. We’ve done twelve of the twelve using American oak, and we can achieve some of the french characteristics and flavors using American oak. Fine grain American out of Missouri.
Stan: It makes sense that with the big fruit, the American oak would work better.
Sarah: Yes, it suits our style. With the Velvet Glove, because it has so much fruit, we use three lots of new oak. In a year it sees three lots of new oak barrels. We put it into new barrels for three months, take it out, put it in brand new oak for another three months and repeat that one more time. And do you get oak on that wine?
Stan: No not really, just a little toasty edge. That’s crazy, I’ve never heard that before.
Sarah: It just soaks it up and makes it such a better wine. That’s about nine months of new oak.
Stan: How many vintages have there been of Mollydooker wines?
Sarah: We just worked out seven.
Stan: Did you start with American oak?
Sarah: Yes. Because when we were with Marquis Philips, we had already worked out all the trials.
Stan: There is something on your website that said at one point after separating from Dan Philips and starting your own winery, you only had seventeen dollars in the check book. That must have been crazy.
Sarah: It was crazy… It was scary. Then Parker himself wrote up our wines. The first vintage is the only one Parker wrote up himself. He loved our wines and it helped. Now it is just word of mouth and we keep growing. As soon as people taste it, they love Mollydooker.
Stan: Just wait until I publish this interview… Your sales will skyrocket! (We all laugh… Really loud!)
Sarah: People always say to us, “You’ve ruined my wine experience forever. Once I’ve tasted Mollydooker I can’t go back.”
Stan: Have you ever heard of Gary Vaynerchuk?
Sarah: Yes.
Stan: He interviewed the guy from Two Hands Winery in Australia, and at the time Gary was on a campaign against the high alcohol, big wines from Barossa. Gary can be quite opinionated, and he was going off about the over-powering wines from that region and this guy just bulled him over. Basically he said that if you want elegant wines, then why would you go to Australian wines. You know what you are getting when you buy them. If you don’t like it, don’t buy them. You drink what you want to drink when you drink them. Don’t trash it, because there is going to be a time when you want that style of wine.
What I like about your wines Sarah is the balance. There is power there, but there is also some finesse.
Sarah: I know, I was like blown away by it too. We get told sometimes that we have fruit bombs, big and brash. We know what some think. But today I didn’t see that. There was elegance in every one of them.
Stan: I tasted it also in your last few vintages. There is a freshness that backs up the fruit. It seems as if your looking for that when you’re blending. I never get “goopy” out of your wines.
Sarah: Whatever that means.
Stan: Wines that lack acidity and structure. Flabby, over-the-top fruit. Just a little too much.
Sarah: O.k., I understand. No, we don’t want that in our wines.
Stan: I also noticed an underlying caramel flavor in a lot of your wines. Have you noticed that?
Sarah: Yeah, that is from the American oak. I love that.
Stan: To finish off, if you had a message you would like to convey about your wines, what would it be?
Sarah: I love bringing people pleasure. I want to make wine that can be enjoyed on it’s own… It doesn’t have to go with food. You can sit and sip and smell it, and it doesn’t have to be something big and brash. It can be elegant, velvety and it just lingers. I want to try to express the fruit, not just do the structure of a wine. It’s all about trying to grade that fruit and put it in a wine that gives you all those characters in the glass. It’s there to be savored, swirled and enjoyed.
Sometimes Sparky and I will pour a glass and say… “We actually made this!” It’s so enjoyable.
It was a privilege for me to be able to sit down with Sarah Marquis, a rock star in the Australian wine making scene, and observe her intensity, modesty and humility. Sparky and Sarah are responsible for some incredible wines and if you haven’t tried them yet I encourage you to get your hands on a bottle of the “Lefty” wines and see for yourself. Their “Heads Down, Bottoms Up” approach has paid off in dividends as they buck the trend and continue to experience growth in their wine sales. I would like to thank Sarah and Janet for taking time out to share their thoughts with me. Cheers! Stan The Wine Man
