The Drinks Interval

Posted on | May 10, 2005

The highly regarded Brokenwood winery in the Lower Hunter Valley wine region north of Sydney sells a ‘Cricket Pitch’ wine, so-called because the vineyard adjacent to the winery was once the site of a cricket ground. It also owns a ‘Graveyard’ vineyard, presumably named in honour of recent England tours of Australia. Geoff Merrill’s winery in the McLaren Vale south of Adelaide has for many years been a favourite stop for England players during an Ashes series. His wines seemed to work wonders for our boys in 1995 (especially Angus Fraser: proof, if ever it were needed, that wine is good for you) but perhaps they enjoyed themselves a bit too much in 1998 and in 2002, which both ended in humiliating defeats. We have seen plenty of interesting pitches this winter (especially at Brisbane) but sticky wickets are now a thing of the past, though sticky wines are alive and kicking, thanks mainly to the efforts of Mick Morris and others at Rutherglen, 150 miles north east of Melbourne.

In Australia there are two invincibles: Sir Donald Bradman and Penfolds Grange. The Don wasn’t often put down in his career, and neither is a bottle of Max Schubert’s awesomely expensive wine, first made in 1951, though both would be very costly things to drop, admittedly. Grange displays the tremendous concentration required by all batsmen to play long innings and, like the Don’s pull shot, is immensely powerful. As with Glenn McGrath’s metronomic deliveries, this wine has impeccable length. In short, a wine that is fine, full, long, but perhaps with a slightly silly price.

Scoring is an admirable occupation in the cricketing world, but rather controversial when applied to wine. The American wine writer Robert Parker rates wines on a 100-point scale; thus a century equals, for him, perfection in a wine glass. Perhaps he was thinking of cricket when he devised his system, as he is prone to over-rate certain wines. He is notorious for favouring what one might call slogger’s wines, which impress with their power and are good in the shortened version of the game, but seemingly disregards Test Match wines, which usually have more subtlety, craftsmanship, and longevity about them. Perhaps the England selectors might like to bear this in mind for future tours: in vino veritas, indeed.

One is also minded of the differences between wines when pondering the differences between cricket grounds. Pitches, like vineyards, are influenced by the sun, soil, climate and weather. Perth, for instance, is renowned for its rock hard, lightning fast pitch baked in the scorching Western Australian sun, a bit like Australian wines are known for their high alcohol and deep colours, whereas Lord’s, in our much cooler climate, is far slower and more subtle, though not without its own particular terroir of a sloping field and (later in the season) very damp pitch. Perhaps HQ is a bottle of Claret: refined, subtle, a touch austere, but - dare I say it? - improving with age, and not completely immune to the advances of technology (the press box could almost be a shiny new Australian winery).

Although Australia has the MCG and SCG, France has its AOC (Appellation d’Origine Controlèe), the strictly defined laws designating where named wines come from. Australia still has a long way to go before catching up with this conceit, though the French are actually proposing to change these laws so that the ubiquitous grape name ‘Shiraz’ (always called Syrah in France) may appear on a label. It’s not quite cricket, somehow…

Stuart George 

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