The Platter's five star wines
Fool's gold
Why is this year's Platter's list of five-star wines larger than usual?
The debate over blind or sighted tastings is never going to go away, so the list of this year's Platter's five-star laureates will simply fuel the discussion. Since the guide ostensibly stands somewhere between the two positions (the shortlist is determined in sighted tastings but the final selection is done blind), this turns out to be a particular kind of googly to flight across the wicket.
It is widely acknowledged that the problem with blind tastings is that they can never take account of terroir-type features which only emerge when the wine has acquired a degree of maturity. I think that most reasonable people also accept that no judging panel, however careful, competent or accurate, can go about its business faultlessly. The tradeoff - from a consumer perspective - of a properly managed, properly directed blind-tasted wine competition is that it strips the brand baggage (and the producers' pretensions) from the equation.
This year's Platter's five-star wine list is larger than usual, arguably a feature of the smaller panels doing the blind tasting - or possibly recognition that the pattern of improvement we've tracked for some time has now been acknowledged by the panels. The question on everyone's lips, however, is whether or not this is the best possible outcome from the 100 or so wines which appeared on the shortlist.
Judging the Platter's five-star candidates is a somewhat different exercise from assessing a comparable group of competition entries. The classes are very small and every wine is - at least according to the individual taster who submitted it - potentially worthy of the five-star accolade. This means that even the least-known wine - if it emerges as a winner - is treated as a "discovery". The same generosity is generally not applied to newcomers emerging at the top of a conventional blind-tasting process.
In the aftermath of this year's Platter's judging, there are a few lingering questions. Why is it that the only Steenberg and Jordan wines to get five stars were Woolworths bottlings? Why was the only Rustenberg the Syrah? Where were the Meerlusts, the Hamilton Russells, the Bouchard Finlaysons? What has happened to the wineries which bagged best of the best in previous years? Were the Jean Daneel Chenin Blanc and Glen Carlou Syrah merely one-vintage wonders?
The Platter's five-star wines are simply the best-performing wines in that particular tasting, on the day. This is in fact no different from the judgement one might pass on the highest-scoring wines from any decently managed blind tasting. Given the occasion and how it is judged, claims to evaluating terroir, to provenance, to potential, must all go out of the window.
This does not make the Platter's selection any less valuable a beacon of what has been achieved by the top end of the wine industry in a 12-month period. It is potentially more reliable than the average wine show, not because the tasters are more competent, but because they control what lands up on their tasting bench. In fact, it's probably fair to say that the five-star judging is a blind tasting of around 100 wines arrived at by way of a sighted screening process.
If you seek more than this, it's up to you to make the effort: look for a pattern, for producers which consistently have wines in the final line-up. Treat the laureates as if they have done well in a credible international show, and then see if any other half-decent assessment panel has produced a comparable result. Extend this research to wines which enjoy solid 4½-star ratings. You may not dispose of all the fool's gold but you're unlikely to be disappointed by the result.
