Man behind the name
It is a name that everyone knows, appearing on every supermarket wine shelf, and in thousands of corner shops around the country. Made in Australia's Barossa Valley and at other major sites across south-eastern Australia, each year they produce enough bottles of Jacob's Creek wine to stretch from Yorkshire to Adelaide and back again, and yet they still manage to win trophies and medals in major wine competitions.
This is winemaking on a big scale, but quality is kept at a level that provides decent drinking and, occasionally, rather good drinking, for millions of customers.
So how do they keep wine quality up and still keep the volume flowing?
Most of that is down to one man, Phil Laffer, who has been in charge of the brand for the last 19 years. As group chief winemaker for Orlando wines, now part of Pernod Ricard, the second largest wine and spirit group in the world, he has overall control of Jacob's Creek.
These days, as a fairly young-looking 68-year-old, he tends to leave the day-to-day stuff to his team of winemakers and he spends his time pushing various bits of wine research. However, he does still have the right, as he puts it, to interfere when it comes to blending the wines. Named Australia's Winemaker of the Year for 2002, Laffer has been the face of Jacob's Creek for years, but he also leads the company forward with some fundamental research into how to get the best flavours into his wines.
Jacob's Creek was never intended to be a big brand. Launched in 1976, they decided to give it a "vineyard" name although that wasn't necessarily where the grapes came from. Named after the creek which runs alongside the first vineyard planted by Johann Gramp in 1847, this was intended to be a short-term brand and so Jacob's Creek Claret was born. That wine sold quickly and a Riesling was added to the range. The rest, as they say, is history.
So who was Jacob and why does he have his own Creek?
William Jacob was assistant to Colonel William Light who surveyed the city of Adelaide in 1836. A few years later, Light moved north-west to an area he named Barossa after a famous Peninsular battle, and he decided to name the small, almost-dry creek after his assistant.
Now the whole world knows the name of Jacob's Creek, although, to be honest, it is a bit of a disappointment if you go there. Overgrown and dried out for most of the year, it hardly merits the fame of its name, although there is a project to clear out the undergrowth and return it to Australian native species.
So how does a winemaker stay interested in making a wine that is such a big brand?
"Wine is inherently a fascinating product," said Phil when I caught up with him recently. "Unlike beer or spirits, where about a dozen brands have most of the world's sales between them, wine thrives on variety.
"There are millions of different factors affecting the flavour of wine – from the kind of grape it is made from, the location of the vineyard and even the amount of rainfall that vineyard has. People are looking for variety in their wines to suit the huge range of foods we now eat. That's what keeps me interested in the product."
And Laffer has been championing variety within the Jacobs Creek brand. With five levels of style and quality, and more than 30 different wines, he still thinks there is room for more.
"Those marketing guys are always telling me to cut down the range but there are still new wines waiting to be added."
With thousands of hectares of vineyards under their control, this company is never short of grapes – but Phil has to make sure they are the right grapes for the wines he wants.
One of the latest additions is a Pinot Noir. "There has been a shortage of this grape variety but now more vineyards have come on stream.
"We get the grapes from cool, areas such as the Adelaide Hills and Mount Gambia, and from warmer areas, such as the Fleurieu Peninsular. That gives us complexity."
And for 6.79, Jacob's Creek Pinot provides good, true-to-type, robust strawberry fruit with just a light touch of oak. The new Reserve version is a significant notch up the quality ladder and will be a good buy when it reaches the shelves.
It is the same story with the Tempranillo – complexity built in from the vineyard stage, producing ripe, juicy fruit and a savoury mid-palate that makes it extremely food-friendly. This wine will also be 6.79 when it arrives on the shelves. There's also a new bottle-fermented Blanc de Blancs fizz which has rounded peachy fruit and a zesty, dry finish.
These are welcome additions to the Jacob's Creek range. Of these, I would pick out the Steingarten Riesling, now on offer at Tesco at 9.97, for crisp citrussy fruit backed by a biting, minerally character, while the lively peppery spice of Jacob's Creek Grenache Shiraz is a bargain down from 5.99 to 4.19 while on offer at Tesco.
The Jacob's Creek name is even used on top-quality wines such as the Johann Shiraz Cabernet 2001 (35, Ocado) which won the trophy in the 2009 Decanter Awards for the best blended Australian wine over 10.
This is no mean feat when you look at the competition.
Maybe the viticultural research that Laffer is doing – trying to get a better balance between the levels of flavour and alcohol – is having an effect.
But to be honest, does a big brand like this really need me to write about it? With sales of nine million cases world-wide and the UK taking a huge share of that, why bother giving them publicity? For the very simple reason that if you end up outside one of those thousands of corner shops, late in the evening, and in need of a bottle of wine, check out the brands that they are offering.
Of all the big names that they are likely to stock, including Yellowtail, Blossom Hill and Gallo, Jacob's Creek is the one that actually has some some decent liquid inside the bottle.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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