Dan Murphys "Decoded" - allowing us commoners :) to make easier choices!!

[juddles]

Hi all, not sure if this thread/post will be of much interest here, as it seems the prolific AFF posters in the wine sub-forum are well above average in their general wine knowledge, but I wanted to share it as I think it is a really sensible idea by Dans.

Confession - I spend way more time in a Dans shop than most - as I simply love the places - the best range of grog I can physically touch and see before buying

But anyway, essentially Dans is embarking on a major project they call "Decoded", which is essentially providing customers with a short list of wines in various categories that they say are the best value in a given price range. It could be a short term marketing thing, but I see the value in such a concept and the need for it in the current market. Essentially, most wine buyers are overwhelmed these days by the sheer availability of choices (around 2000 individual wines in every physical Dans store, and something like 6000 online??) And the rise of wines IMHO has included the rise of wine skill/knowledge (or snobbery?) in some that by far the majority of average wine drinkers do not have. So I get the concept of making things a bit simpler.

They have set 12 general categories of wines:

1.- Lighter Red under $20
2.- Lighter Red over $20
3.- Fuller Red under $20
4.- Fuller Red over $20

5.- Lighter white under $20
6.- Lighter white over $20
7.- Fuller white under $20
8.- Fuller white over $20

9.- Rose
10.- Fortified wine
11.- Sparkling
12.- Preservative-free.

For each of these their "Wine Panel" allegedly had thousands of blind tastings and they reduced it down to 5 wines in each category, including a winner in each. And for each of these wines they give a short, no-fancy stuff, description of what it is and what it is good for. Free of the flowery expert stuff that put many people off the whole thing....

Being the paranoid sod I can be, I thought maybe it was a way to spruik some of those wine brands that Dans/BWS/Woolies owns via Pinnacle: but in my first quick skim I only found I think one ( I think that the Fat Cat shiraz - Cat Amongst the Pigeons is a brand they own) I also have no doubt that there will be underlying commercial arrangements between Dans and the brands that won, as one would expect if such a project suddenly increased wine sales of these suppliers. But after talking to people at Dans, I think this is also a different sort of thing - it is not just a new idea for marketing to the overwhelming majority of customers, but it is also Dans getting up there and saying (without saying) that they are big enough and competent enough to judge the entire wine range out there....

I picked up their new booklet about it yesterday at my local, but haven't read it yet, but had that quick look online where I saw the categories. Oh, and I also did do a tasting at the store of the Z Wine Rustica Barossa Valley grenache which I did enjoy - but will need to actually buy a whole bottle and give it a real test - a sip in a shop is not IMHO an ideal place to really decide At $14.90 it won their "Best Lighter Reds under $20"

I am sure this may be of little interest to the hard core wine people out there, but I am really liking the concept. Personally I believe the enjoyment of wine is an extremely subjective, personal thing. And to have some guidance on the myriad moderately priced tipples is, I feel, a good thing.

 

[burmans]

I'm going to a tasting of these so will tell you my thoughts after!

 

[juddles]

I'm going to a tasting of these so will tell you my thoughts after!

Please do! My local Dans is offering free tastings of a couple of the products each day, but is not one of those (the few) that offers the formal tastings.

 

[pauly7]

I think it’s a really good system - but personally I choose not to spend money with Dan Murphys because I know how much they can screw the end supplier into the ground and have a parent company who I try to avoid spending money with in general for about another 10 reasons!

For anyone in Melbourne (they also ship) I’d recommend Blackheart and Sparrows, a Melbourne based chain that is really smashing it and has great variety and quality as well.

 

[redbigot]

I've bought a heap from Dan over the last 6 months, more than ever before.

BUT
I don't think they made much money on what I bought, half-price mistakes, clearance prices on desirable wines, big discounts on wines at a store in my delivery area (but actually delivered from elsewhere), etc, etc.

I seldom go into a store unless I want a good chuckle or more likely head-shake exercise for my neck.

Their online system and "store area" pricing is a masterpiece in incomprehensible incompetence - long may it continue.

 

[BCons]

I would suggest you all go and look at: Wine Radar

This service is run by an enthusiast who isnt selling anything..

++

How does Wine Radar work ?
Wine Radar scans Australian online wine retailers for specials.

When it finds a special, it automatically cross-references the scores from the experts.

(The retailer’s own score is always ignored … for obvious reasons)

When at least two experts give great scores and no experts give bad scores, Wine Radar takes a closer look.

If the price and the average score meet the selection criteria, that's a hit on the Wine Radar.

Every month all the hits on the Wine Radar are emailed to a distribution list.

++

Recommended

 

[redbigot]

Monthly reports? Many of the best deals I see last less than a day, a day, a few days, a week. Many of the deals mentioned here are done and dusted in a short time frame, monthly doesn't really cut it.

And it doesn't work for Dan Murphy due to state/store-specific pricing. One of my subscribers also tried automated crawling Dan Murphy online store by store to find store-specific specials, but it took too much time and resources to run and Dan Murphy has some anti-crawling tricks in place.

The sample report from the wine radar site includes a score column, but there is no indication of who the score is from. A good idea, but very limited implementation.

 

[georgehall]

The whole DM Decoded model is a bit on the nose to me. the fact that they review the wines they sell, and with a large numbers of Woolworths owned brands, where is the impartiality going to come from? Surely the majority of their winners will be the wines that represent the best sales returns for them?

To the average punter it is hard to distinguish between that last 1% of what makes a wine truly great, so they will look for someone to make the choice for them, it's the reason points scoring exists, and this way Dans actually get to control that element of the marketing.

Or maybe I'm just getting cynical...

 

[redbigot]

Disclaimer here, I've been buying and drinking wine for 50 years and wine has always been a good part of my leisure pursuits. My palate preferences haven't really changed for many years. I buy and drink mostly Australian and NZ wine and I know more than many people about the wines and wineries of those countries. I don't buy to invest and I'm not wealthy enough to buy the expensive wines some lust after. Along the way I've helped a lot of people who wish to learn enough to buy the best wine they can afford.

If you want to reach a level where you can fairly confidently look at a wine listing and know it's something likely worth trying for your palate you have to invest a little time, effort and money. If you don't, stop reading now.

You need to have a reasonable palate memory, not a lot of knowledge, but able to remember the wines that you enjoyed and some aspects of what made them enjoyable and perhaps some of the terms used in "expert" reviews, so that you can equate them to what you experience. The more wines you try, the more you will learn about what you like and don't like, so go to merchant tastings, wine events, wine show tastings, form or join a tasting group, go visit some wineries.

It is helpful also to have a reference source who you seem to agree with more than not when you try the wines they recommend or rate highly. This could be a more experienced knowledgeable amateur (like me) an expert (Halliday, Huon Hooke, The Wine Front etc, maybe even Sam Kim), social wine sites (Vivino, Cellartracker, here, other online forums) or even a smaller merchant (eg Nicks, Boccaccio, Different Drop) who as well as their own reviews publish relevant expert reviews.

I have personally long passed the stage where I find big chain promotions like "Decoded" useful, but I can see it would be useful to others starting out on their wine journey. If you find you like the wines they recommend, good, you have learnt something about yourself and them. There are some pretty good wines in the current Decoded list, even a few in my cellar, but some obvious exclusive/own label wines being promoted as well. There is a quite diverse range of styles in the short lists, so again you should learn something of your own preferences, but it's good if you can remember the reasons why you did or didn't like the wine, rather than just the brand/label.

Once you get to the level of knowing reasonably well what type of wines suit your personal palate (and that's all that matters) you should venture away from the chains, there is a whole world of excitement and great wine from small makers that you will never find at the chains. DM might have "the best range of grog I can physically touch and see before buying", but there is a vastly bigger world of wine out there, much of it online. And the key is to taste before buying wherever possible. I regularly buy mixed packs of single bottles of new releases from Nicks and some other online merchants for one or other of my regular tasting groups,occasionally some impress enough to put in a bigger buy, but you get quite picky once you understand what you like most and what price point you will go to to get it.

The important thing here is to work out your personal QPR (Quality/Price Ratio), the sweet spot being the "wow" wine that fits your preferred budget, the inexpensive wine that over-delivers, the "ultra-wow" wine that is good enough to bust the budget occasionally.

If you got to here and found it useful, that's good.

If you got to here and thought "wanker" that's fine too, I've been called worse.

 

[juddles]

.......

Once you get to the level of knowing reasonably well what type of wines suit your personal palate (and that's all that matters) you should venture away from the chains, there is a whole world of excitement and great wine from small makers that you will never find at the chains. .......

Redbigot, I think your whole post was fantastic, and spot on. Excellent summary and advice of wine in general!

I would also perhaps add that (in my opinion anyway), there are aspects that can increase enjoyment of a particular wine that are not strictly to do with the actual liquid itself. For example, if I visited a tiny winery and met the owner and touched the grape vines, I would get an additional level of satisfaction/and or enjoyment over sampling a Casillero del Diablo massed-produced product.

So I agree with all you say. And I also believe that for a huge portion of the population, they will never have the time to to take their wine interest that far. Hence something like Decoded being a useful thing for the masses.

 

[redbigot]

I would also perhaps add that (in my opinion anyway), there are aspects that can increase enjoyment of a particular wine that are not strictly to do with the actual liquid itself. For example, if I visited a tiny winery and met the owner and touched the grape vines, I would get an additional level of satisfaction/and or enjoyment over sampling a Casillero del Diablo massed-produced product.

Yes, there are some special moments to be had. Through the generosity of others I've had the privilege to tour the maturation cellar at Seppeltsfield where the 100 year old Ports are maturing, tried several of the 100 year old ports over the years, can't afford to buy them.

Just last week, on a trip organised by another person, we had a personal tasting with Chris Ringland, barrel samples with Rolf Binder and walked the vineyard of 100+yo bush vines with Marco Cirillo. And that was just some of the highlights. (If you don't recognise any of those names, they are just a few of the great winemakers for small/medium wineries in the Barossa Valley producing consistently excellent wines, some at quite affordable prices, some of their wines at available at Dan's, many of their best, small volume wines are not).

And the lows, a wine served up for tasting at one winery that was the worst example of reductive spoilage I've ever seen, the wine smelled like an open sewer. Why they would show that for tasting I can't understand. And a usually reliable winery where the current vintage wines were all unpleasant.

I never stop learning, taste lots of wine, but I still only get to try a fraction of what is available, but at least it's mostly at the the better end of the wine quality spectrum.

Look up the Len Evans Theory of Capacity. Roughly paraphrased it says that you can only drink so many bottles of wine in your life, drinking a bad one is like smashing a good one against the wall. "Life's too short to drink bad wine."

That's one reason I almost exclusively drink red wine, I've very seldom found a white wine where I wouldn't much prefer to drink a red wine instead at the same price point.

 

[kevviek]

Look up the Len Evans Theory of Capacity. Roughly paraphrased it says that you can only drink so many bottles of wine in your life, drinking a bad one is like smashing a good one against the wall. "Life's too short to drink bad wine."

That's one reason I almost exclusively drink red wine, I've very seldom found a white wine where I wouldn't much prefer to drink a red wine instead at the same price point.

That's why I grabbed some Shadowfax Chardonnay recently when I could, it's an exception to that rule. And the first paragraph is why I am so disappointed to have 11 bottles of Umamu 2009 SBS sitting on the floor in my study where they are likely to be untouched until they are discarded. The money went to a good cause though.