Humbug!

Directions

WineDown is nothing if not even-handed. After last week’s rapturous homage to Christmas with all the trimmings, it’s time for some balance. This one’s for you, Scrooge: straight up and tinsel-free.

Bah! Humbug!

Why Humbug? We tend to think of it as a benign expression of curmudgeonly crankiness, much like pooh, pshaw and harumph, but Humbug has a nuance all its own. It entered the lexicon in the 1750s via the switched-on young students of the day. The class of ’51 was a bunch of pranksters, much given to jolly japes, and they called their hilarious practical jokes Humbugs. Kids. What can you do? Though considered vulgar initially, Humbug gradually made its way into common parlance – developing a rather darker drift along the way. By the time that Charles Dickens placed it into the mouth of Ebenezer Scrooge, it was longer a joke. Humbug was a lie... a deception... a sham.

Mint Humbug!

Weirdly, at around the same time that Dickens was penning A Christmas Carol (1843) in his London digs, confectioners in the north of the country were perfecting a stripey, peppermint-flavoured hard lolly that they called a Humbug. No-one can categorically say why they chose to call it a Humbug, but the most likely explanation is that early versions contained a surprise – an almond or chewy filling in the centre. Sweetie-starved England went crackers for Humbugs. Even the accidental poisoning of more than 200 Humbug suckers in Bradford, Yorkshire, in 1858, failed to dim their popularity. (With astronomical taxes on sugar, confectioners would augment this essential ingredient with ‘daft’ – a relatively harmless mixture of powdered limestone or plaster of Paris.

Frugal Yorkshireman William Hardaker – who owned a thriving sweet stall – was in the habit of purchasing his daft from the local pharmacy, where on this particular occasion, it had been helpfully stacked next to identical bags of white-powdered arsenic trioxide...) Fortunately, not all minty surprises turn out to be lethal. Some are downright delightful - as anyone who’s ever inserted their schnozz into a glass of Coonawarra Cabernet and deeply inhaled will attest.

Mint in Wine

For years, Aussie reds have been known for their distinctive minty aromas and flavours. So much so, that wine professionals often confess to relying on those minty notes to help identify Aussie wines in a blind tasting.

There’s been a truckload of research into the phenomenon, and plenty of debate as to whether it’s a good thing or not. But we Aussies love it. (Witness the incredible success of wines such as Mildara’s legendary Peppermint Patty – the 1963 Coonawarra Cabernet adored for its fresh mint and chocolate profile.)

But it turns out that what we’ve all been smelling isn’t so much mint, as eucalyptus. Specifically, the volatile compound eucalyptol – or 1,8-cineole as the boffins (and now, we too) poetically call it. 1,8-Cineole is found in high concentrations in the skins of berries that are grown – you won’t believe this – in close proximity to Eucalyptus trees! (Don’t ask how much research it took to establish that.) Importantly, though, the findings revealed that eucalyptol is transferred to the must during fermentation on skins – which explains why those minty/eucalypty flavours don’t feature in white wines. And a very good thing too. Delightful though the impression is in Cabernet and Shiraz, eucalyptus-flavoured Riesling – in WineDown’s humble opinion – is a bridge too far.

Give Me a Rhone Among the Gum Trees

If you’re a fan of these styles, it may help to know the regions that produce them. South Australia is best represented, with Padthaway, Langhorne Creek, Wrattonbully and Clare (in addition to Coonawarra) all producing great examples from producers such as Wolf Blass, Wynns Coonawarra Estate, Pepperjack, Penfolds, Metala, and Annie’s Lane.

As the silly season gets closer - and sillier - these distinctive wines come into their own. Let the wantons scramble with their frenzied shopping and fizzy cork-popping – you’ll find discerning Christmas-agnostics savouring life in the slow lane, with a complex and aromatic glass of Aussie red, while waiting for the world to return to its senses. Pshaw. Harumph. Humbug. And Cheers!