Archive dive in five: Decanter February 1991

Decanter February 1991 issue - Australian Cabernet PT — Our cover story was a panel tasting of 95 Australian Cabernets – ‘one of the most comprehensive tastings of its kind’.

(Image credit: Decanter)

Hark your mind back to February 1991. The Gulf War and Operation Desert Storm dominated the news, Mariah Carey was named best new artist at the Grammys and The Silence of the Lambs spooked us at the cinema.

And, fresh on the newsstand, was Volume 16, issue no6, of Decanter magazine, priced at £2 and boasting 100 pages.

The cover, a glass of red on an Australian flag, promotes the issue’s main feature – ‘The cream of Aussie Cabernets’, alongside new commune Clarets and (intriguingly) paradoxical Ports.

Inside, these were five things that piqued our interest from the Decanter February 1991 issue.

Archive dive in five

1: Aussie accolades

Our cover story for this issue was a panel tasting of 95 Australian Cabernets – ‘one of the most comprehensive tastings of its kind’. Wines ranged from £3.99 to £18, with the judges united in the ‘consistent quality and value’, though less so in the wines’ overt varietal character. South Australian wines dominated the top 13, including five from Coonawarra, but it was the £7.99 Penfolds' Bin 222 1985 from Eden Valley (now a rare collectable bottle) in top spot.

2: Decanter's Bordeaux office

Decanter opened a Bordeaux office on 11 February 1991, on 42 Avenue Emile-Counord (now an Auchan supermarket). The office was headed up by Michael Denton, who joined Decanter in 1980, five years after its launch, and is still our France account manager today, 46 years later – though no longer contactable by Fax or Telex…

Decanter February 1991 issue - Warren Winiarski

3: Napa royalty

Tony Lord, then editor of Decanter, interviewed the ‘cerebral’ Warren Winiarski of Napa’s Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. When Winiarski found out his 1973 Cabernet (from the winery’s first commercial harvest) had beaten four Bordeaux first growths to first place at Steven Spurrier’s now infamous 1976 Judgment of Paris tasting, he was in Chicago trying to sell wine. ‘I thought, that’s nice. I had no idea of the implications…’

4: Prices 35 years ago

In a feature on value buys from UK supermarket Waitrose, a star was the Cave de Lugny Crémant de Bourgogne NV for £5.95. The wine remains a favourite today though inflation now has it at £17. Meanwhile, in her investment column, Serena Sutcliffe MW (newly appointed as global head of Sotheby’s Wine Department – a position she held until 2015) said there’s never been a better time to buy 1985 classed-growth claret at auction, with 12-bottle cases ‘going for a song’. She cited Château Talbot at £99 and Lafite, Ausone and Cheval Blanc between £374 and £396.

5: Wise words

The late great Gerard Basset is the subject for the Bin End back page interview. From drinking ‘watered-down plonk’ as a child, he moved into hospitality and became ‘thirsty for knowledge’, culminating in gaining his Master Sommelier qualification in 1989, the Master of Wine in 1998 and winning the World's Best Sommelier title in 2010 – among so many other accolades, including an OBE. ‘All these things that I do don’t make me a superman,’ he said. ‘They are simply part of my voyage of discovery, and there is so much to learn.’

Decanter February 1991 issue - Gerard Basset

Is there an issue over the past 50 years you'd like us to look back on? Drop us a line at editor@decanter.com

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Tina Gellie has worked for Decanter since 2008 and is the brand's Content Editor as well as Regional Editor for the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. An awarded wine writer and editor, she also won several scholarships on the way to getting her WSET Diploma, and is a freeman of The Worshipful Company of Distillers. She has worked in wine publishing since 2003, including as Deputy Editor and Acting Editor of Wine International. Before her wine career she was a newspaper journalist for broadsheets in London and Australia.