ONE of the world’s most distinguished wine experts has declared war on the fashion for vintages with ever-greater alcohol content, branding the new super-strength bottles at their worst as “boring” and without “any useful purpose”.

Hugh Johnson, who has won a string of awards in a career spanning four decades, compares today’s new, higher-strength wines to steroid-packed bodybuilders.

His salvo is echoed by other wine critics, who say that new wine-making techniques and the tastes of American wine critics have combined to make “dull-tasting” rocket-fuel commonplace — at the expense of more enjoyable tipples.

The rise in alcohol levels began with the arrival of Australian and other New World wines on the British market. Unlike traditional French winemakers, who sought subtlety rather than strength by working in comparatively cool climates, Australian mass producers used fully ripe grapes from high temperature vineyards. These had blockbuster flavours and contained more sugar, which turned to alcohol. Their popularity led Europeans to produce similar wines, possibly assisted by climate change.

Johnson has chosen to lash out at the trend in the 30th anniversary edition of his Pocket Wine Book — published later this month and regarded as a bible for serious wine-drinkers.

He writes: “Wines that 20 years ago had 12 or 12.5 degrees of alcohol may now pack a punch at 14.5 or 15 degrees or even more; balance disappears, and drinkability is thought wimpish.

“Like human bodies packed with steroid-driven muscle, these wines do not fulfil any useful purpose; they are merely made to win competitions . . . mostly what excess alcohol does is muddy the flavours and blur the aromas, so that you lose definition and focus and complexity.”

Johnson adds that “to make one of the world’s most magical substances boring takes some doing”. He has drunk 2005 red wine which tastes like port and white wine which tastes like “peaches in brandy”.

Johnson said Australian winemakers, when faced with a wine with over 16% alcohol, water it down. “There is the great Australian phrase, which is “if it goes up above 16, mate, show it the white snake — the white snake being the water hose.”

Malcolm Gluck, author of the Superplonk wine guides joined the attack, saying “once the alcohol percentage gets high — red, white, rose does all start to taste the same because you can taste the alcohol”.

There are signs, however, that the wine industry itself is becoming concerned that some of its produce is now simply too powerful. Johnson said that within the industry “there is a lot of work going on to discover how to strip alcohol out of wines . . . they use various techniques such as centrifuges and freezing”.

Among consumers, there are signs that the ever-stronger wines are not to everyone’s taste. Jasper Morris, a director of wine dealers Berry Bros & Rudd, compared some of the new-style wines to Pamela Anderson, the busty former Baywatch star.

Morris said: “We have seen a marked fall-off in interest for the really exaggerated wines, that are at 15% or 16% . . . there was a burst of interest because they were getting very high scores from American journalists, but . . . people have decided, once they’ve got them in their cellars, that they don’t really like them.”

In June, Sainsbury’s launched a wine with 9.5% alcohol — Early Harvest Semillon Sauvignon Blanc — aimed at those concerned by the calorie count of wines with higher alcoholic content.

However, Andrew Jefford, a wine writer, disagreed that stronger wines were less drinkable. “If you look at Bordeaux wines — the 2003 or 2005 vintages — and we are talking about the finest of fine red wines, their alcoholic content is up by a degree or a degree and a half from their 1961 or 1970 counterparts,” he said.

“So even the classic wines have got stronger . . . the fact that a wine has a high alcohol content does not mean in itself that it is boring.”

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