Monthly Archives: October 2012

Wine review — Devil’s Lair, Vasse Felix, Hewitson, Stefano Lubiana, Mount Difficulty and Cradle of Hills

31 October 2012Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Devil’s Lair The Hidden Cave Chardonnay 2012 $19–$23
Margaret River, Western Australia
This is an excellent follow up to the 2011 vintage, winner of the Royal Sydney Wine Show’s “best commercial white” trophy. Delicious, vibrant nectarine-like varietal fruit flavours make the wine instantly appealing. But the winemaking techniques infuse it subtly with lees-derived flavours and add to the smooth texture of the full palate. This is really good, modern chardonnay. It walks a mouth-watering path between the fat and flubbery chardonnays of old and new lean, acerbic ones that’ve gone too far the other way. It has a lightness and freshness without losing chardonnay’s inherently generous nature.

Vasse Felix Chardonnay 2011 $21.85–$29
Margaret River, Western Australia
Under winemaker Virginia Willcock Vasse Felix chardonnays have pushed into the very top ranks from the region. Her Heytesbury ($60) easily sits alongside local icons including Leeuwin Estate Art Series and Cullen. The standard chardonnay, too, impresses. It’s a blend from numerous barrels of individual parcels, all wild-yeast fermented and managed individually until blended after nine months in oak. The rich and powerful wine seamlessly combines vibrant fruit with barrel-derived flavours and textures.

Hewitson Gun Metal Riesling 2012 $27
Eden Valley, South Australia
Winemaker Dean Hewitson offers another perspective on the outstanding 2012 rieslings, “the early sensationalism is born from a winemaking perspective, in that it was such a relief and so easy compared to the difficulties faced in 2008, 2009 and 2011. In that respect it was a dream vintage”. Hewitson’s riesling, though, can only fan the vintage reputation. It combines floral and lemony varietal character with the fine, slightly austere acidity of the Eden Valley – a delicate and intense dry white with considerable ageing potential.

Stefano Lubiana Selection 2/3 Pinot Noir 2008 $60 (as part of mixed 3-pack)
Lubiana Yellow block and Moorilla Estate, Granton, Tasmania
Steve Lubiana offers a mixed three-pack ($180) of 2008 vintage pinots, exploring respectively a winemaking option (blend 1/3, barrel fermentation) and two vineyard-soil options (blends 2/3 and 3/3). This one (2/3) includes material from Lubiana’s Yellow block and White block, which was planted to a mix of non-clonal material sourced from neighbouring Moorilla Estate in the mid 1990s. This is beautiful, subtle pinot, the bright juicy, underlying fruit flavours firmly held by fine tannins on a smooth, slippery palate. It’s available only at cellar door and slw.com.au

Mount Difficulty Target Gully Pinot Noir 2010 $99
Target Gully vineyard, Bannockburn, Central Otago, New Zealand
On a $100 budget, the pinot buyer’s options broaden to include very good Burgundy (the original pinot) as well as top shelf Australian and New Zealand versions. Mount Difficulty’s, from one of their six vineyards in Central Otago’s Bannockburn sub-region, sits squarely in the area’s robust style. It’s powerful, but silky, elegantly structured and offers layers of aromas and flavours – ripe, vibrant, cherry-like fruit, a stalky note, savouriness, spiciness, beetroot, earthiness and charry oak. The flavours all roll together, layered with fine, firm tannins. Probably a keeper.

Cradle of Hills Route du Bonheur GMS 2010 $25–$33
Sellicks foothills, McLaren Vale, South Australia
First the interpretation: route du Bonheur is the road to happiness; and GMS indicates a blend of grenache (63 per cent), mourvedre (25 per cent) and shiraz (12 per cent). Tracy Smith tends the vines and Paul Smith makes the wines – hand-sorted fruit; small open fermenters; hand plunging of the skin caps; post-ferment maceration (improves tannins structure and texture); lees stirring in older French barrel for 18 month (builds mid-palate); bottled without fining or filtration. Result: a happy, supple harmonious red – generous but not heavy, spicy, vibrant and with a fine, firm backbone of tannin.

Cider market rules

31 October 2012CiderChris Shanahan

Growing demand for cider sent Canberra wine distributor Bill Mason in search of a local product for his portfolio.

The search led to brothers Anton and Mark Balog, well-known figures in the Southern Highlands wine community. Anton makes wine for Cherry Tree Hill as well as for Artemis, their own winery. And Mark has been behind extensive vineyard plantings across the region.

Anton now also makes apple and pear cider in the Artemis winery. The fruit is crushed by wooden rollers, basket pressed and, after clarification, combined with spring water, fermented then filtered and carbonated.

The clean, protective process captures the fresh fruit flavour, much as winemakers protect riesling grapes to retain the delicate aromatics and flavours. The brothers plan on opening a wine and cider cellar door facility at Artemis, on the old Hume Highway Mittagong, in November.

Sunshack Apple Cider 500ml $5.80
If tasting like fresh apples means good cider, then this is good cider. The colour’s a bright, pale lemon and the aroma reminiscent of very ripe, sweet apples. The palate, however, delivers the tang and thrust of just-ripe apples, though the flavour seems very ripe. The finish is clean, fresh and dry with an apple-like aftertaste.

Sunshack Pear Cider 500ml $5.80
Capturing pear flavour in cider seems to be more difficult than capturing apple flavours. But Sunshack succeeds better than most – the fresh, ripe, pear character carrying through on the aroma and palate and then lingering on unmistakeably in the dry aftertaste. Brisk acidity gives it life and lift.

Wine review — Tulloch, Angoves and Domain Day

28 October 2012Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Tulloch Vineyard Selection Hunter Valley Semillon 2012 $20
Established in 1895, Tulloch wandered in the corporate wilderness from 1969 under varying corporate umbrellas until Jay Tulloch and family bought back the farm from Southcorp in 2001. Christine Tulloch now works as general manager under her dad, Jay. The new release comes from a single lower-Hunter vineyard. The wine weighs in at just 11 per cent alcohol and offers varietal citrus and lemongrass aromas and flavours – and a lean, tight, bone-dry finish. The low alcohol, light body and unique flavour make a good alternative to our generally more heady wines.

Angoves Long Row Riesling 2012 and Shiraz 2010 $6.90–$10
When crusty old Angoves rev up their labels, it’s like trading in the old Kingswood for an old Camry. Like the cars, Angoves Long Row wines offer reliability at a fair price – or even bargain prices when the big retailers have a go. In traditional Australian fashion, Angoves achieves the high quality to price ratio by blending material from top-notch growing regions into a base of Riverland wine. The riesling, at an unusually low 9.5 per cent alcohol, offers pleasant, fresh, floral and citrus flavours on a crisp, medium dry palate. The sturdy shiraz offers ripe plummy flavours with good tannin structure.

Domain Day Mount Crawford Garganega 2011 $18.05–$22
Garganega is the key grape in Verona’s famous dry white, Soave. It’s an Italian native – and perhaps one of its most promiscuous as recent DNA studies suggest it’s a parent of seven other varieties. Robin Day says his planting was Australia’s first. From it he makes a full-bodied, distinctively flavoured dry white which, in the cool 2011 vintage, seem particularly aromatic and intensely flavoured. A touch of passionfruit in the aftertaste adds zest to a vibrant, savoury dry white whose basic fruit flavour defies description. Day calls it preserved pear; I see more melon rind. Whatever you call it though, it works. And it’s a world away from chardonnay or sauvignon blanc.

A little valley somewhere

24 October 2012People, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

Half Moon little valley — Half Moon vineyard, near Braidwood, New South Wales

From a little valley near Braidwood comes the outsider that blitzed this year’s Canberra regional wine show. Half Moon Riesling 2010 won the ‘best riesling’ trophy, beating some of our hottest local riesling makers, including Helm, Clonakilla, Four Winds, Ravensworth, Gallagher and Nick O’Leary.

Half Moon then secured the ‘best white’ trophy then won a taste off with the best red – Hungerford Hill Hh Tumbarumba Classic Shiraz 2010 – to seize a third trophy as champion wine of the show. It was the first riesling in the top spot since Helm Premium 2008 shared the honours with Eden Road The Long Road Hilltops Shiraz in 2009.

The tiny vineyard – located near Mongarlowe, about 16 kilometres from Braidwood – belongs to Sydneysiders Tony and Robyn Maxwell. Manager Malcolm Sharp says the wine bug bit Tony Maxwell in the nineties when he established a vineyard at Rylstone, near Mudgee.

With Rod James, he planted vines at Nullo Mountain, a challenging site within the Mudgee region – but, at 1100 metres, totally different viticulturally. While the pair pulled out many of the vines during the industry downturn early last decade, the wine bug remained with Maxwell.

He asked Sharp, a long-term friend, if he’d look after a vineyard if he planted one on his weekend block at Mongarlowe. What Maxwell had in mind, recalls Sharp, was a very small vineyard he could enjoy, with the aim of making good wine.

Sharp says he knew nothing about vineyards, but accepted the task and planted 200 vines each of riesling and chardonnay in 2000. While Maxwell and Sharp were aware that some people regarded the frost-prone site as an unlikely place to grow grapes, the first vines reached the cordon in the first year, suggesting they could be onto something.

But a subsequent planting of merlot failed and a run of heavy frosts in October 2006 destroyed 500 vines, including a block of pinot noir. Tempranillo took off well, but as the stock they planted carried a virus, Sharp dug them out and planted more riesling, by now a consistent performer.

The vineyard now includes shiraz, viognier, pinot gris, sauvignon blanc, chardonnay and riesling.

Early on, Maxwell introduced Sharp to well-known viticulturist David Botting (he’d consulted on the Nullo Mountain vineyard). And Botting, impressed by the vineyard, came on board as consultant.

At the time the grapes were being trucked to David Lowe’s winery at Mudgee, a legacy of the Nullo Mountain venture. But Botting suggested making the wines closer to the vineyard. The whites in particular, he recommended, needed quick processing. He arranged a meeting on site between Maxwell and Sharp and Murrumbateman winemaker, Alex McKay. As a result McKay took over the winemaking from 2008.

McKay describes the Half Moon site as a little bit cooler than Canberra with double the rainfall (on well-drained soil), with more humidity – a plus for retention of grape aroma and flavour.

He says, “management is first class with a level of attention and hand work you’d be more likely to see in Europe than around here”.

Malcolm Sharp confirms he and his wife Jenny do the majority of work by hand, with a little spraying from a quad bike on one flatter section. On the steep sections, for example, Jenny reels the spray hose out to him from a utility parked at the top as he descends and sprays on foot; then reels him in like a lifesaver as he struggles back up the slope.

To date, says McKay, riesling shows the most consistency and potential. It starts with “enormous levels of acid”, he says, so as a young wine it’s difficult to see the fruit quality lurking under the acidity. But it’s there he say, as the trophy winning 2010 demonstrates, having fleshed out notably in the two years since bottling.

That high acidity, reasons Sharp, comes from the very cool site. The vineyard, at around 630 metres, is flanked by higher ground, with the coastal escarpment immediately to the east. The days tend to be warm to hot, but cold air pools there in the evening, with overnight temperatures of just four and five degrees common during the growing season.

McKay rates the chardonnay as very good, too, and similar in style to wines from Tumbarumba. But production of just one barrel a year provides little scope to explore the style.

He’s optimistic about shiraz even though it’s difficult and harvested from the individually staked bush vines “at the dusk of vintage”. He adds, “We can’t say as emphatically it’s as suited as riesling”.

While the trophy-winning riesling sold out quickly, the 2011 (a very good wine needing time, says McKay) has been released. It and the other Half Moon wines are available at Plonk, Fyshwick Markets, and at Local Liquor and Boutique Wines on Wallace in Braidwood.

This is a producer to watch, though production will remain small. Tony Maxwell has no plans to expand the vineyard says Malcolm Sharp.

Wine review — Skillogalee, Hahndorf Hill, Mount Majura, Chrismont, Mount Langi Ghiran and Cracroft Chase

24 October 2012Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Skillogalee Riesling 2012 $21–$25
Skillogalee vineyard, Clare Valley, South Australia
Skillogalee, established in the early 1970s, first caught my attention when the 1978 vintage won a trophy at the national wine show. Its dazzling freshness and shimmering fruit character sent a ripple of excitement across the wine trade. The now mature vines, planted at around 500 metres in south-western Clare, make even better wines today – in this instance a blend of many individual parcels picked for optimum ripeness at different times during vintage. The wine pulses with life – the thrilling, juicy, intense lime-like varietal flavour cut with racy acidity on a nevertheless soft, deeply textured palate. This is another remarkable Clare riesling from the outstanding 2012 vintage. It drinks well now and should age deliciously for at least ten years if well cellared.

Hahndorf Hill Winery Gruner Veltliner 2012 $28
Hahndorf Hill vineyard, Adelaide Hills, South Australia
Hahndorf Hill owners Larry Jacobs and Marc Dobson pursued the great Austrian dream when they established vineyards in the Adelaide Hills. Research, they say, identified a fit between Austria’s late-ripening gruner veltliner and their elevated, continental-climate vineyard site. In Austria, they write, “vignerons all place huge emphasis on one crucial quality-defining factor – significant diurnal variation… the combination of good ripening days and cold nights that allows for an extended growing season… coaxing out its famously pure flavours and aromatics”. Well, the proof of the gruner is in the drinking of this dazzling, fresh 2012. It’s highly aromatic and flavoursome, with texture, savour and a pleasant bite to the finish.

Mount Majura Shiraz 2010 $28–30
Mount Majura Vineyard, Canberra District, ACT
Canberra’s 2010 vintage, the last of a run of warm seasons, included a couple of cool spells. Though the reds seem generally less opulent and more firmly tannic than the 2009s, winemaker Frank van der Loo notes in his 2010 “more spice than some years” – a flavour component normally associated with cool ripening. Indeed the spice cupboard dominates the aroma and flavour of this medium bodied red. But that’s an adornment to the underlying bright varietal fruit flavour. The texture’s particularly silky – partly a result, no doubt, of including a high proportion of whole bunches (including stalks) in the ferment. Firm but fine tannins rein the fruit in, giving a tight and savoury finish to a most appealing wine.

Chrismont La Zona Sangiovese 2011 $17–$22
Whitfield, King Valley, Victoria
Under the influence of Brown Brothers, Arnie Pizzini and his son Arnie jnr converted from tobacco to grape growing in the early 1980s. In 1984 they planted the Italian variety barbera and followed with sangiovese in 1999. The, operation now run by Arnie jnr and wife Jo, includes a range of Italian varieties and the Spanish tempranillo. Their 2011 sangiovese pleases for its medium body, subtle cherry-like fruit flavour and earthy, savoury tannins – an unobtrusive wine to accompany food, not be the centre of attention.

Mount Langi Ghiran Langi Shiraz 2010 $100
Mount Langi Ghiran vineyard, Grampians, Victoria
Australia’s great diversity of shiraz styles range from the inky black colour and full bodied power of those from warm climates to more subtle, medium bodied versions from cooler areas. And even within the subtle cool-climate versions, styles vary widely. Somewhere out on its own sits The Langi, a limpid, perfumed, peppery, comparatively delicate shiraz sourced from old vines at Mount Langhi Ghiran. The musk, pepper and spice of the aroma and flavour come with an intriguing stalky note, probably from whole-bunch maceration. The delicate, harmonious palate weaves all these flavours in with the finest, silkiest tannins imaginable – a brilliant, unique wine.

Cracroft Chase Blue Sun Pinot Gris 2009 $15
Cracroft Chase vineyard, Canterbury, New Zealand
Cracroft Chase’s Wilma Laryn visited Canberra recently, chasing business for her small Canterbury winery. The five-hectare vineyard produces only pinot gris, a variety that clearly suits the cool site. This is pinot gris as you seldom see it in Australia – in your face with its pear-like flavour, full body, syrupy-rich texture, grippy finish and pungent hit of lees-derived character that may overwhelm some palates. I can imagine this with soft cheese and dishes laced with rich, creamy sauces. It’s available at Braddon Cellars.

Cider review — Dr Pilkington’s

24 October 2012CiderChris Shanahan

Dr Pilkington’s Miracle Cider 500ml $6.99
I buy most of my beer and cider samples – but this rare freebie arrived with a silly, uninformative press release, revealing only that it’s made from apples at Chapel Hill winery, McLaren Vale. Google says it’s available at Dan Murphy’s; and my own palate enjoys a delightful, pale, fresh, tart and genuinely appley-tasting dry cider.

Winning amateur brew bound for Wig and Pen

24 October 2012Beer, PeopleChris Shanahan

Canberra’s amateur brewing competition this year resulted in 18 category winners progressing to the Wig and Pen trophy taste-off.

The coveted trophy gives the brewer a chance (working with brewer Richard Watkins) to make a one-off commercial batch of the winning beer for sale through the Wig and Pen.

This year’s winner, Mark Overton, fielded five of the 18 finalists. Overton won the trophy with an American cream ale style, described by Watkins as an easy drinking style with plenty of flavour, a light finish and the distinctive taste of American Liberty hops. The winner contained a high proportion of polenta in the mash. He says it’s a recognised hybrid style, developed in America from Germany’s Kolsch beer.

Watkins expects to brew the beer with Overton at the Wig and Pen in mid October and to release it in mid November.

Canberra’s Ravensworth conquers 2012 International Riesling Challenge

17 October 2012People, Uncategorized, Vineyard, WineChris Shanahan

Canberra’s Ravensworth Wines topped the honours list at the Canberra International Riesling Challenge 2012. Ravensworth Riesling 2012, made by Food and Wine columnist Bryan Martin, and owned by Martin and his wife Jocelyn, won a gold medal and three trophies.

The judges rated it best Canberra District riesling, best Australian riesling and, in a first for a Canberra riesling, best wine of the show – against 426 contenders from six countries.

Show organiser Ken Helm, a Canberra riesling legend himself, welcomed Ravensworth’s success, especially for winning best wine of show trophy. He said, “This is exciting as it shows beyond doubt that Canberra is up there with Australia’s best”.

Helm said the chair of judges, Ben Edwards, rated quality across the board as the highest in the time he’s judged there.

The impressive medal strike rate supports this view. The 426 wines judged won 278 medals (51 golds, 60 silvers and 167 bronzes), for an overall success rate of 65 per cent.

While Ravensworth brought home the bacon for Canberra, our district provided little support for the event, entering just 12 wines in total across five categories, and underperforming the overall field with a medal strike rate of 58 per cent. We won one gold, one silver and five bronze medals.

In the important class for 2012 vintage dry rieslings (less than eight grams per litre of sugar), Canberra fielded just six wines and won two bronze medals. Compare this performance to the September regional wine show, where 12 Canberra 2012 vintage dry rieslings won nine medals, including three golds.

Admittedly, the class definitions of the two shows vary slightly, so that Ravensworth at 11 grams per litre of sugar, moved from “dry” in the regional show to “semi-dry” at the challenge. But the change of classification doesn’t explain the startlingly different ratings – bronze at the regional, gold and ultimately trophies at the challenge.

As well, Gallagher 2012, Nick O’Leary 2012 and Mount Majura 2012 – all medal winners in the regional show – failed to rate in the challenge, a variance that’s hard to understand.

Perhaps the high acidity of the Canberra rieslings worked against them in this broader environment. Certainly our wines tend to blossom with age as the fruit comes through. And it’s worth considering the top gold medallist in the regional show, Clonakilla 2012, and the top Canberra wine of the challenge, Ravensworth 2012, have a sugar levels of 10 and 11 grams per litre respectively – sufficient to take the edge off the acid and not taste sweet.

If we look only at the classes for 2012 dry rieslings, several regions outperformed the overall medal strike rate of 65 per cent. This supports the growing view of 2012 as an exceptional riesling vintage.

Western Australia’s Great Southern region, for example, won 16 medals (two gold, five silver and nine bronze) from 19 entries, an 84 per cent strike rate.

Clare Valley, the traditional heartland of dry Australian riesling, entered 38 wines for a strike rate of 76 per cent – four golds, six silvers and 19 bronzes. I’ve tried many of these wines and they really are delicious and well priced. Most are already soft and ready to drink.

The Eden Valley, Clare’s southern neighbour on the Mount Lofty Ranges, fielded 25 wines to win five gold, four silver and nine bronze medals – a 72 per cent strike rate.

And tiny Tasmania entered 10 dry riesling from the 2012 vintage to win two golds, two silver and three bronze medals – a 70 per cent strike rate.

While riesling remains a perennially niche variety in Australia, its sales a fraction of those of sauvignon blanc or chardonnay, it offers wonderful drinking, great cellaring and quite often amazing value for money.

The trophy winning Ravensworth 2012, for example, sells at just $20 and its podium mate, Richmond Grove Watervale 2011, often specials at around $18. These are bargain prices for such beautiful wines – the latter with proven long-term cellaring potential; the Ravensworth untested, but likely to do the distance.

From a drinker’s perspective then it’s worth downloading and trolling through the full results. They’re available at rieslingchallenge.com

The honours list includes dry, half dry and sweet styles from many different regions and, indeed, from other countries, and from a spread of vintages. The successful older wines provide some guidance to the cellaring ability of younger wines. Indeed some of the most cellarable rieslings perform poorly at shows in youth, but blossom after a few years’ bottle age.

Canberra International Riesling Challenge 2012
Trophy winners

Wine of the show
Ravensworth Canberra District Riesling 2012

Best Australian riesling
Ravensworth Canberra District Riesling 2012

Best Canberra District riesling
Ravensworth Canberra District Riesling 2012

Best current vintage dry riesling
Penfolds Bin 51 Eden Valley Riesling 2012

Best dry riesling
Richmond Grove Watervale Riesling 2011

Best sweet riesling
Heggies Eden Valley Botrytis Riesling 2011

Best Tasmanian riesling
Bay of Fires Riesling 2011

Best European riesling
Weingut Georg Muller Stiftung Hattenheimer Hassel Riesling Spaetlese Trocken 2011

Best museum riesling
d’Arenberg The Dry Dam McLaren Vale Riesling 2008

The champ – born in adversity
Ravensworth Canberra District Riesling 2012
Fruit source: Bryan and Jocelyn Martin’s Ravensworth vineyard, Murrumbateman
Gold medal and three trophies: Best Canberra District wine; best Australian wine; best wine of show
Canberra’s first grand champion of the riesling challenge almost didn’t exist. Winemaker Bryan Martin says hail stripped the vines almost bare, then 200mm of rain threatened the remaining crop with botrytis cinerea, a potentially destructive fungal disease.

But he sprayed the vines, spread anti-bird netting over the top and waited. The grapes ripened at comparatively low sugar levels and high acidity; and the missing leaves allowed the sun in and moisture out, defeating the botrytis spores.

Almost every bunch, however, included withered berries, the result of direct hail hits. So the picking crew cut the damaged fruit from every bunch before delivering it to nearby Clonakilla winery, where Martin works as a winemaker. The labour intensive work pushed Martin’s harvesting cost out to $1200 a tonne, he says.

In the winery he chilled the fruit to below 10 degrees Celsius in small, broad, flat bins. The shallow bins helped keep the berries intact, thereby avoiding release of phenolics, or tannins, into the juice. And chilling the whole bunches before crushing them in a gentle air-bag press, helped extract fine, phenolic-free juice.

Martin says he held back the last 100 litres – the product of the final, firmest pressing – as unfermented juice to blend back into the finished wine.

A cool fermentation captured the delicate riesling flavours in a bone dry and very acidic wine – a result of the unusually cool ripening period. Martin balanced the acidity by blending a small amount of unfermented juice into the wine.

The addition gave the wine a natural grape sugar content of 11 grams per litre. This subtly fleshed out the middle palate, without being discernibly sweet, reducing the impact of the potentially mouth-searing13 grams per litre of acid.

Until this year, says Martin, he sold his riesling grapes to Clonakilla. He made just 150 dozen bottles. Alas, the wine sold out at just $20 a bottle on withing days of the trophy presentation.

Wine review — Mount Majura, d’Arenberg, Curly Flat, Printhie and Ross Hill

17 October 2012Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Mount Majura Vineyard Graciano 2010 $25
Mount Majura, Canberra District, ACT
Frank van de Loo’s lovely graciano won a gold medal and two trophies at this year’s regional wine show. Van de Loo says he bottled the late-ripening variety separately, rather than blending it with other varieties, for the first time in 2006 – but the 2010 is “probably the first that has been turning heads”. He adds that because it ripens so late “we only get it to this level of ripeness by severe crop thinning. Even in the warm 2010 vintage an exotic and intense peppery aroma says, phew, just made it. But sometimes wines that just struggle across the ripeness line bring more pleasure – it seems the just-ripe peppery notes emphasise the vibrant, fresh berry flavours underneath. In this instance it means a medium-bodied, savoury red that drinks deliciously now.

d’Arenberg The Footbolt Shiraz 2010 $16.15–$20
McLaren Vale, South Australia
The wine bears the name of Footbolt, a racehorse whose success helped Joseph Osborn fund the purchase of d’Arenberg’s first vineyard in 1912. Osborn’s descendents, d’Arry and son, Chester, continue to run the business. The Footbolt remains one of Australia’s big-value wines. It offers robust McLaren Vale shiraz flavour and savouriness, supported by mouth coating but soft, ripe tannins. It’s exceptionally rich and satisfying at this price and has the depth to age well for five to ten years if well cellared.

Curly Flat Pinot Noir $48–50
Curly Flat vineyard, Macedon, Victoria
Vigneron Phillip Moraghan says, “Vintage 2010 was a joy after the incredibly low yielding 2009”. We could add it’s a joy to drink too, and likely to remain so for a few decades. I place it in the very top ranks of Australian pinot noir – and all the more appealing because it moves well away from the strawberry-like fruit flavours we see in so many. Fruit sweetness remains crucial, but top pinot should also be earthy, savoury and richly, smoothly textured with a quite firm but fine tannin backbone. This pretty well describes the outstanding Curly Flat. Released in November and available cellar door and at George’s Liquor Stable, Phillip.

Curly Flat The Curly Pinot Noir 2010 $48–$50
Curly Flat vineyard, Macedon, Victoria
In 2010, under the influence of a visiting winemaker from Domaine Dujac, Burgundy, Curly Flat produced 244 dozen of The Curly – a variant on the other Curly Flat pinot reviewed today. The Curly enjoyed a slightly longer pre-fermentation maceration (five days versus 2–3 days); 100 per cent whole-bunch fermentation (versus 11 per cent); a 20-day fermentation (versus 12–17 days) and maturation in 100 per cent new French oak (versus 31 per cent new). The wines share a common thread; but surprisingly The Curly gobbles up all the new oak, which seems to add more to the tannin structure than flavour. The wine’s also a little earthier, more ethereal and a teasing bit of stalkiness that emphasises the underlying fruit flavour. Due for release in March-April 2013, it will be available by allocation only, so email expressions of interest to office@curlyflat.com

Printhie MCC Chardonnay 2010 $35
Orange, NSW
This and the Ross Hill chardonnay reviewed today are my picks of a range of wines tasted ahead of the Orange Wine Week, being held 19–28 October. The Swift family owns vineyards but also sources grapes from other growers. Drew Tuckwell makes the wines – in this instance a barrel fermented and matured selection of the best chardonnay grapes available from the vintage. It’s fuller bodied than the Ross Hill wine (from the cooler 2011 vintage), revealing grapefruit and white peach varietal flavours, deliciously meshed with all that comes from fermentation and ageing in barrel.

Ross Hill Pinnacle Series Chardonnay 2011 $35
Ross Hill Home Block vineyard, Orange, NSW
Terri and Peter Robson established Ross Hill in 1994 and planted chardonnay on their home block in 1996. In 2008 Greg and Kim Jones joined the business “to build the Ross Hill winery and plant further, higher elevation vines on the slopes of Mount Canobolas”. Since 2009 wines have been made on site by Phil and Rochelle Kerney. The wines are among the best from the region. For this wine whole bunches were pressed and the juice run directly to oak barrels for spontaneous fermentation. It’s a classy chardonnay, showing the lean, acidic structure of the cool vintage, underpinned by intense grapefruit-like varietal flavour, infused with the funky notes and rich texture of barrel fermentation and maturation.

Beer review — Grand Ridge and Holgate Brewhouse

17 October 2012Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Grand Ridge Yarra Valley Gold 330ml $3.90
Grand Ridge of Mirboo North, Gippsland, dedicates this dark, bottle-conditioned ale to the food of the Yarra Valley. It’s a full-bodied ale, leading with molasses-like malt flavour but cut with intense hops bitterness. The bitterness overrides the sweetness of the malt, creating a savoury, bitter, clean dry finish.

Holgate Brewhouse Pilsner 330ml $3.50
Travelling to or from Melbourne it’s worth the detour to Holgate Brewhouse in Keating’s Hotel, Woodend. The atmosphere and beers, including this pilsner, are excellent. It’s a light golden, mildly malty lager featuring the distinctive aroma, flavour and clean fresh bitterness of Saaz hops – liberally applied but in harmony with the malt.