Monthly Archives: February 2013

Wine review — Devil’s Corner, Holm Oak, McWilliams, Mr Riggs and Port Phillip Estate

27 February 2013Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Devil’s Corner Pinot Noir 2011 $14.95–$21.90
East Coast and Tamar Valley, Tasmania
It takes grapes grown in suitably cool climates to make ripe and tasty but elegant wines. This rationale, applied particularly to pinot noir and chardonnay, led Brown Brothers of Milawa, Victoria, to buy Tamar Ridge, Tasmania, from Gunns in 2010. The purchase gave Browns a winery, vineyards in the Tamar Valley and on the East Coast, and the Tamar Ridge and Devil’s Corner brands. These were good wines already. But Brown Brothers’ winemaking and marketing skills broadens their distribution and tweaks the quality. The beautifully re-packaged Devil’s Corner range includes this convincing, lighter bodied pinot noir. Spicy, savoury and peppery notes season the vibrant varietal fruit flavour. And fine tannins add their grip to the silky, easy palate. The recommended price is $21.90, but it’s available for as little as $14.95. These are keen prices for cool-grown, high quality, drink-now pinot.

Devil’s Corner Pinot Grigio 2012 $15–19.90
Tasmania
Pinot noir’s white-grey mutant, pinot grigio (or gris) delivers its best flavour when it’s grown in a cool climate like Tasmania’s. Devil’s Corner’s version captures the variety’s elusive pear-like flavour on a richly textured palate, cut with pleasantly tart tannins and acids – the latter at a higher level than we generally see in the variety. This is a positive feature as means greater freshness and suitability with food.

Holm Oak Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc 2012 $20–$25
Tamar Valley, Tasmania
Winemaker Rebecca Duffy and husband Tim lease the 12-hectare Holm Oak vineyard from Rebecca’s parents, Ian and Robyn Wilson. The Duffys grow, make and bottle all of their wine on site. The excellent 2012 vintage produced a highly aromatic sauvignon blanc, tempered by barrel fermentation of about one fifth of the blend. The barrel component also added texture to an otherwise exuberant, fruity, dry sauvignon, leaning towards the passionfruit end of the variety’s flavour spectrum.

McWilliams 1877 Shiraz Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 $65
McLaren Vale and Coonawarra, South Australia and Hilltops, NSW
McWilliams’ flagship red follows an old Australian tradition of blending components from several different regions. In the age of terroir, where wines are expected to exude a sense of place, some might question this approach. But ideology aside, it’s a brilliant, seductive and sumptuous wine built to last. The vinyl-lounge packaging belies the quality within – a ripe, fragrant, elegantly structured, slurpily delicious red, still in the full flush of youth at five years.

Mr Riggs Piebald Syrah 2010 $27
Adelaide, South Australia
The official Adelaide “Super zone” embraces a diversity of South Australian winemaking zones, including the Mount Lofty Ranges, Fleurie and Barossa. Drill down through the zones and the super zone contains every region north of Kangaroo Island and Victor Harbour in the south to the Clare Valley in the north. Winemaker Ben Riggs draws shiraz (syrah) from cooler sites across this diverse landscape to make Piebald – a fine-boned, spicy style of shiraz. In the excellent 2010 vintage this delivers luscious, sweet fruit, layered with fine, tender tannins – a wonderful, drink-now combination.

Port Phillip Estate Chardonnay 2011 $35
Port Phillip Estate, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria
Winemaker Sandro Mosele’s vintage report recounts the story of a cold, wet growing season, with summer rainfall the highest since 2003 and, ironically, the highest minimum summer temperatures in a decade fanning mildew and botrytis. Ultimately, writes Mosele, by “dropping any fruit that started to show signs of botrytis, we obtained a clean harvest”. The barrel-fermented wine combines grapefruit-like varietal flavour (and accompanying high acidity) with richer underlying white peach flavour, cut through with funky notes derived from barrel fermentation. The wine’s high acid, silky, fine texture and intense flavour suggest some benefits from short-term cellaring.

Canberra riesling — lining up the veterans

27 February 2013People, WineChris Shanahan

On Valentine’s Day, Canberra vignerons took the district’s white darling, riesling, on a date. Not a romantic, love-you, can’t-get-enough-of-you fling, but a forensic examination, under the stark spotlights inside Mount Majura’s squeaky-clean cellar.

Critics, show judges and increasing numbers of drinkers love our rieslings. But they’re enjoying mainly youthful, fresh, just-released wines, within months or maybe a year of bottling.

But it’s often said our rieslings require bottle age to soften their sometimes-austere acids and allow the underlying varietal flavours to emerge.

And it’s true that if you taste Canberra’s 2012 rieslings alongside those from the Clare Valley (a long-established specialist in the variety), our wines tend to be swept aside by Clare’s generally fruitier, softer versions.

Certainly I’ve rated Clare and some Eden Valley rieslings from this stellar vintage ahead of their Canberra counterparts – largely for this reason and in full recognition that the best Canberra wines may catch up or pull ahead in the years to come.

To some extent, then, we can only enjoy what’s before us in the glass now – not what might be there in two or ten years. But we can’t ignore riesling’s potential to blossom with age – nor the youthful austerity of Australia’s and the world’s greatest.

Germany’s great Rhine and Mosel river rieslings age in all their pristine glory for decades. They achieve this on the back of intense fruit flavour and the high acidity that makes them sometimes forbidding in youth.

Likewise Australia’s very finest rieslings tend to be slow out of the box, but to finish strongly. For example, one of Australia’s largest riesling makers, Jacob’s Creek, tends to win show medals in the year of vintage for its cheaper Classic Riesling. But the company’s flagship, generally begins hauling in the medals years after vintage.

The more established, austere but long-lived rieslings of the Clare and Eden Valleys can get away with austerity. Why? Because they have a proven capacity to age well – the best for decades.

If Canberra’s to match these wines in the market place, then our makers need to demonstrate how well the wines age – especially the driest, most acidic versions. Producers can’t expect drinkers to buy wine as an act of faith.

Hence, Canberra’s Valentine’s Day gathering looked at older Canberra rieslings – 27 wines in total, 26 dry; one sweet, the youngest five years old, the oldest 19 years.

Individual producers donated bottles from their own cellars, in Roger Harris’s case, literally displaying a life’s work.

The tasting comprised five brackets – four from individual producers, the final a mixed group. The wines weren’t masked and didn’t include any samples from other regions. So we could call it a Canberra-only benchmarking. I chaired the tasting. The format was: taste the five or six wines in each bracket in silence; call on the maker for comments about style, viticulture and winemaking; offer my own views; call for questions on comments from all tasters.

One big conclusion: the adoption of screw cap by Australian winemakers is one of the great quality breakthroughs of modern times. As the adoption began only from 1998 (and more broadly in Canberra from 2002), our tasting took in both cork- and screw-cap sealed wines. The tasting suffered only one screw-cap casualty (the maker, Roger Harris, called it his only dud bottle in eleven years), but most of the cork-sealed wines suffered, some fatally.

Makers said in some cases they opened several cork-sealed bottles to find one good one – a luxury most drinkers don’t have. Any tasting of older cork-sealed riesling, then, becomes a lottery. Indeed, the likelihood of cork damage, through taint or oxidation, prevents reliable assessment of older rieslings unless we’re dead lucky or have access to half a dozen bottles.

That caveat aside, the cork-sealed Brindabella Hills Riesling 1997 proved one of the most loveable wines of the night – maturing but still lively and fresh after 16 years.

We can also conclude Canberra doesn’t have a single riesling style. If fact, we could argue winemaker preferences probably outweigh the notion of terroir. That is, we have the right climate for riesling (arguably the biggest single factor in terroir). But, for example, winemaker preferences for complete dryness or including residual grape sweetness or picking grapes riper or less ripe strongly influence wine style.

We also observed a trend over the last 20 years to lower alcohol riesling – from a widespread realisation that riesling develops ripe flavours at comparatively low sugar levels. Alcohol levels still vary from maker to maker and from vintage to vintage – the 2012 vintage, for example, producing some of the lowest alcohol wines ever.

A couple of style differences I noted: Brindabella Hills makes soft, easy-drinking styles, a conscious decision by maker Roger Harris to suit his own palate. Clonakilla makes a richer style but with an assertive acid backbone, ameliorated in high-acid years like 2011 and 2012 by back-blending a small amount of unfermented grape juice. And Ken Helm opts for delicate, bone-dry, low-alcohol styles – his Classic slightly fuller and more approachable in youth; his Premium, minerally and austere as a youngster and probably the strongest contender in the district for an element of terroir.

Most importantly, within the individual style differences, Canberra’s best rieslings age deliciously – offering different characteristics as they age. The tasting didn’t include all of our top riesling producers. But the sample was wide enough and good enough to say Clare and Eden Valley have a challenger.

I rated many of the 27 wines very highly. In descending order of preference they were: Helm Premium 2005 and 2008, Brindabella Hills 1997, Clonakilla 2006 and 1997, Centenary Riesling 2008, Nick O’Leary 2008, Mount Majura 2008 and 2005 and Helm Premium 2006.

I rated each of these highly not just for freshness and drinkability now, but for potential to continue drinking well (with that big cork caveat hanging over the two 1997 wines, the only cork-sealed wines in the line up).

For a future masked tasting, Canberra makers should include aged rieslings, vintage for vintage, from the very best Clare and Eden Valley producers. This will help form an objective view of where we stand in relation to the acknowledged best. The best winemakers tend to build this very broad frame of reference.

Beer review — Byron Bay and Emerson’s

27 February 2013Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Byron Bay Pale Lager 330ml
The brewery is “Located in Skinners Shoot Road in Byron Bay”, declares the less-than-honest back label – omitting a crucial fact: CUB brews Pale Lager elsewhere and under licence. Don’t expect too much from the beer either. It’s a clean, fresh, fault-free quaffer with little to distinguish it from the pack.

Emerson’s London Porter 500ml $8.85
Emerson’s sits on the dark side of porter – black and brooding, its strong roasted-malt aroma reflected on a lively, malt-sweet palate that descends into an ash-dry finish and short-black coffee-like bitterness. It’s a beer for cold nights and hot food – perfect then for Canberra and Dunedin, New Zealand, where it’s made.

Brew pubs not so new

27 February 2013BeerChris Shanahan

In brewsnews.com.au beer historian Brett J Stubbs reminds us of the long history of brewpubs in Australia.

Stubbs writes, “it is a little appreciated fact that they were commonplace in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century, as they were then in the United Kingdom”.

When the first fleet sailed into to Sydney Cover, stubs says, 27,000 brewing victuallers produced 43 per cent of British beer, “and nearly half of all publicans brewed their own beer”.

Brewpubs persisted longer in the UK than they did in Australia, with 4,500 still in existence in 1900 and four limping through to the 1970s when the Campaign for Real Ale sparked a resurgence.

To this campaign, says Stubbs, “we owe the revival of the concept in Australia”, noting the late Geoffrey Scharer’s George IV at Picton (1987) and Phil Sexton’s Sail and Anchor at Fremantle (1984).

Wine review — Devil’s Corner and Tahbilk

24 February 2013Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Devil’s Corner Tasmania Chardonnay 2012 $14.25-$17
Few new releases offer as compelling a reason to buy as Devil’s Corner. It delivers high quality at the right price. And it all gets back to growing grapes where they perform best. In this instance Tasmanian chardonnay – grown in the Tamar Valley and the East Coast, near Freycinet– delivers intense white peach and citrus varietal flavours on a dazzling fresh palate of great purity. There’s no oak; and the amazing thing is that the fruit stands on its own. Brown Brothers’ expertise completes the story. They acquired Tamar Ridge, its vineyards and the Devil’s corner brand from Gunns in 2010.

Tahbilk Nagambie Lakes Shiraz 2009 $16.15–$23.30
The wide gap between the recommended and on-special price indicates the strong appeal of this old and solid wine from the Purbrick family. The historic property lies at a similar latitude to Coonawarra. But the continental climate (versus Coonawarra’s maritime one) means a significantly different wine style. Both are medium bodied. But Tahbilk’s are more spicy and savoury with quite strong, sometimes tough tannins giving a firm grip to the wines. At four years’ the shiraz offers satisfying drinking – its savoury flavours and assertive tannins well matched to high-tannin food, especially red meats, and also to more savoury, spicy food, like pepperoni pizza.

Tahbilk Nagambie Lakes Cabernet Sauvignon 2009 $14.90–$23.30
If you’re driving to Melbourne it’s worth the detour off the Hume Highway, via Violet Town and Nagambie, to Tahbilk. The cellar door and café sit on a beautiful anabranch of the Goulburn River, a short walk from the historic nineteenth century underground cellars. Vines, too, date from1860, though most were planted after the Purbrick family purchased the property in the 1920s. Winemaking passed direct from Eric Purbrick (first vintage 1931) to his grandson, Alister Purbrick, the current winemaker. Tahbilk’s medium bodied cabernet delivers rich, ripe varietal flavour, the underlying fresh fruit cut through with assertive, satisfying tannins.

Wine review — Chandon, Mt Monster, Sassy, Tahbilk, Jacob’s Creek and Picante Espana

20 February 2013Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Chandon Vintage Brut Rose 2008 $27.85–$35
Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania
Chandon’s bubbly rosé combines material from the Yarra Valley, King Valley, Goulburn Valley, Strathbogie and Macedon, Victoria; the Adelaide Hills, South Australia; Great Southern, Western Australia; and the Coal River Valley, Tasmania. Winemaker Dan Buckle says it comprises 30 individual cuvees, including a pinot noir component fermented on skins – source of the lovely salmon-pink colour. The quality of the fruit, prolonged ageing on yeast lees and the red-wine component all contribute to a round, soft, creamy-textured scrumptiously fruit bubbly. We served it with baked whole salmon from FishCo, Fyshwick. The fruitiness matched with sweet flesh, while the fresh acidity cut through the fat. Buckle emailed, “this is my go-to wine for yum cha at the moment”.

Mt Monster Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 $15
Padthaway, South Australia
The Bryson family owns two vineyards, totalling 170 hectares, at Padthaway on South Australia’s Limestone Coast, about an hour’s drive north of Coonawarra. The family manages the vineyards and marketing of its Moorambro Creek, Jip Jip Rocks and Mt Monster brands but they hire Ben Riggs to make the wines. Cabernet performs well in the mild maritime climate, producing this bright, clearly varietal, medium bodied version for current drinking.

Sassy Pinot Noir 2010 $30
Sassy vineyard, Orange, NSW
In 2005 Fliss and Rob Coles moved uphill from Cowra to Orange’s brisker climate – establishing a vineyard, including three clones of pinot noir, at an elevation of 900 metres. Their first pinot, a light to medium bodied style made by neighbour Peter Logan, delivers vibrant, delicate pinot aromas and flavours. Fine tannins give it a gently, dry, savoury finish. It’s a well-made wine with lovely fruit – one to watch in future as the vines age, delivering deeper, more complex flavours.

Tahbilk Eric Stevens Purbrick Shiraz 2007 $69.95
Tahbilk vineyard, Nagambie Lakes, Victoria
Alister Purbrick, makes this wine from older shiraz vines (average age 35 years) on Tahbilk’s extensive vineyards, located on a beautiful anabranch of the Goulburn River. It’s a medium bodied red, with intense, verging on syrup-rich, plummy, spicy fruit, cut by assertive but soft tannins – far from the more aggressive styles we once say from Tahbilk. The wine drank beautifully over several days – a satisfying memento to Purbrick’s grandfather and mentor, the late Eric Stevens Purbrick.

Jacob’s Creek Reserve Riesling 2012 $10.70–$18
Barossa, South Australia
The on-special price of Jacob’s Creek Reserve often drops close to the standard price of the cheaper Classic Riesling. In 2012 they’re both outstanding dry rieslings – the slightly fuller-bodied reserve version offering greater floral character on the nose and brisk, lime-like varietal intensity on the palate. Even at full price it offers good value but becomes a bargain on special. Should provide outstanding drinking over the next five or six years.

Picante Espana Grande Meseta Tempranillo Shiraz 2010 $13.99
Meseta, Spain
Picante Espana gives us a clean, fresh modern, screw-cap sealed take on Spain’s great red specialty, tempranillo, tempered by shiraz. The bright, spicy and fruity aroma (like a compote of fresh summer berries) appeals greatly. After an initial hit of vibrant fruit on the palate, tempranillo’s firm tannins close in, adding a mouth-watering savoury element to the otherwise fruity and delicious wine.

Beer review — Coopers and Wigram Brewing Company

20 February 2013Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Coopers Thomas Cooper’s Selection Celebration Ale 355ml 6-pack $20
The party kicks on. The commemorative ale Tim and Glenn Cooper released last year marking Cooper’s 150th anniversary is to join the company’s regular offerings. The ale’s reddish coloured, fruity, with citrusy hops high notes, generously flavoured and finishing hoppy and lingeringly bitter.

Wigram Brewing Co Bristol Best Bitter 500ml $4.60
Wigram Brewing, from Christchurch, New Zealand, nailed the English best bitter style with this delicious ale. The alcohol’s modest at 4.5 per cent, but the flavour’s big and beautiful – round, sweet and rich, with caramel-like maltiness. Beautifully judged hops add flavour and a persistent bitterness to offset the malt sweetness.

Tetchy times

20 February 2013BeerChris Shanahan

In late January and early February beer blogs and online publications lit up with indignation. A January press release from the The Byron Bay Brewing Co had announced the release of a bottled version of Byron Bay Pale Lager. The release said the brew had previously been available only on tap at the brewery in Byron Bay.

The annoyance in some quarters arose because neither the press release nor the packaging mentioned that CUB brewed the packaged version under licence at Warner Bay, on the NSW Central Coast.

There’s nothing wrong with brewing and bottling beer under licence. But shouldn’t the parties involved reveal this to consumers. This was reminiscent of a similar omission when Woolworths’ released its Sail and Anchor Beer last year. Those beers were brewed at Gage Roads, but the release material talked of the historic, but defunct, Sail and Anchor brewery.

Wine review — Angoves, Lindeman and Cherubino

17 February 2013Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Angoves Vineyard Select Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 $18
South Australia’s 2010 vintage produced excellent red wines, with vibrant fruit flavours and smooth, round tannins. We see this from the Barossa in the north to Coonawarra in the south. In this instance Angove’s Vineyard Select gives us the true Coonawarra cabernet sauvignon experience at a comparatively low price. The elegant wine delivers vibrant, ripe, red-berry varietal character, subtly seasoned with sweet oak. Grippy but fine, smooth tannins complete the cabernet picture and there’s just a hint of varietal leafiness in the aftertaste. The back label suggests cellaring, but I see it as a medium-bodied, drink-now wine.

Lindemans Bin Series whites 2012 $5.45–$10
Cheap wines can be a good litmus of vintage quality. The recently reviewed Jacobs Creek Riesling 2012, for example, being one of the best under-$10 whites you’re ever likely to buy. The perennial unpopularity of riesling allowed its makers to source fruit from the best riesling-growing regions, despite the low price. Lindemans Bin 65 Chardonnay 2012 and Bin 95 Sauvignon Blanc 2012, on the other hand, come from warm inland regions rather than the best areas for those varieties. In the mild 2012 season this translated to vibrant varietal flavours and great freshness – meaning good drinking at a low price.

Cherubino Permberton Sauvignon Blanc 2012 $35
As Hardy’s winemaker in Western Australia, Larry Cherubino enjoyed access to a thousand hectares or more of plum vineyards across the state’s south, including Margaret River, Pemberton and the various sub-regions of Great Southern. Since going solo in 2005, Cherubino and wife Edwina source fruit from their own Frankland River vineyard and growers in Margaret River, Pemberton and the Porongurups. Cherubino’s sauvignon blanc offers a subtle and lovely alternative to the Marlborough style. It leans to the passionfruit-like riper end of the varietal spectrum, in a charming way, with fresh, soft acidity and fine, smooth texture.

Wine review — Tahbilk, Frankland Estate, Xanadu, Quilty and d’Arenberg

13 February 2013Wine reviewChris Shanahan

Tahbilk 1927 Vines Marsanne 2003$45
Tahbilk vineyard, Nagambie, Victoria
Winemaker Alister Purbrick’s late grandfather, Eric, built Tahbilk’s reputation for marsanne, a Rhone Valley white variety. Alister worked alongside his grandfather after graduating as a winemaker, eventually taking the reins. Over time, he finessed the potentially long-lived style, brightening and freshening the fruit in the basic marsanne and absolutely mastering it in this special bottling from the estate’s oldest marsanne vines. At ten years it remains absolutely fresh and vibrant – the mouth-watering, citrusy flavours showing barely a hint of honeyed aged character. At 11 per cent alcohol, it sits lightly on the palate and invites another mouthful.

Frankland Estate Poison Hill Vineyard Riesling 2012$27
Poison Hill Vineyard, Frankland River, Western Australia
Frankland Estate makes three rieslings from individual vineyards within the Frankland River region. Last time we drove through the area, in late 2010, it was baking hot and the countryside look dry as a plank. It didn’t feel like riesling country. But the saviour is a cool ocean breeze, pushing in from the south, ameliorating the hot breath of the continent, and making delicate riesling like this possible. It’s full flavoured for riesling, but the low alcohol (10.5 per cent), bright, fresh citrusy varietal character and dusty, dry finish give it a delicious, appealing lightness and pleasant tartness on the palate.

Frankland Estate Isolation Ridge Shiraz 2010 $32
Isolation Ridge vineyard, Frankland River, Western Australia
Frankland River gives yet another Australian interpretation of medium-bodied shiraz – different again from, say, Canberra, Hunter and the Pyrenees. The palate’s strikingly pure with spicy, ripe-berry varietal flavours. But there’s a savoury undertone and a supple, silky texture contributed by the fine-boned tannins. The tannins also dry out the finish with a savoury bite that seasons the lingering berry fruit flavours.

Xanadu Shiraz 2010 $29
Xanadu Stevens Road vineyard, Margaret River, Western Australia
Like Coonawarra, Australia’s other great maritime cabernet specialist, Margaret River makes decent shiraz, too – albeit not as consistently well as it does cabernet. This version comes from a single vineyard and included whole berries in the ferment, partial barrel fermentation and a touch of the white variety, viognier. It’s a solid shiraz that remained intact for days after opening – a slightly chewier, chunkier wine than its WA mate, Frankland Estate, reviewed today, and with some alcoholic heat in the finish.

Quilty Black Thimble Shiraz 2011 $28
Burundulla, Mudgee Region, NSW
Des and Emma Quilty make just 450 cases of wine a year, says their website, “hand plucking the best possible grapes from the most interesting parcels of land. In this instance Des Quilty made just 175 dozen bottles from “low-yield vines in the hills just south of Mudgee. Now Mudgee’s a generally warm area, but this wine shows a pepperiness normal associated with much cooler places – suggesting the influence of the unusually cold season. There’s a bit of magic to this medium-bodied, idiosyncratic wine.

d’Arenberg Vintage Fortified Shiraz 2006 $40
McLaren Vale, South Australia
In the old days we would’ve called this vintage port. But the name now belongs exclusively to Portuguese winemakers, while our fortified makers revert to regional and varietal naming. This is a traditional Australian style, made from very ripe shiraz, sourced from old, low-yielding vines. It was partially fermented before the addition of fortifying brandy arrested the fermentation. This created a big, sweet wine, combining intense, juicy, ripe shiraz flavours, integrated with clean, heady brandy character. At seven years, it’s soft, approachable and still very fruity – and set for a long, long flavour evolution in the bottle. It should drink well for decades.