Chris Shanahan

In the Clare Valley a couple of weeks back Jim Barry Wines hosted its fiftieth anniversary celebrations. The highlight was a tasting of memorable Jim Barry, Leo Buring, Lindemans and Richmond Grove rieslings from vintages 1972 to 1998.

And what lovely twists there were to the tasting: the beautiful old Leo Buring wines came from a vineyard that now belongs to the Barry family; the Jim Barry wines came from a vineyard that the family no longer owns; and the sole Richmond Grove wine, the youngest in the line up, came from the same vineyard as the old Buring wines. And it was made by same winemaker, John Vickery, in the same (but now renamed) winery where he’d first made wine for Leo Buring in 1955.

The thread linking all this is the Florita vineyard at Watervale, located towards the southern end of the Clare Valley. This was the source, acknowledged in the fine print of the labels, of the legendary, long-lived Leo Buring Reserve Bin Rhine Rieslings of the sixties, seventies and early eighties.

When Lindemans put Florita on the market in 1986, Jim Barry saw a unique opportunity to grab one of the region’s great and proven vineyards. But it was tough times in the industry and, according to Jim’s son Peter, Nancy (Jim’s wife) said to Jim, ‘you don’t want it’. But he did.

So Jim said to his sons, Peter, Mark and John, ‘mum won’t let me, so you boys had better do it’. And they did. Peter recalls the financial stretch, approaching several banks ‘with figures to back the lie – bullshit on paper. Several banks knocked it back, one accepted it, lent us money and we made it work’. It’s that sort of vision and risk taking that makes or breaks businesses.

To help fund the purchase, the Barrys sold a corner of Florita to Ian Sanders (the corner became Clos Clare) and another vineyard in Watervale, source of their earlier Watervale rieslings. They also sold Florita material, as juice, to other makers, including Richmond Grove (owned by Pernod Ricard and located in Leo Burings old winery at Tanunda, Barossa Valley).

Twenty-three years on, the entire Florita vineyard is back in family hands and it provides fruit for three labels – Jim Barry Watervale Riesling ($15), Jim Barry The Florita Watervale Riesling ($45) and Clos Clare Watervale Riesling ($24). The Barrys also offer a riesling ($19) from their Lodge Hill Vineyard in the northern Clare.

As we tasted the older riesling Peter Barry recalled that John Vickery at Burings had the technological over his dad in the seventies, and it wasn’t until the eighties that Jim Barry Wines acquired essential refrigeration and other protective technology that Burings had enjoyed since the sixties.

The gap shows in the extra vivacity of the old Buring wines – like the beautiful Reserve Bins DW C15 Watervale Rhine Riesling 1973 and DW G37 Watervale Rhine Riesling 1977. Even so the older Jim Barry wines from1972, 1974 and 1977 in particular drink well, albeit in a rounder, softer style than the Buring wines.

But the gap has been closed in recent times and I’ve no doubt that Jim Barry The Florita and Clos Clare will equal the great wines made by John Vickery so sustainably over so many decades – especially now that we have screw caps protecting these beautiful wines.

The best vintages will be as delicious at almost forty years as they are at one. The connection, of course, is the Florita vineyard. You can see it by searching ‘Old Road Watervale South Australia’ on Google Earth or maps.google.com – it’s the vineyard furthest from Cemetery Road. The little plot on the corner near the cottage is Clos Clare. It’s a great Australian regional story to be explored primarily in the glass.

Florita Vineyard timeline

1940s
Leo Buring purchases the Florita site. He plants pedro ximenez and palomino for sherry making and, believes former Buring employee John Vickery, perhaps small amounts of crouchen, trebbiano and shiraz.

1955
John Vickery joins Leo Buring at Chateau Leonay (now Richmond Grove), Barossa Valley. John makes table wine and sherry.

1950s
Among the wines Vickery makes is a fino sherry sold under Buring’s ‘Florita Fino’ label. This is probably the first label to bear the vineyard name. Leo Buring established the solera before Vickery’s arrival.

1961
Leo Buring dies at 85 years.

1962
Lindemans, under Ray Kidd, purchases Buring’s business, retaining Vickery as winemaker. At about the same time Kidd replants Florita almost entirely to riesling, leaving about one hectare of crouchen.

1963
In time for vintage, Lindemans installs protective winemaking equipment, enabling production of riesling and other crisp, fruity whites in a style pioneered by Colin Gramp, of Orlando, in the 1950s. The stage is set for Vickery to make his legendary Eden and Clare Valley rieslings, the latter from the Florita vineyard.

1960s, 1970s, 1980s
Vickery’s Leo Buring rieslings, including those from Florita, become Australian benchmarks.

1986 and thereabouts
Lindemans, now owned by Phillip Morris, sells Florita vineyard to Jim Barry Wines.  Lindemans retains the Florita trademark.  To help fund their purchase (it was a stretch, says Peter) the Barry family sells a two-hectare corner with vines and a cottage to Ian Sanders. Sanders names this corner Clos Clare. The Clos Clare wines are made by Tim Knappstein and then Jeffrey Grosset. (Sanders later sells Clos Clare to Noel Kelly. Wines are then made at O’Leary Walker).

The Barrys immediately graft the one-hectare of crouchen, planted by Lindemans in the 1960s, to sauvignon blanc. Four years later they grub this out and plant riesling. Florita vineyard is for the first time planted entirely to the variety that made it famous.
1994–2003

The Barry family sells juice from riesling grown on the Florita vineyard to John Vickery, now working in Orlando’s Richmond Grove Winery (formerly Chateau Leonay). From 1994 to 2003 Richmond Grove Watervale Riesling contains material from Florita.

2004
The Florita trademark lapses and the Barry family takes it up, allowing the launch of Jim Barry ‘The Florita’ Riesling 2004.

2007
The Barry family buys back the lost corner of Florita. Peter Barry’s sons Tom and Sam run Clos Clare as a separate business, making the wine at John and Daniel Wilson’s Polish Hill River winery.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009

‘Terroir’, or a sense of place, is the vocabulary of the fine-wine world. It’s the language of regions, their climates and soils and the grapes that work best in particular circumstances. The wine drinker’s fascination with origin progresses to the peculiarities of individual vineyards sites and the subtle differences of wines from various locations within a region.

Australia’s has ‘terroirs’ galore, manifested by the tremendous spread of our more than two thousand small vignerons and legion of independent grape growers. But in our conquest of world markets we’ve limited our vocabulary largely to a generic sunshine-in-a-bottle, multi-region-blend message.

This promises a base for our next round of expansion as we take our regional stories to the world. To achieve this, however, our big winemakers – those leading the current, but faltering, export success – must embrace the ‘terroir’ concept – not just mouth it, but comprehend it and take it to the world.

They don’t need to use the French term ‘terroir’ – and perhaps may better off without it even though we don’t have a comparable English word. But what it sums up for Australia is our tremendously varied regional and intra-regional wine stories, some just a few decades in the making, others stretching back to the mid nineteenth century.

The concept underpins all of our successful small makers and many of our locally successful big company upmarket brands – for example, the Foster’s-owned Wynns of Coonawarra. Indeed, for Australian wine drinkers the name Wynns, Coonawarra and cabernet sauvignon are indistinguishable – making Wynns a model of a wine brand, intimately linked to its region and the region’s varietal specialty.

The link exists not through slick marketing but through the Wynns wines enjoyed by Australians for almost sixty years ¬– what’s in the glass tells the Coonawarra story.

But after Australia’s decade of export success, the story of this fifty-eight-year-old brand remains little known outside Australia, even in our biggest export markets, the UK and USA. In the latter, said winemaker Sue Hodder in Canberra last week, the trade accepts Wynns shiraz because shiraz is seen as Australia’s special variety, but rejects Wynns cabernet, partly because it upstages American cabernets in Foster’s portfolio.

Meanwhile back in Australia the Wynns regional story moved on to individual vineyards earlier this decade – reflecting the fact that even in a flat, apparently homogenous region like Coonawarra, quality and shades of flavour vary widely, even over short distances.

The focus began in earnest after the disastrous 2002 vintage says Hodder.  A vineyard rejuvenation project, already being led by Allen Jenkins, gathered pace across Wynns vast holdings, spread across Coonawarra.

Allen worked closely with Sue, monitoring grape quality, and ultimately wine style and quality, across scores of blocks and even rows of vines within blocks.

The first individual vineyard wine that I recall from the project was Wynns ‘Harold’ Cabernet Sauvignon 2001, sourced from a nine-hectare block purchased by Wynns from Harold Childs in 1966 and replanted to cabernet in 1971. The block sits about half way between Coonawarra village and Penola on the northwestern corner of the Riddoch Highway (dissecting Coonawarra north to south) and Stony Road. You can see the vineyard by searching ‘Stony Road Coonawarra’ on Google Earth.

Eight years on Harold 2001 looks young, with a beautiful floral lift to the varietal aroma and a fresh, supple, elegant ripe-berry palate. It’s a delight to drink and quite distinctive in the Wynns line-up, albeit in the Coonawarra family mould.

What a contrast Harold presents to Wynns ‘Messenger’ Cabernet Sauvignon 2005. This is a fuller, riper, earthier style (still very much Coonawarra cabernet) from a 3.3-hectare vineyard planted in 1975 on what would’ve then been Coonawarra’s southwestern fringe. Apparently the block performs well in warm years like 2005.

In another different vein Wynns ‘Johnson’s’ Shiraz Cabernet 2003 presents a round, soft palate (thanks to the shiraz) with bright, fresh, red-berry flavours. Sue says the block always delivers these distinctive flavours in both cabernet and shiraz. The block’s cultivated history stretches back to the 1890s. Wynns acquired it in 1951 as part of their original purchase. Today it has 32 hectares of shiraz, planted in 1925, and 19 hectares of cabernet sauvignon, planted in 1954.

And from the ‘Alex’ block, located one kilometre north of the Wynns winery, comes a new cabernet from the 2006 vintage. It’s very deep and ripe with rich, supple, clearly varietal palate – an open, appealing style and a pleasure to drink now. It’s from a block acquired by James Alexander in 1892, bought by Wynns in 1982 and planted to grapes in 1988.

These single vineyard wines present some of the colour and shade of Coonawarra, variations based partly on quantifiable climate differences (Coonawarra’s flat but grapes ripen almost two weeks later in southern Coonawarra than they do just 15–20 kilometres north) and partly to less quantifiable factors like variation in soil types. And that’s overimplifying what’s behind the fascinating flavour difference.

The single site wines add spice to the core range which has also benefited from a decade of vineyard rejuvenation. The just released shiraz 2008 presents a beautifully fragrant, vibrant, elegant face of Coonawarra shiraz – medium bodied, spicy, supple and with cellaring potential, despite its drink-now appeal.

Good old black label cabernet 2007, made in tiny volumes thanks to frost and drought, is elegant, refined and pure in its varietal character. Its bigger brother, John Riddoch 2006, is all power and grace – a beautifully aromatic cabernet of great intensity and harmony.

These are all wines that tell their own regional story. They’re graceful, delicious and varied but have a regional stamp. There’s no marketing artifice, just an honest story of the land, the vines and the people tending the vines and making the wines. The evolving story is best told directly by winemaker Sue Hodder and viticulturist Allen Jenkinson. The role of the marketers is to understand this story and help Sue and Allen pass it on to wine drinkers. It isn’t like marketing fast moving consumer goods or even like marketing big beer brands. They’re different worlds and we live in hope that Foster’s might grasp it and take some of our greatest wine names to the world.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2009