Wine | Chris Shanahan

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Exotics grape varieties galore — but will any go mainstream?

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

The Winemakers’ Federation of Australia’s official vintage report for 2009 has little to say about the much talked about ‘alternative’ grape varieties now being explored enthusiastically by Australia’s winemakers.

The report reveals, for example, that our vignerons harvested 117 tonnes of the Italian red, barbera, and 449 tonnes of the CSIRO-bred tarrango. But it offers no insights on perhaps the most talked about red, the Spanish tempranillo. Presumably it’s lumped in with the 15,124 tonnes of ‘other’ red varieties – and this out of a total o 888,312 tonnes.

I notice among the whites, too, the report still records the harvest of 222 tonnes of palomino and pedro ximenez (leftovers from last century’s fortified wine production) but not of savagnin (the correct name for what we thought was albarino), nor the apparently fast-expanding, drought resistant vermentino; and that it still calls ‘gewürztraminer’ ‘traminer’, as if the two were synonymous.

But as our battered wine industry reforms itself over the next few years (reportedly 40 thousand hectares of vines need to be removed), we’ll definitely see and hear a lot more about emerging alternative varieties.

What the WFA figures reveal, though, is the enormity of the task should any of these newcomers make serious inroads into established varieties. The volumes that need to be replaced should any niche variety go mainstream are massive – making it difficult to visualise our future industry. But change it must with a surplus of 100 million dozen bottles and growing.

In 2009 we harvested 1.7 million tonnes of wine grapes – 888.3 thousand tonnes of red and 817.7 of whites. Shiraz, cabernet and merlot contributed 779.3 thousand tonnes, or 88 per cent of the red total. Chardonnay alone, at 398.6 thousand tonnes, accounted for almost half the white total.

By all accounts the surplus of chardonnay is huge. Sauvignon blanc overtook it as our preferred white tipple in 2009 – mainly at the hands of imports from Marlborough, driven by New Zealand’s overproduction, our strong dollar and, of course, our love of the flavour.

As we reduce our area under vine, and cut back on some varieties like chardonnay, how will the emerging varieties perform? Perhaps there’s a hint in past performance of niche varieties.

The white variety, marsanne became a big seller for Victoria’s Tahbilk decades ago, and it’s been adopted by many other wineries, but few with significant success. We harvested only 1,678 tonnes of it in 2009.

Likewise, the white verdelho, so suited to our warm areas and present in Australian vineyards for about 150 years, remains a perennial niche player at 15,051 tonnes. And last decade’s darling, viognier, seems stuck at about 13 thousand tonnes a year (with a good deal of that going into red blends).

Some of the ‘emerging’ red varieties, have been with us for decades. Of these, barbera and sangiovese appear in the WFA vintage report at 117 tonnes and 3,921 tonnes respectively – confirming that currently they are minor players indeed.

Two niche red varieties deserve separate mention. Grenache (15,170 tonnes in 2009) and mourvedre (6,165 tonnes) have been with us for about two centuries, surviving swings in wine fashion (fortified to table wine) and are becoming increasingly important, notably in the Barossa, in blends with shiraz. In such regions, shiraz is certain to remain the star player but grenache and mourvedre will remain key support players.

I reckon the biggest change we’ll see in volume will be a retreat in the area of chardonnay under vine. It’s already lost its place as number one quaffing white, supplanted by sauvignon blanc. But it won’t disappear – rather it’ll retreat to cooler areas and continue to make complex, full bodied wine, the best of which will continue to be our most prized and expensive white wines.

This won’t be replaced by today’s champ, sauvignon blanc, as most of Australia simply doesn’t grow the variety well. New Zealand will continue to dominate this part of the market, but cool Australian areas, too, will carve a niche. Sauvignon blanc volume stood at a significant 63,253 tonnes.

As our winemakers search for drought and disease resistant varieties, especially along our ever-drier river lands, they’ll be looking for more than vine adaptability. It’s one thing to grow healthy vines that require little irrigation, but another to make from them wines that people enjoy drinking.

It’s worth the search. And it’d be a fair bet to say that the palette of wine flavours and textures we enjoy should continue to expand. Bring on the saperavi, nebbiolo, graciano, albarino, fiano, tempranillo, montepulciano, sagrantino, nero d’Avola, verdicchio and so on. But expect that most will remain as niche players.

Will any of them, though, become mainstream, to stand beside shiraz, cabernet, pinot noir, chardonnay and sauvignon blanc? It’s quite likely. Don’t forget that Italy has hundreds of indigenous varieties and some, like montepulciano and sangiovese are very widely grown – in fact, satisfied most local demand until the classic French varieties gained a foothold in recent decades.

And in Spain, tempranillo reigns, often in tandem, with grenache. Plenty of commentators, myself included, see tempranillo as a potentially great success in Australia. It grows well and makes juicy lovable dry reds.

While some larger companies see great potential for the white vermentino (it apparently grows well here), we know little yet about how Australian drinkers like it. And a white that many makers see with the potential is another Spanish variety, albarino. It’s much loved in Spain and successfully exported.

Though our early efforts with it have been marred by the discovery that our albarino was, in fact, the almost identical variety savagnin, it remains on vignerons’ radar. But it’ll be some time before we have volumes of the real thing.

It’ll take a few years for the bargains and carnage being wrought by the current oversupply to settle. But we’re already enjoying, and will see increasingly, a parade of exotic varieties among all the familiar ones.

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Near and yet so different

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

We’re all familiar with the idea of regional wine specialities, like Coonawarra cabernet, Barossa shiraz, Marlborough sauvignon blanc and Mornington Peninsula pinot noir. And with a growing focus on regions, we’ll enjoy increasing numbers of intra regional specialties – like Andrew Seppelt’s wonderful shiraz-grenache-mourvedre reds of the western Barossa reviewed here two weeks back.

As we move into sub-regional wines – including those from individual vineyards within a sub-region, and even wines from a few rows of vines within a vineyard – we begin to hear the French word terroir. It evokes a sense of place and attributes distinctive wine flavours to geography – all the physical and human factors contributing to its production

While the notion seems far-fetched to some, there’s no denying just how different two wines can be, even when they’re made by the one vigneron from one grape variety grown in neighbouring vineyards. How can vineyards in such close proximity produce such varied flavours?

Terroir lies at the heart of the French wine naming system, based on regions, varieties suited to those regions and, in the case of Burgundy, a complex subdivision that finally draws a line around sometimes-tiny individual vineyards.

It’s easier to grasp the bigger picture behind that system than to perceive the finer, individual vineyard differences. Northeastern France, for example, is the domain of pinot noir and chardonnay in a big sweep from Reims in the north almost to Lyon in the south.

In the north, around Reims and Epernay, sparkling Champagne eventually triumphed as the regional specialty, principally because it’s too cold to make still table wine reliably.

While Champagne is a single appellation, the wines are not all equal. Behind the best wines lie the best vineyards – and these are officially graded, even if the vineyard names seldom appear on labels (though this is changing).

The best Champagnes from the best vineyards are unique. No other sparkling wine has the same combination of flavour intensity and finesse. Unfortunately there’s a lot of ordinary material parading under the name, so it’s a matter of caveat emptor.

A little to the south, at Chablis (the northernmost part of Burgundy), pinot noir drops out of the equation altogether, leaving chardonnay to make a white like no other in the world. Drinking Chablis has been described as like “sucking pebbles” – an evocative, if desperate, way of conveying its unique, lean, delicious, mouth watering, bone-dry character.

To me it’s the best value, most distinctive chardonnay on earth. And mere ‘Chablis’ does the job. You don’t have to move up the scale to ‘Premiere Cru’ or ‘Grand Cru’ (all based on defined individual vineyards) to enjoy the regional flavour. But the increments in quality are there when you buy wines from leading producers.

Further south, in Burgundy proper, chardonnay and pinot co-exist along the slopes stretching from Dijon to Macon, south of which the gamay grape takes over in the plump and juicy wines of Beaujolais.

Burgundy’s awe inspiring pinot noirs and chardonnays, like Le Chambertin and Le Montrachet respectively, make up only a small portion of total production. These vineyards are good enough to have individual appellations under French law. But even lesser Burgundies bear a general resemblance to these wines, albeit across a comparatively wide spectrum of styles. What’s notable is that there’s a general regional style and, within that, a range of distinctive sub-regional style, and within those sub-regions individual vineyards that produce superior wines over time.

Like Champagne, though, there’s a lot of dross trading under the Burgundy name, so it’s an expensive area to explore without expert guidance.

In Australia, too, chardonnay and pinot noir make a natural pair in our cooler regions. They’re the dominant varieties, for example, in Tasmania, the cooler parts of the Yarra Valley, Mornington Peninsula, Macedon and even in our neighbouring Tumbarumba region.

Unlike their French counterparts, however, our winemakers are not constrained by rigid laws specifying what they can and can’t grow. Over time regional specialties emerge, often after decades of trial and error. But even where regional specialties emerge, unlikely varieties thrive on particular sites and winemakers continue to experiment, with both traditional and new-to-Australia varieties, typically Spanish or Italian.

On the Mornington Peninsula, for example, pinot noir has emerged over the last forty years as the dominant specialty, followed closely by chardonnay. Pinot now makes up about forty per cent of Mornington’s annual grape crush and the best rate, to my taste, among the purest and finest in Australia.

The Mornington producers have already noted sub-regional flavour differences in their pinots based on variations in latitude and altitude. But what’s more intriguing, and harder to explain, are the flavour difference in wines from neighbouring vineyards.

Over the Christmas break we enjoyed two sub-regional tastings – the Western Barossa, and three individual vineyard 2007 vintage pinot noirs from Mornington producer, Ten Minutes by Tractor.

The Wallis, McCutcheon and Judd vineyards are all, literally, ten minutes by tractor from the winery at the cool, elevated, southern end of the Peninsula. Each was planted in the mid nineties and each has had some underperforming clones replaced by better ones between 2003 and 2007.

There are minor altitude differences between the vineyards and variations in soil and aspect; but one vigneron makes all three wines using the same techniques and same oak barrels – suggesting that the flavour variations may be attributable to a complex of factors (yes, this is where terroir becomes a possibility).

Shortly after opening the wines, the two older male tasters preferred the Judd Vineyard wine for its exuberant fruit and power over the delicate, understated McCutcheon and the firmer more savoury Wallis. On the other hand, a younger female taster found the Judd wine overwhelming. She was an inexperienced wine taster but perceived quite big difference among the wines.

After sipping away for a while both of the male tasters preferred the perfume, elegance and purity of the McCutcheon wine, elevated the solid, savoury Wallis to number two position and relegated Judd to third place – a lovely wine, but a bit bigger and more obvious than the other two (we finally saw what our your female companion had perceived at first sniff).

We were getting picky, as all three are outstanding by any measure — pure, varietal, complex and silky smooth. Chris Hamilton from Ten Minutes by Tractor tells me they offer this three vineyard tasting at cellar door and there’s no clear winner. People are fascinated by the flavour difference, but each wine has its followers.

The wines are available at cellar door (see www.tenminutesbytractor.com.au) and at fine wine outlets.

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Brats mellow to greats

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

In the mid eighties Penfolds released the first edition of The Rewards of Patience, containing reviews of Grange Hermitage (as Grange was then called), and the rest of the Penfolds red family, back to the earliest vintages, including the experimental Grange of 1951.

Grange was moving into a purple patch at the time, gaining international recognition ahead of a great flourishing — marked in particular by the release of the sensational 1990 vintage in 1995. Its price shot up. And despite increasing competition, it continued (still continues) to hold number one position in Australian wine auctions.

Its success continues despite last year’s attack by Winewise magazine, accusing Grange of being old fashioned; and a more generic urging by some writers here and in the UK for Australia to move to more elegant, lower alcohol wines. We’d heard all this before in the 1970s. And it’s just as wrong now as it was then.

Consumers roundly rejected the thin, lacking wines made from unripe grapes in the name of elegance — just as they will no doubt do should anyone be silly enough to go down that path again. But out of that error of judgement by our winemakers grew, gradually, a greater confidence in the qualities of our opulent warm climate reds, particularly shiraz.

And it turned out that elegance, in its true sense, was indeed a character of many wines from our emerging, cooler growing areas, like Mornington, Tasmania, Yarra Valley, Canberra, Margaret River and Coonawarra. Over time these grew in number and quality and joined our ever-improving warm climate styles.

And what the critics of the Penfolds style (Grange in particular) often lack is the perspective of long-term aging. For these were, and continue to be, wines that need decades of cellaring. They start as opaque, purple-rimmed wines brimming with fruit, oak and tannin. Even though these are harmonious enough, the total flavour volume and tannic grip can be overwhelming for many years.

Like a lot of others immersed in the trade, I see comparatively few wines of this style among the thousands of reds tasted each year. The market teems with lively, soft, easy to drink reds, quite often made specifically for very early drinking.

And, of course, the elegant, supple shirazes now made so beautifully in Canberra and other cool areas slip down easily in youth, even though some appear to have long-term cellaring ability. But we don’t yet have a thirty or forty year old Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier to confirm that, as we do with Grange.

What we may not see in a young Grange, unless we’ve also tasted very old vintages, is that great periods of time in the cellar render it less opaque, less tannic, less oaky, more complex and increasingly fine – and, yes, even elegant. I was reminded of this over the Christmas break when we opened two old Penfolds reds from our cellar – prompted to do so by the refreshingly cool weather. The wines were Penfolds Grange Hermitage 1982 and Penfolds Bin 80A Coonawarra Cabernet Kalimna Shiraz 1980 (inspired by Max Schubert’s legendary Bin 60A 1962).

These were like children in a way — wines that I’d come to know intimately throughout their lives, beginning when they were bold, purple, tannic oaky brats back in the eighties; and now after a couple of year’s absence moving int0 full, but not declining maturity.

I see that the Rewards of Patience is now in its sixth edition — and all but the first edition of 1986 track the progress of these two wines.

The second edition, 1990, notes Bin 80A 1980 as ‘a wine of great power and breeding with a long life in front of it — a classic in the making’. This was an opinion I shared sufficiently at the time to buy a case of it.

The same edition was equally unequivocal on the progress of Grange 1982 — “Generous, lifted ‘fleshy’ fruit is typical of the ’82 vintage. A distinctive and great Grange”. The tasters recommended a drinking window from the early 1990s and as far out as 2002.

By the third edition in 1994, the tasting panel was seeing Bin 80a 1980 as intense, concentrated, herbaceous, cedary, elegant, of remarkable structure and showing “strong Coonawarra district character”. They recommended drinking it out to 2010.

By this edition 1982 Grange was no longer one of the greats but, rather, “reflects the super-fleshy fruit characters of this vintage”. The tasters suggested regular monitoring (I think this means drinking) within a drinking window of “now to 2005”.

The tasting panel for the fourth edition in 2000 adopted more floral, less meaningful tasting notes for the Bin 80A, demoted it from the ranks of the ‘greats’ and wound back the drink window to 2007 and commented “best drunk soon”.

But the same group held a slightly higher view of the 1982 Grange, pushing the drinking window to 2008 and once again commenting on the distinctive “sweet, ripe fruit”. They thought it “might hold for many years” but not improve.

Just four years later in the 2004 fifth edition, Bin 80A was once again one of the ‘greats’ and its drinking window was now out to 2020. This once powerful red was now “a soft, well-balanced wine”.

This edition adopted a more kindly view of the now 22-year-old 1982 Grange. The tasters recommended drinking out to 2010. They described it as “a supple, refined wine with sweet cassis/cedary flavours”.

In the sixth edition in 2008, Bin 80A, now 28-years-old held its ‘great’ status and its drinking window was pushed out further to 2025. Though it had been described as a “soft, well-balanced wine” four years earlier, it was now “a well-concentrated, solid wine with attractive mature fruit and strong tannin structure”.

The reviews once again commented on Grange 1982’s rich, fleshy fruit, describing it as “idiosyncratic” and recommended drinking it by 2010.

Almost two years after the assessments made in the sixth edition, the Chateau Shanahan team noted the sweet fruitiness of the 1982 Grange. It’s been part of the wine since it was born and I recall that very early on we sometimes wondered if it would live as long as other Granges. Well at just on 28 years it’s soft, juicy, oh-so-complex and wonderfully vibrant, yet ethereal and aged. What a joy it was to drink and share with the family. It has many years to go.

The Bin 80A, too, opened wonderfully. In aroma, flavour and structure it’s still clearly led by cabernet sauvignon (two thirds of the blend) and very much a Coonawarra style — despite the Kalimna (Barossa) shiraz in the blend. This one has mellowed — having moved from power to elegance and grace in its thirty years. It, too, will age for many more years.

These are great wines. And great wine takes time.

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Andrew Seppelt’s sensational Barossa wines

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Murray Street Vineyards’ new-release reds are sensational — generous, juicy, seamless wines, made by Andrew Seppelt and sourced from low yielding vines sprinkled along the Western rim of the Barossa Valley.

They stand comparison with the best shiraz and blends from any part of the globe. And yet they’re just a small part of a wider movement towards sub-regional and individual vineyard labelling in the Barossa — a movement led by an amazing pool of talent exploiting the wealth of great vineyards, some dating almost to the beginning of European settlement in 1842.

But from a distance the Barossa might seem like one, big, homogenous region, churning out rich, warm, soft shiraz. While there’s a grain of truth in the generalisation, in reality it’s a complex valley of varying landscapes, producing a diversity of styles within that generally big, ripe, soft mould.

And if shiraz is the Valley’s signature variety, it’s commonly blended with the other Rhone varieties, grenache and mourvedre (known locally as mataro) — varieties that also stand on their own, sometimes with distinction.

Were we to tour the Barossa by helicopter, we’d start in the south at the separate Lyndoch Valley with its slopes, flats and feeder valleys; then north over the ridge into the southern Barossa proper with its rolling landscape, eroded by the North Para River; over the Gomersal plateau with black, cracking soils, inhospitable to vines, and its magic, sandy western ridge; through to the rising and flatter central and northern valley to the Kalimna sand dunes; east to the rim of the recently (geologically speaking) uplifted ranges of the Eden Valley and across to the lower, more eroded western rim, including the Marananga and Seppeltsfield bowls. Doing the tour by Google Earth isn’t a bad approximation.

And were we to walk this roughly 30-kilometre by 12-kilometre landscape with geologist David Farmer we’d see about fifteen distinct land surfaces, including the southern angular-rock type soils, the cobbled soils of Roland Flat, the Kalimna dunes and the Gomersal Ridge sands.

Throughout this infinitely varied landscape, scores of winemakers like Andrew Seppelt are now defining the sub-regions by the wines they make — and currently debating formal boundaries and names (existing parish boundaries, for example, offer convenience but don’t gel, necessarily, with wine styles or natural land surface delineations).

But whatever names or boundaries the sub-regions ultimately adopt, the reality is that the division of wine styles in the Barossa is no longer restricted to north, south, east, west and the Eden Valley (part of the Barossa ‘zone’ but already an approved and separate ‘region’).

Andrew Seppelt’s patch of the Barossa stretches from Gomersal in the south, then north to Greenock and Kalimna — all on the valley’s western rim, an area pioneered by his great-great-great grandfather, Joseph Ernst Seppelt in 1851 and carried on from 1868 by his eldest son, Oscar Benno Seppelt.

The Seppelt family ultimately lost control of the Seppelt brand and the historic Seppeltsfield property. But Andrew’s Murray Street Vineyards, owned jointly with his wife, Vanessa, and Bill and Pattie Jahnke, lies just to the south of the old family property at Greenock.

Andrew writes, “Murray Street Vineyards is the result of a 10 year dream of my wife, Vanessa, and I. Believing that the Barossa is the best place in the world to grow shiraz, mataro, grenache, viognier and Marsanne, we set about sourcing fruit from the most extraordinary soil types in the Barossa Valley. Additional planting were made on the ancient, weathered slate slopes of Gomersal to complement the sandy clay loams of Kalimna’s lower reaches and the ironstone of the upper Kalimna hills”.

From a palette of shy-yielding vines (2.5 to 5 tonnes to the hectare), aged from five to about 90 years, Andrew produces an excellent, full-flavoured viognier marsanne blend (2009 vintage, $35) as well as the five sensational reds mentioned in the introduction.

‘The Barossa’ 2007 ($35), a blend predominantly of shiraz, with mataro and grenache, shows the lifted, alluring fragrance of grenache. It’s generous and soft, the tone set by grenache but enriched by earthy shiraz and spicy, tannic mataro. It’s a joy to drink now but has the depth to age well in the medium term.

‘Greenock Shiraz 2007 and Gomersal Shiraz 2007 (both $55) express variations on the shiraz theme from vineyards just a few kilometres apart. They’re both rich, full and soft, but the Greenock wine has a savoury edge and slight firmer tannins; and the Gomersal wine is more fragrant with a scrumptious, juicy palate.

Sophia Shiraz 2006 ($75), named for Andrew’s great-great grandmother, is a truly great shiraz blended from the best fruit from the Gomersal and Greenock vineyards – vibrant, deeply fruity, tender and solid.

Sophie’s fellow flagship, Benno Shiraz Mataro 2006 ($75), offers yet another variation on the theme. Like Sophia, it’s built on the best shiraz from Gomersal and Greenock but contains, as well, mataro from Gomersal. The influence of the mataro is profound – boosting the aroma, making the palate more buoyant, adding spicy flavours and firm, fine tannins.

This is a must-try Barossa variety. Older readers might recall Penfolds Bin 2 Mataro, a wonderful drop. And in recent times I’ve tasted extraordinary all-mataro wines from Dean Hewitson (two wines, one from southern Barossa vines planted in 1853) and Rolf Binder, from vines just behind his Veritas winery to the west of Tanunda.

For more information about Murray Street Vineyards see www.murraystreet.com.au

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A wine vignette of Tasmania’s Derwent Valley

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

A visit to Tasmania highlighted the huge contrasts in Australia’s wine industry. Just two weeks before Foster’s set a price of $150 tonne for Riverland chardonnay, Tasmanian growers were boasting prices of up $5,000 a tonne for theirs.

Assuming production of 70 dozen bottles a tonne, that’s a per-bottle grape cost of 18 cents for Riverland chardonnay versus $5.95 for top-end table and sparkling wines – the sort that after winemaking costs, producer and retailer mark-ups and tax fetch $50-plus a bottle retail.

That’s not the stuff, generally, of broad-acre farming. But it gives the flavour of Tasmania’s wine industry – craft based, with comparatively high production costs and correspondingly high bottle prices, though in the main more in the $20–$35 a bottle range than $50-plus.

While pinot noir and chardonnay constitute more than two thirds of the state’s grape plantings, that’s not the only game. Indeed, every winery tells a different story, offering more than the two main varieties and suggesting a far more varied future for Tasmania.

But beneath the outward confidence and high quality on display, profit margins are so tight, says vine consultant Fred Peacock, that even a small shock could prompt many growers to walk away from their vines.

The fragility that Fred sees, however, isn’t apparent at cellar doors we visit around Hobart – in the Derwent, Coal River and Huon Valleys and over on the east coast.

Along the Derwent, for example, we visit just three wineries and find three utterly different operations.

At Moorilla Estate, Hobart’s oldest vineyard, founded by Claudio Alcorso in 1958 and now owned by David Walsh and partners, recently reduced production by three quarters to boost quality. It’s a well-capitalised operation focusing more on fine art than wine.

The new winemaker, Connor van der Reest, oversees construction of a new winery geared to small batch production from Moorilla’s Derwent vineyards (now pressed by suburban Hobart) and extensive plantings in the Tamar Valley to the north. The Tamar vineyards vary by 200 metres in altitude and include pinot noir, chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, riesling, gewürztraminer, pinot gris and even shiraz – with the reds planted on the lower, warmer slopes.

Conor emphasises the main game for the site – David Walsh’s extraordinary museum of modern and ancient art (MONA), due to be opened in 2011. Everything revolves around the art collection – the beautiful Ether building, housing the art collection, Source restaurant, cellar door and Moo Brew Brewery, with the new winery in its lee; and eight magnificent accommodation pavilions – four dedicated to artists Arthur Boyd, Brett Whiteley, Charles Blackman and Sidney Nola (their art on display in each) and four to architects Roy Grounds, Robin Boyd, Esmond Dorney and Walter Burley Griffin.

Conor’s new to Moorilla and charged with turning wine quality around. You can see it already in the whites and in the reds now maturing in barrel. It’s a bit early to get too excited, but it’s probably safe to predict Moorilla becoming one of Tasmania’s best producers very quickly, given its resources and will to excel.

It’s a must visit already and will only get better. Food at Source Restaurant is outstanding, up there with Hobart’s best.

At Stefano Lubiana Wines, Steve and Monique Lubiana make stunning, well-marketed table and sparkling wines from their 19-hectare estate. They moved here from Mildura in 1990.

Here the effort’s in fine-tuning already exemplary quality apparent in riesling, bottle-fermented sparkling wines, pinot grigio, sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, pinot noir and merlot. The two pinot noirs, in particular, are beautiful wines: the fine and fruity 2008 Primavera ($27) and the sensational, taut and savoury 2007 Estate at $45. And Steve’s opulent, fine-boned 2005 Tasmania Chardonnay, at $39, is in the same league.

And at nearby Derwent Estate, Pat Hanigan established vines in 1993 on a sheep and cattle farm that’s been in her family since 1913. Pat produces superb chardonnay grapes, good enough for Penfolds $130 flagship, Yattarna. She praises the help she’s had from Foster’s (owner of Penfolds) in developing her own wines, available at cellar door.

Fred Peacock, one of Tasmania’s leading vine experts rates the Derwent Estate chardonnay vineyard as one of the best sites in the state. He helped Pat choose the site and attributes the outstanding fruit quality in large measure to the underlying limestone.

Now Fred has a theory about high calcium soil and chardonnay quality – something that grew from his earlier years managing apple orchards and the superior keeping quality of fruit from trees growing in calcareous soils. But we’ll return to Fred’s theory in a later article.

Let’s end, instead, with a question. If Tasmanian vineyards now underpin two of Australia’s greatest chardonnays – Hardys Eileen Hardy and Penfolds Yattarna, both multi-region blends – what value is there for Tasmania, or in the longer run Australian wine, in persisting with the blends?

We’re moving to regional marketing. It’s the international language of fine wine. So why don’t Foster’s (owner of Penfolds) and Constellation (owner of Eileen Hardy) commit their very best Tasmanian chardonnay to their Tasmanian brands — Heemskerk and Bay of Fires respectively. Why dilute their Tasmanian offerings by bolstering multi-region blends that few international consumers are likely to understand?

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Christmas wine gifts — regional vignettes

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

You don’t have to be a wine lover to love a bottle of wine for Christmas. And with Australian regions now offering such a diversity of styles, a gift of regional, varietal wine ticks so many boxes: it’s lovingly grown and made by people with a passion for what they’re doing; it can be shared and savoured with friends and family; it can be put aside as a memento for later enjoyment; and it can have a great story to tell.

My wine shopping lists looks not at individual makers but a tiny vignette of distinguished regions with world-class wines to offer.

Barossa Valley – shiraz, grenache and mourvedre (aka mataro)
An hour north of Adelaide, and home of big, warm, soft reds made from one, some, or all of shiraz, grenache and mourvedre, quite often from extremely old vines. Look in particular for wines from individual vineyards. Like sleuths, an army of enthusiastic winemakers now criss-crosses the Barossa sourcing outstanding material from venerable old vines that once contributed their fruit anonymously to regional or cross-regional blends. You can now taste the fascinating Barossa wine story from vines dating to first European settlement in the mid nineteenth century and from all of the little nooks and crannies of this fascinating area.

Clare Valley – riesling
Riesling is the signature blend. The best are dry, vibrant, delicate and fruity when young and age well in good cellars, particularly reliably now that we have the screw cap. The Clare has no official sub-regions, but there’s a considerable range of riesling styles attached to locally known names like Sevenhill, Clare (the town itself), Watervale and Polish Hill. Prices vary between $15 and $45 for very high quality wines.

Adelaide Hills – chardonnay
This region comprises a high, cool slice of the north-to-south running Mount Lofty Ranges, bordered by McLaren Vale to the south and the Eden Valley to the north (and Clare is further north on the same ranges).
It makes a number of varieties well, including delightful, fine-boned shiraz, and Stephen George’s beautiful Ashton Hills pinot noir. But to me its high achievement to date is opulent, fine, complex chardonnay, produced in the broader region as well as in its two official, and cooler, sub-regions, Lenswood and Piccadilly Valley.

McLaren Vale – shiraz
McLaren Vale, bordering Adelaide’s southern suburbs, makes a bit of everything, but nothing finer than its ripe but delightfully savoury shiraz. It’s another of our very old producing regions with many winemakers exploring its diverse sites.

Coonawarra – cabernet sauvignon
It’s about four hours’ drive south of Adelaide and one from the Robe, on the Southern Ocean. The cool maritime climate favours cabernet sauvignon, the clear champion of the area. But the warm northern end grows good shiraz, too, and historically some of Coonawarra’s best wines have been blends of shiraz and cabernet. Nevertheless, cabernet reigns and the best are powerful but elegant, long-lived examples of this noble variety.

Grampians – shiraz
This western Victorian region producers many wine styles, but none better than shiraz. We’re now considerably south of South Australia’s McLaren Vale and Barossa regions, meaning a significantly cooler climate. In turn, this means considerably different styles of shiraz – flavours lean to the peppery and savoury with a more elegant structure than we see in those from the warmer north.

Macedon Ranges – pinot noir and chardonnay
The elevated, cool Macedon region, on the Great Divide, an hour’s drive north west of Melbourne, specialise in pinot noir and chardonnay. As the altitude, and therefore growing temperatures, vary considerably, Macedon makes outstanding table and sparkling wine from the two varieties – bubblies from the cooler sites and table wine from the warmer ones. The bubblies can be straight chardonnay, straight pinot noir or, more commonly, a blend of both. The best chardonnay and pinot noir table wines stand with the best in Australia.

Mornington Peninsula – pinot noir and chardonnay
This is another beautiful and unique Victorian region, a little south of Melbourne, with Port Phillip Bay to its west and Westernport Bay to its east. Pinot noir and chardonnay are the stars, although the region’s producers have pinned their star to the pinot noir banner. With the affluent Melbourne market nearby, thirty years’ of hard graft by the local growers, some very well funded, means very rich pickings. This is definitely one of Australia’s most exciting cool-climate growing regions.

Yarra Valley – shiraz, pinot noir, chardonnay cabernet sauvignon
Because of its size and diversity, the Yarra hits the excitement button with a wider range of varieties than most. Few regions could say, “my best shiraz, best pinot, best chardonnay and best cabernet are all as good as the best in the country”. The Yarra can.

Tasmania – riesling, chardonnay and pinot noir
Surrounded by the Southern Ocean and with its southerly location, Tasmania produces small crops of high quality wine grapes – two thirds of them chardonnay and pinot noir — used in both table and sparkling wine production. More than eighty small makers now turn out exciting wines, and larger producers increasingly source Tasmanian fruit for top end bubbly and table wines. While the real excitement lies in chardonnay and pinot, riesling hits the high notes, too.

Rutherglen – fortified muscat and muscadelle (formerly known as tokay)
Rutherglen, in Victoria’s hot northeast makes robust table wines. But its greatest achievements are the complex, sometimes profound, barrel aged fortified wines, culminating in the very old ‘rare’ category. There’s the intensely grapey, luscious muscat and equally luscious, but less grapey, muscadelle. Until recently muscadelle was labelled as ‘tokay’. But when the Hungarians claimed the name, our makers coined ‘topaque’, used by some makers. Others prefer to call the wine by its varietal name, muscadelle.

Canberra – riesling and shiraz
While fine, spicy, elegant shiraz (sometimes with a splash of viognier) is our standout wine style, made successfully now by many local producers, our rieslings are increasingly on the money.

Hunter Valley – semillon, chardonnay and shiraz
It’s a perennially niche region but it makes graceful, long lived wines from semillon chardonnay and shiraz. The semillons begin life austere and lemony but, with age, they develop a delicious toasty and honeyed depth – a distinctive style that people either love or hate. The chardonnays are generous and round but finely textured, utterly delicious and age well. Hunter shiraz is medium bodied, beautifully soft, almost tender, and develops an earthy, gamey complexity over time. The Hunter is something of an enigma – a region this far north should be too warm to make such graceful wines.

Margaret River – cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay
With Coonawarra, Western Australia’s Margaret River is Australia’s cabernet capital – although quite often it’s at its best coupled with merlot. Surprising for a region where vines can shoot as early as June, Margaret Rivers makes some of our most complex, interesting chardonnay, although I suspect it’s not a region-wide success.

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Brilliant regional wines emerging from Oz wine wreck

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Australian winemaking 2009 – it’s a tale of two industries: mature, vibrant, small and medium producers with their strong regional identities; and the headline-grabbing wreckage of the ‘brand Australia’ juggernaut.

A recent Winemakers’ Federation of Australia (WFA) report, Wine industry must confront the reality of oversupply, detailed the horror behind the chilling headlines.

The report concluded “at least 20% of bearing vines in Australia are surplus to requirement, with few long-term prospects. On cost of production alone, at least 17% of vineyard capacity is uneconomic. The problems are national – although some regions are more adversely affected – and are not restricted to specific varieties or price points”.

The quiet panic behind a decline in exports and domestic sales of Australian wine manifested itself most obviously in the sell off of vineyards and wineries by two of our largest wine producers, Constellation Wines Australia (formerly BRL Hardy) and Foster’s.

Constellation simply continued the dumping of assets that began with their departure from Canberra, announced late in 2006. But the asset dumping increased in scale towards the end of 2008 as they put three wineries up for sale – Goundrey, in Western Australia, the historic Leasingham Winery in Clare and the Stonehaven Winery at Padthaway. Only the Goundrey winery sold. The other two were mothballed in the absence of buyers.

Earlier this year, borrowing a well-worn political phrase, Foster’s said it would sell 36 ‘non-core’ vineyards and close three wineries. This came on top off widespread value destruction following their acquisition of Southcorp Wines for $2.5 billion in 2005.

While many of the problems facing Foster’s may have been self-inflicted, the larger backdrop of the global financial crisis and a rising Australian dollar exaggerated the effects of incipient oversupply – and sucked the industry along with it.

Australian exports peaked in October 2007, says the WFA, and have since declined by eight million cases and 21 per cent in value. This coincided with a decline in domestic sales of Australian wine and an even larger rise in the volume of imports, spurred by the rising dollar.

The combination of rising supply and falling demand leaves Australia with a surplus of more than 100 million cases. And this is set to double over the next two years because we’re producing 20–40 million cases a year more than we sell.

This, of course, explains the amazing range of wine bargains being thrown at us from all directions – the big, direct-importing retailers; wine club operators, including the Wine Society, Cellarmasters and Wine Selectors; the more aggressive independent retailers, including cleanskin specialists; and even the auction houses, notably GraysOnline.com

While Coles and Woolworths continue to dominate liquor retailing, the wine surplus encourages to the growth of alternative channels as the wine clubs and clean skin specialist boost sales of labels totally under their control.

Indeed, this aspect of wine selling (and it includes the big retailers with their direct imports and private domestic wine labels) concerns winemakers deeply. WFA points the finger at supermarkets, declaring “excess supplies have allowed supermarkets to move from customers to competitors by launching their own low-price products, without the need to invest in capital infrastructure or long-term health of the industry. This clutters the market place and eats into margins”.

But if the retailers exploit the surplus (and we all benefit from lower prices while it lasts) they didn’t create it.

Unquestionably, the strong Australian dollar makes many producers internationally uncompetitive through no fault of their own. But the WFA says that producers in many regions bear production costs that are simply too high for the quality of fruit they produce.

While this means bargains galore as producers seek to offload surplus wine, ultimately it isn’t unsustainable, meaning that many enterprises will go bust. Thankfully, the WFA calls on the industry to sort out its own problems. It doesn’t seek government subsidies other than exit packages for small growers and wineries along the lines of those for small block irrigators – in other words, one-off help to get out of the industry, not a subsidy to perpetuate oversupply.

While the low margins forced by massive oversupply affects the profitability of most makers, there’s a multi-faceted, energetic and mature industry that’s not oversupplied and has a pretty clear vision of where it’s headed.

We have only to drive up the Barton or Federal Highways to see this regionally based industry on our doorstep. It’s been hard yakka, sustained over decades, but producers like Brindabella Hills, Jeir Creek, Helm, Shaw Vineyard Estate, Clonakilla, Lark Hill and Lerida Estate have successfully built brands and customer bases – some in overseas markets.

The same story unfolds across Australia from east to west, and from the high country in Queensland in the north to the coolest reaches of Tasmania. Down there a few weeks back, Steve and Monique Lubiana told me they continued to export successfully despite the rising dollar – a benefit of selling a strongly branding, high quality luxury product. Of course, not all makers can be up there.

But if we sniff around, we see not just regional specialties, but minute subdivision of these regions. A good example is the small army of small, mostly young makers criss-crossing the Barossa Valley making tiny quantities of beautiful shiraz, grenache and mourvedre from ancient vines whose fruit no longer goes to the anonymous blending vats of large companies.

Ironically, given the pain they’ve felt, both Foster’s and Constellation continue to make cutting edge wines like Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay and the magnificent Tasmanian based House of Arras bubblies made by Constellation’s Ed Carr.

As overproduction winds back, it’s possible to see for Australia a new industry based on what various regions do best. That may mean our exit, domestically and internationally, from very low price points and that much of our cheaper quaffing wine could come from better-watered countries – a future where we drink Chilean cask wine but bottles of Cowra chardonnay, Yarra Valley Pinot and Barossa shiraz.

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National Show shouldn’t ignore gaps in its ranks

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Canberra’s National Wine Show bills itself as the grand final of the Australian circuit. But to deserve the mantle it needs to re-invent itself. In reality, it’s just another capital city show, more notable for what’s not in the tasting line up than what is.

Its strength is the high standard of judging and the probity of its results, meaning that as drinkers we can rely generally rely on the award winners to put a smile on our faces. This is partly driven by stringent entry conditions, restricting entry in many classes to medal winners from other shows.

But the problem I see as I flick through the catalogue (you can view it at www.rncas.org.au) is the absence of so many leading, generally small, producers from most classes. In certain cases, such as the semillon and tokay and muscat classes this leads to the dominance of just one or two producers.

For example, in this year’s class 18 for 2008 vintage and older semillons, Tyrrell’s and McWilliams fielded 13 of the 22 entries. Good on them for putting forward so many extraordinary Hunter wines. But where were the dozens of other wonderful Hunter semillon producers? And in the tokay and muscat classes, Morris of Rutherglen once again dominated, but in the absence of other distinguished Rutherglen producers.

While single companies don’t dominate classes less regionally specific than semillon or fortifieds, the list of notable absentees expands. For example, in class 1 for 2009 vintage dry rieslings, one of Australia’s great specialties, 11 companies entered 19 wines – barely touching the diversity this variety offers across Australia.

The gold medallists, Knappstein Enterprise Clare Valley Handpicked Riesling and 2009 and its cellar mate from the Lion Nathan group, Knappstein Clare Valley Ackland Vineyard Riesling 2009, are beautiful wines and readily available. But given their victory in such a narrow, unrepresentative field, forgive me for not accepting the hype that they’re champs from a grand final. They’re not. And the pattern repeated itself throughout the show.

At the trophy presentation dinner, Jeremy Stockman, representing the major sponsor, Vintage Cellars (part of the Wesfarmers-owned Coles Liquor Group), called on the show organisers to rethink their approach and find ways to attract more entries from small makers.

As the Australian industry reels from the effects of overproduction and the wreckage of the ‘brand Australia’ juggernaut (we now have a surplus of about 100 million cases and growing), it’s shifting its marketing focus to regional specialisation – trying to sell our extraordinary, diverse winemaking achievements locally and in export markets.

In this environment, it’s perhaps logical for our look-alike capital city shows, run by conservative agricultural societies, to adopt a regional focus, too. This is not a call to bar medium and large companies from exhibiting, but to encourage participation from small producers as well.

It’s a difficult task, partly because many of our very best small makers happily develop their wine styles and markets independently of the show system. Winemakers like Clonakilla’s Tim Kirk and Tapanappa’s Brian Croser, for example, see no need for independent benchmarking or show awards. For various reasons, those that do see benefits in shows are more likely to enter in the growing number of regional shows (limited to wines produced in a single region or zone) or perhaps events like Canberra’s Winewise Small Vignerons Awards.

A solution might be a more structured show system that streams winners from regional shows to state shows to a truly national show. But given the independent, competitive and national focus of our capital city shows, this will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to achieve.

It might be more practicable, therefore, for the National to seize the initiative by opening its doors to award winners from a greater range of regional shows and high-quality independent competitions like Winewise Small Vignerons and the Sydney International 100. However, if Canberra’s National simply ignores the gaps in its entry ranks, it will become increasingly irrelevant. The organisers have an opportunity now to re-invent the show and make it the truly innovative event that it was in the eighties.

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A Christmas wine wish list

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Taittinger Prelude Grand Crus Champagne $130
There’s a lovable elegance and creamy richness to the Taittinger Champagnes. And with the non-vintage Prelude blend comes the extra flavour dimension from some of the most highly rated pinot noir and chardonnay vineyards of the Montagne de Reims and Cotes des Blancs sub regions respectively. A gentle, creamy softness makes Prelude the ideal drought breaker at Christmas.

WITH THE OYSTERS

Stefano Lubiana Tasmania Chardonnay 2005 $39
Steve and Monique Lubiana’s cool vineyard site produces chardonnays with a high natural acidity that accentuates varietal flavour and gives the structure and intensity to match ultra-fresh oysters. A little bottle age makes the flavour so much more enticing. Amazingly this is the current release, with the 2006 due for release around March.

WITH THE LOBSTER

Main Ridge Mornington Estate Chardonnay 2007 $52
There’s a unique purity, delicacy and finesse to Rosalie and Nat White’s barrel-fermented-and-matured chardonnay – with the opulence and complexity to complement fresh, cold lobster.

WITH THE CHRISTMAS HAM

Bream Creek Tasmania Pinot Noir 2008 $30
As soon as I tasted this recently in Tasmania, juicy, sweet Christmas ham came to mind. The wine comes from Fred Peacock’s Bream Creek vineyard on a high ridge overlooking Marion Bay, to the east of Hobart. The wine’s keynote is a pristine, mouth-watering, delicious pinot flavour. While this youthful fruitiness suits ham now, I suspect that if cellared the wine’s flavour will progress to a more complex, savoury, gamey state over the next five to 10 years.

WITH THE ROAST TURKEY

Ruchottes Chambertin Clos des Ruchottes (Armand Rousseau) 2005 $350
Well, there’s pinot noir and there’s Burgundy. Perhaps it’s vinocide to quaff this illustrious, potentially long-lived classic so young. But surely we can indulge in absolute luxury once year. 2005 is a great year for Burgundy and Domaine Armand Rousseau is one of the great producers.

WITH CHRISTMAS PUDDING

Champagne Krug Brut 1996 $500
Best to finish on a high note. Good vintages of Krug, like 1985 and 1996, are the Bradmans of bubbly. They possess the finesse and elegance of Champagne but also the power and gravitas of truly great wine. Like the Chambertin of Armand Rousseau, above, Krug vintage is truly awe-inspiring.

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Tasmania rolls Burgundy and Champagne into one

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

In the nineties as Australian wine regions agonised over their boundaries, Tasmania got smart. Its winemakers saw that as small, comparatively homogenous producers, their interests would be best served by promoting the island as a whole. In opting for ‘Tasmania’ as their only entry in the register of protected names they neatly avoided the distraction of formally defining the state’s widely spread wine producing areas.

In the ensuing decade, as other states with vastly more varied wine styles defined zones, regions within zones and even sub-regions within regions, Tasmania stuck to its guns and still has ‘Tasmania’ as its only official appellation. But this hasn’t hindered the emergence of regional identities within the state.

Indeed, as soon as you set foot in a Tassie winery you’ll be given a copy of the excellent Tasmania’s wine routes 2009–10 and see on the map four regions: North-West, Tamar Valley, East Coast and Southern. And if you happen to be Hobart based, you’ll see the Southern region further sub-divided into the Derwent Valley, Coal River Valley and Huon Valley/d’Entrecasteaux.

But the location of Bream Creek Vineyard in the East Coast region, for example, demonstrates the difficulty of formally defining boundaries. It’s just a spit from Coal River Valley or Hobart but more than two hours’ drive from the northern end of the East Coast.

With vineyards located between 41 and 43 degrees south, and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, Tasmania enjoys a moderate climate with an extended, cool ripening period. This suits the production of delicate wine styles, dominated by pinot noir and chardonnay, used in both sparkling and table wine making The two varieties accounted for 71 per cent of production in 2008.

While the split between sparkling and table wine production is anybody’s guess, it could be as high as fifty-fifty given increased Tasmanian sourcing from mainland sparkling-wine producers and a growing number of home-grown brands.

Talking to grape growers across Tasmania it becomes clear that Constellation Wines (formerly BRL Hardy) is a major buyer of grapes for both still and sparkling wine. And Foster’s, Australia’s largest winemaker, is on the scout, too, snapping up top quality fruit for its Heemskerk brand and multi-regional icon blends, including Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay.

In the latter, Foster’s has simply discovered, as Hardy’s did a decade earlier, that some of our greatest chardonnay grapes come from Tasmania. For example, Eileen Hardy Chardonnay, Constellation’s flagship white wine, has been predominantly Tasmanian for around ten years.

While the big producers, especially Constellation, exert a profound and positive impact on the Tasmanian wine scene, the view from the ground is of tens of small and medium sized independent makers sprinkled around the island.

The Australian Wine Industry Database lists 84 Tasmanian vignerons. But I suspect the number might have grown since it was compiled a year ago.

Tasmanian makers, focused at the top end of the bottled wine market, account for half a per cent of Australia’s wine grape output, contributing just 9,628 tonnes of the 1,827,647 tonnes crushed in 2008.

Pinot noir, at 4,355 tonnes, is the state’s most widely grown variety, accounting for 45 per cent of the crush in 2008 – highlighting the vast difference between this cool little Island and the mainland, where pinot accounts for only about two per cent of the harvest.

In 2008 Tasmanians harvested 2,501 tonnes of chardonnay, its second most important variety; 992 tonnes of sauvignon blanc; 732 tonnes of riesling; 452 tonnes of pinot gris and tiny quantities of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, gewürztraminer, shiraz and other niche varieties.

In effect, given the dominance of pinot noir and chardonnay, Tasmania is the equivalent of France’s Champagne and Burgundy regions rolled into one, albeit on a far smaller scale.

Tasmania’s first modern vineyards appeared near Launceston in 1956 (Jean Miguet’s La Provence, now Providence and owned by Stuart Bryce) and on the Derwent in 1958 (Claudio Alcorso’s Moorilla Estate, now owned by David Walsh and partners).

But growth was slow. Thirty years after Miguet planted his first vines, Tasmania had only 47 hectares of bearing vines, producing 154 tonnes of grapes – equivalent to about 11 thousand dozen bottles.

By 1999 the area under vine had grown almost tenfold to 463 hectares, producing 3,199 tonnes (224 thousand dozen bottles). And by 2008 vines covered 1,315 hectares, yielding 9,628 tonnes (674 thousand dozen bottles).

As we’ve seen, this accounts for only half a per cent of Australia’s wine production. But it’s all pitched at the top end of the market. While some of it may disappear anonymously into mainstream sparkling wine blends, the majority come to market under Tasmanian labels.

It’s far more than the Tasmanians themselves can drink, so producers look to the mainland, tourists and exports for sales in an increasingly competitive market.

Fortunately for them, they have something unique and delightful to offer, as we’ll see over the next few weeks.

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