Category Archives: Vineyard

At a regional shiraz dinner a few years back, Garry Parker told me he approached wine marketing as he did building a career as a barrister from 1963 – on the belief that good performance would attract a following.

And that’s exactly what he’s achieved at Long Rail Gully Wines – a deep respect among his winemaking peers and well-informed consumers, if not yet with the wider acclaim his wines deserve.

With wife Barbara and son Richard, Parker established Long Rail Gully at Murrumbateman in 1998 as a serious business investment, capable of standing in its own right.

Richard Parker managed the venture from the outset. As a science graduate from Sydney University, he’d helped manage the family’s wheat, sheep and canola interest out west. But he recalls resisting a move into vines – concerned about the instability of the market.

However, Hardy’s move into Canberra, with the promise of a fixed-term grape contract, settled the argument and underpinned the family’s new venture in the short term. At the time Richard was half way through an agricultural science degree at Charles Sturt University.

“I was able to flip this into wine science”, he says, recalling how his mates said he’d not have to worry about viticulture as he’d know more about vines than the lecturers by the time he’d finished planting.

The family established the bulk of the 22-hectare vineyard, one of Canberra’s largest, in 1998 and in recent years replaced some of the cabernet sauvignon with pinot gris.

The vineyard now has seven hectares of shiraz, four of riesling, about three hectares each of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and pinot gris and one of pinot noir. These are rounded figures

While the grape contract with Hardy’s underpinned the early years, Long Rail Gully planned its own brand from the outset, making its first wine in 2001, just three years after establishing vines.

The business now has several strands – grape sales to other makers (including Clonakilla, Capital Wines, Eden Road and a couple of Hunter producers), contract winemaking for other grape growers and making the Long Rail Gully Range (current releases reviewed below).

Wine making demands considerable capital investment, so the Parkers now have on site a very large, insulated winery, all the right winemaking gear and even a bottling line (most Canberra producers use a mobile bottling contractor).

The Parkers are about to export to China. Exports will include purpose-made wines, now in barrel, as well as the Long Rail Gully range. Richard says the standard wines are to be cork sealed to meet market demands. But the premium wines will be screw-cap sealed – emphasising the quality benefits of the seal.

Long Rail Gully wines are available at selected outlets and cellar door. See www.longrailgully.com.au for details.

Long Rail Gully Riesling 2011 6-pack $17 ($92 for 6) Pale straw to lemon colour; lime-like varietal aroma with a floral lift; intense lemon and lime varietal flavours on the palate, carried by the delicate, tart acidity of the cool vintage, with a touch of musk in the dry aftertaste. The wine continued to drink well for days after opening, suggesting a long cellaring life. It’s blended from the two clones in the vineyard: Geisenheim, contributing leaner lime and spicy notes; and McWilliams Eden Valley clone, lending lime and musk.

Long Rail Gully Pinot Gris 2011 $ 20 ($110 for 6) Winemaker Richard Parker sees this as his stand-out white of the vintage – not surprising for a variety that thrives in cool ripening conditions. Although it’s only slightly more alcoholic than the riesling (12.1 versus 11.5 per cent) it’s considerably fuller bodied, with a rich, silky texture. This reflects the making technique: a component tank fermented to capture fruit flavour and aromatic high notes; another portion fermented and matured on yeast lees in old oak barrels, to build body and texture. The result is a vibrant, fresh wine, leading with a pear-like varietal aroma and flavour, with layers of succulent stone-fruit flavours adding further interest – all of this embedded in the rich, silky texture.

Long Rail Gully Pinot Noir 2010 $30  ($162 for 6) A cellar door favourite and the priciest wine in the range, Long Rail Gully pinot noir challenges the notion that the variety doesn’t suit Canberra. This is a class act, certainly not reaching the heights of our best shirazes, but delivering the real pinot experience. The initial impacts are of fragrant, vibrant, varietal red berries with a stalky note – probably derived from whole bunches included in the ferment ­– and a smooth, velvety texture. With aeration, more savoury “umami” flavours arrive – layering the fruit with an earthy, beef-stock note. There’s drinking pleasure galore in this wine. A tasting of the 2005 vintage confirms its keeping ability.

Long Rail Gully Merlot 2005 and 2006 $22 ($119 for 6) Is bottle age part of the marketing plan, we ask Garry and Richard Parker? Alas, no, they say. Merlot doesn’t sell; it seems to be giving way to pinot. But the almost-sold-out 2005, and 2006 that follows, offer delicious drinking – and a great opportunity to experience the extra flavour dimension that comes with bottle age. These are highly aromatic, plummy wines with the deep, sweet, earthy, chocolaty notes of age, a pleasant leafy edge and plush, juicy tannins.

Long Rail Gully Shiraz 2008 and 2009 $24 ($129 for 6) These beautiful wines reveal the great strength of Canberra shiraz, albeit in contrasting styles. The almost-sold-out 2008 reveals a peppery side of shiraz not often seen in Canberra. In this instance we see both white and black pepper, the former normally associated with very cool conditions and sometimes with unripeness.

In Long Rail Gully it’s as if the grapes accumulated sugar (sugar ripeness), while flavour ripeness lagged behind – a common situation in warm Australia. However, ripeness, tinged with white pepper, seems to have just staggered over the line, giving a wine of 14.5 per cent alcohol and distinct, just-ripe white pepper flavour. This is a very pleasing flavour in one of our district’s better shirazes.

The 2009, however, moves another step up the quality ladder. Here, aromatic, floral red-berry varietal flavours stand at the centre – reminiscent of shiraz from France’s tiny Cote-Rotie region. The supple, sweet palate and savoury, spicy background flavours add to this impression. The wine’s delicious to drink now but should cellar well for many years. It’s phenomenally good – and undervalued. But don’t count on that lasting as it’s like to attract attention.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2012 First published 25 January 2012 in The Canberra Times

We always want what we don’t have and value the scarcest things most of all. Australian winemakers value acidity – tasting berries anxiously as an ascendant sun pushes sugar levels ever higher as acid levels decline.

In the Mosel, it’s the opposite. There the winemakers value sugar, something Australia produces in abundance. At 50 degrees north only vines on the steepest south, southeast and southwest slopes, like giant solar panels, collect sufficient heat to ripen grapes fully. Acid levels remain high til the end and Germany’s quality system even grades wine according to the sugar content of the grapes.

English writer, Hugh Johnson, likened the impossibly steep slopes to toast held to the fire – though at this latitude the sun’s oblique autumn angle ensures a very slow roast, ensuring the intense but delicate flavours of the area’s unique riesling.

On the right slopes, proven over two millennia, the grapes do, indeed, achieve full sugar and flavour ripeness and retain high acidity. And because of the high humidity, botrytis cinerea flourishes, dehydrating the berries and further concentrating sugar and acidity.

However, not all of the riesling succumbs to botrytis, widening the options available to winemakers – from fresh, fruity dry wines unaffected by botrytis, through delicate, semi-sweet styles, to profound, sticky wonders made only of rotten, shrivelled berries (beerenauslese and trockenbeerenauslese).

After enjoying his wines at a stall in Bernkastel, we visit Heiko Fass, a small maker based at Neumagen-Dhron. A graduate of Geisenheim wine university, Fass took over the old family business from his father and brothers.

He operates the compact cellar single handed, receiving small batches of hand-harvested grapes – picked by the same Polish family that’ve worked for his family for 50 years.

Everything in the steep vineyards is done by hand, he says, meaning Mosel can only ever be about quality, not quantity.

In the cellar we see similarities with mainstream Australian riesling making, but also some notable differences. Like leading Australian makers, Fass transports small batches of grapes quickly to the cellar, separates the juice into free-run and pressings components, settles the juice and ferments it at controlled temperatures in stainless steel tanks, keeping the various components separate until final blending.

A crucial difference, however, is maturing batches of the higher quality rieslings in “fuder”, old oak barrels of about 1,000-litre capacity, used widely in Mosel. Fass also uses a couple of larger 1,800-litre and 2,000-litre oak vessels. He says his father made some of the fuder, including a couple bearing 1965 and 1969 date stamps.

These old vessels allow micro-oxidation, mellowing the wine, muting some of the aromatics and adding texture, without injecting woody flavours.

Upstairs in the living room, overlooking the Mosel, we taste a range of Fass dry, semi-sweet and sweet rieslings from the Hofberger and Roterd vineyards, near Dhron (hence “Dhroner Hofberger” or Dhroner Roterd” on the labels).

What makes riesling sweet or dry? In short, the winemaker – if she wants dry, she ferments all the sugar; if she wants semi-sweet or sweet, she refrigerates the wine, the yeasts quit fermenting and she then filters the yeasts out, just to be sure. So, the sweeter the wine, the lower the alcohol; the drier the wine, the higher the alcohol – all relative, of course, to the amount of sugar in the juice originally.

In the case of the Fass rieslings, the driest wine at an undetectable 3.5 grams of sugar per litre, contained 12.5 per cent alcohol; the half-dry version had 16.8 grams and 11.5 per cent of sugar and alcohol respectively; and the kabinett, spaetlese and auslese at 7–8 per cent alcohol, contained between 48 and 220 grams per litre of sugar.

But because of the high acidity, the 48 grams-of-sugar kabinett remained delicate, clean and refreshing – definitely a three-glass wine; and the truly sticky sweet auslese, though luscious, remained light, buoyant and completely not cloying.

After the tasting we stop in Piesport to see the remains of an old Roman winery – a reminder of the area’s extraordinary winemaking history

If you’re visiting the Mosel, Heiko will gladly show you the cellar and wines by appointment. The visitor centre in Bernkastel has contact details for all Mosel producers.

A short walk out of Bernkastel, we join half a dozen young members of the Oxford University Wine Club for a “tasting and light supper afterwards” at Dr Loosen – one of the Mosel’s most visible, best and outspoken producers. Our host is owner, Ernst (Ernie) Loosen.

Loosen starts with a map of the middle Mosel’s vineyards, compiled in 1868 by the Prussian tax authorities. He says it still holds and became his basis for defining vineyard quality ever since he took over the family business from his father in 1988.

Loosen produces about 40 Mosel wines and takes us through a representative dozen. As we progress he explains, with exasperation, Germany’s confusing wine labelling laws, commenting, “We Germans really hate our customers. We want to make it as difficult as possible”.

Rather than a confusing matrix of regulations for Germany’s different regions, Loosen favours a system that ranks vineyards by their quality, then allows winemakers to choose how they make the wine and whether it’s sweet or dry or in between.

Loosen owns parts of some of the Mosel’s greatest vineyards, including Sonnenuhr, opposite the village of Wehlen; Wurzgarten, just downstream of Urzig; Pralat and Treppchen, opposite the village of Erden; and Lay, adjacent to Bernkastel.

We start with the two dry rieslings, relative newcomers to the portfolio and labelled simply Blue Slate and Red Slate, reflecting the different soils of the vineyards they come from.

But the delicate, sweeter, low alcohol wines from the great vineyards take centre stage. In the warm, sunny sitting room, we linger longer than we ought on the magnificent Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spaetlese 2010. Then with increasing pleasure we move through the sweeties, culminating in the profound Erdener Pralat Riesling Auslese Goldkapsel 2010 and Bernkastler Lay Riesling Eiswein 2008.

The tasting over, Loosen kicks off the “light supper” with a fresh, taut, bone-dry and delicate sparkling wine, based on a 1990 riesling auslese from the nearby Himmelreich vineyard at Graach.

The tasting finished at around six and we leave the light supper, Loosen and the Oxford mob at around two in the morning. By now we’ve sleuthed our collective our way through 18 mature mystery wines from Switzerland, the USA, South Africa, France, Germany and Australia ¬– the latter represented by the still excellent Coldstream Hills Reserve Yarra Valley Pinot Noir 1992.

The German wines came at the very end, with Loosen’s comment, “Now we will drink ourselves sober on Mosel”. The first, a still lively but mature Erdener Treppchen Riesling Spaetlese 1969, made by his grandfather, could’ve been 20-30 year old we thought, not 42. And the second, introduced as “a refresher”, had been put aside and never sold because of its searing acidity at the time. This was, indeed, a vibrant refresher. We guessed its age as three or four years. In fact, it was an Erdener Treppchen Riesling Spaetlese 1983.

While this demonstrates the staying power of Mosel in a good cellar, the main game for visitors to the region and shoppers in Australia will remain recent vintages. Current selections in Australia go back to 2004, and there are still some of the excellent 2007s around if you look hard.

MOSEL IMPORTERS

This is not a comprehensive list but should, however, lead you to some terrific Mosel rieslings.

Dr Loosen – www.drloosen.de

Imported by Cellarhand, Melbourne (www.cellarhand.com.au). Woolworths, through Dan Murphy, has an exclusive on Dr Loosen Blue Slate Riesling Trocken (dry). We tried and liked the 2010 vintage at Loosen’s cellars, Bernkastel.

Weingut Staffelter Hof

Imported by Canberra’s Lester and Adrienne Jesberg on indent. Winemaker Jan Klein (“one of a young brigade achieving great things”, writes Jesberg) sources fruit from the Letterlay and Steffensberg vineyard. Join the mailing list to hear of future indents by writing to Adrienne at adrjes@bigpond.net.au

Fritz Haag, A. J. Adam, Reinhold Haart, Knebel, Schloss Lieser, Willi Schaefer and Schmitges

Imported by Eurocentric Wines, Sydney (www.eurocentricwine.com.au). The website links to the producer sites.

J. J. Prum

Imported by Bibendum Wine Company, Melbourne (www.bibendum.com.au).

Reichsgraf von Kesselstatt

Imported by Domaine Wine Shippers, Melbourne (www.domainewineshippers.com.au).

Egon Muller

Imported by Negociants Australia (www.necociantsaustralia.com)

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011 First published 12 October 2011 in The Canberra Times

We’re a die-hard lot us riesling lovers, clinging to a great variety that appeals to few. We talk it up. We pore over the results of Canberra’s annual International Riesling Challenge. We admire Frankland Estate’s International Riesling Tasting. Then Coles liquor executive, Grant Ramage, reveals the sorry truth, “Riesling’s just not going anywhere. Nielsen data says sales are down nine per cent year-on-year to the end of August”.

In more gloomy riesling reality, the press release accompanying today’s wine of the week crows, “Sales of pinot gris/grigio have now overtaken riesling in this country”. Depressing news about a variety that more often than not produces ordinary wine.

We’re fishing for good riesling news, high on the variety after eight days in the central Mosel, Germany’s riesling heartland – source of the world’s most delicate, most profound rieslings.

We’ve carried these aromas and flavours in our head for over thirty years – memories born in the late seventies from tasting wines from the great 1976 vintage. What unforgettable wines they were, even if we knew little of the regions or names at the times.

The wines did the talking – gently fragrant kabinett and spaetlese rieslings, poised softly, ethereally on the palate, delivering intense flavours and a unique, perfect, thrilling balance between sweetness and dazzling, fresh acidity. Even the profound, sweet ausleses, beerenausleses and trockenbeerenausleses sat delicately on the palate, never cloying, never too sweet, but filling the room with their fragrance.

You can’t forget wines like that, and we didn’t. Though the selection included wines from the Rhine River, a few Mosel wines in particular etched their peculiar names in our minds – Bernkasteler Doctor, Wehlener Sonnenuhr and Graacher Himmelreich.

We were new in the trade at the time, but studied the vineyard maps, gained a basic understanding, and over the decades, enjoyed other vintages without ever losing the thrill of first discovery. These were great and unique wines.

But even then, long before the chardonnay or sauvignon blanc ages, selling German riesling in Australia proved difficult. It took years for Farmer Bros to move the 400 cases of 1976 it’d imported. David and Richard Farmer and staff probably drank more than they sold (I’m still grateful).

And nothing’s changed, says Grant Ramage, quoting the Nielsen year-to-August figures again. Sales of all German wines increased by 2.5 per cent in value but declined in volume, accounting for just one thousandth of wine sales in Australia.

Even in Germany, it’s not easy to find these home grown glories. In east and west Germany, in the weeks before arriving in the Mosel, we search supermarket shelves in vain. We find long lines of bland wines, German and imported, mostly priced between two and four euros.

At a tasting with renowned Mosel producer Dr Loosen, a German-based, English wine distributor confirms what we’ve feared. He tells us, “The Germans have no appreciation of what they’ve got. That’s why Ernie [Loosen] exports 70 per cent of his wine to America”.

But if sales of German riesling disperse in little wisps to admirers around the world, here in the central Mosel, up and downstream of Bernkastel, riesling rules, accounting for 60 per cent of the area’s 9,000 hectares of vines.

We didn’t come here for the other 40 per cent. However, because we’re there and we can, we taste a few examples of muller-thurgau (rivaner), elbling, pinot noir (spatburgunder), dornfelder and pinot blanc. But they’re not wines you’d travel 20,000 kilometres to taste.

We didn’t come to try the increasingly popular dry (trocken) rieslings either. But we do and conclude that the classic, delicate, semi-sweet versions – with their unique balance of acidity and sugar – remain the region’s great specialty.

Our visit coincides with the middle Mosel wine festival, so we taste dozens of wines simply by wandering from marquee to marqee strung along a riverfront road at Bernkastel. It’s an annual event, held each September shortly before vintage, and worth attending.

There we savour old friends, like J. J. Prum’s exquisite Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Spaetlese 2007 at three euros a glass or 17 euros a bottle – amazingly modest prices for a wine of this stature.

We enjoy unfamiliar wines, too, and stop to chat with young winemaker Heiko Fass. Later we drive up to his underground cellars, built by his father in 1969, at Neumagen-Dhron. There we learn more about Fass rieslings from the Hofberger and Roterd vineyards, Dhron – and his recent access, through his wife’s family, to the great Goldtropfchen vineyard at Piesport, around the next bend of the Mosel, down stream.

Over the next days we drive upstream to the old Roman provincial capital, Trier, and downstream to Koblenz, where the Mosel flows into the Rhine. Our constant travelling companion, Hugh Johnson’s wonderful World Atlas of Wine, with its detailed contour maps, allows us to identify the great vineyards on the Mosel’s impossibly steep south, south east and south west facing slopes.

Our other constant companion is a desire to drink those beautiful rieslings, which we do in buckets. What we’re not expecting, though, is to taste, alongside those rieslings, an eclectic and great range of perfectly cellared whites and reds from Switzerland, Loire Valley, Washington State, Corton-Charlemagne, South Africa, Aix-en-Provence, Yarra Valley, Volnay, Charmes-Chambertin, Pomerol and St Estephe.

But we did. And that’s part of the continuing Mosel story next week.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011 First published 5 October 2011 in The Canberra Times

Early in August, Lark Hill Winery bought an established 3.6-hectare vineyard at Murrumbateman. The purchase coincided with the release of Lark Hill Shiraz Viognier 2010 and Viognier 2011 (top drops today), both sourced from the vineyard.

Chris Carpenter commented, “We purchased the vineyard in order to secure our long-term supplies of these varieties, and have renamed it ‘Dark Horse Vineyard’. We will be converting this vineyard to biodynamic and organic farming this year”.

Carpenter says the vineyard comprises about 1.2 hectares each of shiraz and sangiovese, about 0.8 hectares of viognier, 0.4 hectares of marsanne and a small patch of roussanne (part of the Rhone Valley white family, along with marsanne and viognier).

The purchase increases the Carpenter’s vineyard holdings to about 10 hectares – the balancing being on their original vineyard, planted in 1978, on the Lake George escarpment, overlooking Bungendore. At 860 metres it’s Canberra’s highest, coolest vineyard.

Over the years David and Sue Carpenter pared back varieties that didn’t work on this cool site. As a result they now focus on the proven winners – riesling, chardonnay and pinot noir and, from 2006, Austria’s specialty white variety, gruner veltliner. By this time their son, Chris, had joined the business and shiraz had entrenched itself as Canberra’s standout variety.

The site being too cold for shiraz, the Carpenters sourced material from lower, warmer Murrumbateman for several years before taking the plunge and buying their own vineyard this month.

The vineyard was one of two blocks in the Ravensworth operation, associated with Bryan and Jocelyn Martin and other business associates over the years.

Martin says the Ravensworth name belonged originally to Brendan Ryan and an American partner.

Later, Michael Kirk, brother of Clonakilla’s Tim Kirk, bought Brendan Ryan’s section of the vineyard and converted Ravensworth from a partnership to a company, with Kirk and the Martins as shareholders. Kirk leased his section of the vineyard to the Martins.

In this month’s transactions, the Carpenters bought Kirk’s section of the vineyard and the Martins bought Kirk out of Ravensworth, to be become sole owners of the name as well as the other section of vineyard.

Martin says he planted the vineyards and knows every vine by name. But he’s relieved to be managing only one vineyard from now on. While the Carpenters vineyard includes the marsanne vines behind Ravensworth’s highly regarded dry white, Chris Carpenter says they will sell the fruit to Martin.

The Carpenters intend to convert the Murrumbatemen vineyard to certified biodynamic – an expensive process, expected to take about five years.

Chris Carpenter says they made no shiraz from the vineyard this year but expect to produce a shiraz viognier under the Dark Horse label in 2012. Lark Hill produced sangiovese from the site in 2007 and 2009 ¬ – the latter, still being offered at cellar door.

The Lark Hill Shiraz Viognier 2010 reviewed below came from the vineyard but had been bottled and labelled before the purchase, so doesn’t have the Dark Horse name on the label.

Lark Hill Canberra District Shiraz Viognier 2010 $40 Grown at Murrumbateman and made at Lark Hill, this wine combines shiraz and the white variety viognier (six per cent of the blend) fermented together. It’s a highly fragrant combination, inspired by the wines of Cote-Rotie in France’s northern Rhone Valley. In the 2010 vintage the floral, spicy and peppery aromas and flavours come with a marked savoury streak and quite firm tannins. That’s firm in a slinky, elegant, medium-bodied context. It builds in interest over time – always a good sign.

QR codes – smarties are onto them

Lark Hill introduced QR codes to their back labels with the release of their 2011 vintage whites – riesling, gruner veltliner and viognier.

QR stands for “quick response” code and refers to a little, square white-on-black pattern, readable by special scanners or smart phones. They’ve been a big deal in Japan for yonks and now seem certain to spread in Australia with the rapid uptake of smart phones – including Apple’s iPhone and other brands, such as Samsung Galaxy, using Google’s Android operating system.

Free scanning apps for the phones read QR codes, which can be encoded with a variety of data, including a link to a website. This is what the Carpenters use in their codes.

Chris Carpenter writes, “I believe we are the first Canberra wine to use QRs. Our aim is to provide what amounts to after-sales support for people – so if a bottle is picked up in a bottle shop, restaurant or similar, anyone with a smart phone can find out more about the wine including its RRP, reviews and our tasting notes.

We will be keeping these links as permanent pages on our website and continuing to add reviews and tasting notes as the wines age – so the QR codes should be useful even if somebody picks up a bottle in their cellar in 10 years (or 20!)”.

Using Bakodo (a free app) we zapped the Lark Hill codes on the Chateau Shanahan iPhone – and bingo, strait through to the detail on the website.

If you have a smart phone try scanning the QR code on Lark Hill Gruner Veltliner back label, pictured.



Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011 First published 17 August 2011 in The Canberra Times

What an awesome sight the Casella family’s Griffith winery is from the air – a glittering expanse of massive stainless steel tanks housing tens of millions of litres of wine destined for the highly successful Yellow Tail label.

It might smack of homogeneity. But in fact the wine inside those tanks represents a vast network of independent grape growers spread across south-eastern Australia – including the slopes of the Great Dividing Range in New South Wales.

This is the story of one of those vineyards – just one piece in the giant Casella jigsaw puzzle.

First a little background. Casella makes the fabulously successful Yellowtail brand. In May this year British consultancy, Intangible Business, named it as the most powerful Australian wine brand in the world and number 37 in the top 100 wine and spirit brands globally. And in the Shanken News report of 5 July 2011, Yellowtail topped the list of Australian imports into the USA in 2010 at 8.5 million dozen bottles – four times the volume of second placed Lindemans.

My back-of-the-envelope reckoning puts total production at perhaps 12 million dozen bottles a year – given that Yellowtail sells domestically and Casella exports to around 50 countries.

Ever wondered how many grapes that takes and what area of vines it might require? On the same envelope, with Boorowa viticulturist, Mark Sims, we computed 12 million cases translates to around 160 thousand tonnes of grapes from vines covering between 10 and 11 thousand hectares. Little wonder, then, that the capital investment and risk is so widely dispersed.

Sims says he’s worked as a middle man for Casella for many years, managing vineyards and sourcing up to 20 thousand tonnes of grapes a year along the western slopes of the Great Divide, between Mudgee and Cowra.

About ten years back Sims and a couple of farming mates from Warren and Nyngan thought they’d grow grapes together. After a long search, a very attractive property became available on the Belubula River, Canowindra.

The property, Belubula Farm, had originally produced hay, lucerne and chaff, says Sims. A new owner used it for cattle and changed the name to Pinnaroo.

The little idea became a bigger one requiring more capital, so the original mates “pulled in extra partners, pooled our capital and formed Pinnaroo Partners”, say Sims.

From 2002, they established a 110-hectare vineyard, contracted to Casella and planted 90 per cent to chardonnay and five per cent each to viognier and pinot gris.

Sims says the vineyard runs east to west, peaking at about 400 metres above sea level. The east-west orientation provides under-canopy shade for the berries, says Sims, a veteran of grape growing in this warm area.

Sims manages the vines and the families from Warren (Glen and Narelle Whittaker) and Nyngan (Paul and Jenny Buckley) look after the farm. And the other partners are all regular visitors: Mark Sim’s wife, Luisa, Mark and Cathy Beach of Warren, David Buckley of Newcastle, Peter and Margaret Carnell of Dubbo, Glen and Michelle Hamblin of Nevertire, Chris and Mary Logan of Sydney and Peter and Suzie Sims of Canberra.

But like most contract grape grows, the Pinnaroo partners began to produce a little wine for themselves – selecting small parcels of the best fruit and sending it to winemaker Richard Parker at Long Rail Gully, Murrumbateman.

Of course, friends then wanted some, so they created the Pinnaroo brand and sell it through www.pinnaroowines.com.au

Quantities remain small, but these are seriously good wines from an estate that normally slakes the thirst of those mighty Yellowtail tanks in Griffith.

Pinnaroo Estate Partners Reserve Cowra Viognier 2010 $25 Viognier provides a unique drinking experience. Yalumba pioneered the variety some thirty years ago. But plantings increased during the late nineties, partly to make varietal viognier, partly as a minor component in blends with shiraz.

The early stand-alone versions tend to be picked very ripe, resulting in high-alcohol whites with sometimes over-the-top apricot-like varietal flavour and, a solid bite of tannin and a thick, sometimes oily texture.

These are all natural qualities of the grape. But it’s possible to maintain the varietal characteristics in a much more refined package – demonstrated in this delicious version, made by Richard Parker at Long Rail Gully, Murrumbateman.

The Pinnaroo partners hand harvested the grapes at a comparatively low 12.9 per cent alcohol potential – not the 14.5 or 15 per cent often seen from comparable climates.

In Parker’s hands this translated to a full-flavoured, aromatic dry white, displaying clear-cut apricot and ginger varietal character. He matured the wine on yeast lees for 12 month, building a lovely, soft creaminess that sits well with the natural viscosity of the style. It’s a comparatively delicate expression of viognier, with none of the hardness and a very lively, fresh acidity.

Pinnaroo Estate Partners Reserve Cowra Chardonnay 2009 $25 This is an exciting wine – and far removed from the Cowra chardonnay stereotype. At two years age we might expect a dark-golden, fat-but-fading peachy dry white. Instead we have a lemon-coloured, vibrant barrel-fermented chardonnay displaying great flavour intensity (melon rind and white peach), subtly enhanced by barrel fermentation and maturation on yeast lees. A wonderfully rich but fine texture matches the intense fruit flavour. And the alcohol’s a modest 12.9 per cent.

It’s hard to imagine how a Cowra chardonnay could be any better than this – a great example of very high quality fruit being artfully handled by a skilled winemaker.

Pinnaroo viticulturist, Mark Sims, says it’s made from the best chardonnay block on the 110-hectare vineyard – planted to the Entav 76 clone. Richard Parker made the wine at Long Rail Gully, Murrumbateman.

Pinnaroo Estate Partners Reserve Hilltops Shiraz 2008 $25 Like Canberra, the Hilltops region, around Young, New South Wales, makes delicious shiraz, albeit in a generally fleshier style than Canberra’s – but still medium bodied and far removed from, say, the bolder Barossa versions.

As in the other Pinnaroo wines we enjoy the combination of skilful grape growing by Mark Sims and sensitive winemaking by Richard Parker at Long Rail Gully. The grapes seemed to have been picked at just the right point of ripeness – with the varietal, ripe-cherry flavours at full tilt and packed with the vibrancy of fresh berries. This comes through on the highly aromatic, slightly savoury, spicy aroma and on the juicy, fine-boned palate – a kiss of French oak sweetness adding to the pleasure of the shiraz flavour. Grapes come from Mark and Luisa Sim’s Boorowa vineyard.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011 First published 13 July 2011 in The Canberra Times

Visiting Canberra two weeks back, Barossa vigneron Grant Burge rated 2010 his “best white vintage in 10 years”.  Then came the highs and lows of a wet 2011 season, “throwing up all the diseases in one year”, devastating crops in many vineyards, and driving up spraying and vineyard costs across the board.

In his own vineyards – about 400 hectares, mainly in the southern Barossa – Burge sprayed against disease 12 to 16 times, instead of the usual four. And when late-season rain spurred outbreaks of botrytis cinerea, vineyard workers cut out infected berries by hand.

Faced by unrelenting disease pressures, says Burge, “some growers stopped spraying, because they felt uncertain about the final result”. Better to cut their losses early, they reasoned, than to spend more on spraying when there might be no grapes to sell in any event. Some lost their entire crops.

As a winemaker needing every berry, Burge persisted and in the end reaped a good harvest from his own vineyards. In the final ripening period, he says, mild to cool weather settled on the Barossa, bringing healthy fruit to flavour ripeness at unusually low sugar levels. Reds at Burge’s elevated Corryton Park Vineyard, for example, came in at around 12.5 to 13.4 Baume (a measure of sugar), instead of the usual 14 plus.

The low temperatures at ripening produced intense flavours and high natural acidity in the whites, says Burge, and now believes they’ll be even better than the 2010s.

He rates Barossa Valley ahead of the adjoining, cooler Eden Valley in 2011, particularly for cabernet sauvignon. Burge’s Corryton Park vineyard – normally much cooler than the Barossa floor, and more akin to Coonawarra – usually produces his best cabernet.

But in 2011, says Burge, “cabernet sauvignon off the valley floor is the best in 25 years. If fact, I’ve never seen the quality before. I’ve never seen the purple colour on the floor, like at Corryton, but it’s black-purple”.

Overall, says Burge, 2011 wines seem generally leaner, very pure in their fruit expression, less alcoholic and needing time to mature – comments closely paralleling the Canberra 2011 experience.

Burge visited Canberra to promote his flagship Barossa shiraz, Meshach ($155), released, like Grange, at five years. But Burge operates on a large scale for a private Australian producer – and the styles he makes extend far beyond the more expensive reds behind his reputation.

Burge’s 400-plus hectares of vines supply only 60 per cent of company needs. The other 40 per cent comes from about 20 long-term growers, says Burge.

He now makes more white wine than red, largely through the success of his $30-a-bottle sparkling wines, sourced from the cool Adelaide Hills (immediately to the south of Eden Valley on the Mount Lofty Ranges).

But Burge’s most intense passion clearly lies in his beloved Barossa reds.  On this trip he’s showing us Meshach 2006 (straight shiraz, mainly from the Filsell vineyard) and Holy Trinity 2008 ($36), a blend of grenache, shiraz and mourvedre.

They’re beautiful examples of their styles – Meshach made since 1988 and Holy Trinity from 1995. While we might call them “traditional” robust, warm-climate styles, they’re both thoroughly modern wines, expressing regional fruit flavours first and foremost, and benefiting from careful fine-tuning over the years.

While the market still loves them, Burge laments a shift away from the style in wine shows. He says the judges are now “all cool-climate orientated. I went to a few shows last year with Craig [winemaker Craig Stansborough] and warm climate wines like McLaren Vale and Barossa couldn’t get a look in. Anything showing American oak got kicked out. But some of the cool shirazes were tried were just green. I understand they need to show a lead for the industry, but they shouldn’t get too far from the public. The judges now have a narrow focus”.

He sees it as a worrying trend that wine judges today tend to award a narrower range of styles now than an older generation did in the past.

Burge offers interesting insights into international markets, too. He exports to 32 countries, sees opportunities for strong brands despite our dollar’s strength. Describing China as “the wild, wild east”, he’s built export volumes of high quality wine there through “individuals all over the place” and expects ultimately to have a central distributor.

He’s neve done much in the United States but plans to attack the market in the near future and sees huge potential there for good wine. Research, however, revealed a widespread perception in America that Australia doesn’t make good quality wine – a stereotype, he believes, created by the success of cheap, fruity wines like Yellowtail.

He’ll therefore emphasise Barossa Valley, not Australia, as Grant Burge wines roll out across America.

Oh, and the wines? See Grant Burge Meshach 2006 and Thorn Vineyard Eden Valley Riesling 2010  in today’s reviews and Holy Trinity 2008 next week.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2011