As we move towards vintage 2008 Australia’s wine industry is in dramatically different shape than it was last year.

In spring 2006 as vines budded for the 2007 vintage, I was in the Barossa and Langhorne Creek hearing daily of cancelled grape contracts as large winemakers, with storage tanks full, anticipated a third consecutive bumper grape harvest.

Then, out of the blue, frost struck eastern Australia, decimating the embryonic 2007 crop. Drought wrought further damage and, in the end, vignerons crushed 1.4 million tonnes of grapes – half a million tonnes down on the 1.9 million tonnes each of 2005 and 2006.

The oversupply became a shortage overnight. And as the drought continued, vintage 2008 seemed almost certain to be even smaller 2007’s.

At a wine industry conference in Melbourne last month the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation’s Laurie Stanford projected the 2008 harvest at 1.22 million tonnes and predicted an even smaller crop in 2009.

By my estimate the projected 2008 harvested might leave our winemakers about half a million tonnes short of replacing current consumption of Australian wine (1.1 million tonnes for exports; 0.6 million tonnes domestic).

So, with exports still bubbling along and domestic consumption growing modestly, where does that leave Aussie wine drinkers? Will we go without? Will we have to pay more?

The answers you get depend on whom you ask.

Tony Leon, General Manager of the Woolworths owned Dan Murphy brand, was in Perth opening the chain’s seventy-third outlet when I called. A projected turnover of $1.5 billion this year makes Dan the dominant force in Aussie liquor retailing, and a good litmus for the market.

Leon says we won’t go dry, but things will change. One way or another, he reckons, there’ll always be wines at the prices people want. But the day of the $1.99 and $2.99 cleanskin are over. These will jump by $1 to $2 a bottle.

And he believes that strong premium brands are likely to increase in price. For example, the Penfolds Bin Range reds, probably won’t be seen at under $20 next year – and certainly not at the $15 and $16 we enjoyed in 2007.

While Leon predicts that import volumes will increase substantially in percentage terms, their absolute volume will be small. ‘They won’t move the needle’, he said. But he also expects to see imports in some wine casks.

He expects our insatiable thirst for sauvignon blanc to continue into 2008. And to meet demand the next cleanskins of this variety will be from Chile and France – as there’s none to be had in Australia’s bulk market.

And what wines will we want most in 2008? In red wine, says Tony, we want straight shiraz or straight cabernet sauvignon. But we’re developing a taste for pinot noir, but the rapid growth in demand is off a small base.

Similarly there’s a buzz about the white pinot gris. It could grow from about one per cent to three per cent of white wine sales.

Canberra’s Jim Murphy, of Jim Murphy’s Market and Airport cellars, expects that the strong Australian dollar will curb imports to the USA and that this, in turn, could take the pressure off domestic supplies.

Jim says that there have been no price rises yet in the important $5-$10 a bottle range nor in the $15-$30 sparkling wine range – a sweet spot for the Christmas trade. With Christmas deals now done and dusted this suggests stable prices until the New Year.

He adds that there are enough small and medium wineries now to allow him to pick and choose what to stock.

A closer look at the grape supply figures, though, suggests where the price pressures might come in the new year, even if they’re not showing yet.

The real pain for growers is in the Murray Darling basin, source of something like seventy per cent of our wine grapes. These are the backbone of our cask industry (representing a little under half of domestic wine sales), and also of our under-$10 bottled wine market and much of our export push to date.

Most of next year’s grape shortfall will be because of water shortages in the basin. This year, for example, South Australia capped water allocations at 16 per cent, rising to 22 per cent in December.

The ABC reported a few weeks back that ‘many growers say that is not enough’. It went on to report that one Barmera grower vowed to use 40 per cent and said, ‘God help whoever comes out here on my property to tell me you’re not going to do that.’

Meanwhile that River Murray shortage is forcing larger wine companies to change focus. We may well see imported wine in wine casks. And Hardy Wine Company’s Sheralee Davies told me that their could be some rationalisation of their cask products and that there’d be a global push on top end and regional products – from the $15 Oomoo McLaren Vale range to flagships like the $60 Eileen Hardy Chardonnay and $100 Thomas Hardy Cabernet Sauvignon.

Premium growing regions, it seems, won’t be as badly hit as the Riverland and many may deliver normal crops, thanks to late but effective spring rains.

In Canberra, Tim Kirk of Clonakilla, Murrumbateman, and Jim Lumbers of Lerida Estate, say that fruit set suggests a healthy vintage. And Anne Caine, President of the Canberra District Wine Industry Association, reports good fruit set across the district, thanks to June rain and recent follow up falls.

What we’ll also begin to see increasingly in 2008 and beyond is the effects of concerns about global warming.

Increasingly, the industry will measure its carbon footprint and take steps to reduce it. This will be driven partly by international retailers, partly by legislators, partly by consumers and partly by producers themselves.

We’ve already seen the introduction by Foster’s of premium wine in PET bottles into the Canadian market and to a lesser extent in Australia. At one-tenth the weight of glass these deliver major savings in transport and recycling costs.

And Hardy’s has introduced one-litre tetra packs into its UK Banrock Station range. These will hit Australian shelves next year.

At the recent Wine Industry Outlook Conference, delegates learned of a new carbon-footprint tool developed by Australian company, Provisor. Wineries from Australia and other countries have agreed to adopt the tool as a means to giving standardized assessments across the industry.

What we can say for 2008 and beyond is that we won’t go dry; we’ll drink more imports; we’ll see a lift in basic wine quality; competition will keep a lid on prices, as it always does; and we’ll see a rapid greening of the industry – partly to survive, partly to gain competitive advantage and partly in response to consumer and government demands.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007

Rutherglen’s luscious, luxurious Tokays and Muscats may not the underpriced secrets they used to be. But they are, at least, as stunningly, deliciously brilliant as ever and readily available.

They’re wines to savour slowly and, like good Cognac or single malt Scotch, half the pleasure is in the aroma. And that means that one glass goes a long way.

I’ve had the fortune to judge some of our greatest fortifieds at many wine shows over they years, notably at Cowra with Rutherglen legend, David Morris, leading the panel. But the greatest display I’ve seen was in Rutherglen just after the local wine show a year or two back.

Show Chairman, Chris Pfeiffer, organised a couple of wine workshops for about sixty winemakers and grape growers in town for the celebrations and the old muscats and tokays proved irresistible.

After a morning’s warm up on shirazes and shiraz blends, we moved to the serious business of fortified wines. Industry luminaries David Morris, of Morris Wines, and James Godfrey, of Seppeltsfield, led the session. But with venerable old Rutherglen families like Buller, Killeen, Gehrig, Campbell and Chambers in the audience, we were never going to go short on experience.

Before slipping into the truly luscious stuff, a little foreplay on a range of fino, amontillado and oloroso sherry styles seemed appropriate. Samples of fortifying spirits and current vintage base wines showed the building blocks. But a taste of mature Australian and Spanish versions of the three styles reminded us of how rewarding it is to drink these extraordinary wines.

Fino, the most delicate of the sherry family, matures at length in old oak barrels under a protective layer of ‘flor’, or yeast cells. The pale lemon coloured wines that emerge give no hint of their often-considerable age. However, the intensity and complexity of aroma and flavour are remarkable in their special savoury, tangy way.

And with the removal of Australia’s ‘minimum 17 per cent alcohol’ law in 1995, the best local versions – bottled at around 15 per cent alcohol – have a delicacy equal to that of the original Spanish styles.  Two that appealed strongly on the day were the readily available Seppelt DP 117 Fino (made by James Godfrey) and, from Spain, Hidalgo La Gitana Manzanilla – a particularly delicate, sub-category of fino. Lightly chilled, these are superb aperitif wines.

Of the richer, darker Amontillado styles, the older Australians – Seppelt DP898, Seppelt DP102 and Morris 35 Year old – showed the wonderful, drying nutty finish of prolonged barrel ageing. These are simply glorious. The Spanish Gonzales Byass Elegante Amontillado was a touch lighter in colour with a lovely, honeyed rich palate and very fine, dry finish. Amontillado is the classic consommé or soup wine.

The old Oloroso’s were remarkable, the Aussies showing medium brown colour with the distinctive olive-green meniscus of great age. These were intensely rich and sweet with powerful, aged nutty flavours and grippy drying finish. Fruitcake, nuts and a roaring fire is all these need. Of the two Spanish versions, I preferred Hidalgo Secco Napoleon – a subtle but intense dry style of some delicacy.

Palates suitably titillated, we moved to Rutherglen’s great Tokays and Muscats, working through contrasting samples of current vintage wines, various blending components and, finally, the finished, bottled product.

Within a familial regional theme, both the Tokays and Muscats show considerable style variation from make to maker. This became increasingly clear as we stepped up through the formal quality grades comparing the Morris and Seppelt product.

Even the current vintage base wines, barely fermented and fortified, showed an essentially different winemaking approach: the Seppelt samples, largely because the maker opts for a low pH winemaking approach, were significantly paler than the Morris wines and notably firmer, and less rounded in the mouth. This is neither good nor bad – just a style difference.

Now, Rutherglen Tokays and Muscat have four formal classifications. The progression is: Rutherglen, Classic Rutherglen, Grand Rutherglen and Rare Rutherglen. While these are based on richness, complexity and flavour, increasing age is, perhaps, the biggest single quality factor behind increasing quality. Broadly then, ‘Rutherglen’ will be the youngest commercial material and ‘Rare’ the oldest.

However, the wines are skilful blends containing components of varying age, from various sized oak barrels, from various parts of the winery. This can be complex, as David Morris demonstrated with samples from the 1993 vintage drawn from barrels at different heights in the stack.

The winemaker’s art is in blending numerous components, some of very great age (we tasted one syrupy-rich 70 year old sample) to produce consistent bottlings from year to year.

In the end, though, whether you prefer the slightly more subtle fruit character of Tokay or the powerful grapiness of Muscat, Rutherglen’s fortified specialties reliably grow in intensity and interest as you move up the formal scale.

At the tasting, however, just as we’d exhausted our superlatives on Seppelt and Morris ‘Rare’ Tokays and ‘Muscats, the organisers knocked our socks off with extraordinary ‘Museum’ bottlings. These are truly heavenly and deserve to be savoured drop by drop from brandy balloons that capture their profound, aged, luscious complexity.

While you won’t find the museum wines in bottle shops, you could get lucky at a cellar door tasting in Rutherglen. But you can buy the wonderful ‘Grand Rutherglen’ and ‘Rare Rutherglen’ versions in bottle shops. They are great and unique Aussie wines that go beautifully with Christmas pud, fruitcake and nuts.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007

‘Although alcohol does not have a taste’, writes Professor A. Dinsmoor Webb (Oenologist, UC Davis, retired), ‘it has an effect, not just on the human nervous system, but on how a wine tastes. The alcohol content in a perfectly balanced wine should be unfathomable, but wines that are slightly too high in alcohol can have a hot aftertaste. As a general rule, wines described as ‘full bodied’ are high in alcohol, while those described as ‘light’ are low in alcohol.’

Professor Webb’s words imply that there’s an optimum alcohol content for each wine. Indeed, over the last few years, many Australian wines, reds in particular, have copped criticism for going over the top.
And last week at the Australian Wine Industry Outlook Conference, Dan Jago, director of beer, wine and spirits for giant UK retailer, Tesco, warned Aussie makers of a swing towards lighter red styles.

It’s a topic widely discussed amongst winemakers, partly in response to perceived consumer resistance to reds weighing in at fifteen per cent or more alcohol by volume. The alcohol is quite often accompanied by masses of sweet fruit, mountains of tannin and enough oak to rebuild the ark.

The issue is not limited to reds, nor solely to Aussie wines. I once tasted, for instance, a sherry-like Californian chardonnay bottled at a breathalyser blowing 16.5 per cent alcohol. It was awful.

And it’s not only consumers driving the alcohol discussion. Many winemakers and wine show judges question the drinkability of excessively big wines. A couple of years back, for example, Jim Brayne, McWilliams chief winemaker told me, ‘The wheel seems to be turning. High quality shiraz and chardonnay seems to be coming down in alcohol as winemakers seek finesse and palate structure rather than just volume’. ‘Wine judges are rewarding the finer wines, too’, he added.

To understand the relationship between flavour and sugar (and, hence, alcohol), it’s worth looking at wine grapes through a vigneron’s eyes. The vigneron approaches grapes with a wine style in mind. Two of the key parameters in deciding when to harvest grapes to achieve the desired style are sugar ripeness and flavour ripeness. These are related but not in a linear way.

Now, sugar ripeness determines the alcohol content of a dry wine and in most Australian growing regions achieving sufficient sugar levels is not a problem. However, as winemakers tend to harvest for a particular flavour profile, it’s not uncommon, especially in warmer areas, for sugar levels (and therefore alcohol potential) to climb very high before flavour ripeness is achieved.

So, let’s look at the Hunter examples. Jim Brayne says that semillon in the lower Hunter develops ripe fruit flavours when the alcohol potential is around ten to eleven per cent. Indeed, the better Hunter semillons today continue to be made at about this level. In contrast, says Jim, semillon grown in the much warmer Griffith area, develops ripe fruit flavours at much higher sugar levels and therefore the wines are more alcoholic

Now, with Hunter shiraz, things have changed. Jim says that in the old days the Hunter’s lousy vintage weather often left shiraz stranded on about 11 per cent alcohol. These wines were light, thin and green. Improved viticulture, says Jim, means that even in poor seasons today’s Hunter shiraz reaches respectable sugar and flavour ripeness levels.

Some makers, however, boost alcohol in poor seasons by running off juice, concentrating it by removing water, then adding the concentrated juice back for fermentation.

Interestingly, in good seasons, sugar levels achieved in the Hunter shiraz today are similar to those achieved in good seasons in the old days.

While there is evidence that some modern yeasts extract more alcohol than older strains, it seems the ultimate alcohol content of any given wine is dependent on the grape variety, the region, the season and winemaker decisions about time of harvest.

If, indeed, we experience a wider swing to elegance and finesse, we’ll see subtle declines in alcohol content because winemaker in any given region still have to harvest within the fairly narrow flavour ripeness spectrum. I don’t think we’ll see again, for example, the thin, green 11 per cent alcohol Coonawarras peddled about in the early eighties.

For those seeking elegant, comparatively low alcohol wines, the answer may be found in cool areas, or in regions where through some peculiarity or another, a particular variety (like Hunter semillon or Clare riesling) achieve flavour ripeness before the sugar level explodes.

That said, wines of comparatively high alcohol content are not unique to Australia and can be just as easily found in France, Italy, Spain or pretty well anywhere you look. Whether nature provides or humans add the sugar that ultimately becomes alcohol matters less than the impact that the alcohol has on a wine’s flavour.

As the good professor said above ‘the alcohol content in a perfectly balanced wine should be unfathomable.’ I’ve had beautifully balanced, elegant, Aussie reds weighing in at 15 per cent alcohol and hot, hollow ones of only 13 to 14 per cent.

What that means, of course, is that alcohol content on its own tells you little about the overall quality of a wine. And given our growing export success it suggests that in working towards lower alcohol content, we shouldn’t sacrifice the ripe, fruity flavours that people love.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007